US 10129390

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

Let me run the specifically-requested searches for USPTO and CAFC 2026 docket activity.

US 10,129,390 B2 — Summary

Note on sourcing: My search tools returned no USPTO PatentCenter page, no CAFC/Federal Circuit 2026 docket, and no district-court or PTAB proceeding for this patent number. The only substantive hits were the Google Patents record and EU/national-register journal entries (EP/CN/ES/WO family members). Accordingly, the summary below rests primarily on the full authoritative patent text (Google Patents, fetched 2026‑09‑28), which is treated as controlling.

Bibliographic data

Abstract (as printed)

"The invention allows utilizing Caller Line Identification (CLI) feature in receiving test emergency calls from any kind of elevator emergency telephones. A call attempt including CLI information from an elevator emergency telephone is received at an elevator emergency call receiver unit. The CLI information is detected. Then, one of the following is performed: a) disconnecting the call attempt to complete the test call processing; b) in response to detecting the call attempt being released by the elevator emergency telephone within a predetermined time period, determining that the test call processing is completed; and c) in response to detecting the call attempt not being released by the elevator emergency telephone within the predetermined time period, answering the incoming call to enable the elevator emergency telephone to continue the test call processing."

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Claim 1 — Method. A call receiver (e.g., an elevator company's care center) gets a test-call attempt from an elevator emergency phone, delivered as a call setup signaling message and carrying CLI information. The receiver reads the CLI before answering. It then decides whether test-call processing is already finished by checking whether the emergency phone hung up within a set time period. If not finished, the receiver answers so the phone can carry on with the test. After answering, the receiver obtains a second identification of the emergency phone that is different from the CLI (this covers the case where several elevator phones share one outside line, so the CLI only identifies the building/line). Plainly: use the free CLU data to log the test call, and only pay to answer when the phone actually needs an answered call.

Claim 6 — Non-transitory computer-readable medium. The same logical steps as claim 1, implemented as processor-executable instructions on a receiver.

Claim 7 — Elevator emergency call receiver (apparatus). A memory-plus-processor device that: receives the test call attempt with CLI; detects the CLI; determines whether test-call processing is complete by checking release within the set time period; answers the test call if processing is not complete; and then receives a further identification of the emergency phone different from the CLI. (Note: the granted text reads "completed la determining" — an apparent typographical/OCR artifact in the printed claim; interpreted literally per the document.)

Claim 12 — System. An elevator emergency telephone + a test call database + the receiver of claim 7.

Dependent claims (for context)

• 2 – update a test call database based on the detected CLI.
• 3 – establish a data communication protocol with the emergency phone.
• 4 – receive type information about the call attempt (e.g., check call, battery-failure message, genuine entrapment emergency).
• 5 – further update the database based at least on the received non-CLI identification.
• 8–11 – apparatus counterparts to claims 2–5.

Technical context from the specification

• Examples use a call processing node (switch/exchange or IP multimedia server) that adds CLI into the call-setup message.
• The "set time period" is exemplified as 15 seconds; the fallback protocol is a DTMF-based protocol (CPC, P100, ANTENNA, or ADEMCO); the second ID may be an "elevator order number" on a shared line.
• Stated benefits: test calls shrink to roughly 15–20 s versus 45–90 s in the prior art, reducing receiver load and caller-side telephony costs, with no modification required to the elevator emergency phones.
• Notably cited prior art includes KONE's own US 8,948,348 B2 ("Method for testing elevator emergency phones and elevator emergency communication system," issued 2015‑02‑03), plus US 5,736,694 A (Kone Oy) and US 5,239,570 A (Teltone).
• Forward citations listed: US 2021/0253395 A1 and US 12,479,695 B2 (both Mitsubishi Electric, "Emergency report system for elevator," priority 2018‑08‑02).

Uncertainties and caveats

• No CAFC 2026 docket located. Searches for Federal Circuit 2026 activity, litigation, or appeal tied to 10,129,390 returned nothing responsive. This is a negative search result, not proof that no such proceeding exists.
• I could not reach a live USPTO PatentCenter/Patent Assignment page for this number through the available tools; the assignment details above come from the patent record's legal-events data.
• One EU register-journal hit showed a separate entry, "EP 3363759 / EP 15906210.8," with the identical title and the same inventor (Huotari) and assignee (Kone), filed 2015‑10‑13. Its bibliographic fields as indexed appear inconsistent/possibly garbled, so I cannot confirm whether it is a genuine further family member; treat it as unverified.
• I have not independently verified the EP/CN/ES family members' current legal status; the "Active" designation refers to the US patent.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 10129390 across the specified sources.

Let me search targeted litigation databases and related terms.

Litigation Search: US Patent 10,129,390

Patent under review (as identified literally):

• US 10,129,390 B2 — "Processing test calls from elevator emergency telephones"
• Assignee: Kone Corporation (Finland)
• Application No. US 15/260,620; filed 2016-09-09; granted 2018-11-13
• Priority: 2014-03-28 (PCT/FI2014/050229 → WO 2015144974 A1)
• Family members: EP 3122678 B1, CN 106132859 B, ES 2792476 T3

Findings

No litigation involving US 10,129,390 was found.

I searched for the specific number "10129390" (and the formatted variants "US10129390" / "10,129,390") in connection with litigation, lawsuit, infringement, district court, PTAB, and IPR terms, and also in connection with the assignee Kone. The searches did not return:

• Any district court complaint (PACER-style record)
• Any CAFC appeal
• Any PTAB proceeding (IPR/PGR/CBM)
• Any Unified Patents litigation entry

The Google Patents page for this specific patent (https://patents.google.com/patent/US10129390/en) also shows no litigation entries — its "Legal Events" section lists only assignment (2016-09-12), a status entry at grant (2018-10-24), and a 4th-year maintenance fee payment (2022-05-04). A maintenance-fee record is consistent with the patent being maintained but says nothing about enforcement activity.

Important caveats (stated per the operating rules)

1. Search coverage was incomplete. I was unable to directly query PACER, the CAFC docket, or the Unified Patents litigation portal's case list; the search tool returned no results for the Unified Patents query and exhausted its step budget before returning results for two other queries. Therefore, my conclusion is based on web-indexed sources (Google Patents, CourtListener, and general results), which are not exhaustive for every district court filing.

