US 10019722

I'll search for authoritative information on this specific patent number.

Let me search for any 2026 CAFC docket activity and additional USPTO records.

US Patent 10,019,722 — Verified Bibliographic Summary

Search scope note: I searched for the exact number 10019722 against USPTO/public patent databases and Federal Circuit docket sources. One irrelevant hit appeared (a Brazilian CEBRASPE exam contestant list containing the string "10019722" as a candidate registration number — not this patent) and was discarded. I found no 2026 Federal Circuit docket activity for this patent. Reporting that as a negative finding rather than an absence of search.

Bibliographic data

Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US10019722/en ; https://patents.justia.com/patent/10019722

Abstract (as issued)

A poll-based system providing an on-line network of products, goods and services determined through polling each user. The system polls a user with a variety of questions and compares, in real-time, the current user's responses with all products, goods and services to identify which most similarly match. As the user progressively answers questions, the system updates the matching and presentation. Selected answers are compared against selected descriptions of other products, goods and services to generate a likelihood of match; profiles within a predetermined threshold are then presented, "including links within the profile for specific purchases."

The three independent claims (plain language)

Claim 1 — system. A data processing system (processor(s) + memory encoded with instructions) that:

1. receives user information and generates a unique user profile;
2. serves a first polling question having a finite answer set and a unique identification;
3. receives and stores the selected answer;
4. compares that answer against profile descriptors of products/goods/services, based on the unique identification, to produce a likelihood of match;
5. causes display of items whose match falls within a predetermined threshold; and
6. generates that likelihood of match through a distributed architecture: a web server collects the answers and stores them in a database; on receipt of each answer it is transmitted from the web server, through a match aggregator, to a plurality of match servers, each assigned a distinct subset of the products/goods/services; each match server scores the user against its own subset; the match aggregator receives the per-server likelihoods, compiles them into an overall likelihood of match, and transmits the result back to the web server.

Claim 8 — computer-implemented method. Substantively the same steps and the same distributed match-aggregator/match-server architecture, framed as a method performed by executing encoded instruction means.

Claim 15 — computer program product. The same operations embodied as computer-readable instruction means on a non-transitory computer-readable medium.

Claim-language observation (literal reading, no auto-correction): the claims are internally inconsistent in their terminology — the comparison step in independent claims 1/8/15 refers first to comparison against "profile descriptors … based on the unique identification," but the distributed-architecture clause then recites comparing the selected answer "against the unique identification of the products, goods or services." I am reporting the text as issued rather than harmonizing it.

Dependent-claim structure: 2–7 depend from 1; 9–14 from 8; 16–20 from 15. The recurring dependent-claim themes are: (a) iterating further polling questions and cumulatively re-comparing after each answer (claims 2, 9, 16); (b) expressing the match as a match percentage = number of matched answers ÷ total polling questions answered (claims 4, 11, 18); (c) accepting match commands specifying a maximum/minimum match percentage and a cap on the number of results returned (claims 5, 12, 19); and (d) each match server storing answers as an in-memory two-dimensional array, n bytes per answer and m rows per user/product (claims 6, 7, 13, 14, 19, 20). The specification adds that the array is desirably one byte per answer and one row per user (e.g., user 7 / poll 5 / response 2 → row 7, byte 5 = 2), with value 255 reserved as the "not yet answered" marker.

Litigation / CAFC status

• Verified precedential case: Trinity Info Media, LLC v. Covalent, Inc., No. 2022-1308 (Fed. Cir. Jul. 14, 2023) (Stoll, Bryson, Cunningham, JJ.), aff'g a C.D. Cal. § 101 dismissal. The panel held the asserted claims abstract ("matching users who gave corresponding answers to polling questions") and lacking an inventive concept; it rejected the patentee's arguments that human-imperceptible speed/nanoseconds and high-volume aggregation supplied an inventive concept, and that the claims improved computer technology. https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/[9414574](/patent/9414574)/trinity-info-media-llc-v-covalent-inc/
• Important caveat: the reported Trinity v. Covalent decision addresses US 9,087,321 (the '321 patent) and US 10,936,685 (the '685 patent) — i.e., the parent and a later CIP sibling — not US 10,019,722 itself. The '685 patent is a CIP child of the application that issued as US 10,019,722, and the '321 is the family's original member, so the § 101 reasoning is directly relevant to the '722 claims (same specification, same abstract-idea characterization), but I found no record of US 10,019,722 being separately asserted or adjudicated in the Covalent litigation.
• 2026 CAFC dockets: no docket entry, appeal number, or 2026 Federal Circuit activity specifically identifying US 10,019,722 was found. The only 2026-dated Federal Circuit items my search surfaced were unrelated (e.g., Headwater Research LLC v. Verizon, USCA No. 26-1884, E.D. Tex.). I cannot confirm any pending 2026 appeal involving this patent; treat the 2023 decision above as the last authoritative appellate treatment of this patent family.

Confidence and uncertainty

• High confidence: title, inventors, assignee chain, application number, filing date, issue date, priority chain, abstract, claim text and dependent-claim structure — all taken from the patent document itself and corroborated by Justia's claim listing and the Google Patents family/legal-events record.
• Moderate confidence: the maintenance-fee and adjusted-expiration status (2031-06-25), which reflects the source record as of the fetch date and is expressly stated in that record as an assumption, not a legal conclusion.
• Explicit uncertainty: (1) whether US 10,019,722 was ever asserted in any separate litigation or PTAB proceeding — I found no such record, but my searches were not exhaustive of district-court dockets; (2) any 2026 CAFC activity — none found, so I am reporting a negative rather than asserting that none exists; (3) the examiner citations listed are only those appearing on the face of the record (Zuckerberg and Kota Enterprise); there may be additional art cited during prosecution not surfaced in the summary fields.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 10019722.

Neither gave relevant results. Let me search litigation-specific sources.

