US 10029701

I'll ground this in the authoritative patent text provided, and run targeted searches for current ownership and any 2026 litigation activity.

Let me pull the actual claim set and check for enforcement activity tied specifically to patent 10029701.

Let me try to obtain the authoritative claim text for this exact patent and confirm whether it is itself in suit or on appeal.

US 10,029,701 B2 — Summary

Caveat up front: The full patent text I was given (Google Patents scrape) is truncated mid-sentence in the description ("With reference now to FIG. 5, a high-level flow cha"). It does not include the claim set. I therefore report the bibliographic data and abstract from the authoritative text I was provided, and give a plain-language reading of the independent claims based on the patent's own Abstract and Summary — flagged below as reconstructed, not verbatim.

1. Identification (identifiers reproduced literally)

Note on dates: The Google Patents record lists the priority date / "prior art date" as 2015-09-25. One secondary aggregator listed "2015-09-24"; I am following the authoritative source (2015-09-25).

Family / prosecution chain (from the record): US 15/341,225 is a continuation of US 14/865,393, filed 2015-09-25, which issued as US 9,566,986. It was in turn continued as US 15/955,874 (US 10,717,446), US 16/899,407 (abandoned), US 16/997,202 (US 11,091,171), US 17/374,656 (US 11,738,765), US 17/719,541 (US 11,597,402), US 18/222,774 (US 12,037,004), and US 18/743,841 (US 2025/0018963 A1).

Ownership chain (per recorded assignments): IBM → Daedalus Group LLC (2019-11-14) → Daedalus Group, LLC (2020-01-27) → Slingshot IoT LLC (2020-01-29) → Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC (2023-07-27).

Do not confuse with same-titled siblings: US 9,566,986; US 9,785,145; US 9,834,224; US 9,944,291 are separate patents with the same title and largely the same inventor group. Only 10,029,701 is the number you asked about.

2. Abstract (as given in the authoritative text)

"A computer-implemented method, system, and/or computer program product controls a driving mode of a self-driving vehicle (SDV). One or more processors compare a control processor competence level of the on-board SDV control processor that autonomously controls the SDV to a human driver competence level of a human driver in controlling the SDV while the SDV experiences the current operational anomaly. One or more processors then selectively assign control of the SDV to the on-board SDV control processor or to the human driver while the SDV experiences the current operational anomaly based on which of the control processor competence level and the human driver competence level is relatively higher to the other."

The Summary section adds one upstream step: the processor(s) first determine the control processor competence level, then receive a driver profile of the human driver describing the human driver competence level, then compare, then selectively assign.

3. Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Important limitation on what I can state here. The claim text of US 10,029,701 was not present in the material supplied to me, and my searches did not return the patent's own claim set (they returned the claims of the later continuation US 12,037,004 / appl. 18/222,774, publication 2023/0356735 — a different patent). Under the strict "do not auto-correct / do not conflate identifiers" rule, I will not present that other patent's claims as the claims of US 10,029,701.

What can be stated reliably, because it comes from this patent's own Abstract and Summary:

• The patent is directed to a driving-mode arbitration between an on-board SDV control processor and a human driver, triggered by an operational anomaly of the vehicle.
• The core inventive sequence is: (a) obtain a "control processor competence level" (CPCL) for the SDV control processor specifically under the current anomaly; (b) obtain a driver profile describing a "human driver competence level" (HDCL) under that same anomaly; (c) compare CPCL to HDCL; (d) selectively assign control of the SDV to whichever of the two is relatively higher, while the anomaly persists.
• The specification frames the claim families as being implemented as a computer-implemented method, a system, and/or a computer program product (consistent with the Abstract's opening phrase), so the independent claims are most likely a method claim, a system/vehicle claim, and a computer program product claim built on the four-step CPCL/HDCL comparison-and-assignment core above. This claim-set structure is my reconstruction from the disclosure, not a verified quotation.

Features described in the disclosure that likely appear in dependent claims (again, unverified as to claim inclusion):

• Enumerated "current operational anomalies": snow tires fitted during the wrong road condition (or absent when needed); tire pressure outside a predetermined level; tire tread below a limit; windshield-wiper edge below a predefined width; washer fluid below a predefined volume; inoperable headlamp; window condensation/frost above a limit; antilock-brake failure; all-wheel-traction failure; faulty braking system.
• Competence levels as history-based (accident frequency, speed, stop/start behavior, fuel economy for the same or similar SDVs under the same anomaly) or capability-based (what control functions the processor or driver can actually perform).
• Comparison by weighted control factors (e.g., maintaining spatial buffers weighted above turn-signal use).
• Roadway-specific comparison, including roadway width and geometry (e.g., a cloverleaf the driver previously handled poorly).
• Cohort-based competence: matching the driver or the control processor to a cohort of drivers/processors and using that cohort's traffic/accident records.
• Environmental-report override: disregarding on-board sensor readings in favor of a weather service report where they disagree.
• Weighted summation of multiple sensor readings, with autonomous mode mandated above a predefined summed level.
• Minimum competence threshold: if neither CPCL nor HDCL meets it, the driving-mode module commands the SDV control processor to take control and bring the SDV to a stop.
• Routing in autonomous mode to a resource provider able to remediate the anomaly, and issuing an alert to the driver before or instead of an automatic mode change.

4. Litigation / docket check for this number

What I found, with the boundary drawn precisely:

• No 2026 CAFC docket, and no USPTO proceeding, keyed to US 10,029,701 was found. I cannot confirm that 10,029,701 itself is in suit or on appeal.
• The patent appears in the asserted family's litigation. Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC v. Tesla, Inc., No. 2:24-cv-01007 (E.D. Tex., filed 2024-12-06; Judge Rodney Gilstrap), asserts US 11,597,402, US 11,738,765, and US 12,037,004 — continuations of 10,029,701, per secondary reporting of the docket. Accused products listed as Model 3, Model S, Model X, Model Y, and Cybertruck. A further case, Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC v. Tesla Inc, No. 5:26-cv-01457, appears with a February 2026 filing date. Treat these case-number/date details as unverified secondary-source reporting; I did not retrieve the PACER dockets directly.
• In re Tesla, Inc., No. 26-116 (Fed. Cir.) lists Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC as respondent, and a Tesla amicus brief in Sup. Ct. No. 26-73 (Aug. 2026) cites In re Tesla, Inc., No. 2026-116, 2026 WL 555080 (Fed. Cir. Feb. 27, 2026). This appears to concern PTAB/IPR institution discretion, not an appeal of 10,029,701.
• A "701 Patent" in PTAB filings is a different patent. An IPR petition snippet titled to Nokia/Hisense refers to a '701 patent that issued 2015-05-19 and concerns H.264/H.265 video coding. That is not US 10,029,701 (issued 2018-07-24, self-driving vehicles), and I have not treated it as such.

5. Stated uncertainties

1. Independent claim wording is not quoted — the claim set was absent from the source text and not recovered via search. The four-step CPCL/HDCL structure above is drawn from the Abstract/Summary and should be verified against the issued claims before being relied on.
2. Number of claims is unverified; a Google Patents index artifact suggests 12, which I could not confirm.
3. Litigation and assignment details come partly from aggregator sites (Justia dockets, Unified Patents, IP-NAVI, Justatic) rather than from USPTO/PTAB or PACER primary documents.
4. Assignee of record for 10,029,701 today is reported as Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC; the assignments from IBM onward are consistent across sources but I did not pull the USPTO Assignment records directly.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 10029701 across patent litigation databases.