2. Absence of evidence, not proof of absence. A patent not appearing in search results is not affirmative confirmation that no suit was ever filed. Non-practicing-entity suits, sealed complaints, or cases in jurisdictions with poor public indexing could escape these searches.

3. Contextual note (not litigation): The same Kone patent family's subject matter relates to the earlier Kone US 8,948,348 B2 ("Method for testing elevator emergency phones and elevator emergency communication system"), which is cited on the face of US 10,129,390 as prior art. US 8,948,348 is listed as a citation, not a litigation matter against this patent. Separately, Kone has been involved in elevator patent disputes historically (e.g., a 2012 settlement with Inventio AG/Schindler over RFID call-input patents — US 5,689,094, EP 699 617), but that dispute does not involve US 10,129,390 and should not be conflated with it.

Bottom line

Based on the available search results, there is no known litigation (district court, CAFC, or PTAB) involving US Patent 10,129,390. To confirm definitively, a direct PACER docket search for "10,129,390" / "10129390" in patent cases and a direct query of the Unified Patents litigation database would be required — neither could be completed with the tools available here.

If you can provide direct access or results from PACER or the Unified Patents portal, I can verify or update this conclusion.

I'll verify the structured data against public sources before reporting.

Let me run a few more targeted checks to confirm the absence.

PTAB Proceedings — US 10,129,390 B2 ("Processing test calls from elevator emergency telephones")

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0. The USPTO Open Data Portal PTAB proceedings dataset returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding for US 10,129,390, and targeted web searches (Google Patents family/citation data, PTAB decision commentary, and general validity-challenge queries) surfaced no AIA trial, no Federal Circuit appeal of any AIA FWD, and no defensive-aggregator challenge. Breakdown by status is therefore: active 0 / claims invalidated 0 / claims sustained 0 / settled 0 / institution denied 0. The defensive posture this yields is not "the patent is hardened by surviving IPRs" — it is "the claims have never been tested at the PTAB." All 12 claims stand as issued, with the statutory presumption of validity intact and with zero § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaching to any party. That cuts both ways: unchallenged claims are un-narrowed and must be met on their full issued scope, but no petitioner has yet burned the Board's time or created estoppel that would constrain your own validity case.

Methodology caveat: this conclusion rests on (a) the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" data supplied with this task, which states ODP returned no AIA trials, and (b) live web searching on 2026-09-28 that surfaced no proceeding. I did not have direct access to PTAB E2E / PTAB Decisions in this session. If a proceeding was filed and instituted very recently, ODP ingest lag is a real possibility — an E2E docket check by patent number remains the authoritative verification.

No proceedings to report

There is no {PROCEEDING_NUMBER} to itemize. To be explicit about what I checked and what I am not asserting:

Why PGR is off the table. The application underlying this patent is a continuation of PCT/FI2014/050229, filed 2014-03-28, with no post-2013 effective filing date. PGR requires an earliest effective filing date on or after 2013-03-16 (AIA § 3(n)(1)); the nine-month PGR window from the 2018-11-13 grant also expired 2019-08-13. PGR was never a viable vehicle here in any event.

Why CBM is off the table. The claims are directed to call-setup signaling, CLI detection, and DTMF-protocol identification exchange in elevator emergency telephony. That is not "a method or corresponding apparatus for performing data processing or other operations used in the practice, administration, or management of a financial product or service." No CBM.

Bottom line for the only vehicle available. IPR under § 311(b) — §§ 102/103 on patents and printed publications only — is the sole AIA route, and it remains available to any party not yet time-barred under § 315(b).

Strategic summary

Claim status map — all UNTESTED. Claims 1–12 of US 10,129,390 B2 have never been construed or adjudicated by the Board. There is no claim-level carve-out to work with: no claim is canceled, and no claim has been confirmed over art. Claim 1 (the independent method claim), claim 6 (independent non-transitory CRM claim), claim 7 (independent receiver-apparatus claim), and claim 12 (system claim depending from claim 7) are all live at full issued scope, as are dependent claims 2–5 (database update on CLI; data-comm protocol establishment; type-information receipt; database update on received identification) and 8–11. The single most useful thing a defendant can say about the PTAB record is that it is empty — which means the patent owner has never had to defend, and has never been forced to narrow, the claim language that matters.

Estoppel landscape — nothing is foreclosed. Because no IPR was instituted and no FWD issued, no § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches to anyone, and there is no privity chain to worry about. Unlike a patent that has been through trial, you face no risk that a ground you want to raise in district court was "raised or reasonably could have been raised" by a prior petitioner. All prior art of record should be treated as untapped: the face of the patent cites 29 references, including Kone's own earlier US 5,736,694 ("Method for providing a phone alarm call in an elevator system"), Mitsubishi's US 8,184,785 ("Elevator monitor system"), Kone's US 8,948,348 ("Method for testing elevator emergency phones and elevator emergency communication system"), the Harris ringback-test references EP 0 792 057 A1 / CN 1134639 A, and US 7,680,250 ("Interactive method and system of testing an automated call telephonic communication system"). Those were cited during prosecution, which raises § 325(d) discretion risk for re-asserting the same art at the PTAB — but that is a discretionary institution risk, not estoppel, and it is a reason to lead with art that is not on the face of the patent. Critically, the priority date is 2014-03-28, so your § 102/§ 103 art must predate that date.

Pattern signals — none. There is no repeat petitioner, no multi-petition campaign, no patent-owner appeal practice at the CAFC to read, and no defensive aggregator (Unified Patents or similar) in the chain. The forward-citation record shows only benign technical follow-on (Mitsubishi Electric's US 2021/0253395 A1 and US 12,479,695 B2, "Emergency report system for elevator"), not litigation-driven challenge activity. The patent owner is KONE Corporation (original assignee; inventor Tommi Huotari, assignment recorded 2016-09-12); the family includes EP 3 122 678 B1, CN 106132859 B, ES 2 792 476 T3, and WO 2015/144974 A1. This looks like a commercially maintained portfolio asset that has never been the target of a funded invalidity campaign.