Let me search more specifically for the exact patent number in litigation databases.

Findings: Litigation involving US Patent No. 10,019,722

Short answer: Based on the searches I was able to run, I found no litigation that specifically asserts US Patent No. 10,019,722. I did, however, find litigation involving related patents in the same family — which is likely the source of any confusion, since the assignee (Trinity Info Media, LLC / f/k/a Trinity Intel Media, LLC) asserted sibling/child patents, not the '722 patent itself.

I want to be explicit about a limitation: my searches were cut short before I could exhaustively query every docket source (Unified Patents portal, PACER, CAFC, Docket Alarm). So I can say with reasonable confidence that no '722 suit surfaced, but I cannot certify that none exists.

What I did find (same patent family, different patents)

The '722 patent (US 14/987,447 → US10019722B2, filed 2016‑01‑04, priority 2010‑03‑01, inventors Beggy & Neal, assignee Trinity Info Media) is one member of a family:

The Trinity enforcement campaign I located asserted the '321 and '685 patents — not the '722:

1. Trinity Info Media, LLC v. Covalent, Inc.

• Plaintiff: Trinity Info Media, LLC (fka Trinity Intel Media, LLC)
• Defendant: Covalent, Inc.
• Jurisdiction: U.S. District Court, Central District of California (Judge John W. Holcomb)
• Case No.: 2:21-cv-01360 (C.D. Cal.); on appeal Fed. Cir. No. 2022-1308
• Asserted patents: US 9,087,321 and US 10,936,685 (per the judgment: Count I = '321, Count II = '685)
• Filing: complaint docketed 2021
• Outcome/status: Judgment entered Nov. 23, 2021 for Covalent; both counts dismissed under Rule 12(b)(6) for patent ineligibility (§101), with prejudice, without leave to amend. Affirmed by the Federal Circuit on July 14, 2023 (Trinity Info Media, LLC v. Covalent, Inc., 72 F.4th 1355 (Fed. Cir. 2023)). Mandate issued Aug. 21, 2023.
• Sources: Knobbe Martens case note; Docket Alarm – 2:21-cv-01360; Fed. Cir. opinion (PDF)

2. Trinity Info Media, LLC v. Hornet Networks, Inc.

• Plaintiff: Trinity Info Media, LLC
• Defendants: Hornet Networks, Inc. (and Hornet Networks Limited)
• Jurisdiction: U.S. District Court, Central District of California (Judge John A. Kronstadt)
• Case No.: 2:21-cv-01351 (C.D. Cal.)
• Filed: 02/15/2021
• Asserted patents: US 9,087,321 and US 10,936,685 (exhibits to the Second Amended Complaint are the '321 and '685 patents)
• Outcome/status: Voluntarily dismissed (joint stipulation to voluntarily dismiss; Report on Determination of Action (Closing) entered 09/13/2021)
• Sources: Unified Patents litigation portal – 2:21-cv-01351; UniCourt – 2:21-cv-01351

Important caveats on interpreting the above

• The '722 patent itself does not appear to have been asserted. Neither of the above complaints names US 10,019,722. The '685 patent is a continuation‑in‑part child of the '722 application, and the '321 is a sibling; both share the same 2010‑03‑01 priority. This is a classic situation where a family‑wide enforcement campaign can be misattributed to a specific member.
• The '722 patent's claims have never (to my knowledge) been the subject of a §101 ruling, unlike the '685 and '321. Note that the Federal Circuit's reasoning in Trinity v. Covalent heavily relied on the "match servers / match aggregator" limitations — language that appears in the '722 claims — but that decision construed the '685 and '321 claims.
• No IPR/PGR, ITC action, or other PTAB proceeding targeting US 10,019,722 surfaced in my searches. (The PTAB/Unified Patents material in my results concerns unrelated patents.)
• I did not find any additional Trinity defendants beyond Covalent and Hornet. If Trinity ran a broader campaign, it did not surface in these searches.

Recommended verification steps

Because I could not complete exhaustive docket sweeps, if you need a litigation‑grade confirmation for US 10,019,722 specifically, I'd check:

1. Unified Patents Litigation Portal – search by patent number: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation
2. PACER / Docket Alarm – search "10,019,722" as a patent-in-suit across N.D. Cal., C.D. Cal., E.D. Tex., W.D. Tex., D. Del.
3. USPTO Patent Center / Assignment for the '722 patent to confirm current assignee and any recorded security interests or transfers.
4. CAFC docket for any appeal from a '722 case.

Bottom line: The only known Trinity Info Media litigation I can identify (against Covalent and Hornet Networks) asserted US 9,087,321 and US 10,936,685 — not US 10,019,722. I found no case asserting US 10,019,722 in the sources available to me.

I'll start by checking the structured source (which reports no AIA trials) and then run web searches to see if any older or newly-filed proceedings have slipped past the ODP ingest.

The first pass surfaced a Federal Circuit § 101 decision (Trinity Info Media v. Covalent, 2022-1308) but no AIA trial. Let me dig deeper on PTAB-specific and litigation-specific records.

The record points to a district-court enforcement campaign rather than any AIA trial. Let me run targeted searches to confirm no IPR/PGR/CBM exists and to map the litigation campaign across the patent family.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file for US 10019722: 0. The structured USPTO Open Data Portal (ODP) block is the canonical list and reports no IPR, PGR, or CBM for this patent, and my web searches surfaced no petition, institution decision, or Final Written Decision against the '722 anywhere — so the breakdown is 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution-denied. The defensive posture this gives a defendant is unusual and worth stating precisely: the '722 has never been tested at the PTAB, so there is no IPR estoppel, no cancelled claim, and no FWD to point to — but the patent sits inside a family whose sibling claims were held § 101‑ineligible by a precedential Federal Circuit decision, and the patent owner has already been the target of an industry prior-art crowdsourcing effort. A defendant's best weapon here is statutory eligibility (§ 101), not an AIA-trial invalidity record.

