Obviousness

Obviousness Analysis under 35 U.S.C. § 103 for US8989715

This analysis addresses the obviousness of US patent 8989715 under 35 U.S.C. § 103, considering the provided patent text and the general principles of obviousness. To establish obviousness, one must demonstrate that a person having ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA) would have been motivated to combine prior art references to arrive at the claimed invention, and that there would have been a reasonable expectation of success. Prior art includes any evidence that the invention was known or publicly available before the effective filing date of the patent application.

The provided patent text for US8989715 outlines a system and method for rendering content on a wireless device where a server executes a generic application, tailors its output based on the wireless device's capabilities, and sends "basic commands" along with "custom configuration" to the device for rendering. The core innovation, as described in the patent's summary and detailed description, lies in relieving software vendors from tailoring applications for each device type by having the server handle device-specific rendering, including the use of generic syntax with tailored parameters and custom configurations for "look and feel."

Without the full prosecution history, including the Examiner's Reasons for Allowance, it's challenging to precisely identify the closest prior art considered during examination and the specific arguments made for patentability. However, based on the patent's own description of the problem it solves and the prior art keywords provided, we can infer relevant areas of prior art.

Identified Problems in the Background Art:

The patent explicitly states the following problems in the background art:

• The market is fractured with many different types of wireless devices, each with unique attributes (brand, model, rendering capability, processing power, display resolution, etc.).
• Each application must be tailored to these wireless device attributes, leading to increased development costs and limiting the number of applications software vendors can produce.
• Updating applications requires device-specific patches, a laborious process for users, often leading to un-updated applications.

Prior Art Keywords from the Patent Information:

• wireless device
• content
• application
• custom configuration
• compiled

Potential Combinations of Prior Art References and Motivation to Combine:

Given the stated problems and the general landscape of mobile application development prior to the priority date of August 1, 2007, a PHOSITA would likely have been aware of various technologies addressing aspects of device-independent content delivery, remote application execution, and customizable user interfaces.

Scenario 1: Combining technologies for device-independent content delivery with client-side rendering.

• Prior Art Elements:

  • Remote content delivery systems: Technologies like WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) browsers or early web browsing on mobile devices allowed servers to deliver content (e.g., WML, HTML) to wireless devices. While WAP applications were noted as having limitations, particularly with real-time updates and bandwidth efficiency, they established the concept of server-client communication for content.
  • Device profile/capability databases: Systems existed for identifying device capabilities (e.g., screen size, color depth, supported media formats) to aid in content adaptation. This was common for serving optimized images or different content versions.
  • Client-side interpreters/virtual machines: Platforms like J2ME (Java Platform, Micro Edition) and BREW (Binary Runtime for Wireless) enabled execution of applications on wireless devices, often involving a degree of abstraction from the underlying hardware. These platforms also allowed for some level of customization of the user interface through themes or skins. The patent itself mentions J2ME/BREW 104 as a component of the wireless device protocol stack.

• Motivation to Combine: A PHOSITA facing the challenge of developing applications for a fragmented mobile market would be highly motivated to combine these elements to reduce development effort and improve user experience.

  • The desire to reduce application tailoring costs (as highlighted in the patent's background) would drive the combination of server-side content adaptation (using device profiles) with client-side rendering capabilities. Instead of building a unique application for each device, a developer would naturally seek to generate a common "intermediate" representation that could be rendered flexibly on different devices.
  • The need for more efficient updates and patches would motivate moving application logic to the server. If the core application runs on the server, updates can be applied once centrally, rather than requiring individual client updates.
  • The aim for a customizable user experience across devices would lead to the integration of client-side configuration data (for "look and feel") with server-generated content. If a server is already adapting content, providing custom configuration data that the client can apply to its rendering blocks offers an obvious way to enhance the user interface beyond basic content display.

• Obviousness Argument: A PHOSITA would recognize that by having the server act as a central hub for generic application execution and device-specific content generation, and by sending a flexible, "basic command" set to a client-side rendering engine that can be customized with "custom configuration" data, they could overcome the limitations of tailoring applications for each device. The generic syntax for commands would allow for broad compatibility, while tailored parameters would ensure optimal display on diverse devices. The combination would be a logical step to achieve a more efficient and adaptable mobile application ecosystem.

Scenario 2: Remote application execution with tailored output.

• Prior Art Elements:

  • Thin-client architectures / Remote Desktop protocols: Technologies existed where application execution occurred on a server, and only the display updates were sent to a client device. While often used for more powerful desktop applications, the underlying principle of separating application logic from display rendering was known.
  • Server-side content generation/transformation: Servers were capable of dynamically generating content (e.g., HTML, images) based on user requests and various parameters.
  • Customizable user interface frameworks: Client-side frameworks allowing for the application of "skins" or "themes" to alter the visual appearance of applications were known in various computing contexts.

• Motivation to Combine: The stated problem of "updating applications requires a patch/update to be specially developed for and provided to each wireless device individually" would strongly motivate a PHOSITA to explore server-side execution of applications.

  • Combining remote execution with tailored output generation directly addresses the maintenance burden. If the application logic resides on the server, a single update on the server benefits all connected clients, regardless of their specific device model.
  • The use of "basic commands" that are device-generic in syntax but tailored in parameters would be an obvious optimization for sending display updates efficiently to diverse client devices, building on existing remote display protocols.
  • Incorporating "custom configuration" data would provide the necessary flexibility to maintain brand identity or user personalization across different devices, even when the core application runs remotely.

• Obviousness Argument: A PHOSITA would find it obvious to apply known principles of remote application execution to the wireless device context to alleviate the burden of device-specific application development and updates. The steps of a server executing a generic application, using device profiles to tailor the output into a series of basic (but parameterized) commands, and leveraging client-side custom configurations for presentation, would be a straightforward combination of known techniques to achieve the desired improvements in efficiency and flexibility for mobile content rendering.

Conclusion on Obviousness:

Based on the problems identified in the patent's background and the general state of technology prior to 2007, it is likely that many of the individual components described in US8989715 were known. A PHOSITA, motivated by the clear economic and logistical challenges of developing and maintaining device-specific applications for a fragmented wireless market, would have found it obvious to combine these known elements (server-side application execution, device capability detection, content adaptation/tailoring, generic command sets, and client-side customizable rendering blocks) to create a system that addresses these problems. The combination would have offered a reasonable expectation of success in achieving device-independent application development and easier updates.

Without the specific prior art cited and discussed during the patent's prosecution, this analysis relies on a general understanding of the technical field. A comprehensive obviousness analysis would require examining the Examiner's Reasons for Allowance and the cited prior art to determine the specific points of novelty that were argued and accepted by the USPTO.