Let me search more targeted litigation sources.

Let me dig deeper into whether the '701 patent itself was ever asserted, and check other litigation databases.

Answer: Litigation involving US Patent 10,029,701

Bottom line

Based on my searches (Google Patents litigation/family data, USPTO PTAB filings, Law360, Law.com, Unified Patents, and court/PACER-derived sources), I found no district-court litigation, PTAB proceeding, or ITC action that specifically asserts or challenges US Patent 10,029,701 (the '701 patent) itself.

However, the '701 patent sits at the head of a continuation family whose later members are in active litigation. That litigation is worth reporting, but it must not be confused with litigation on the '701.

Key distinction — the '701 is the parent, not an asserted patent

The USPTO family data confirms the '701 is a link in a continuation chain:

• App. 14/865,393 → US 9,566,986 ('986)
• App. 15/341,225 → US 10,029,701 ('701) — con of the '986
• App. 15/955,874 → US 10,717,446 — con of the '701
• App. 16/997,202 → US 11,091,171 — con of the '446
• App. 17/374,656 → US 11,738,765 ('765)
• App. 17/719,541 → US 11,597,402 ('402)
• App. 18/222,774 → US 12,037,004 ('004)

Source: USPTO/PTAB petition papers for the Granite family (e.g., App. 18/222,774 continuation data listing "15341225 … PAT 10029701" as a parent).

Related family litigation (NOT asserting the '701)

Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC v. Tesla, Inc.

Sources: Law.com/Texas Lawyer ("Not in Texas: Tesla Wants Patent Lawsuit Moved to California," Feb. 19, 2025); Law360 case page "Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC v. Tesla, Inc."; IP-NAVI dispute record (case 2:24-cv-01007, filed 2024-12-06, asserting US11597402/US11738765/US12037004).

Related PTAB / appellate activity (also NOT on the '701)

• Tesla, Inc. v. Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC, IPR2025-00943 (filed May 5, 2025) — challenges US 11,597,402 (claims 1, 3–4, 6, 8–11, 13–24). Patent Owner filed a preliminary response arguing discretionary denial.
• Additional Tesla IPR petitions against the '765 patent (Patent Owner preliminary response referencing IPR on U.S. Pat. 11,738,765).
• Tesla's mandamus petition to the Federal Circuit (denied February 2026) and cert petition to the Supreme Court (filed May 2026) concerning the PTAB's discretionary denials (Fintiv-type time-to-trial issue), supported by industry amici (IPWatchdog, Aug. 31, 2026).
• The Darts-ip "family has litigation" flag on the '701 Google Patents page refers to this family-level activity, not to a suit on the '701.

None of these proceedings name the '701 patent as an asserted or challenged patent.

Caveats and limitations

1. Public-source limitation: I relied on web-indexed sources (Google Patents, PTAB/PTActs filings, Law360, Law.com, Unified Patents, IP-NAVI, CourtListener/RECAP). I did not obtain a full PACER/RECAP docket report for the '701 patent number specifically, and PACER is not fully web-indexed.
2. Literal number discipline: I restricted results to the exact number 10,029,701. Search hits containing "10029701" for unrelated goods (e.g., a Lithuanian RASFF food-safety notice, a Georgia LLC registration number, a NJ purchasing catalog line) were correctly excluded as false positives, not patent litigation.
3. Family vs. patent: Because the asserted Tesla patents are continuations of the '701, an infringement theory or PTAB challenge directed at a child patent does not place the '701 itself in suit. If you need to confirm whether the '701 was ever separately asserted (e.g., in a case since dismissed or in a complaint not yet indexed), a full PACER/RECAP docket search on the patent number and on Granite Vehicle Ventures / Daedalus Group / Slingshot IoT as parties is the appropriate next step.

Conclusion: As of the sources searched, no litigation is known that asserts US Patent 10,029,701. The nearest related matter is Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC v. Tesla, Inc., No. 2:24-cv-01007-JRG (E.D. Tex., filed Dec. 6, 2024; transferred to N.D. Cal.), which asserts only the '402, '765, and '004 continuations — not the '701.

I'll start by verifying the structured data against public sources, since the canonical block says "no AIA trial proceedings" but I'm instructed to flag anything web search surfaces.

Search results surface PTAB petition documents referencing "Tesla EX1002" alongside patent 10029701. I need to pin down actual proceeding numbers. Let me dig.

Important: Tesla's May 2025 IPRs target the continuation patents (11,597,402 etc.), not the '701 patent. Let me pin down the exact proceeding numbers and check whether '701 itself was ever challenged.

PTAB Proceedings — US Patent 10,029,701

Canonical source check: The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO Open Data Portal) returns no AIA trial proceedings for US 10,029,701. My independent searching corroborates that: I found no IPR, PGR, or CBM petition ever filed against the '701 patent. Below I give the "zero" answer plainly, then add the family-level proceedings that do exist — because they are the single most important thing a defendant needs to understand about the '701 patent's current posture, even though they are not proceedings on this patent.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 10,029,701: 0 — no IPRs instituted, none denied, no claims canceled, no claims sustained, no settlements; consequently the '701 patent's granted claims are entirely untested at the PTAB, and there is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel running against anyone on this patent. The bottom line for a defendant: the patent has not been hardened by surviving an IPR, and it has not been narrowed by one either — its claims are an open merits question. However, the same specification's continuation patents (11,597,402, 11,738,765, 12,037,004, all children of '701's parent) were hit with four Tesla IPR petitions in 2025, all of which were denied institution on discretionary grounds and never reached the merits. So the practical defensive picture is "unfought territory, but the family has already drawn a discretionary-denial fight that is now on the Supreme Court's cert docket."

Proceedings on US 10,029,701

None. No proceeding number exists to report, and I will not manufacture one. A defendant receiving a demand letter citing the '701 patent should treat it as an unlitigated, un-IPR'd asset.

Related family proceedings (NOT on the '701 patent — context only)

Every number below belongs to a different patent in the same family. Do not cite these as '701 proceedings.

Family chain (from the prosecution record): 14/865,393 (US 9,566,986) → 15/341,225 (US 10,029,701) → 15/955,874 (US 10,717,446) → 16/997,202 (US 11,091,171) → 17/374,656 (US 11,738,765) → 17/719,541 (US 11,597,402) → 18/222,774 (US 12,037,004).

IPR2025-00943 — Tesla, Inc. v. Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC (U.S. 11,597,402)

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2025-05-05
• Status: Institution denied (discretionary) — gloss: never reached the merits
• Judge panel: Decided at the Director level by Deputy Director Coke Morgan Stewart (delegee of the Director); no APJ merits panel because no trial was instituted
• Petition grounds: Claims 1, 3–4, 6, 8–11, and 13–24 challenged (obviousness/§ 103 over prior art including Debouk, Fields, Fung, and others listed in Tesla's Sotera stipulation table)
• Institution decision: Denied 2025-09-26 under 35 U.S.C. § 314(a). Reasoning: "it is unlikely that a final written decision in this proceeding will issue before the district court trial occurs, resulting in significant duplication of effort, additional expense for the parties, and a risk of inconsistent decisions." (Decision, Paper 17)
• FWD: None — no trial instituted
• Settlement/termination: N/A
• Appeal: Rolled into Tesla's mandamus petition; denied (see below)
• Defensive value: Establishes that the family's asserted claims have no merits adjudication — nothing for a defendant to leverage as stare decisis or even as persuasive PTAB reasoning.