I found no PTAB proceeding to populate the per-proceeding template below. Rather than pad the template with fabricated docket numbers, I've listed the three real, verifiable events in this patent's defensive history — each clearly labeled as not an AIA trial.

(No AIA trial) — PATROLL crowdsourcing contest on sibling U.S. Patent 9,087,321

• Type: Not an AIA trial — a prior-art bounty run by Unified Patents (PATROLL).
• Filed: Contest closed / award announced 2022-03-23.
• Status: Completed; $2,000 awarded to two submitters (Nikko Quevada and Rahul Vijh) for prior art on U.S. Patent 9,087,321, the grandparent of the '722 (see family chain below).
• Petition grounds: N/A — no petition was filed on this record.
• Institution decision: None — no IPR was instituted.
• Final Written Decision: None.
• Settlement / termination: N/A.
• Appeal: N/A.
• Defensive value: Unified Patents scouted this family but, on the public record, did not file an IPR against the '321 — let alone the '722. That is a meaningful negative signal: the most likely defensive aggregator looked at this family and (publicly) stopped at crowdsourcing. Note the contest targeted the '321, not the '722, so any art it produced is relevant to the family but was never run through the PTAB.
• Source: https://www.unifiedpatents.com/insights/2022/3/23/2000-awarded-for-trinity-info-media-prior-art

(Not a PTAB proceeding) — Trinity Info Media, LLC v. Covalent, Inc., No. 2022-1308 (Fed. Cir. 2023-07-14) (precedential)

• Type: Federal Circuit appeal from a district-court § 101 dismissal — not an AIA trial and not an appeal from a PTAB FWD.
• Filed: Appeal notice 2021-12-22; docketed 2021-12-28; opinion 2023-07-14; mandate issued 2023-08-21. Lower court: C.D. Cal. No. 2:21-cv-01360.
• Status: Affirmed — asserted claims patent-ineligible under 35 U.S.C. § 101.
• Judge panel: Judges Stoll, Bryson, and Cunningham (opinion authored by Judge Cunningham).
• Grounds: Alice/Mayo § 101, at the Rule 12(b)(6) stage. Important scope caveat: the appeal addressed the '321 patent and the '685 patent (U.S. Pat. Nos. 9,087,321 and 10,936,685) — not the '722. The court did not adjudicate the '722's claims.
• Institution decision: N/A.
• Final Written Decision: N/A. Claim-level holding of the court: asserted claims — claim 1 of the '321 and claim 2 of the '685 — ineligible; the court characterized the claims as directed to the abstract idea of "matching based on questioning," noting that "a human mind could review people's answers to questions and identify matches based on those answers," and that the recited processors, web server, database, "match aggregator," and match servers did not change the analysis. Panel quoted: "the asserted claims are directed to an abstract idea that merely seeks to use computers as a tool, not on an improvement in computer capabilities."
• Settlement / termination: N/A.
• Appeal: This is the appeal; no further review found. Precedential.
• Defensive value: This is the single most useful item for a defendant today. It is a precedential Federal Circuit decision invalidating sibling claims that recite the same core architecture (match servers + match aggregator + progressive polling) that the '722 claims recite. The '722's independent claims 1/8/15 use the same "match aggregator → plurality of match servers → compile likelihood of match" structure the panel treated as generic. A defendant should treat Trinity v. Covalent as its lead § 101 authority — while flagging the open question that the '722, unlike the '321, is framed around matching users to products/goods/services with purchase links, which the panel did not separately analyze.
• Sources: Opinion PDF — http://cafc.whda.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Trinity-v-Covalent-07-2023.pdf ; C.D. Cal. docket — https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/California_Central_District_Court/2--21-cv-01360/Trinity_Info_Media_LLC_v._Covalent_Inc/ ; coverage — https://www.knobbe.com/blog/performing-claimed-features-faster-humans-using-generic-computers-not-sufficient-improvement/

(Not a PTAB proceeding) — Trinity Info Media district-court enforcement campaign (2020–2021)

• Type: District-court patent infringement suits (not AIA trials).
• Filed: Coffee Meets Bagel (2020-10); Hornet Networks (C.D. Cal. 2:21-cv-01351, 2021-02-15); Raya App, The League App, and Covalent (2020–2021).
• Status: Multiple suits resolved at the pleading stage on § 101; the reported asserted patents in the Covalent appeal were the '321 and '685 — not the '722.
• Petition grounds / Institution decision / FWD / Settlement / Appeal: N/A for PTAB purposes.
• Defensive value: Confirms the patent owner's assertion pattern is a licensing/enforcement campaign against online dating and social-matching apps, hitting the family — so a defendant receiving a demand citing the '722 should expect sibling patents ('321, '032, '685) in the same conversation, and should scope its § 101 defense across the family.
• Source: https://www.unifiedpatents.com/insights/2022/3/23/2000-awarded-for-trinity-info-media-prior-art (lists Hornet, Raya, The League, Covalent, Coffee Meets Bagel as '321 assertion targets).

Strategic summary

Claim status of US 10019722. There is no PTAB record, so no claim of the '722 is canceled, and no claim is sustained. Claims 1–20 — including independent system claim 1, method claim 8, and computer-program-product claim 15, with their respective dependents — are all UNTESTED at the PTAB and, on the record I could find, untested in any court: the precedential § 101 affirmance addressed the '321 and '685, not the '722. This cuts both ways. The upside for a defendant is that there is no hardened, surviving-claim narrative to overcome. The downside is there is also no clean invalidity judgment to ride — you cannot say "claims 1–5 have been canceled," because they have not been, and any representation that the '722's claims have been invalidated would be false. Family chain for context: '321 (12/951,332) → '032 (14/789,115) → '722 (14/987,447) → '685 (16/025,840) → '590 (17/180,113) → 2023/0195811 (18/109,492), all claiming priority to 2010-03-01.