Recommended next steps

• There is no FWD to link to and no disposition to quote. I will not manufacture one. If you need a citation-grade null result, pull the PTAB E2E docket for US 10,129,390 directly and preserve the docket page — the absence of a proceeding is itself the evidence you would offer against any suggestion that the claims have been adjudicated.
• Your § 315(b) clock is the gating item. If you have been served with a complaint alleging infringement of this patent, an IPR petition must be filed within one year of service. Once that clock runs, IPR is permanently unavailable to you, and your only validity fora are the district court/ITC (with no PTAB backstop) and ex parte reexamination (in which you have no participation rights).
• Lead with off-record art. Because prosecution cited 29 references and the Board applies § 325(d) discretion to previously presented art and arguments, build the petition around patents and printed publications that were not before the examiner. Confirm the 2014-03-28 priority date is not attackable via the PCT/FI2014/050229 chain before investing in art dated between the PCT filing and the 2016-09-09 US filing.
• No estoppel to exploit or avoid — but also no prior construction to borrow. You will need your own claim-construction position on terms like "determining whether processing of the test call is complete," "set time period," and "identification of the elevator emergency telephone different from the CLI information." That last limitation is the likely non-obviousness fulcrum, since the patent frames the two-identifier approach as the solution to the shared-phone-line problem (FIG. 1c: elevator ID "2" sent as DTMF character 2 after CLI-based site identification).
• Unverified docket hygiene item: the last legal event of record is the 4th-year maintenance fee paid 2022-05-04. The 7.5-year fee came due 2026-05-13, with a grace period running to 2026-11-13 under 37 C.F.R. § 1.20(e)–(g). I am not asserting the patent has lapsed — Google/ODP event data lags and often omits routine fee payments. But given today's date (2026-09-28) falls inside that grace window, a Patent Center fee-status check is a five-minute task with an asymmetric payoff: a lapsed-and-unrevived patent is a complete defense, and even a late payment indicates a maintenance lapse worth probing.

I'll research the assignment record for US 10,129,390. Let me search multiple sources.

Let me verify post-issuance assignment activity and check for any Kone portfolio transfers.

Assignment Record Analysis — US Patent 10,129,390 B2

("Processing test calls from elevator emergency telephones"; App. No. 15/260,620; granted 2018-11-13)

Inventors

• Tommi Huotari — sole named inventor. Employer at time of filing: Kone Corporation (Finland). This is determinable with high confidence because the inventor's own assignment of rights runs directly to Kone Corporation (see timeline), and the application entered the US as a national-stage/continuation of Kone's PCT application PCT/FI2014/050229.

Unusual-pattern check: None observed. A single inventor assigning to his corporate employer is the most common and least suspicious configuration. There is no evidence of inventors departing the assignee, and no inventor-side assignments to third parties appear on the record. No fire-sale precursor signals.

Original assignee

Kone Corporation (Kone Oyj), a Finnish public company; registered address on the family records: Kartanontie 1, 00330 Helsinki, Finland.

• Product embodiment: Yes. Kone is a global top-tier elevator and escalator OEM (alongside Otis, Schindler, TK Elevator). The patent's subject matter — an elevator emergency call receiver unit located in a customer-care center that processes test calls from elevator emergency telephones — is squarely implementation-level for Kone's own connected-services / remote-monitoring business. Kone is a "large entity" for USPTO fee purposes (confirmed by the 2022 maintenance-fee event, which cites "LARGE ENTITY").
• Primary line of business: Manufacture, installation, and servicing of elevators, escalators, and automatic building doors; plus digital elevator/people-flow services.
• Current status: Operating, publicly listed (HEL: KNEBV). No bankruptcy, dissolution, or acquisition event appears in any source reviewed.
• Portfolio context: ~677 US granted patents tracked in PatentsView (2015–2025), concentrated in CPC class B66B. Kone is a net patent acquirer/holder, not a seller of patent assets in this record.

Assignment timeline

One recorded assignment, and it is the original inventor-to-employer assignment filed on national-stage entry. There are no post-issuance (post-grant) assignments on the record.

• 2016-09-08 (executed) / recorded 2016-09-12 — Reel 039697/0480
  • Conveyance: Assignment (ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST)
  • Assignor: Tommi Huotari (individual inventor)
  • Assignee: Kone Corporation (Finland)
  • Correspondent: Not recoverable from the sources available here. The Google Patents legal-events record for this filing discloses the reel/frame (039697/0480) and the assignment type but does not expose the correspondent of record. (Context only, not this reel: a separate, later Kone US assignment — reel 47356/905, recorded 2018-10-30 — names correspondent John A. Castellano, Harness Dickey & Pierce, PLC, Reston, VA. That is a different recording and should not be attributed to 039697/0480 without direct confirmation from Assignment Center.)
  • Context: Ordinary initial corporate assignment — the inventor assigning his employment-invention rights to Kone as the application entered the US. Not a fire-sale, securitization, or transfer-to-asserter.
• 2018-10-24 — Status event "PATENTED CASE" at grant (2018-11-13). Not an assignment.
• 2022-05-04 — Maintenance fee, 4th year, large entity (M1551). Not an assignment; confirms Kone still held the patent at the 4-year window.

Direct statement of the finding: Assignment Center / USPTO records show only the single original assignment (reel 039697/0480) for this patent. There is no recorded change of ownership after grant — which means Kone Corporation remains the owner of record. Because there is no post-issuance chain to analyze, the NPE-signal tables below are necessarily characterized by absence of transfers rather than by the presence of them.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10129390
    2014 : Priority PCT filed by Kone
    2016 : US application filed
         : Inventor assigns to Kone reel 039697 frame 0480
    2018 : Patent granted
    2022 : Maintenance fee paid by Kone

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. The only recorded transfer is inventor → Kone Corporation (reel 039697/0480). No "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" entity appears; no single-purpose LLC; no registered-agent address. Ownership never left the operating company.

2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. Neither the original assignee (Kone Corporation) nor any successor matches any public NPE list (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, DGC, Spangenberg entities). Kone is an operating OEM, not a tracked high-frequency plaintiff.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Unclear / not applicable. There is only one link in the chain, so "recurrence" cannot be tested. The correspondent of record on reel 039697/0480 was not recoverable from the available sources. (No attorney appears twice because no attorney appears more than once — with a one-link chain this signal is structurally inapplicable rather than affirmatively clean.)