IPR2025-00944 — Tesla, Inc. v. Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC (U.S. 11,738,765)

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2025-05-02
• Status: Institution denied (discretionary)
• Judge panel: Same Director-level decision (Deputy Director Coke Morgan Stewart), decided jointly with -00943
• Petition grounds: Claims 1–8 and 10–20; eleven separate § 103 obviousness grounds combining Attard, Frazer, McNew, Hampiholi, An, Kang, Schunder, DeRuyck, and Gunderson. Patent Owner attacked the petition as "fatally weak" — minimum four references per ground, up to nine, no articulated motivation to combine, and no construction of the "active learning data" limitation that appears in every remaining challenged claim.
• Institution decision: Denied 2025-09-26 under § 314(a), same time-to-trial rationale (projected FWD December 2026 vs. district court trial 2026-08-03)
• FWD: None
• Settlement/termination: N/A
• Appeal: Included in the mandamus petition
• Defensive value: Note the § 112 / written-description-adjacent attack on "active learning data" — that limitation is a live vulnerability worth developing if you ever face the '765. As to '701, nothing transfers.

IPR2025-01034 and IPR2025-01035 — Tesla, Inc. v. Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC (U.S. 12,037,004)

• Type: Inter Partes Review (two petitions against the same patent)
• Filed: 2025 (exact filing dates not confirmed in my sources; both inside the one-year § 315(b) window from the 2024-12-06 complaint)
• Status: Institution denied (discretionary) — Tesla's own mandamus petition asks the Federal Circuit to vacate "the discretionary denial of institution for inter partes review in IPR2025-943, -944, -1034, -1035," confirming all four were denied
• Judge panel: Director-level
• Petition grounds: Not confirmed at claim level in my sources
• Institution decision: Denied, with the same time-to-trial rationale
• FWD: None
• Appeal: Included in the mandamus petition (Mandamus No. 26-, filed 2025-12-01)

Common appeal thread — In re Tesla, Inc.

• Federal Circuit: Tesla petitioned for a writ of mandamus to vacate the four non-institution decisions. Denied 2026-02-27 in a nonprecedential order (TARANTO, MAYER, STARK, JJ.). The court held that § 314(d) makes institution decisions "final and nonappealable," and that Tesla's ultra vires argument "presents no colorable constitutional claim" under Dalton v. Specter. → https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/[10801275](/patent/10801275)/in-re-tesla-inc/
• Supreme Court: Tesla filed a petition for a writ of certiorari dated 2026-07-27 (cert-stage briefing continued into August 2026 with industry amicus briefs from CCIA, HTIA, the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, and the National Retail Federation). → petition: https://business.cch.com/ipld/TeslaGraniteVehicleVentures26126PetitionWritCert20260727073126.pdf
  • Caveat: reporting conflicts on the cert filing date (one trade outlet says "this May," the filing itself is dated 2026-07-27). Treat the July date as the document date and verify on the Supreme Court docket before relying on it. I was not able to confirm the precise Supreme Court docket number for Tesla's petition by name.
• Underlying litigation: Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC v. Tesla, Inc., No. 2:24-cv-01007-JRG (E.D. Tex.), complaint filed 2024-12-06, asserting the '402, '765, and '004 patents — not the '701 patent. Reported later transfer to N.D. Cal. as 5:26-cv-01457.

Strategic summary

Claim status on the '701 patent. Nothing is canceled, nothing is sustained, nothing is tested. Every granted claim of US 10,029,701 remains as issued. Contrast that with the family generally: the asserted continuations ('402, '765, '004) were challenged by Tesla but the challenges died at the institution threshold on discretionary grounds, so no claim of any patent in this family has a PTAB merits ruling behind it. Two consequences: (1) a defendant cannot say "claim X is dead"; (2) a patent owner cannot say "we survived an IPR on the merits." The family's validity is an entirely untested question.

Estoppel landscape. Because no IPR was ever instituted on the '701 patent, § 315(e)(2) estoppel is a non-issue for this patent — no petitioner and no privy is barred from raising any § 102/§ 103 ground in a district court. All prior-art grounds remain available to anyone defending against '701. Two caveats. First, if you are the same defendant in the Granite v. Tesla litigation and are later served with a complaint asserting '701, your § 315(b) one-year clock runs from that service date, and — because '701 was never the subject of a petition — the window is not already burned. Second, expect the patent owner to argue Fintiv-style discretionary denial against any new petition; that argument just succeeded four times in this exact litigation, with the Deputy Director expressly holding that a patent "issued in 2023" gets no counterweight from youth.

Pattern signals. (a) Same petitioner, four petitions, one patent family: Tesla filed IPR2025-00943, -00944, -01034, and -01035 and even offered a "Broadened Sotera Plus" stipulation surrendering invalidity defenses in district court — and still got discretionary denial across the board. That is an unusually aggressive discretionary-denial posture and a real warning about institution prospects in this family. (b) No defensive aggregator (Unified Patents et al.) appears anywhere in the chain; the challenger is a direct competitor defendant. (c) The patent owner, Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC, is an NPE with no product — the assignment chain runs IBM → Daedalus Group → Slingshot IoT (2020-01) → Granite Vehicle Ventures (2023-07), which sued ~17 months later. (d) The patent owner's portfolio of continuations is the monetization vehicle; the '701 patent, despite being earlier in the chain, was not asserted, which suggests counsel viewed the continuations' claims as the stronger read against modern FSD systems.

Recommended next steps

1. Do not plead around IPR estoppel on '701 — there is none. No claims have been canceled and no FWD exists to cite or quote. Any statement to the contrary would be a fabrication.
2. Get the certified file history and the full prosecution of the '701 claims. Because the '701 patent was never challenged, the only validity paper trail is prosecution. The family record shows heavy continuation practice and a Preliminary Amendment cancelling claim 1 and adding claims 2–21 in a sibling application (17/374,656) — expect § 112 and written-description attack surface in the continuations to have analogues in '701's prosecution history.
3. If you must file an IPR, brief the discretionary-denial fight as hard as the merits. File a true Sotera stipulation (not a "Sotera plus" reservation — note Patent Owner's successful argument that Tesla's reservation of system-art theories meant the IPR was not a "true alternative" to litigation), and be prepared to show the district court is likely to stay. The Deputy Director's 2025-09-26 decision is the playbook the patent owner will hand the Director. → denial decision: https://www.caseminesoftware.com (find via PTAB E2E for IPR2025-00943, Paper 17) or the mirrored copy at https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1557829](/patent/1557829)/download-documents?artifactId=w-7sEa3kdKYbjiymeloicm0CQPf_Mc-o_p28qDMxHGtglJdv6m8Jvxw
4. Watch the cert docket. If the Supreme Court grants Tesla's petition and curtails time-to-trial discretionary denials, the institution calculus for the '701 patent (and any re-filed family petition) changes materially. There is no statutory deadline forcing your hand on '701 until you are actually served with a complaint asserting it.
5. Verify on PTAB E2E / Patent Center before filing anything. My search coverage of free databases is not exhaustive; the ODP canonical feed shows zero proceedings, and I found no competing evidence. If a recently filed petition against '701 surfaces after this memo, treat this overview as superseded as to that proceeding.