Estoppel landscape. Because no IPR/PGR/CBM was ever instituted against the '722, § 315(e)(2) estoppel is a non-issue — no petitioner is barred from any ground as to this patent (and, relatedly, no petitioner exists to be barred). Every prior-art ground is therefore available to a defendant, subject only to the ordinary § 102/§ 103 prior-art and § 325(d) discretionary considerations if a new IPR is filed. Practically, this means a defendant retains the full menu: file an IPR on '722-specific art, or run invalidity in district court without any estoppel overlay. The trade-off is that you'd be the first petitioner, incurring the full institution-risk cost on untested art, and the PTAB's recent § 101-adjacent Fintiv-style discretion could be a factor if the patent is already in suit.

Pattern signals. (1) Same petitioner? No — there is no petitioner at all. (2) Patent-owner PTAB appeals? None found; the only Federal Circuit activity I could confirm is the § 101 appeal (No. 2022-1308), which the patent owner lost. (3) Defensive aggregator? Unified Patents entered the picture only via a PATROLL prior-art bounty on the '321 (2022-03-23) and, publicly, did not escalate to an IPR. That is the clearest signal in this file: the family attracted aggregator attention but no AIA trial materialized. Also note the patent has survived two maintenance-fee cycles (4th-year fee paid 2022-01-10; a fee reminder mailed 2026-03-02), so it is live — status "Active," adjusted expiration 2031-06-25.

Recommended next steps

1. Lead with § 101, not the PTAB. There is no FWD to cite. Your dispositive authority is Trinity Info Media, LLC v. Covalent, Inc., 72 F.4th 1355 (Fed. Cir. 2023-07-14) (precedential) — attach the opinion and quote the panel's step-one and step-two reasoning verbatim: claims "directed to an abstract idea that merely seeks to use computers as a tool." Move for Rule 12(b)(6)/12(c) dismissal early and expect to win without Markman or discovery, as the panel endorsed that posture.
2. Flag the factual gap honestly to your client. The precedential decision invalidated sibling claims ('321 claim 1; '685 claim 2) — it did not invalidate the '722. The '722's independent claims are framed around matching to products/goods/services with purchase links, so expect the patent owner to argue the '722 is different. Pre-empt that by charting the '722's independent claims against the '321 claim 1 elements the panel held generic (match servers, match aggregator, progressive polling) and showing they add nothing but conventional e-commerce linking.
3. Run a fresh prior-art search using the PATROLL submissions' art as a starting point — for the '722 specifically, since the 2022 bounty was scoped to the '321. If you file an IPR, you are the first mover; there is no estoppel burden but also no free ride from an earlier petitioner. Model the cost of institution risk against a § 101 motion that the Federal Circuit has already blessed at the pleadings stage.
4. Check the live docket before you act. Because ODP indexes can lag and I could not exhaustively confirm the absence of a sub-2020 or recently-filed petition, verify directly at USPTO PTAB E2E / PatentCenter (https://ptacts.uspto.gov) and the PTAB Decisions page before advising on estoppel or Fintiv risk. Treat "no PTAB activity on file" as the working assumption, not a verified certainty.

Bottom line: No AIA trial has ever been filed against US 10019722, so there is no IPR-based defense to inherit and no claim is canceled. Your case is a § 101 case built on Trinity v. Covalent, with the honest caveat that the '722's own claims remain untested and the panel's holding covers the '321 and '685, not the '722.

I'll research the ownership chain for US 10019722 using the primary sources before drafting.

Ownership & Assignment Analysis — US 10019722 B2 ("Poll-based networking system")

Scope note: The Google Patents legal-events feed for this patent (which mirrors the USPTO assignment record) exposes exactly two recorded ownership events. I was able to retrieve both reel/frame identifiers, but the fetched record does not expose the assignment correspondent of record (the recording attorney/agent). I flag that gap explicitly rather than guess. Verification link: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search by patent number) and the mirror at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html.

Inventors

• The two inventors are the sole assignors on the only true assignment in the chain, and they assigned to the company that became the patent's long-term owner. No separate employer (e.g., a large operating company) is named anywhere in the record.
• Unusual pattern check: No inventor-departure or fire-sale pattern is visible. What is notable is timing — the inventors' assignment to Trinity Intel Media was executed 2016-01-04, the same day this CIP was filed, roughly six years after the 2010-03-01 priority date. That is consistent with a continuation-family housekeeping assignment rather than a distress signal, but it means the pre-2016 ownership paper trail lives with the parent applications (US 9,087,321 / US 9,230,032), not this file. I could not independently confirm the inventors' employment relationship beyond the assignment itself.

Original assignee

• Entity on the issued patent: TRINITY INTEL MEDIA, LLC, a Pennsylvania limited liability company.
• Current name: Trinity Info Media, LLC (change of name, effective 2018-03-28; recorded 2020-01-22).
• Product embodying the claims: No evidence of a commercial product. The specification describes a poll-based social/ecommerce website, so the original concept was plausibly a consumer site, but I found no record of a shipped or operating product. Unified Patents expressly classifies the owner as "Trinity Info Media, LLC f/k/a Trinity Intel Media LLC, an NPE."
• Primary line of business: Patent licensing and enforcement. The entity has asserted this patent family serially against online-dating operators.
• Current status: Operating as an assertion/licensing entity — not dissolved, not in bankruptcy. Maintenance fees are current (4th-year fee paid 2022-01-10; next reminder mailed 2026-03-02 per the legal-events feed). Google Patents lists status Active, adjusted expiration 2031-06-25.

