US 10346105

I'll search for the specific patent and any related 2026 litigation activity.

Let me check the issued claims and any 2026 appellate activity.

Let me pull the full issued claims and check for any 2026 appellate docket activity.

US 10,346,105 B2 — Verification Summary

Searched for the literal identifier "10346105" / "US 10,346,105 B2." Results below are drawn from the Google Patents full text (authoritative copy supplied), the USPTO-recorded prosecution/assignment trail as indexed on Google Patents, the Justia/FPO/RPX claim texts, and Unified Patents' litigation portal. I found no Federal Circuit docket activity for this patent in 2026 (see §5).

1. Bibliographic data

Continuation chain (all incorporated by reference in the specification): 15/265,098 (Sep. 14, 2016) ← 14/137,688 (Dec. 20, 2013, now US 9,448,750) ← 13/087,089 (Apr. 14, 2011, now US 8,645,500) ← 12/105,710 (Apr. 18, 2008, now US 7,958,205) ← 10/191,606 (Jul. 9, 2002, now US 7,383,321). Related co-pending filings: 09/870,538 (US 7,747,699), 10/022,924 (US 6,976,084), 10/024,068, 10/191,161, 10/191,892.

Assignment trail (USPTO reassignment records as indexed): Senshin Capital, LLC ← Polaroid Corporation (Apr. 16, 2020); Intellectual Ventures I LLC ← Senshin Capital (merger, Apr. 16, 2020); Intellectual Ventures Assets 139 LLC ← IV I (Apr. 24, 2020); Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. ← IV Assets (Aug. 14, 2020).

2. Abstract (verbatim)

"In order to enable downloading to a mobile printer data items from a server, a method comprising the steps of establishing communication connection end points ('sockets'), communicating with the server, where the communication includes sending a request for authentication to the server, receiving an authentication response, requesting print data portions from the server, receiving the requested print data portions, and notifying the server after each print data portion has been printed. The method also includes the step of terminating their communication connection when a printing session ends or if an error occurs. The method constitutes a printer-server protocol."

3. Independent claims in plain language

Claim 1 — method (server/computing-device side). A computing device (processor + memory, coupled to a remote printer over a network) (a) receives from the remote printer data identifying one or more characteristics of that printer; (b) verifies that the remote printer has been registered with the computing device; and (c) sends back to the printer an indication of a number of data items to be printed and an indication of a number of print data items to be downloaded, the printer being configured to download those print data items.
Note: the issued claim is narrow relative to the specification — it does not itself recite sockets, authentication handshake, CRC/MD5 security indicators, offset-based resume, or the "endOfPrint" notification emphasized in the description.

Claim 9 — computer-readable storage device. The same three operations (receive printer characteristics → verify registration → send indications of number of items to print and number of print data items to download), but claimed as a non-transitory storage device carrying instructions.

Claim 17 — computing device. The same three operations, claimed as an apparatus (at least one processor plus at least one memory in communication with it, the memory holding instructions causing the device to perform the receive/verify/send steps).

Dependent claims (grouped by family): 2/10/18 – verification by comparing printer characteristics to a database; 3/11/19 – determining to terminate the connection based on comparing the number of items printed vs. the number to be printed; 4/12/20 – sending an updated number of data items and terminating based on that comparison; 5/13 – receiving the printer's request for the updated number; 6/14 – sending an updated number of print data items to download; 7/15 – establishing the communication connection in response to successful verification; 8/16 – connection-endpoint (socket-style) establishment at both the computing device and the printer.

4. Claim-set / prosecution note

The pre-grant publication US 2018/0373474 A1 presents the same substantive claim language under higher claim numbers (independent claim "21" corresponds verbatim to issued claim 1). This suggests the originally filed claims were canceled before issuance and the later-added claim set was renumbered to 1–20. I could not retrieve the complete published claim listing to confirm the exact pre-issuance numbering, so treat that inference as moderate confidence.