I'll research the assignment chain for US 10029701 before assembling the report.

Good — I found a reel/frame. Let me dig for the remaining recordings and the correspondent details.

Excellent progress. Let me pin down the IBM→Daedalus recording and the correspondent attorney's firm.

Ownership & Assignment Analysis — US 10,029,701 B2

Patent: US 10,029,701 B2 — Controlling driving modes of self-driving vehicles
App. 15/341,225 (continuation of 14/865,393, filed 2015-09-25) · Filed 2016-11-02 · Issued 2018-07-24
Verification link: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search by patent number 10029701; mirror: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html)

Data-quality note up front. The authoritative patent text I was given (Google Patents full text) records the events but not reel/frame numbers for the two earliest links. I recovered two reel/frame numbers (051733/0463 and 064405/0422) from a USPTO chain-of-title exhibit filed in a PTAB petition (P-TACTS petition 1557829, executed by /Ian D. MacKinnon/ on 2024-01-04), which quotes the recordation data for the Slingshot and Granite links. I could not retrieve the cited reel/frame for the IBM→Daedalus recording or the inventor→IBM recording. Those two are marked not retrieved below rather than guessed.

Inventors

Employer evidence: all five are the named assignors on the original assignment to IBM recorded against the parent application 14/865,393 ("Assignors: MALKIN, PETER K., KOZLOSKI, JAMES R., GORDON, MICHAEL S., KUNDU, ASHISH, PICKOVER, CLIFFORD A."). The obligation-to-assign, plus the docket prefix "S974-…" used on every continuation, is consistent with a single IBM Research inventor group. Treat the "IBM Research" designation as probable but not independently confirmed for each individual.

Unusual-pattern check — not present. I found no evidence of inventors departing IBM within 12 months of filing, and no inventor-side assignment activity. The monetization here was portfolio-level, not inventor-level: IBM divested the rights years later in a bulk transaction, which is a different (and weaker) tell than an inventor fire-sale.

Original assignee

International Business Machines Corporation (Armonk, NY) — named on the issued patent.

• Line of business: enterprise hardware, software, and services (hybrid cloud, consulting, mainframes).
• Product embodying the claims: No. US 10,029,701 claims a method/system for selecting between autonomous and manual driving in a self-driving vehicle. IBM did not commercialize an SDV. The asset is a research-derived patent, not a product patent.
• Current status: operating. IBM was not in bankruptcy; the 2019 transfer was a voluntary portfolio divestiture (~500 US assets for a reported ~$9M), not a distressed sale.
• Current assignee of record: Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC (per Google Patents "Current Assignee" and per reel 064405/0422).

Assignment timeline

1. 2015-09-25 (executed) / recorded date not retrieved — Reel/Frame not retrieved

• Conveyance: Assignment (inventors → employer)
• Assignor: Gordon, Kozloski, Kundu, Malkin, Pickover
• Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Correspondent: not retrieved
• Context: standard employment/obligation-to-assign transfer at filing of parent app 14/865,393 (the 2015-09-25 date is recited in the Granite v. Tesla complaint's chain of title).

2. 2019-09-30 (executed) / recorded 2019-11-14 — Reel/Frame not retrieved

• Conveyance: Assignment
• Assignor: International Business Machines Corporation
• Assignee: Daedalus Group LLC
• Correspondent: not retrieved
• Context: portfolio fire-sale / bulk divestiture — Daedalus Group LLC (led by Ed Gomez, ex-Altitude Capital and Walker Innovation) acquired 500+ IBM US assets for a reported ~$9M; the assignment was signed in September 2019 and recorded mid-November 2019. Daedalus Blue LLC then began asserting these assets (e.g., Drone Navigation v. SZ DJI; later Oracle).

Data artifact flag: Google Patents legal events list two IBM→Daedalus entries — 2019-11-14 ("DAEDALUS GROUP LLC") and 2020-01-27 ("DAEDALUS GROUP, LLC"), both with assignor IBM. The complaint chain-of-title lists only one IBM→Daedalus link. I read the second entry as a confirmatory/corrective recording (or a recording covering additional family members). Unclear — not resolved from the sources available.

3. 2020-01-29 — Reel 051733/0463

• Conveyance: Assignment
• Assignor: Daedalus Group, LLC
• Assignee: Slingshot IOT LLC (listed at Baltimore, MD on the corresponding PTO/AIA/82 form)
• Correspondent: /Ian D. MacKinnon/ (signature on the chain-of-title exhibit citing this reel/frame, 2024-01-04)
• Context: break-up and onward transfer of the Daedalus aggregation — Slingshot IOT LLC took a package of 60+ former-IBM assets (the same Daedalus package separately fed Quartz Auto Technologies LLC in Feb 2020).

4. 2023-07-27 — Reel 064405/0422

• Conveyance: Assignment
• Assignor: Slingshot IOT LLC
• Assignee: Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC
• Correspondent: /Ian D. MacKinnon/ — the same attorney who signs the chain-of-title exhibit citing both reel 051733/0463 and reel 064405/0422 (2024-01-04), and the filer of record on Granite's continuation applications (P-TACTS EFS filings for app 17/374,656 and 18/222,774; "Filer: Ian David MacKinnon"). Recurrence flag: same correspondent spans at least two links in this chain.
• Context: transfer to a litigation vehicle — Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC was the applicant on the continuing applications and, on 2024-12-06, sued Tesla in the Eastern District of Texas; MLex characterized Granite as "a nonpracticing entity."

Litigation (not an assignment, included for the pre-litigation-transfer test): Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC v. Tesla, Inc., E.D. Tex., complaint 2024-12-06, asserting US 11,597,402; 11,738,765; 12,037,004 — all in the same family as the '701 (priority 2015-09-25).

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10029701
    2015 : Inventors assign rights to IBM
    2016 : Application 15/341225 filed
    2018 : Patent issued to IBM
    2019 : IBM divests portfolio to Daedalus Group
    2020 : Daedalus assigns to Slingshot IOT LLC
    2023 : Slingshot assigns to Granite Vehicle
    2024 : Granite sues Tesla in E D Texas

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — PRESENT. The patent left an operating company (IBM) and passed through two licensing-only vehicles before landing at a third: IBM → Daedalus Group LLC (exec. 2019-09-30 / rec. 2019-11-14) → Slingshot IOT LLC (reel 051733/0463) → Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC (reel 064405/0422). None of Daedalus, Slingshot IOT, or Granite ships an SDV or any product embodying the claims. Slingshot IOT LLC's address on the PTO/AIA/82 form is a Baltimore, MD mailing address. This is a documented transfer chain, not a naming inference.

2. Known asserter in the chain — PRESENT. Daedalus Group LLC / Daedalus Blue LLC is a publicly reported NPE campaigner (suit against Oracle; drone-navigation suit against SZ DJI), and Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC is the plaintiff in Granite v. Tesla (E.D. Tex., 2024-12-06), expressly described by MLex as "a nonpracticing entity." Neither matches the specific named list (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, DGC, Spangenberg) — the finding rests on litigation conduct reported by MLex and Mondaq, not on a directory match.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — PRESENT (one identity, two links). Ian D. MacKinnon is the signing attorney on the chain-of-title exhibit that names both reel 051733/0463 (Daedalus→Slingshot) and reel 064405/0422 (Slingshot→Granite), dated 2024-01-04, and is the prosecution filer on Granite's continuations. Note: the underlying PTAB petition text is OCR'd as "Jan D. MacKinnon" in one place and "Ian D. MacKinnon" / "Ian David MacKinnon" elsewhere — same person, transcription variance. His firm could not be confirmed from the sources retrieved; Customer Number 164 appears on the filings. I have not seen his name on a Unified Patents / RPX / Patent Progress asserter list, so the recurrence claim is limited to this chain.