4. Cascading transfers — Not present. No consecutive assignments, let alone chained LLCs within 24 months. Zero post-grant transfers.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present. As covered in the prior litigation-summary section, no infringement suit naming this patent was found. There is therefore no qualifying pre-suit assignment date to measure against, and no reassignment at all near any litigation window.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. Kone Corporation is solvent and operating; no Chapter 7/11 proceeding involving the assignee surfaced in any source.

7. Privateering — Not present. No transfer to any third party that could assert on Kone's behalf. Kone's only known enforcement activity in this technology space was defensive — the 2012 cross-license/settlement with Inventio AG (Schindler) over RFID call-input patents (US 5,689,094; EP 699 617), in which Kone took a license, i.e. Kone was the accused party, not the privateer. That matter does not involve and does not touch US 10,129,390.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. It terminates at Kone itself; the patent has not been "neutralized" by transfer to an aggregator.

Verdict

Insufficient data (only the original assignment).

Applying the menu literally: the record contains nothing but the original inventor-to-employer assignment (reel 039697/0480, executed 2016-09-08, recorded 2016-09-12), which the definition of this verdict expressly covers. Substantively, the absence of any post-grant transfer is the finding: no NPE signal is present on any of the eight dimensions, because ownership never moved off the operating OEM Kone Corporation, which remains the sole assignee of record and was still paying large-entity maintenance fees as of 2022-05-04. This is a clean, single-link corporate-ownership chain with no shell entity, no known asserter, no cascading or pre-litigation transfers, and no bankruptcy or privateering event — i.e., the opposite of a troll pattern, though the record is too thin to award any affirmative "operating-company assertion" label (there is no assertion at all).

Cross-reference / contradiction check: This is fully consistent with the earlier litigation-summary section — that section found no litigation, and this section finds no post-issuance assignments. The two are mutually reinforcing: a patent that was never re-assigned and never asserted is the expected profile of a defensive/portfolio-hold asset retained by its operating-company owner. No contradiction between the prior sections and this one.

Verification link (USPTO Assignment Center, search by patent number 10129390):
https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ — or the legacy interface at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html

Caveat per operating rules: the correspondent of record for reel 039697/0480 could not be confirmed from the sources retrievable here; Assignment Center's per-record detail page would need to be opened directly to capture that field. That omission does not change the ownership finding, but it leaves signal #3 ("repeat correspondent") technically unverified rather than affirmatively "not present" — I have marked it unclear for that reason.

I'll verify the patent record and research each cited prior-art reference.

Now let me research the remaining key cited references.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 10,129,390 B2

Building on the earlier litigation section (which found no known litigation); this section analyzes the prior art of record. I do not repeat the litigation content.

1. USPTO record verification (patent number interpreted literally as 10129390)

Scoping caveat (per operating rules). The "Patent Citations" list below is the set of references printed on the face of US 10,129,390. I can confirm that those references were listed, but I do not have the underlying IDS/office-action record in front of me, so I cannot confirm which references were examiner-cited vs. applicant-submitted, nor whether any were actually applied in a § 102/§ 103 rejection during prosecution. Google Patents flags some entries as "cited by examiner" (asterisked) but the formatting in the fetched page is ambiguous. I flag this explicitly rather than assert a prosecution history I cannot verify.

Important claim-scope note. The granted independent claim 1 is narrower than the published US 2017/0019528 A1 claim 1. The published claim ended at the "answering" step; the granted claim adds a limitation:

"further processing the test call by receiving an identification of the elevator emergency telephone different from the CLI information after answering the test call."

This added "second identifier ≠ CLI" limitation (the DTMF elevator-ID concept of FIG. 1c) is the feature most likely responsible for allowance, and it is therefore the key limitation for any anticipation analysis.

2. Most relevant prior art — ranked

Ranked by proximity to the claimed subject matter (elevator emergency telephony + automatic test-call processing + caller/line identification):

1. US 8,948,348 B2 — Kone's own earlier elevator-emergency-phone testing patent (closest, same assignee, common inventor Huotari)
2. US 5,736,694 A — Kone Oy, elevator phone alarm call handling
3. US 7,680,250 B1 — Interactive Quality Services, automated telephony system testing
4. US 8,184,785 B2 — Mitsubishi, elevator monitoring/interphone system
5. Teltone US 5,239,570 A / GTE US 5,016,269 A — emergency/access call handling with line identification
6. Y.P. Unitesters family (WO 2000033542 A1 et al.) — telephone-number verification/identification
7. Harris EP 0792057 A1 / CN 1134639 A — telephone ringback test device
8. BT US 6,002,746 A / BellSouth US 5,974,115 A / Westell US 6,212,258 B1 — line/subscriber testing
9. Chambron US 2007/0178879 A1 — alarm system
10. US 5,859,894 A (Telular) — self-diagnostic cellular transceiver with remote reporting
11. TP Lab family (US 7,272,402 B1 et al.) — emergency-caller location
12. Meucci EP 2487888 A1 / EP 2490423 A1 — telecom bypass detection
13. US 5,016,269 A (GTE Mobilnet) — cellular emergency callbox

3. Reference-by-reference analysis (citation, dates, description, potential § 102 mapping)

For each reference I give the full citation, the filing/publication dates as recorded, a brief description, and the claim(s) it could potentially anticipate if every element were met. In almost all cases I conclude no complete anticipation of an independent claim, and I say so plainly.

3.1 US 8,948,348 B2 — Kone Corporation

• Full citation: US 8,948,348 B2, "Method for testing elevator emergency phones and elevator emergency communication system," Kone Corporation; inventors Rytilä, Hienonen, Huotari (common inventor with the patent under review).
• Dates: PCT filed 2010-12-14 (PCT/EP2010/069660); US continuation filed 2013-06-13; granted 2015-02-03.
• Description: Periodically tests VoIP/mobile elevator emergency phones by initiating a registration process of the phone in its communication network within a set period (e.g., every 3 days per EN 81-1); a reporting device monitors the registration attempt and sends status data (date, log, result) and the emergency phone's ID to a monitoring center, which acts if a registration is missed or fails.
• Potential § 102 mapping: This is the closest art. It discloses the elevator-emergency-phone periodic-testing context, a monitoring center, and communicating an emergency-phone identifier on a test. It could arguably touch the preamble of claims 1/6/7 and the "test call" concept. However, it does not disclose: (i) a call attempt received at a call receiver including CLI information; (ii) detecting CLI prior to answering; (iii) determining completeness by whether the phone released the call attempt within a set time period; (iv) answering when not released; or (v) receiving a second identifier different from the CLI after answering. Its "test" is a network registration, not a CLI test call. Conclusion: does not anticipate any independent claim; relevant as § 103 background.