Assignment timeline

• 2016-01-04 (executed) / recorded 2016-01-04 — Reel 037403/0542

  • Conveyance: Assignment (assignment of assignors' interest)
  • Assignor: Timothy Beggy; David Shaun Neal
  • Assignee: Trinity Intel Media, LLC (Pennsylvania)
  • Correspondent: Not exposed in the retrieved record. Must be pulled from the Assignment Center continuation sheet for Reel 037403/0542. (Flagging for follow-up: this is the one field that would let us link this chain to any attorney who runs other anonymous LLC portfolios.)
  • Context: Initial capture of inventor rights by the company, recorded concurrently with the CIP filing.

• 2018-03-28 (effective) / recorded 2020-01-22 — Reel 051667/0060

  • Conveyance: Change of Name
  • Assignor: Trinity Intel Media, LLC
  • Assignee: Trinity Info Media, LLC
  • Correspondent: Not exposed in the retrieved record.
  • Context: Change of name only — same legal entity, no change in beneficial ownership, no consideration, no third party introduced.

No further recorded assignments exist. There is no security agreement, no license recordation, no merger, no release, and no transfer to any successor entity. Ownership has never left the original assignee.

Related family (same priority, same owner): US 9,087,321; US 9,230,032; US 10,019,722; US 10,936,685; US 11,599,590; US 2023/0195811. All should be checked for the same two-event pattern.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10019722
    2010 : Priority provisional filed
    2016 : CIP filed and inventors assign to Trinity Intel Media
    2018 : Name change effective to Trinity Info Media
    2020 : Name change recorded
         : First infringement suits filed
    2023 : Federal Circuit affirms patent ineligible

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT. The patent never moved from an operating assignee to a licensing LLC. There is exactly one ownership event plus a name change (Reel 051667/0060). Caveat: the original assignee is itself a non-practicing entity, but the enumerated signal (a transfer) did not occur.

2. Known asserter in the chain — PRESENT. Trinity Info Media, LLC f/k/a Trinity Intel Media, LLC is publicly designated an NPE by Unified Patents (PATROLL prior-art contest on related US 9,087,321, opened 2021-03-02). It is a repeat plaintiff: Coffee Meets Bagel (Oct 2020), then Hornet Networks, Raya App, The League App, and Covalent (all Feb 2021, C.D. Cal.). It does not appear on the enumerated legacy lists (Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, Wi-LAN/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Round Rock, etc.), but it is squarely a Unified Patents– and RPX-tracked high-frequency plaintiff.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR. Neither Reel 037403/0542 nor Reel 051667/0060 exposed its correspondent in the retrieved record, so recurrence cannot be tested. As a distinct observation (not an assignment-correspondent finding), the entity's enforcement counsel recurs: Gregory L. Hillyer (Hillyer Legal, ghillyer@hillyerlegal.com) appears as appellant counsel for Trinity across the 2021 California suits and the Federal Circuit appeal (No. 2022-1308), alongside Ashley D. Posner. Recurring litigation counsel is a weaker tell than a recurring assignment correspondent — flag, don't count.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT. Only one assignment over the patent's life. No chained LLCs, no back-to-back transfers inside 24 months, no shared correspondent address evidence.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT. The last ownership event (name change) was recorded 2020-01-22 — roughly nine months before the first infringement suit in October 2020 — and was effective 2018-03-28. Nothing was assigned within six months of the first filing.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. No Chapter 7/11, no trustee sale. The owner is active and paying maintenance fees.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT. No operating-company parent appears; the assignee is inventor-founded, so there is no "operating company asserting through an NPE against competitors" structure.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. The owner continued to assert after registering the family.

Verdict

NPE — high confidence.

The ownership chain is unremarkable on its face: the inventors assigned to Trinity Intel Media, LLC on 2016-01-04 (Reel 037403/0542) and the entity merely renamed itself to Trinity Info Media, LLC (Reel 051667/0060, effective 2018-03-28), so there are no cascading transfers or pre-litigation hand-offs to score. The NPE character therefore rests on entity-level evidence rather than transfer mechanics: the same single owner, with no product in commerce, is publicly designated an NPE by Unified Patents and serially asserted this family against operating dating-app companies (Coffee Meets Bagel, Hornet Networks, Raya App, The League App, Covalent) in 2020–2021, before the Federal Circuit affirmed §101 invalidation in Trinity Info Media, LLC v. Covalent, Inc., No. 2022-1308 (Fed. Cir. July 14, 2023). Two open items should be closed by pulling the correspondent fields at the Assignment Center: (a) the recording attorney on Reel 037403/0542 and Reel 051667/0060, and (b) whether that attorney recurs on the sibling family members.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ — search 10019722 (mirror: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html).

I'll research the patent and its cited prior art. Let me search for the specific references.

Prior-Art Analysis: US 10019722 B2

1. Patent identification (verified)

Source: Google Patents, https://patents.google.com/patent/US10019722/en (fetched 2026-10-01). I did not pull the USPTO PatentCenter/Global-Dossier view directly in this session; the Google Patents record above is the authoritative text I am working from, and its bibliographic data is consistent with Justia's mirror (https://patents.justia.com/patent/[10019722](/patent/10019722)).

Important structural note: The '722 patent has only two cited references in its "Citations" section. Both were cited by the examiner. No third-party (†) references appear in the citation record. The two references are the only items I can treat as "patent citations for 10019722."

2. Cited reference A — US 2009/0287763 A1

Full citation: Svendsen, Hugh & Curtis, Scott, "Question server to facilitate communication between participants," U.S. Patent Application Publication No. US 2009/0287763 A1, App. No. 12/120,676; assignee Kota Enterprise, LLC (later Kota Enterprises, LLC / Lemi Tech LLC). Priority date 2008-05-15 (some records list 2008-05-14); publication date 2009-11-19.
Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20090287763 ; https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-20090287763-A1

Related grants in the same family: the disclosure matured into US 8,316,096 B2 and US 9,432,326 B2 (the latter shows priority pub. US 2015/0215262 A1).
Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/US8316096 ; https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/b7/79/62/e8fc7c2dc95ff9/US9432326.pdf

Brief description: A central server performs a profile matching function that matches a first user's profile to a second user's profile to at least a "desired degree" defined by matching rules. A question selection function automatically selects questions (tagged with keywords) to ask the users, and an answer recommendation function suggests answers to those questions. Questions/suggested answers are sent to a user device; a reward is revealed upon answering; and a summary of answers is returned to the initiating user. It also contemplates a single "central server" that "may alternatively be implemented as multiple servers," and distributing server functionality among user devices.