4. Cascading transfers — PRESENT for the 2019–2020 legs. IBM→Daedalus (exec. 2019-09-30) and Daedalus→Slingshot IOT (2020-01-29) are consecutive transfers through chained LLCs within ~4 months, with the same Daedalus package simultaneously distributed to at least one other recipient (Quartz Auto Technologies LLC, Feb 2020). The final leg to Granite (2023) falls outside the 24-month window.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — UNCLEAR. The Slingshot→Granite assignment was recorded 2023-07-27 (reel 064405/0422) and the first Granite/Tesla suit of record is 2024-12-06 — roughly 16 months apart, outside the 6-month test. The execution date of that assignment was not retrieved; if it was executed in 2024 rather than 2023, this signal would flip to present. Marked unclear rather than inferred.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. IBM was never in Chapter 7/11. This was a solvent, strategic monetization of a research portfolio. The "fire-sale" character is real but the cause is corporate divestiture, not insolvency.

7. Privateering — UNCLEAR. IBM sold 500+ assets to Daedalus Group LLC, which then asserted against IBM-adjacent competitors (Oracle, DJI, and via Slingshot IOT/Granite, Tesla). Whether IBM retained a back-end license, royalty share, or veto right is not disclosed in the assignment documents I could access. Big Blue's pattern of bulk patent divestiture is well documented, but I will not assert a retained-interest privateering arrangement without a contract or SEC disclosure.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — NOT PRESENT. The chain terminates at a plaintiff NPE, not at RPX / AST / LOT / Unified / OIN.

Verdict

NPE — high confidence.

Two or more strong signals are independently evidenced: (i) a documented shell-entity chain — IBM → Daedalus Group LLC (exec. 2019-09-30, recorded 2019-11-14) → Slingshot IOT LLC (reel 051733/0463, 2020-01-29) → Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC (reel 064405/0422, recorded 2023-07-27) — through entities that ship no product embodying the claims; and (ii) a known asserter at both ends of that chain, with Daedalus Blue litigating against Oracle/DJI and Granite Vehicle Ventures — described by MLex as "a nonpracticing entity" — suing Tesla in E.D. Tex. on 2024-12-06. The same correspondent, Ian D. MacKinnon, appears on at least two links of the chain, and the 2019–2020 legs are a textbook cascade of chained LLC transfers within four months. The one signal that would strengthen this to an even clearer case — a within-6-months pre-litigation transfer — is unclear because the execution date of reel 064405/0422 was not retrieved.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ → search patent number 10029701; confirm reel 051733/0463 and reel 064405/0422 and pull the underlying PDFs to capture the exec. dates and correspondent addresses for the two links I could not fully document (IBM→Daedalus, and inventor→IBM).

Caveats I want on the record: the IBM→Daedalus reel/frame and the inventor→IBM reel/frame were not retrieved and are not invented here; MacKinnon's firm name is unconfirmed; and the apparent duplicate IBM→Daedalus legal event (2019-11-14 and 2020-01-27) is unresolved.

I'll research the prior art cited against US 10,029,701 and check the front-page references.

Let me pull the front-page references for this exact patent number from Justia and Google Patents mirrors.

Let me try to locate the granted patent PDF and its front-page reference list directly.

Prior-art analysis — US 10,029,701 B2

Reading note on dates

Your task header gives the current date as April 26, 2026. The environment running this analysis is stamped 2026-10-01. I flag the discrepancy rather than silently picking one; nothing in the analysis below turns on it.

A. Retrieval status — read this before using anything below

I must be explicit about what I did and did not get, because the answer to your question is bounded by it.

1. The authoritative text I was given does not contain the front page. The Google Patents scrape supplied for US 10,029,701 is truncated mid-sentence in the description ("With reference now to FIG. 5, a high-level flow cha"). It contains no "References Cited" block and no claim set.
2. My searches for the '701's own citation list did not return it. They returned the reference lists of identically titled sibling/continuation patents — principally US 9,834,224 B2 ("Controlling driving modes of self-driving vehicles," same inventor group) and a later family continuation whose front page is excerpted in P-TACTS petition document 1557935 and which recites "15/341,225, filed on Nov. 2, 2016, now Pat. No. 10,029,701." Under the strict identifier-discipline rule I will not present those lists as the '701's own list.
3. Aggregate figure only. The only site that returned a citation count keyed to patent_id=10029701 was expertkg.com, listing "Citations | 43" — i.e., roughly 43 cited references on the '701 front page. I could not independently verify that number or enumerate it.
4. False positives excluded. Search hits carrying the string "10029701" that are not this patent were discarded — e.g., a Georgia Secretary of State control number 10029701 for "Bee Healthy Evans, LLC" (Annual Registration, filed 1/23/2020), and a New Jersey purchasing catalog line. These are not patent citations.

Consequence: I can give you a verified-by-citation list for the family but not a verbatim, itemized front-page list for the '701 itself. Everything in Section C is labeled with its actual provenance. Anyone relying on this for an invalidity opinion should pull the '701 front page from Patent Center/Global Dossier first.

B. Why the family lists are a defensible proxy

US 10,029,701 is appl. 15/341,225, a continuation of appl. 14/865,393 (filed 2015-09-25, issued as US 9,566,986). Because the '701 and its siblings share one specification and one IBM prosecution unit (the "S974-…" docket prefix), the examiner's applied art overlaps heavily across the family. So the family reference lists are a probable superset/displacement of the '701's — useful for scoping the art, useless as a quotation of the '701 form.

Effective filing date to test everything against: 2015-09-25 (parent filing / earliest priority). This matters because the AIA applies (post-2013-03-16), so the operative provisions are § 102(a)(1) (publicly available before the effective filing date) and § 102(a)(2) (another inventor's earlier-filed U.S. patent/published application).

C. Verified reference lists (family, NOT the '701's own form)

Table A — Front page of US 9,834,224 B2 (identical title; same inventor group)

U.S. patent documents, as printed (dates as given in the source; a few OCR variants are preserved verbatim rather than "corrected"):

Foreign patent documents on that front page: CN 1135063 (11/1996), CN 2349068 Y (11/1999).
Non-patent literature listed: U.S. Appl. No. 14/855,731 Non-Final Office Action dated Apr. 15, 2016.

Table B — Front page of the later continuation excerpted in P-TACTS petition 1557935 (which recites '701 as its parent)

Overlap with Table A is substantial, with these additions visible in the excerpt:

Published applications on that same form include US 2022/0001885 A1 (1/6/2022) — a post-filing reference and therefore not § 102 art against '701.

OCR/typography warning. The two lists disagree on printed dates for the same numbers (e.g., "6,393,363" vs. "6,393,362"; "7,214,088" vs. "7,124,088"; "8,931,062" vs. "8,031,062"; "8,152,323" vs. "8,152,325"; "8,190,322" vs. "8,180,322"). I am not auto-correcting these. Treat the number/date pairs as unverified until read off the certified front page of the '701 itself.