3.2 US 5,736,694 A — Kone Oy

• Full citation: US 5,736,694 A, "Method for providing a phone alarm call in an elevator system," Kone Oy.
• Dates: CIP filed 1995-08-16; earliest priority 1992-12-22; granted 1998-04-07.
• Description: Elevator remote-monitoring/alarm-call system: on alarm or malfunction, the elevator (or base unit) calls a prestored phone alarm number; if no audible connection is established, a service center transfers the call to at least one reserve number.
• Potential § 102 mapping: Discloses elevator equipment placing calls to a remote service center and connection handling. It could bear on the general "elevator emergency telephone → call receiver" architecture, but it discloses no CLI-based test call, no pre-answer CLI detection, no "released-within-time = complete" logic, and no post-answer second-identifier exchange. Conclusion: does not anticipate.

3.3 US 7,680,250 B1 — Interactive Quality Services

• Full citation: US 7,680,250 B1, "Interactive method and system of testing an automated call telephonic communication system," Zilles et al., Interactive Quality Services.
• Dates: filed 2004-11-24; granted 2010-03-16.
• Description: Remote, web-based testing of automated telephony systems using pseudo-calls, detecting call progress, collecting test-result data, and presenting results in (near) real time.
• Potential § 102 mapping: Relevant to the generic "test call" and "detect call progress/release" concepts that underlie claim 1's timing determination. It contains no elevator-emergency content and no CLI-plus-second-identifier scheme. Conclusion: does not anticipate; possible § 103 support for the generic test-call mechanics. (Note: this reference also appears in an unrelated ISR for PCT/US2015/049246 — a different applicant's call-testing case — so it should not be confused with the prosecution of US 10,129,390.)

3.4 US 8,184,785 B2 — Mitsubishi Electric

• Full citation: US 8,184,785 B2, "Elevator monitor system," Kuroda, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation.
• Dates: PCT filed 2005-04-28 (PCT/JP2005/008158); US national stage filed 2006-11-21; granted 2012-05-22.
• Description: Elevator monitoring where an operation-monitoring device and an interphone base unit cooperate to display communication states of car interphone units and detect a passenger unable to complete an interphone call.
• Potential § 102 mapping: Elevator interphone/monitoring architecture only. No test calls, no CLI, no call-release timing. Conclusion: does not anticipate.

3.5 US 5,239,570 A — Teltone Corporation

• Full citation: US 5,239,570 A, "9-1-1 Switched access system," Teltone Corporation.
• Dates: filed 1990-07-25; granted 1993-08-24.
• Description: Switched access for emergency (9-1-1) calls with line/identification handling (ANI-type). Relevant to caller-identification and emergency-access handling. No elevator or periodic-test content. Conclusion: does not anticipate.

3.6 US 5,016,269 A — GTE Mobilnet

• Full citation: US 5,016,269 A, "Method and apparatus for utilizing a cellular telephone in a programmable, intelligent emergency freeway callbox."
• Dates: filed 1988-11-04; granted 1991-05-14.
• Description: Emergency callbox using a cellular telephone that places an alarm call to a remote center. Emergency callbox architecture — not elevator test calls. Conclusion: does not anticipate.

3.7 Y.P. Unitesters family — WO 2000033542 A1 / US 6,201,854 B1 / US 2001/0009576 A1 / US 6,628,756 B2

• Full citation: WO 2000033542 A1 and US counterparts, "System and method for telephone number verification and identification," Y.P. Unitesters Ltd. / Yair Avitsur.
• Dates: filed 1998-11-27; WO published 2000-06-08; US publications 2001-07-26; US 6,628,756 granted 2003-09-30.
• Description: Verifying/identifying telephone numbers of callers (CLI-type identification) against stored data. Relevant to the "detect CLI and use it to identify the caller" element. No elevator or emergency-test-call context. Conclusion: does not anticipate.

3.8 Harris — EP 0 792 057 A1 / CN 1134639 A

• Full citation: EP 0 792 057 A1 and CN 1134639 A, "Telephone ringback test device and method," Harris Corporation.
• Dates: EP filed 1996-02-23, published 1997-08-27; CN filed 1994-11-18, published 1996-10-30.
• Description: Device/method for ringback testing of telephone lines (exercising and detecting ringing/ringback on a line). Relevant to testing a telephone line and detecting call-progress signaling — the kind of "ringing/tones" the patent references in FIG. 1b. No elevator/CLI test-call logic. Conclusion: does not anticipate.

3.9 Line/subscriber-testing references — BT US 6,002,746 A; BellSouth US 5,974,115 A; Westell US 6,212,258 B1

• Full citations / dates:
• US 6,002,746 A, "Line testing in a telecommunications network," British Telecommunications PLC — filed 1997-04-16, granted 1999-12-14.
• US 5,974,115 A, "System and method for testing subscriber lines and terminating equipment from a service platform," BellSouth — filed 1996-11-15, granted 1999-10-26.
• US 6,212,258 B1, "Device for remotely testing a twisted pair transmission line," Westell — filed 1998-11-25, granted 2001-04-03.
• Description: Remote/service-platform testing of telephone lines and terminating equipment. Relevant to the generic notion of automatically testing a phone line/terminal from the network side. No elevator, CLI test-call, or answer/release-timing scheme. Conclusion: do not anticipate.

3.10 US 2007/0178879 A1 — Michel Chambron

• Full citation: US 2007/0178879 A1, "Alarm system," Michel Chambron.
• Dates: filed 2006-01-30; published 2007-08-02.
• Description: Alarm system (general). Alarm/notification context only. Conclusion: does not anticipate.