Potential § 102 relevance (claim-by-claim):

• Claim 1 / Claim 8 / Claim 15 (independent claims): The reference is strong prior art for the polling-and-matching core — receiving user information to build a profile, presenting questions with predefined answer sets, storing answers, comparing profiles to determine a match ("to at least a desired degree"), and surfacing matching users. Under a broad reading, this maps onto the "receiving user information … providing a first polling question … receiving and storing a selected answer … comparing … to generate a likelihood of match … displaying … within a predetermined threshold" elements. However, it does not anticipate claim 1 as a whole, because the independent claims additionally require the distributed architecture: a web server + match aggregator + a plurality of match servers each assigned a distinct subset, with compiling of per-server match results. The reference's "multiple servers" language is generic and does not disclose that specific aggregator/match-server division or distinct-subset assignment. So this is § 102 art for the matching steps but not a full § 102 anticipation of the independent claims.
• Claim 2 / 9 / 16 (progressive polling): Relevant — the reference discloses iterative question selection and storing prior answers, and even nested/follow-up questioning (in the Zuckerberg-family sense); it supports cumulative questioning but its matching degree is rule-based rather than a progressive cumulative percentage.
• Claim 5 (max/min match percentage and maximum number of hits): The reference's "desired degree … defined by one or more matching rules" reads on the notion of a match threshold, making it § 102/§ 103-relevant to this limitation, though it does not recite a numeric max/min percentage plus a capped hit count.
• Claims 6, 7, 13, 14, 19, 20 (in-memory two-dimensional array, n bytes/answer, m rows): Not disclosed. The reference is silent on an in-memory 2-D byte array or the "255 = unanswered" marker. These claims are not anticipated by reference A.

Bottom line: Reference A is the most on-point single citation for the substantive matching concept (and it is directed to user-to-user matching, which is the claim set of the '722 patent's parent US 9,087,321 rather than the product/goods/services ecommerce variant). It is best treated as § 103 obviousness art when combined with a distributed-computing reference; it does not by itself read on all elements of any independent claim.

3. Cited reference B — US 2012/0296749 A1

Full citation: Zuckerberg, Mark E. (et al.), "Auction-based selection and presentation of polls to users," U.S. Patent Application Publication No. US 2012/0296749 A1; priority date 2007-05-31; publication date 2012-11-22.
Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20120296749 ; https://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2012/0296749.html

Related grants/continuations in the same family: US 8,249,943 B2 ("Auction based polling," Facebook, Inc., granted 2012-08-21) and US 8,478,658 ; the earlier publication US 2009/0037277 A1 ("System and methods for auction based polling," pub. 2009-02-05) is the pre-2010 disclosure of the same subject matter.
Sources: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/ec/8d/03/4c73dceb528037/US8249943.pdf ; https://patents.justia.com/patent/[8478658](/patent/8478658) ; https://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2009/0037277.html

Brief description: A polling engine on a social network. A poll requester submits a poll question with response choices and auction/bid parameters (price per answer, per impression, per user type). The engine ranks/prioritizes polls by bid, distributes them to second users, collects responses in "real-time," and reports results back to the requester. It uses an API, nested/follow-up queries, and profile-based targeting (e.g., bidding for users whose profile says their favorite food is pizza).

Potential § 102 relevance:

• Claim 1 / 8 / 15 (independent claims): Reference B discloses receiving a polling question with response choices, distributing polls to users, and gathering/reporting results in real time. That covers the polling and result-collection environment. But it is directed to poll-requestor → targeted-users distribution and reporting results back to the requester — not the claimed user-to-product/goods/services match pipeline with a match aggregator + distinct-subset match servers. It therefore does not anticipate the independent claims.
• Claim 2 / 9 / 16 (progressive/nested questioning): Relevant — the reference expressly discloses nested queries ("if the user selects choice #3, the user may be asked another query related to choice #3"), which is germane to the "next polling question … repeating for a plurality of next polling questions" limitations, though the purpose (poll branching) differs from cumulative matching.
• Claim 5 (real-time, max/min percentage, capped hits): The specification describes reporting poll results "in real-time" and an incentive system, but reference B's relevance to the match-percentage limitation is weak; the "percentage" in reference B is a bid/response-rate concept, not a user-to-item match percentage.
• Claims 6, 7, 13, 14, 19, 20 (in-memory 2-D array): Not disclosed.

Bottom line: Reference B is a secondary/reference-in-the-field citation largely because it shares the "poll to a set of users and report results" vocabulary and nested-query feature. Its effective prior-art date (2007-05-31 priority / 2009-02-05 publication of US 2009/0037277 A1) predates the '722 filing chain, so it is available, but it is obviousness ( § 103 ) art at best and does not read on the distinguishing distributed-match architecture or the in-memory array.

4. Honest assessment of § 102 vs. § 103

I want to be explicit rather than overstate: neither cited reference appears to anticipate (fully disclose) any independent claim of US 10019722 under 35 U.S.C. § 102. Anticipation requires a single reference to disclose every element of the claim as arranged. The '722 independent claims (1, 8, 15) all hinge on:

1. a web server storing answers in a database;
2. on receipt of an answer, separately transmitting it through a match aggregator to a plurality of match servers, each assigned a distinct subset of the products/goods/services; and
3. the aggregator receiving, compiling, and transmitting back the per-subset match results.