D. Most relevant prior art for the '701's inventive concept — ranked § 102 analysis

The '701's claimed core (per its own Abstract and Summary — not verified verbatim claims) is a four-step arbitration: (a) determine a control processor competence level (CPCL) of the on-board SDV control processor while the SDV experiences the current operational anomaly; (b) receive a driver profile describing a human driver competence level (HDCL) under that anomaly; (c) compare CPCL to HDCL; (d) selectively assign control to whichever is relatively higher, while the anomaly persists.

Because the claim set is not in my source text, the "potentially anticipates" column below maps to these reconstructed elements, not to numbered claims. Verify against the issued claims before relying on it.

Tier 1 — art directed at the same mode-arbitration problem

Tier 2 — vehicle-state / fault-sensing art mapping to the "operational anomaly" element

These are the long tail of the family's front page. They are not plausibly anticipatory of the CPCL-vs-HDCL arbitration as a whole, but they bear directly on the dependent-claim elements the specification enumerates (tire pressure/tread, wiper edge, washer fluid, headlamp, ABS failure, traction failure, braking failure, roadway width/geometry):

• General vehicle-condition monitoring / diagnostics: US 4,665,395 (Van Ness, 5/1987); US 4,905,798 (Yamamura, 3/1990); US 5,975,791 (McCulloch, 11/1999); US 6,064,970 (McMillian, 5/2000); US 6,201,318 B1 (Guillory, 3/2001); US 6,326,903 B1 (Gross, 12/2001); US 6,502,035 B2 (Levine, 12/2002); US 6,587,043 B1 (Kramer, 7/2003).
• Driver-behavior / performance monitoring: US 6,393,363 (Burns, 5/2002); US 6,704,621 B1 (Stein, 3/2004); US 7,113,867 B1 (Stein, 9/2006); US 7,151,996 B2 (Stein, 12/2006); US 8,045,455 B1 (Agronow, 10/2011).
• Vehicle/driver state sensing and adaptive control: US 6,622,082 B1 (Schmidt, 9/2003); US 6,731,202 B1 (Klaus, 5/2004); US 7,214,088 B2 (Bauer, 10/2006); US 7,877,269 B2 (Bauer, 11/2011); US 8,090,598 B2 (Bauer, 11/2012).
• Traction/braking/steering control: US 7,769,544 B2 (Blesener, 8/2010); US 7,894,951 B2 (Norris, 2/2011); US 8,140,358 B1 (Ling, 3/2012); US 8,146,703 B2 (Baumann, 4/2012); US 8,152,325 B2 (McDermott, 4/2012).
• Autonomous-navigation / obstacle sensing: US 7,580,782 B2 (Breed, 8/2009); US 7,979,173 B2 (Breed, 7/2011); US 8,346,360 B2 (Trempier, 10/2013); US 8,352,112 B2 (Mudalige, 11/2013); US 8,442,854 B2 (Lawton, 5/2013); US 8,466,807 B2 (Mudalige, 6/2013); US 8,509,982 B2 (Montemerlo, 8/2013); US 8,553,365 B2 (Jang, 11/2013).

All of the above are § 102(a)(1) art on their issue/publication dates, which precede 2015-09-25. I am not asserting descriptions for these individually — the titles/inventors above are as printed in the source excerpts, and I have not independently read each specification. Mapping any of them to a specific claim limitation requires pulling the document.

Tier 3 — foreign patent documents and NPL

• CN 1135063 (11/1996) and CN 2349068 Y (11/1999) — printed on the family front page. § 102(a)(1) by publication date, subject to the usual translation/accessibility analysis.
• Other WO publications appearing on family fronts: WO 2014/058263, WO 2014/066721, WO 2014/147361, WO 2014/148975, WO 2014/148976, WO 2015/024616, WO 2015/056105, WO 2015/156146; EP 0582236 (2/1994). Note WO 2015/156146 (10/2015) and WO 2015/056105 (4/2015) are near the 2015-09-25 line — verify their exact publication dates before treating any as § 102(a)(1) art.
• NPL: P. Mell et al., The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing, NIST ITL (Sep. 2011) — cited in this family's "Other Publications." This is boilerplate cloud-computing material and is relevant, if at all, only to the cloud-embodiment dependent claims.
• Family-specific NPL: "List of IBM Patents or Patent Applications Treated as Related" (e.g., dated Oct. 17, 2017) — a § 102/§ 103 context document, not anticipatory art.
• Popular-press NPL cited in the family (MIT Technology Review 8/28/2014; Forbes 6/8/2015; Wired 1/20/2012; Insurance Journal 5/28/2014) — general SDV prior art; the Forbes and Insurance Journal items post-date parts of the priority chain and are relevant only as background.

Not prior art — the forward-citation trap

The searches also surfaced documents that cite the '701 (i.e., "Cited By"): US 10,717,446, US 11,597,402, US 12,037,004, US 10,821,971, US 11,782,438, US 9,981,669, US 2016/0075512 A1, US 7,877,269 (cross-listed), among others. These are post-dating family members or later filings and are not § 102 prior art against the '701. Do not treat them as anticipatory.

E. Honest bottom line

1. The single reference I would brief first against the '701's independent claim is US 2014/0358353 A1 (Ampere SAS, "Control of the autonomous mode of bimodal vehicles," pub. 2014-12-04). It is squarely § 102(a)(1) art, it pre-dates the effective filing date by ~9 months, and it addresses manual/autonomous mode control of a dual-mode vehicle — the architectural heart of the '701. Whether it discloses the competence-comparison step (elements a–d) is the whole ballgame, and I have not read it closely enough to say. That is the first document to pull.
2. US 2015/0070178 A1 (IBM, "Real-time Vehicle Driver Performance Monitoring") is the most dangerous art on the driver-competence half of the claim, and its IBM provenance raises a § 103 combination risk within the same corporate portfolio.
3. The '701's U.S. patent citations are predominantly 1987–2013 vehicle-control and driver-monitoring art. On their faces they map to the disclosed anomaly-detection dependent claims and are weak-to-nonexistent against the CPCL/HDCL arbitration concept itself.
4. Two caveats that could change the picture, stated plainly so they are not buried: (i) I could not retrieve or reproduce the '701's own front-page reference list, so the ~43-reference figure is from a secondary aggregator (expertkg.com) and is unverified; and (ii) I could not retrieve the '701's claim set, so the element-by-element mapping in Section D is anchored to the patent's Abstract/Summary and is flagged as reconstruction.

Recommended verification path: pull the '701 front page from USPTO Patent Center / Global Dossier and read the "References Cited" block against Tables A and B above; then pull US 2014/0358353 A1, US 8,078,349 B1, and US 2015/0070178 A1 in full and map them, limitation by limitation, onto the issued independent claims.

I'll ground this in the authoritative text where possible. Two things I need before I can write a defensible §103 analysis: (1) the actual claim set of US 10,029,701 (the supplied text was truncated mid-description and did not include claims), and (2) the actual prior-art "Citations" listed on the patent's page. Let me try to recover both.

I have the claim structure of the '701's continuation (US 12,037,004) and its siblings, but I still need the '701's own claim set and its front-page "References Cited" list. Let me make a targeted attempt.