3.11 US 5,859,894 A — Telular Corporation

• Full citation: US 5,859,894 A, "Self-diagnostic system for cellular-transceiver systems with remote-reporting capabilities."
• Dates: filed 1994-03-02; granted 1999-01-12.
• Description: Self-diagnostic cellular transceiver reporting status remotely. Relevant to periodic self-test + remote reporting — conceptually adjacent to periodic emergency-phone testing, but not elevator and not CLI-test-call based. Conclusion: does not anticipate.

3.12 TP Lab family — US 7,272,402 B1 and related (US 8,019,358 B1 etc.)

• Full citation: US 7,272,402 B1, "Method and system for obtaining emergency caller location," TP Lab.
• Dates: filed 2005-07-14; granted 2007-09-18 (family grants through 2014).
• Description: Obtaining emergency-caller location. Emergency-call/location context. Conclusion: does not anticipate.

3.13 Meucci Solutions — EP 2 487 888 A1 / EP 2 490 423 A1

• Full citation: EP 2 487 888 A1, "A system for detection of a bypass of an interconnect to a telecommunication network"; EP 2 490 423 A1, "A bypass detection system resembling human behaviour."
• Dates: EP 2487888 filed 2011-02-02, published 2012-08-15; EP 2490423 filed 2011-02-15, published 2012-08-22.
• Description: Telecom bypass/interconnect fraud detection using simulated (human-like) call behaviour. Adjacent to automated test-call generation and call-behaviour modeling, but not elevator/CLI-test-call. Conclusion: does not anticipate.

4. Overall § 102 anticipation conclusions

• No reference of record appears to anticipate independent claims 1, 6, 7, or 12. Each independent claim requires the combination of: (a) a call attempt sent as a call-setup signaling message of a test call; (b) detecting CLI prior to answering; (c) determining completeness by whether the phone released within a set time period; (d) answering when not released; and (e) receiving a second identifier different from the CLI after answering. No single cited reference discloses all of these.
• The closest single reference — US 8,948,348 B2 (Kone) — covers only the elevator-emergency-phone periodic-testing framework and identifier reporting via a network registration, not a CLI test call with release-timing and post-answer second-identifier exchange. It is best characterized as § 103 background art (and is, notably, the same assignee's earlier work, with a common inventor).
• Dependent claims 2–5 and 8–11 (test-call database update on CLI; establishing a data-communication protocol; receiving type information; updating on the second identifier) have no close single-reference disclosure in the cited set either; the DTMF "CPC/P100/ANTENNA/ADEMCO"-type protocol exchange and the dual-identifier concept are the distinctive features.
• Anticipation vs. obviousness. The user asked specifically for § 102 mapping. Candidly, on the record available, the cited art supports at most § 103 obviousness combinations (e.g., an elevator-emergency-testing reference such as US 8,948,348 B2 combined with a generic telephony test/CLI reference such as US 7,680,250 B1 and/or the Y.P. Unitesters CLI-verification art), not clean § 102 anticipation.

5. Explicit limitations of this analysis

1. I could not retrieve the actual USPTO prosecution record (office actions/IDS) for US 15/260,620. Which references the examiner applied, versus merely listed, is not established here. The per-reference "potential § 102" mappings above are my analytical projections against the granted claims, not a report of Examiner rejections.
2. Every "does not anticipate" conclusion is based on the reference descriptions and the granted claim language I could retrieve. For references where only abstracts/summaries were available (e.g., Chambron US 2007/0178879 A1, some line-testing references), a fuller reading of the specification could change the analysis.
3. Citations drawn from the Google Patents "Patent Citations" list include both examiner- and third-party-cited entries; I have not separated these because the fetched page did not render the designations unambiguously.
4. The ISR for PCT/FI2014/050229 (the parent PCT) is listed as a non-patent citation (dated 2015-01-22); I have not retrieved its contents, which would show the references the ISA considered most pertinent. That document would materially sharpen any § 102/§ 103 conclusion and is recommended as a follow-up.

Primary source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US10129390/en (bibliographic data, claims, and citation lists).

I'll ground this obviousness analysis in the actual prior-art references cited on the face of US 10,129,390. Let me pull the key references.

Now let me pull the remaining cited references most relevant to the CLI and call-testing limitations.

Obviousness Analysis — US 10,129,390 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Builds on the prior two sections. The bibliographic data, claim breakdown, and litigation findings from the earlier sections are adopted here without repetition. One flag: the system frame for this session shows "Today's date: 2026‑09‑28" while this task specifies April 26, 2026 — I've used the task date (2026‑04‑26) for currency statements and note the discrepancy rather than silently harmonizing it.

Scope and rules I applied. This is an analyst's § 103 opinion, not a legal conclusion or an invalidity contention. It is expressly hypothetical: no IPR/PGR, district-court, or CAFC proceeding for this patent was located in the earlier searches, so no party's actual invalidity theory exists to critique. I interpret all identifiers literally (e.g., "US 8,948,348 B2", "WO 00/33542", "EP 0 792 057 A1"). Where I could not retrieve a reference's full text, I say so and treat it as unverified.

1. Governing framework

• Effective filing date / critical date: 2014‑03‑28 (PCT/FI2014/050229, filed 2014‑03‑28; the US case is a straight continuation with no earlier priority). Because that date falls after 2013‑03‑16, AIA §§ 102/103 apply. Two consequences matter: (i) a reference qualifies as § 102(a)(2) art as of its own effective filing date, not its publication date; (ii) the KSR "expansive and flexible" obviousness approach governs.
• All references relied on below predate 2014‑03‑28 as of their effective filing dates. The most important one, US 8,948,348 B2 (Kone), issued 2015‑02‑03 — after the critical date — but its pre‑grant publication US 2013/0272506 A1 published 2013‑10‑17, and its priority date is 2010‑12‑14, so it is prior art under § 102(a)(1) (publication) and (a)(2) (effective filing date). It is also cited on the face of US 10,129,390 itself.
• Level of ordinary skill (proposed): a bachelor's degree in electrical/communications engineering (or equivalent), 2–3 years' experience in elevator emergency telephony or telephony call-handling/alarm-receiver systems, with working familiarity with call setup signaling, CLI/ANI, DTMF signaling, and periodic self-test regimes for alarm/emergency terminals. This is not a high skill level; the combination space is conventional telephony plus conventional elevator monitoring.