That distributed aggregator/match-server substrate is the feature that distinguishes the '722 claims, and it appears in neither cited reference. Likewise, the in-memory two-dimensional byte array (claims 6–7, 13–14, 19–20) is absent from both.

Consequently, the two citations are properly characterized as § 103 basis references (alone or combined, and best combined with a distributed-computing / sharded-database reference), rather than § 102 anticipatory references.

Caveat on my confidence: My § 102/§ 103 characterization is based on the reference abstracts and exemplary claim-mapping passages available via the sources cited above, not on a full element-by-element charting of every reference claim. A definitive anticipation opinion would require the complete specifications and claims of US 2009/0287763 A1 and US 2012/0296749 A1 (and their grants US 8,316,096 / US 9,432,326 / US 8,249,943 / US 8,478,658).

5. Additional context from the record (not "cited references," but relevant)

• The '722 patent's parent/related family is relevant to prior-art scope. US 14/987,447 is a CIP of US 14/789,115 → US 9,230,032 B2, which is a continuation of US 12/951,332 → US 9,087,321 B2 (the user-to-user matching patent). The '722 claims are the ecommerce (products/goods/services) variant.
• Families citing this family include US 10,743,131 B2 (Flying Eye Reality), US 11,526,552 B2 (Lyqness Inc., "Systems and methods of optimizing the use of user questions to identify similarities among a large network of users"), and US 12,125,096 B2 (Flying Eye Reality). US 11,526,552 B2 is arguably the most substantively related later art in this space.
• Litigation/validity signal: Under Trinity Info Media, LLC v. Covalent, Inc. (Fed. Cir. 2023), the sibling patent claims (US 9,087,321 and US 10,936,685) were held directed to the abstract idea of "matching based on questioning" and patent-ineligible under § 101 (Alice/Mayo). This does not change the § 102/§ 103 analysis but is material to overall validity posture of the family.
  Sources: https://www.patentsusa.com/2023/09/05/trinity-info-media-llc-v-covalent-inc-federal-circuit-2023-software-patents/ ; https://www.unifiedpatents.com/insights/2022/3/23/2000-awarded-for-trinity-info-media-prior-art

6. Summary table

Net conclusion: For US 10019722, the two examiner-cited references (US 2009/0287763 A1 and US 2012/0296749 A1) supply the polling-and-matching environment but neither anticipates the independent claims under § 102, primarily because both predate and omit the claimed distributed match-aggregator/match-server with distinct subsets and the in-memory two-dimensional array. They are best characterized as § 103 obviousness references.

If you'd like, I can attempt to pull the full claim text of US 2009/0287763 A1 and US 2012/0296749 A1 to build a formal element-by-element § 102/§ 103 chart against claims 1–20 of the '722 patent.

I'll analyze the obviousness of US 10019722 using the prior art cited on its Google Patents page. Let me first verify the cited references.

Obviousness Analysis — US 10019722 B2 ("Poll-based networking system")

Analyst note on scope: This analysis uses only the references appearing in the Prior Art / Patent Citations section of the US 10019722 B2 Google Patents page, i.e. two examiner-cited references. I have not auto-corrected any identifiers; they are reproduced literally. This is a technical/analytical assessment, not a legal opinion.

1. Controlling framework

• Patent: US 10019722 B2, Trinity Intel Media LLC, inventors Timothy Beggy and David Shaun Neal. Application US 14/987,447 filed 2016-01-04; granted 2018-07-10.
• Claimed priority: 2010-03-01 (provisional 61/309,038 → US 12/951,332 → US 14/789,115 → US 14/987,447). Because the earliest asserted date is 2010-03-01, the pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) framework applies (assuming the claims are supported by the earlier disclosure), with the Graham v. John Deere factors and the KSR Int'l v. Teleflex flexibility on motivation/rational underpinning.
• Priority-date caveat: The distributed match-aggregator/match-server subject matter that dominates claim 1 appears to be new matter introduced by the CIP chain (2015–2016). If those limitations are not entitled to the 2010-03-01 benefit, the effective date for those claims moves to 2015-07-01 or 2016-01-04. For §103 purposes this does not rescue the claims, because both cited references predate even the earliest date (Kota published 2009; Zuckerberg's family has a 2007 priority). The priority question therefore affects the statutory subsection (102(b)/102(e)) but not the ultimate prior-art status of either reference.

2. The cited prior-art references (as listed on the page)

Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20090287763A1/en ; https://patents.google.com/patent/US20120296749/en ; https://patents.google.com/patent/US10019722/en

What Kota '763 discloses

• A central server 12 containing a contact initiator 20, a profile matching function 22, a question selection function 24, an answer recommendation function 26, a user accounts database 28 with user accounts 30 (user profiles), and a questions database 32 including questions 34.
• Two user profiles are deemed matching "if they match to at least a desired degree, where the desired degree is preferably defined by one or more matching rules" — i.e., a threshold-based likelihood-of-match concept.
• The question selection function picks questions tagged with keywords; the answer recommendation function suggests answers "based on previous answers given by the user … to the same or similar questions" — i.e., progressive, stored, cumulative Q&A.
• Critically for motivation: "while the central server 12 is illustrated as a single server, the central server 12 may alternatively be implemented as multiple servers having the functionality of the central server 12 distributed thereon," and "all or a portion of the functionality … may be distributed among the user devices."
• Field difference: Kota matches users to other users (social introduction), not users to products/goods/services.

What Zuckerberg '749 discloses

• A polling engine 106 with communications interface 202, parameter module 204, auction module 206, query module 208, reporting module 210, accessed via an API 108 over a network 104.
• Poll requester enters a poll question and response choices; queries may be nested ("if the user selects choice #3, the user may be asked another query related to choice #3") — i.e., progressive polling.
• The query module 208 sends queries to users and gathers responses; the reporting module 210 generates reports; the flowchart expressly recites "REPORT RESULTS IN REAL-TIME 514."
• Profiles and communities/categories are used for grouping/bidding, and results/priority can change "as it is conducted by the polling engine" — i.e., dynamic, incremental updating.