5. Litigation status and 2026 CAFC check

• No 2026 Federal Circuit docket or appeal for US 10,346,105 was returned by any search. I cannot affirmatively state that none exists — I do not have direct PACER/CAFC docket access here, so this is a negative search result, not a verified absence.
• What is indexed are district-court cases flagged on Google Patents (via Unified Patents' litigation data): E.D. Tex. 2:24‑cv‑00898, 2:25‑cv‑00088, 2:24‑cv‑00897, 2:21‑cv‑00387, 2:21‑cv‑00078; W.D. Tex. 6:21‑cv‑01342, 6:21‑cv‑00420, 6:21‑cv‑00251, 6:21‑cv‑01035; D.N.J. 1:24‑cv‑10453 and 2:24‑cv‑10453; D. Del. 1:22‑cv‑00051. Cedar Lane Technologies is the plaintiff in these.
• An April 2021 W.D. Tex. complaint against HTC asserted this patent (together with US 6,566,805; 6,972,774; 6,972,790; 8,537,242) over mobile-printing functionality in HTC smartphones.

6. Explicit uncertainties

1. No 2026 CAFC activity confirmed — searches returned no appellate docket; absence of evidence here is not evidence of absence.
2. Claim 18's verbatim text (a dependent of claim 17) was not fully retrievable; I infer it mirrors claim 2 (database comparison) but have not verified it word-for-word.
3. The exact published claim numbering of US 2018/0373474 A1 (claims 1–20 vs. 21–40 pre-issuance) is inferred, not confirmed.
4. The "Expired – Fee Related" status and 2022‑07‑09 expiration date are as reported by Google Patents and are not a legal conclusion.

Key sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/US10346105/en · https://patents.justia.com/patent/10346105 · https://insight.rpxcorp.com/patent/[US10346105B2](/patent/US10346105B2) · https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/10346105

I'll research litigation involving US Patent 10,346,105. Let me search multiple sources.

Let me dig deeper into the specific cases involving this patent.

Let me search for more recent cases and specific outcomes.

Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. 10,346,105

Important framing notes before the list:

• U.S. Patent 10,346,105 ("the '105 patent"), titled "Method and system for communicating between a remote printer and a server," issued July 9, 2019, the application (Ser. No. 15/989,511) being filed May 25, 2018 as a continuation of a chain going back to 2002. It lists a priority date of July 9, 2002.
• Current assignee: Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. (an NPE), acquired via Intellectual Ventures → Intellectual Ventures Assets 139 LLC → Cedar Lane. Google Patents records the patent as "Expired – Fee Related" with an anticipated expiration of July 9, 2022.
• Caveat on scope: The Google Patents page shows a "Family has litigation" list of case links (docket URLs). Those links reflect litigation involving the patent family / Cedar Lane's campaign, and the Google Patents listing is not, by itself, a guarantee that the '105 patent specifically was asserted in each listed case. I have flagged below which cases I can confirm named the '105 patent as a patent-in-suit versus those appearing only on the family-level list. Wherever I could not confirm a filing date or outcome, I say so rather than guessing.

A. Cases CONFIRMED as asserting the '105 patent

1. Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. v. Azpen Innovation

• Plaintiff: Cedar Lane Technologies Inc.
• Defendant: Azpen Innovation
• Jurisdiction: U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas (E.D. Tex.)
• Case No.: 2:21-cv-00078
• Filed: March 8, 2021
• Patents asserted: U.S. 6,972,790; 8,537,242; 6,972,774; 10,346,105
• Status/Outcome: Dismissed – voluntarily (terminated April 13, 2021).
• Sources: IPWatchdog Patent Filings Roundup (Mar. 17, 2021) — https://ipwatchdog.com/2021/03/17/patent-filings-roundup-canonball-runs-itc-district-court-filings-spike/ ; Patexia case summary — https://services.patexia.com/lawsuits/Cedar-Lane-Technologies-Inc-v-Azpen-Innovation-id-[145958](/patent/145958)

2. Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. v. Unitech America, Inc.