The prior art source for this analysis is the citation list on the face of US 10,129,390 (the "Citations (19)/(29)" and "Patent Citations" entries), which is what the task directs me to use. I verified the substance of four of them against their full text (US 8,948,348; US 5,736,694; US 5,239,570; US 5,850,894; US 6,201,854 / WO 00/33542); the remainder are characterized from their titles/abstracts and are flagged as unverified.

2. The claim‑1 limitations that carry the case

Stripping the preamble, claim 1 requires five things. I use these as the chart's rows because they are the only limitations that can plausibly be argued either way:

1. Call attempt received "as a call setup signaling message of the test call" and including CLI information — i.e., the CLI arrives with setup, not by a spoken/coded exchange.
2. Detecting the CLI "prior to answering the test call."
3. Determining whether processing is complete "by determining if the elevator emergency telephone has released the call attempt within a set time period."
4. Answering the test call only "in response to determining that the processing of the test call is not complete."
5. "Further processing … by receiving an identification of the elevator emergency telephone different from the CLI information after answering the test call."

Limitations 3–5 are the only non‑trivial ones. 1, 2 and 4 are each squarely old in the art; 3 is the "smart two-branch decision" that does the work; 5 addresses the shared‑line case that the '390 specification identifies as the reason plain CLI is insufficient.

3. Claim 1 element chart — primary combination (A): US 8,948,348 + US 6,201,854 (or WO 00/33542) + US 5,239,570

Why a PHOSITA would combine these. All three sit in the same field of endeavour — automatic telephony testing of remotely located terminals that call a central receiver — and the '348 reference is the elevator industry's own published solution to the same regulatory problem (EN 81‑1 / every‑three‑days test). The self‑evident engineering incentives are stated inside the references rather than inferred:

• Cost/load incentive. '348 states the goal of not loading the receiver with test calls; CLI interception (a known, free feature, per '854 and '570) achieves exactly that. Answering only the subset of phones that need an answer is the natural corollary.
• Heterogeneous installed base. '348 contemplates VoIP, mobile and PSTN phones coexisting in one building; the '390 specification itself records the admitted state of the art that "all elevator emergency telephones do not necessarily support a CLI based test call," because some "are configured to wait that a test call is answered and acknowledged in a certain way." A receiver that must serve both classes is obliged to discriminate between them — and the only externally observable discriminator on a call that has not been answered is whether the caller releases.
• Known supervisory technique. Watching a call attempt against a timer to decide whether it has "completed" is a routine telephony primitive ('570 time‑out; '894 numeric timers on a self‑test call). Applying it to the '348 test‑call receiver is KSR rationale (C)/(D): using a known technique (call‑supervision time‑out) to improve a known device ('348's test‑call receiver) in the same way as in the prior art, yielding nothing more than the predictable result of "don't answer calls that already hung up."
• Predictable result / no structural change. Nothing in claim 1 requires modifying emergency phones; the whole behaviour is receiver‑side software on an existing call‑handling platform. That is the classic "arranging old elements as the prior art suggests" case.

Obviousness strength for combination A: high, subject to the '570 snippet caveat (§ 8).

4. Alternative combination (B): US 8,948,348 + US 5,850,894 + US 5,736,694

Useful if an examiner or challenger wants the time‑out/release‑detection teaching to come from a terminal self‑test rather than a central‑office ANI system:

• US 5,850,894 teaches precisely the "test‑call‑with‑conditional‑behaviour‑detection" pattern in a remote alarm/monitoring product: the unit generates a call through the network, monitors network response (busy tone, ring, ring‑answer), applies numeric time limits, and reports test results to a remote telemaintenance centre — which is '390's "test call database updated based on the detected CLI / received ID" in all but name (cf. claims 2, 5).
• US 5,736,694 supplies the multiple‑elevator‑on‑a‑shared‑line problem and the transmission of an alarm data signal to the service centre, plus the general architecture of a base unit "calls a service point and establishes a voice connection" — i.e., answering is part of the designed flow, which supplies the claim's answer branch as a known element.
• Motivation: '894 is about remotely proving that an unattended terminal can both place and receive calls, including answering behaviour; '348 is about proving an unattended elevator phone can reach the emergency centre. Both address "prove the unattended device works, without a human in the loop," one via the terminal, one via the centre. A PHOSITA integrating them at the centre would naturally adopt the terminal‑side test's timing logic.

5. Alternative combination (C): US 8,948,348 + US 5,239,570 + WO 00/33542 + US 5,736,694

This is the cleanest four‑reference attack if one concedes that elements 3 and 5 are the only inventive contribution:

• '570 → time‑out‑supervised call handling at the receiver, ANI capture and forwarding.
• WO 00/33542 / US 6,201,854 → CLI capture and its use to verify/identify a line and update a database — directly supporting dependent claims 2 and 5.
• '348 → elevator‑specific test‑call regime, receiver loading concern, and a second phone ID distinct from the caller ID.
• '694 → multiple elevator phones sharing one line/monitoring unit and a data signal carried to the service centre, which is the factual predicate that motivates element 5.

6. Dependent claims 2–5 and 8–11

These dependents are, in substance, bookkeeping steps over the primary combination. Their obviousness rises or falls with claim 1 and with the motivation to log in a database, which is expressly the purpose of the references themselves.

7. Claims 6, 7 and 12

• Claim 6 (non‑transitory CRM) mirrors claim 1 step‑for‑step. Once the method is obvious, implementing it as processor‑executable instructions on a receiver is routine (KSR rationale (A)); '894 is itself a microprocessor/flowchart‑driven diagnostic implemented as firmware, so programming a call receiver to perform the same logic is a conventional implementation choice, and no unexpected technical effect is claimed for the medium.
• Claim 7 (receiver: memory + processor) is the same subject matter in apparatus form. '348 already discloses receiver/monitoring‑centre apparatus ("a monitoring centre … connected with the communication network," with testing/reporting devices implemented as "a software program running in any device"); '570's TDU/CAU are processor‑controlled call handling units with RAM, flags and stored instructions. The apparatus claim adds no structural limitation that survives the method analysis.
• Claim 12 (system: phone + database + receiver of claim 7) is the least difficult: '348 discloses an elevator emergency communication system comprising an emergency phone, a monitoring centre, and a reporting/testing arrangement feeding data that is compared against caller IDs — i.e., a database function. Substituting CLI‑driven logging for reporting‑device‑driven logging is a known‑element substitution.