Neither reference discloses the match-aggregator + plurality of match servers each assigned a distinct subset or the in-memory two-dimensional byte array recited in the claims. Those are the features that carry the claimed subject matter.

3. Proposed combination and element-by-element mapping

Combination A — Kota '763 as primary, Zuckerberg '749 as secondary

The two references are in the same field of endeavor (networked, server-based polling/question systems that use stored user responses to produce matches), address the same problem (identifying compatible counterparts from a large pool based on stored answers), and their combination yields predictable results. A claim chart:

Claims 2–5 (next/plural polling questions, cumulative comparison, match percentage = matched answers ÷ total questions, max/min percentage + maximum number of hits) map to: Zuckerberg's nested/follow-up queries and dynamic re-ranking; Kota's matching rules/desired degree; and both references' use of stored, accumulated answers. The arithmetic percentage is a conventional scoring technique.

Claims 6, 7, 20 (in-memory 2-D array, n bytes/answer, m rows per user/product; 255 sentinel) and claim 6's "m rows per user and products" are not disclosed by either reference.

Combination B — A + distributed/parallel data-processing knowledge

The gap in Combination A (fan-out to worker servers by data subset, then fan-in aggregation) is a well-known scalability pattern (sharding / map-reduce-style divide-and-conquer). Under KSR, "a court must ask whether the improvement is more than the predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions." Distributing a per-row comparison across shards and re-aggregating results is a predictable use of known distributed-computing elements, and Kota supplies an explicit motivation by stating its server "may alternatively be implemented as multiple servers having the functionality … distributed thereon." Zuckerberg supplies the real-time requirement (step 514). The combination would therefore likely render claim 1 prima facie obvious.

4. Motivation to combine (rationales)

1. Same field / common problem. Both references concern server-hosted polling engines that align users with counterparts using stored answers (Kota: profile matching; Zuckerberg: poll distribution and reporting).
2. Explicit teaching of distributed servers. Kota literally teaches that the central server may be implemented as multiple servers with distributed functionality — the strongest single piece of motivation for the aggregator + worker-server architecture of claim 1.
3. Predictable, known technique. Fan-out/fan-in over data shards is a routine engineering technique; applying it to Kota's matching engine to handle large pools is an "improvement … more than the predictable use of prior art elements."
4. Real-time pressure from Zuckerberg. The "REPORT RESULTS IN REAL-TIME 514" teaching motivates re-computing and re-displaying matches after each answer, matching the claimed "cumulatively comparing … displaying" flow of claims 2–5.
5. Ecommerce extension is obvious to try. Converting a user-matching engine to match products, goods or services (each given descriptive attributes and an identifier) was a conventional ecommerce-recommendation practice; the "unique identification" limitation is simply a normalized key/index, i.e., a predictable data-modeling choice.
6. Threshold + max/min + max hits (claim 5) reflect Kota's "desired degree/matching rules" combined with Zuckerberg's ranking/hierarchy logic.

5. Where the obviousness case is weak (candidate non-obviousness arguments)

Being candid, a Kota + Zuckerberg combination alone does not squarely reach every limitation of independent claim 1; the applicant has room to argue:

• The distributed match-server architecture is not disclosed. Neither reference teaches a match aggregator that transmits each answer to a plurality of match servers, each assigned a distinct subset of products, then recompiles partial results back to the web server. Kota's distribution statement is generic; using it as the sole teaching may be attacked as impermissible hindsight.
• The in-memory two-dimensional array (claims 6, 7, 20 and claim 6's "m rows per user and products") — the one-byte-per-answer / one-row-per-user / 255 = unanswered configuration — is a specific, non-trivial implementation choice that supports a "particular machine/improved computer-functionality" argument and is not taught by either reference.
• Field mismatch. Kota matches people to people; the claims require matching against products, goods or services descriptors. A patentee can argue the cited art does not suggest re-purposing a social-introduction question server into an ecommerce matcher.
• Match-percentage formula (claims 4, 11, 18) is asserted as specific arithmetic, not disclosed in either reference.
• Priority/§112 support. If the applicant relies on the 2010-03-01 date, an examiner (or challenger) may argue the distributed-matching claims lack written-description support in that earlier disclosure and are only supported by the 2015–2016 CIP text — which cuts against the patentee on priority but does not, by itself, defeat patentability, since both references remain prior art under the later date too.

6. Conclusion

• Likely prima facie obvious (Combination A + general distributed-computing knowledge): independent claims 1, 8, 15 and their cumulative-polling descendants (2–5, 9–12, 16–19), because Kota supplies threshold-based profile/question matching with stored, cumulative answers and an express teaching that the server may be distributed, and Zuckerberg supplies real-time, nested, accumulative polling with a server-side engine — making the aggregator/multi-server scale-out a predictable application of a known technique.
• Weakest link for the challenger / strongest for the patentee: claims 6, 7, 13, 14, 19 (in-memory two-dimensional array portion) and 20, plus the specific match-percentage arithmetic, which are not disclosed by either cited reference and would require an additional reference or a "design choice" argument that is more vulnerable to attack.
• Grounding: analysis rests on US 10019722 B2 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US10019722/en), US20090287763A1 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US20090287763A1/en; grant US 9,432,326 B2), and US20120296749A1 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US20120296749/en; family US 8,249,943 B2).

Confidence note: I am highly confident about the content of the two cited references and the claim limitations as reproduced on the page. I am not asserting, and cannot verify with high confidence, that no other reference or combination would be needed to fully meet the distributed-aggregator and in-memory-array limitations; those gaps are flagged above rather than assumed away.