Obviousness Analysis — US 10,029,701 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

0. Scope, provenance, and two corrections to the earlier sections

Before the merits, three housekeeping points, because a §103 opinion is only as good as its claim text.

(a) The "Prior Art section" was not in my materials. The task directs me to "use the results from the Prior Art section of this page," but the authoritative text supplied to me is a Google Patents scrape that truncated mid-description ("With reference now to FIG. 5, a high-level flow cha") and contains no claim set and no rendered Citations/Cited-By section. I did not receive that section. I therefore reconstructed the applied art from (i) the "References Cited" front pages of same-family patents (the '701 shares its specification with US 9,785,145 and US 11,091,171, whose face citations are the same body of art the examiner used) and (ii) the art Tesla actually asserted in the family IPRs. Every reference below is flagged by provenance. I have not invented a single reference number.

(b) I have now recovered the actual claim set — this supersedes the "reconstructed" structure in my earlier Patent Summary. The earlier section said the independent-claim wording was unverified and that "a Google Patents index artifact suggests 12" claims. Both uncertainties are now resolved: a secondary reproduction of the granted claims (RPX Insight, https://insight.rpxcorp.com/patent/[US10029701B2](/patent/US10029701B2)) shows 20 claims, with independent claims at 1 (method), 12 (computer program product), and 19 (computer system). The earlier four-step CPCL/HDCL reconstruction was correct.

(c) Minor date inconsistency to flag. The task header states the current date is April 26, 2026, but the session operating date is 2026-10-01, and my earlier sections cite events dated July 27, 2026 and Aug. 31, 2026 (the Tesla cert petition and amicus filings). Those events cannot post-date an April 2026 "today." I proceed under the October 1, 2026 operating date and note the conflict rather than silently reconciling it. None of this affects the §103 analysis, which turns on art as of 2015.

1. The claim to be analyzed

Claim 1 (reproduced from the RPX claims page, https://insight.rpxcorp.com/patent/US10029701B2):

"A computer-implemented method for controlling a driving mode of a self-driving vehicle (SDV), the computer-implemented method comprising:
determining, by one or more processors, a control processor competence level of a self-driving vehicle (SDV) control processor, wherein the control processor competence level describes a competence level of the SDV control processor in controlling the SDV while the SDV experiences a current operational anomaly;
receiving, by one or more processors, a driver profile of a human driver of the SDV, wherein the driver profile describes a human driver competence level of the human driver in controlling the SDV while the SDV experiences the current operational anomaly;
comparing, by one or more processors, the control processor competence level to the human driver competence level; and
selectively assigning, by one or more processors, control of the SDV to the SDV control processor or to the human driver while the SDV experiences the current operational anomaly based on which of the control processor competence level and the human driver competence level is relatively higher to one another."

Claim 12 recites the identical four-step core as a computer program product; claim 19 recites it as a system with first/second/third/fourth program instructions. The three independents rise or fall together on the same core.

The single point of novelty is narrow: not autonomous driving, not fault detection, not driver monitoring, not handover — all of those are conceded as old — but the arbitration rule: compute a machine-competence score and a human-competence score both indexed to the same operational anomaly, and hand the wheel to whichever is higher.

The dependent claims (2–11, 13–18, 20) add the features itemized in my earlier Summary (enumerated anomalies; history- vs. capability-based competence; weighted control factors; roadway-specific/geometry comparison; driver and processor cohorts; environmental-report override; weighted summation of sensor readings; minimum-competence threshold → stop; routing to a resource provider; alerts).

2. Threshold issue that must be resolved first: what is even available as art

The '701 was filed 2016-11-02 as a straight continuation of 14/865,393 (filed 2015-09-25, issued as US 9,566,986). Because it adds no new matter and claims that priority, its effective filing date is 2015-09-25, and the AIA applies.

That matters enormously, because several references on the family's face citations are 2016–2018 publications (e.g., US 2016/0046290 Aharony; US 2016/0139594 Okumura; US 2018/0075309). Those can only be §102(a)(2)/§102(e) art if their own effective filing dates predate 2015-09-25 — publication date alone is irrelevant for a US patent document. Similarly, the cluster published after September 25, 2015 (US 2015/0293994 Kelly; US 2015/0338226 Mason; US 2015/0339639 Choe; US 2015/0354976 Ferencz) is not §102(a)(1) art and is available only if its underlying filing date predates 2015-09-25.

Practical consequence: the cleanest §103 case is built on the references whose publication dates fall before 2015-09-25 — i.e., the 2014 and January–August 2015 publications on the family face. Those are the ones I foreground below. Anything later needs a §102(a)(2) date check pulled from the reference's own front page.

3. Person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA)

For a 2015 effective filing date, a POSITA is an engineer (B.S. mechanical/electrical/computer engineering, or equivalent) with ~2–4 years in vehicle automation, sensor fusion, and human-machine interface, or a comparable advanced degree. She is charged with knowledge of: (i) SAE-style levels of driving automation; (ii) torque/steering/braking control via drive-by-wire; (iii) OBD-II and on-board diagnostics; (iv) adaptive automation / dynamic function allocation (the decades-old literature on reallocating control between a human operator and an automated subsystem as workload, reliability, or state changes); and (v) driver-state monitoring. Critically, a POSITA in 2015 knew that the human-factors community had been writing about "who should have control, and when" since at least the 1990s.

4. Scope and content of the prior art (by provenance)

4A. Documented on the family's face ("References Cited")

From US 9,785,145 (https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/e0/e6/24/9862d271c1f5a3/US9785145.pdf) and US 11,091,171 (https://uspto.report/patent/grant/[11,091,171](/patent/11091171)). Representative entries, grouped by what they supply:

4B. Documented in the family's PTAB record

Tesla's petitions (documented in my PTAB section) asserted, against the '402 and '765 continuations: Debouk, Fields, Fung (against the '402) and Attard, Frazer, McNew, Hampiholi, An, Kang, Schunder, DeRuyck, Gunderson (eleven grounds against the '765). All four petitions (IPR2025-00943, -00944, -01034, -01035) were denied institution on discretionary §314(a) grounds and never reached the merits — so no reference in this list has ever been adjudicated to disclose anything against any patent in the family.

5. The obviousness case

Combination 1 — The core arbitration claim (claims 1, 12, 19)

Primary reference: an autonomous-vehicle control system that manages transitions between autonomous and human control in response to vehicle/roadway conditions — e.g., Montemerlo (US 2014/0324268) and/or Attard (US 2015/0149018 / 2015/0175070), both on the family face.

Secondary reference: a driver-monitoring / driver-state reference that characterizes the human operator's fitness or behavior in real time — e.g., Ben Shalom (US 2015/0210276/77/78), Stein (US 2015/0210312), or Huberman (US 2015/0210275).

Tertiary reference: a driver-profile/identification reference supplying a stored, driver-specific characterization — e.g., Yopp (US 2015/0066282 / 2015/0066284).

The proposed rejection: Primary reference teaches detecting a condition and choosing a driving mode; secondary reference teaches deriving a quantified measure of the human's current capability/state; tertiary teaches storing a driver-specific profile. It would have been obvious to index the machine's and the human's respective capability measures to the same detected operational condition and to select the operator with the higher measure, because the claimed elements are combined to do nothing more than their established functions (condition detection, capability scoring, comparison, selection) and yield the predictable result of assigning the more-capable operator. KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 416–17 (2007).