Obviousness strength: high for 6, 7 and 12; the '348 reference alone gets very close to claim 12's architecture.

8. The strongest counterarguments (and how much they bite)

I would be overstating the case if I did not state these plainly.

1. Limitation 3's specificity. Claim 1 does not just say "use a timer"; it says completeness is determined by whether the calling phone released the call within a set period, with the negative outcome triggering answering. The verified references teach (a) time‑out supervision of a call the receiver placed ('570) and (b) timers around a terminal's self‑test call ('894). Neither verified passage is a clean disclosure of a receiver waiting out a third‑party‑origin test call and using non‑release as the trigger to answer. This is the limitation most likely to carry a non‑obviousness argument, and it should be attacked as a combination of '570 + '894 + '348 rather than as a single‑reference showing. Caveat: my '570 "time‑out" passage comes from an indexed specification quotation (everypatent.com), not from the full claim set I read end‑to‑end; a challenger should verify it against the issued patent before relying on it.
2. Possible teaching‑away argument on claim 1's "don't answer" branch. '348's preferred flow appears to require "receipt of the first call‑connected signal" before interrupting the test call, i.e., it may presuppose answering. If read that way, one could argue '348 leads away from a receiver that resolves test calls without answering. The rebuttal is that '348's own stated purpose is to avoid loading the emergency centre with test calls, which is the motivation to answer less — and '854/'570 independently establish CLI/ANI capture without answering. A teaching‑away argument would need '348 to criticise CLI‑only handling, which it does not.
3. Motivation is partly supplied by the patent's own background. Much of the "why combine" narrative (heterogeneous brands, shared lines, cost of answering, thousands of daily test calls) appears in the '390 specification's own Background. Statements about the state of the art in the applicant's own specification are usable as evidence of the art's condition, but a challenger should anchor the motivation in the references themselves, which I have done above ('348's anti‑loading statement; '694's shared monitoring unit; '854's cost/time discussion of CLI capture).
4. Unverified references I did not rely on for any essential limitation. US 8,184,785 B2 (Mitsubishi, "Elevator monitor system"), US 2007/0178879 A1 (Chambron, "Alarm system"), US 5,974,115 (BellSouth), US 6,002,746 (BT), US 6,212,258 (Westell), EP 0 792 057 A1 / CN 1134639 A (Harris, "Telephone ringback test device and method"), US 7,680,250 B1 (Interactive Quality Services), US 5,016,269 (GTE Mobilnet), and EP 2 487 888 A1 / EP 2 490 423 A1 (Meucci Solutions). I could not retrieve their texts within this session's search budget. On titles and abstracts they are all plausibly relevant — Harris's "ringback test device" and Meucci's "bypass detection system resembling human behaviour" are especially promising for supervising an unanswered test call against expected call‑progress behaviour — but I am not asserting them as grounds of obviousness; they are leads, flagged as unverified.
5. Secondary considerations. No evidence of commercial success, licensing, copying, unexpected results, or industry praise with an established nexus to these claims surfaced in the earlier searches (and no litigation to supply such evidence). Absent that, there is no Graham factor weighing against obviousness on the record available.
6. Prosecution history. The earlier sections note the patent was granted 2018‑11‑13 over this same citation list; the examiner presumably accepted the claim‑1 sequencing. That is a fact about the prosecution, not a defence to a § 103 challenge, and the "la determining" artifact in granted claim 7 suggests limited textual scrubbing — but claim construction arguments (e.g., reading "a set time period" broadly) cut both ways and would have to be run on the intrinsic record, not inferred here.

9. Bottom line

• Primary case: US 10,129,390 claim 1 would have been obvious over US 8,948,348 B2 in view of US 6,201,854 B1 (or WO 00/33542 A1) and US 5,239,570 A, with US 5,850,894 A supplying the time‑out/release‑detection teaching in the alternative. Every limitation of claim 1 is disclosed or suggested by the combination, and the motivation is not merely hindsight but is written into the references: Kone's own '348 expresses the goal of not loading the emergency centre with test calls, and the CLI references supply the free, unanswered identification mechanism the '390 claims to exploit.
• Dependents 2–5 / 8–11 are conventional logging and signalling steps over that combination; claims 6, 7 and 12 add only form (medium, processor, system), which is routine given '348's system disclosure.
• Weakest link for a challenger: claim 1's third limitation, as a supported combination rather than a single‑reference showing. Weakest link for a defender: no secondary‑considerations evidence has surfaced, and the shared‑line problem (limitation 5) is squarely addressed by '348's own elevator‑group ID feature.

Sources cited

• US 10,129,390 B2 full text and citation list — https://patents.google.com/patent/US10129390/en
• US 8,948,348 B2 — https://patents.google.com/patent/US8948348 ; https://www.freepatentsonline.com/8948348.html ; US 2013/0272506 A1 claims — https://www.patents-review.com/a/20130272506-method-testing-elevator-emergency-phones-elevator-emergency.html
• US 5,736,694 A — https://patents.justia.com/patent/5736694 ; http://www.everypatent.com/comp/pat5736694.html
• US 5,239,570 A — https://uspto.report/patent/grant/5,239,570 ; http://www.everypatent.com/comp/pat5239570.html
• US 5,850,894 A — https://patents.google.com/patent/US5859894 ; follow‑on text at https://patents.justia.com/patent/5966428
• US 6,201,854 B1 / WO 00/33542 A1 — https://patents.google.com/patent/US6201854 ; https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/12/f3/a6/b4fa885a8fa0fe/WO2000033542A1.pdf

This is a technical/analytical assessment prepared for portfolio purposes. It is not legal advice and does not constitute an invalidity opinion or a freedom‑to‑operate conclusion; no claim of US 10,129,390 has been adjudicated, and no proceeding challenging it was identified in the searches underlying this analysis.