• Plaintiff: Cedar Lane Technologies Inc.
• Defendant: Unitech America, Inc.
• Jurisdiction: U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas (E.D. Tex.)
• Case No.: 2:21-cv-00387
• Filed: 2021 (reported in the Oct. 21, 2021 IPWatchdog roundup)
• Patents asserted: 10,346,105
• Status/Outcome: I could not confirm a final disposition from the sources retrieved; the case appears on Cedar Lane's docket list and IPWatchdog's filing table. Not verified as to ultimate outcome.
• Source: IPWatchdog Patent Filings Roundup (Oct. 21, 2021) — https://ipwatchdog.com/2021/10/21/patent-filings-roundup-district-court-termination-wave-old-fashioned-oil-fights-npe-targets-apple-and-others/

3. Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. v. HTC Corporation

• Plaintiff: Cedar Lane Technologies Inc.
• Defendant: HTC Corporation (Taiwan)
• Jurisdiction: U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, Waco Division (W.D. Tex.), Judge Alan D. Albright
• Case No.: 6:21-cv-00420
• Filed: April 27, 2021
• Patents asserted (five): U.S. 10,346,105; 6,566,805; 6,972,774; 6,972,790; 8,537,242
• Accusation: HTC smartphones with built-in mobile-printing functionality (Android 8+/Mopria) allegedly infringed at least claim 1 of the '105 patent; direct and induced infringement alleged; pre-/post-judgment interest and damages sought. Counsel for Cedar Lane: Rabicoff Law LLC.
• Status/Outcome: Docket last reflected "Open" as of mid-2021; service/waiver activity in May–June 2021 (Standing Order entered June 16, 2021). Final outcome not confirmed in the retrieved sources.
• Sources: Docket Alarm — https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/Texas_Western_District_Court/6--21-cv-00420/Cedar_Lane_Technologies_Inc._v._HTC_Corporation/ ; Justia Dockets — https://dockets.justia.com/docket/texas/txwdce/6:2021cv00420/[1131720](/patent/1131720) ; Law Street Media — https://lawstreetmedia.com/news/tech/htc-sued-for-alleged-infringement-of-various-patents-including-remote-printing/

4. Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. v. Lenovo (United States) Inc.

• Plaintiff: Cedar Lane Technologies Inc.
• Defendant: Lenovo (United States) Inc.
• Jurisdiction: U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware (D. Del.)
• Case No.: 1:22-cv-00051
• Filed: January 13, 2022
• Patents asserted (five): U.S. 10,346,105; 6,473,527; 6,516,147; 6,566,805; 6,972,774 (per the AO-120 Patent/Trademark Report in the docket)
• Status/Outcome: A complaint with jury demand was filed January 13, 2022; summons issued same day. Final outcome not confirmed in the retrieved sources.
• Sources: Patexia docket — https://services.patexia.com/lawsuits/Cedar-Lane-Technologies-Inc-v-Lenovo--United-States--Inc-id-[160591](/patent/160591) ; IPWatchdog roundup (Jan. 20, 2022) — https://ipwatchdog.com/2022/01/20/patent-filings-round-claims-25-million-verdict-held-unpatentable-stay-denied-panel-denies-[ipr](/resources/cost-of-inter-partes-review)-lengthy-reexam-history/

B. Cases appearing ONLY on the Google Patents "family has litigation" list (not confirmed as asserting the '105 patent specifically)

The Google Patents entry for US 10,346,105 lists the following docket links under "Family has litigation." I could not, within this research, confirm that the '105 patent was a named patent-in-suit in each. Treat these as family/Cedar Lane campaign leads to verify, not confirmed '105 assertions:

Sources: Google Patents US10346105B2 "Family has litigation" links — https://patents.google.com/patent/US10346105/en ; IPWatchdog roundup (Mar. 17, 2021) for the AT&T '251 patent list — https://ipwatchdog.com/2021/03/17/patent-filings-roundup-canonball-runs-itc-district-court-filings-spike/

C. Related Cedar Lane case NOT confirmed as involving the '105 patent

• Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. v. Xiaomi Inc. (W.D. Tex., Waco, Judge Albright) — Cedar Lane sued Xiaomi on seven patents relating to smartphones. This case is widely reported (Greenberg Traurig secured a dismissal in Xiaomi's favor in Sept. 2021 after Cedar Lane voluntarily dismissed). However, the retrieved reporting does not identify the '105 patent among the seven, so I do not list it as a confirmed '105 case. Source: Greenberg Traurig press release — https://www.gtlaw.com/en/news/2021/9/press-releases/gt-secures-dismissal-in-favor-of-client-xiaomi-inc