Note the claim's breadth, which makes this easier for a challenger, not harder: claim 1 does not require any particular way of computing "competence level." Its own specification (¶¶ 61–62, quoted in the supplied text) offers two alternatives — history-based (accident frequency, travel speed, stop/start, fuel economy) and capability-based (what control functions the processor can execute). A claim that recites a result ("describes a competence level … while the SDV experiences the current operational anomaly") without confining the computation invites an obviousness finding whenever the underlying scoring is a known metric.

Combination 2 — The anomaly-specific dependent claims

The enumerated "current operational anomalies" (snow tires in the wrong season; tire pressure outside a range; tread below a limit; wiper edge below a width; washer fluid below a volume; inoperable headlamp; window condensation/frost; ABS failure; all-wheel-traction failure; faulty brakes) are each independently detected by ordinary vehicle-diagnostics that long predate 2015 — coolant/washer-fluid level sensors, TPMS, ABS/traction-control self-diagnostics, and TPMS/brake-wear monitors. The face citations to McMillan (6,064,970), Breed (7,580,782), and Blesener (7,769,544) are exactly the kind of vehicle-condition-sensing art that supplies these signals.

Motivation: a POSITA seeking to implement the Combination-1 arbitration for real would necessarily read the vehicle's existing diagnostic bus to know what anomaly the vehicle is experiencing (the claim requires the anomaly-indexed comparison). Using existing OBD/TPMS/ABS signals as the "operational anomaly" input is the epitome of a predictable use of a known technique to improve a known device. KSR, 550 U.S. at 417.

Combination 3 — The comparison-mechanics dependent claims (weighted factors; weighted summation; cohorts)

The dependent claims reciting weighted control factors, weighted sums of multiple sensor readings compared against a predefined level, and cohort-based traffic/accident statistics map onto:

• the weighted-voting concept the specification itself borrows from general decision theory (¶ 52: inputs I₁…Iₙ, weights w, quota q), and
• the statistical/comparative references on the family face (e.g., the July 2015 autonomous-operations cluster).

A POSITA optimizing a comparative scoring function would predictably reach for weighted summation and population statistics; there is no new principle, only the application of known decision theory to a known control-allocation problem.

Combination 4 — The "neither is competent" fallback (claims per ¶ 84/88)

Claim-type features reciting that if neither competence level meets a threshold, the system stops the vehicle, are squarely supplied by decades of degraded-mode / limp-home vehicle control art (present among the older mechanical/control references on the face). Applying a minimum-threshold fallback to the Combination-1 arbitration is a routine safety design choice.

6. Motivation to combine (the heart of the §103 case)

A POSITA in 2015 had multiple independent, articulable reasons to reach the claimed rule:

1. The claim solves a problem the art already framed. The prior art already asked "should the human or the machine be driving right now?" The '701 answers it with "whichever scores higher." That is a finite, predictable set of alternatives (fixed machine takeover; fixed human priority; state-triggered handover; or comparative allocation), and the comparative option was an obvious design choice. KSR.
2. Safety is a universal design incentive. Both references' systems exist to prevent accidents. Allocating control to the more capable operator for the specific fault at hand is the direct way to serve that shared purpose — there is no "teaching away."
3. The elements cooperate exactly as designed. Detection feeds scoring; scoring feeds comparison; comparison feeds selection. Nothing in the combination changes any reference's principle of operation. In re Keller (the test is what the combined teachings suggest).
4. The machine's competence is knowable from the machine's own design. The specification's own capability-based example (¶ 62) — a processor that can do "cruise control" but not steering has a lower competence than one that can hold a safety cushion or steer — is knowledge the vehicle's designer has on day one; a POSITA need not invent anything to populate the CPCL.
5. The human's competence is knowable from existing driver-monitoring/profile art (Yopp; the July 2015 driver-state cluster). Combining a known driver profile with a known machine-capability profile is the classic "arranging old elements with each performing the same function it had been known to perform." KSR, 550 U.S. at 417.

7. Likely rebuttal and how strong it is

The patent owner's best non-obviousness arguments, and my assessment:

• "The references are in different fields / not combinable." Weak. The family's own PREDECESSOR patents (US 9,566,986, US 9,785,145) are cited as prior art by themselves in this space — the field is unified. KSR rejects rigid field-of-endeavor limits where references address the same problem.
• "No reference teaches comparing a machine competence level to a human competence level." This is the only genuinely arguable point, and it turns on what the secondary references actually disclose — a fact I have not verified for any individual reference. If no single reference discloses a comparative allocation (as opposed to mere driver monitoring or mere handover), the petitioner must supply it via the adaptive-automation NPL or a second reference, or argue the comparison step is an obvious mechanization of two known capability determinations. The claim's failure to narrow how competence is measured cuts against the owner here.
• Secondary considerations (objective indicia). As I noted in my Litigation and Assignment sections, the '701 was never asserted, never IPR'd, and Granite instead asserted the continuations ('402, '765, '004) against Tesla. There is no established nexus between the '701's specific claims and any commercial product (IBM never made an SDV; Granite makes nothing). Expect no meaningful secondary-considerations evidence to rebut a prima facie case — but note that this also means no one has tested the art yet (§315(e) estoppel is a non-issue per my PTAB section).

8. Caveats I want on the record

1. The claims I analyzed are from a secondary reproduction (RPX Insight). They match the patent's Abstract and Summary and the sibling claims I retrieved, but I have not read the certified copy. Verify claim 1/12/19 against the USPTO Patent Center PDF before relying on this opinion.
2. I could not verify the disclosure of any individual cited reference. The numbers, dates, and inventor names in §4 are documented; the characterization of what each reference teaches is my inference from its title/date/class and is labeled as such. A real §103 opinion requires reading each reference — the combinations in §5 are hypotheses with articulated motivations, not concluded rejections.
3. The §102(a) date gate (§2) is a live filter. Several family-face references publish after 2015-09-25 and are usable only if their effective filing dates predate it. Check each before relying on it.
4. The '701 was never challenged, so there is no PTAB merits record to borrow. The four Tesla IPRs died at the §314(a) threshold on discretionary grounds (2025-09-26, Deputy Director Coke Morgan Stewart), were the subject of a denied Federal Circuit mandamus (2026-02-27), and now sit on the Supreme Court cert docket (petition dated 2026-07-27). Nothing in that history adjudicates any reference against the '701.
5. Do not conflate the '701's claims with the continuations' claims. The '004's claims (which I retrieved in full) recite "active learning data," "fault-remediation tables," and dual weighted-voting systems — features absent from the '701's claim 1. The '701 is the broadest member; the hypothetical rejections above target its broad claim, not the later, narrower ones.

Bottom line: On the claim text as recovered, claim 1 (and independents 12 and 19) presents a strong prima facie §103 vulnerability under a KSR-style combination of (i) known autonomous/manual mode-management art, (ii) known driver-monitoring/profile art, and (iii) the long-standing adaptive-automation principle of allocating control to the more capable operator — with the enumerated fault/anomaly and weighted-scoring dependent claims being supplied by ordinary vehicle-diagnostics and decision-theory art. The one step that genuinely needs a reference rather than general knowledge is the head-to-head competence comparison recited in claim 1; whether the art discloses it is the question that decides the case, and it is the question I cannot resolve from the materials supplied.