Summary

• No appellate (CAFC) litigation involving the '105 patent was found; Cedar Lane's suits were district-court, settlement-oriented NPE actions.
• Four district-court cases are confirmed to have named the '105 patent: Azpen (E.D. Tex. 2:21-cv-00078, dismissed voluntarily 2021), Unitech America (E.D. Tex. 2:21-cv-00387), HTC (W.D. Tex. 6:21-cv-00420, filed 4/27/2021), and Lenovo (D. Del. 1:22-cv-00051, filed 1/13/2022).
• Plaintiff was Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. in every instance. The patent's prosecution-family assignees were Intellectual Ventures entities.
• Outcomes are largely voluntary dismissal / settlement in Cedar Lane's pattern; several cases (HTC, Lenovo, Unitech) could not be confirmed as fully terminated from the sources retrieved.
• Limitations: I could not verify filing dates and outcomes for the 2024–2025 E.D. Tex. and D.N.J. cases, nor confirm that each "family" docket involved the '105 patent. Confirmatory steps would be PACER dockets for each case number and a Darts-IP/Unified Patents family query at https://patents.darts-ip.com/?family=30114185 (link on the Google Patents page). I did not fabricate outcomes where sources were silent.

Key URLs: https://patents.google.com/patent/US10346105/en ; https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/10346105 ; https://lawstreetmedia.com/news/tech/htc-sued-for-alleged-infringement-of-various-patents-including-remote-printing/ ; https://dockets.justia.com/docket/texas/txwdce/6:2021cv00420/1131720 ; https://services.patexia.com/lawsuits/Cedar-Lane-Technologies-Inc-v-Lenovo--United-States--Inc-id-160591

I'll verify the "no PTAB activity" default against live sources before finalizing.

Let me run more targeted searches on the patent owner's IPR track record and the specific patent.

Let me check the patent family (the continuations share the same spec) and the broader Cedar Lane/IV IPR record.

AIA Trial Proceedings — U.S. Patent No. 10,346,105

Patent: Method and system for communicating between a remote printer and a server
Patent Owner: Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. (acquired from Intellectual Ventures Assets 139 LLC, recorded 2020‑08‑14)
Priority date: 2002‑07‑09 (pre‑AIA) · Application: 15/989,511, filed 2018‑05‑25 · Granted: 2019‑07‑09
Verified: 2026‑09‑28

Proceedings overview

There are zero AIA trial proceedings on file against U.S. Patent No. 10,346,105 — no IPR, no PGR, no CBM, no derivation proceeding — so the bottom line for a defendant is not "the patent is hardened" and not "the claims are canceled," but rather that the patent's validity has never been tested by the Board at all; every claim is UNTESTED, and the most important defensive facts (unpaid maintenance fees / expired term) sit in the Patent Office's fee records rather than in any PTAB decision.

The canonical list supplied in the prompt (USPTO Open Data Portal) is empty, and my independent web searches corroborate that: I found no petition, institution decision, final written decision, or appeal involving this patent. I did not have direct PTAB E2E / Patent Center access during this run, so treat "zero proceedings" as a high-confidence but not independently docket-verified conclusion — the verification step is listed in Recommended next steps.

Because there is no proceeding to summarize at claim-level granularity, the numbered proceeding template below is intentionally omitted rather than populated with invented case numbers.

Strategic summary

Which claims are canceled vs. sustained vs. untested

All claims are untested. No claim of 10,346,105 has been canceled, confirmed, or construed by the PTAB. There is no FWD to quote, no certificate issued under 35 U.S.C. § 318(b), and no estoppel to map. (The claim set is not reproduced in the full-text excerpt I was given, so I am not assigning claim numbers I cannot verify — the safe statement is that the entire claim set is untested.)

Two structural points matter for how you defend:

1. The patent is pre‑AIA (effective filing 2002‑07‑09). That means PGR is unavailable (PGR applies only to first-inventor-to-file patents filed on or after 2018‑03‑16), and CBM is almost certainly unavailable — CBM review requires a patent that claims a financial product or service, and a printer/server transport protocol does not qualify on its face. IPR is the only realistic AIA vehicle.
2. Term and fee status are the elephant in the room. The authoritative Google Patents record for this patent shows an anticipated expiration of 2022‑07‑09 (20 years from the 2002‑07‑09 priority filing) and a current legal status of "Expired – Fee Related." If that status is accurate, the damages window closed years ago and a lapsed maintenance fee may have cut the term even shorter. Google expressly labels these as assumptions requiring verification, so confirm in USPTO Patent Center — but if it holds, this is a complete defense to prospective infringement and drastically limits any damages theory. This is a far bigger lever than any IPR.

Estoppel landscape

There is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel to worry about, in either direction. Estoppel attaches only to a petitioner whose IPR was instituted and terminated with a final written decision. With no institution, no petitioner and no privy is barred from raising any ground — and equally, the patent owner has not narrowed anything, so nothing has been conceded. Practically:

• The full universe of § 102/§ 103 art remains available to any defendant, including art that would have been "reasonably could have raised" ground had an IPR run. Nothing has been burned.
• The § 315(b) one-year clock is the real constraint. If you (or a privy/real party in interest) have already been served with a complaint asserting 10,346,105, the IPR petition deadline is one year from service. The Google Patents family record shows the patent (with co-asserted patents) in cases reaching back to 2021 (e.g., 2:21‑cv‑00078 E.D. Tex.; 6:21‑cv‑00251 W.D. Tex.) and continuing into 2024–2025 (2:24‑cv‑00897 and 2:24‑cv‑00898 E.D. Tex.; 2:25‑cv‑00088 E.D. Tex.; 1:24‑cv‑10453 D.N.J.). Any defendant served in 2021 is long past § 315(b); a 2024–2025 defendant may still be inside the window. Check your own service date before anything else.
• No-PTAB alternatives remain fully open: ex parte reexamination (no § 315(b) bar, no estoppel), and invalidity under §§ 101/102/103/112 in district court or at the ITC.

Pattern signals

• Patent owner posture: Cedar Lane Technologies is a Canadian NPE formed around 2019 that acquired this patent, and the rest of the asserted portfolio, from Intellectual Ventures. Third-party litigation data (KIPO, covering 2018–2022) reports Cedar Lane filed roughly 367 suits in that window, with ~310 settled, ~13 otherwise terminated, and ~44 still pending — i.e., an extremely high-volume, settlement-driven assertion model, typically in W.D. Tex. before Judge Albright, and typically through Rabicoff Law. This patent was asserted (with siblings such as 6,972,774, 8,537,242, 6,566,805) against HTC, AT&T, Lenovo, Azpen and others.
• Has the same petitioner filed multiple IPRs on 10,346,105? No — no petitioner has filed any. There is no serial-petition pattern on this patent.
• Has the patent owner pursued PTAB appeals aggressively? Nothing to appeal; no AIA trial has ever reached a decision on this patent.
• Defensive aggregator involvement? Unified Patents has targeted Cedar Lane, but on a different patent: IPR2020‑00006, Unified Patents, LLC v. Cedar Lane Technologies Inc., on U.S. 7,173,177 (unrelated subject matter — playlist ownership display). It was instituted 2020‑03‑18 and the Board's final written decision of 2021‑02‑12 held the asserted independent claim unpatentable; rehearing was denied 2021‑12‑08. That is not a proceeding on 10,346,105 and must not be cited as one — but it is a useful signal that Cedar Lane patents are within Unified's radar, and it shows the Board will invalidate Cedar Lane claims when presented with the right art.
• The signal from the absence itself: this patent has been asserted in a dozen-plus suits over roughly four years and has still attracted no IPR petition. For a patent asserted at that volume, that is unusual and suggests either (a) the art is thin relative to the cost of a petition, (b) targets are settling quickly rather than petitioning, or (c) the term/fee status makes a petition pointless. Investigate (c) first.

Recommended next steps

1. Verify the proceeding list directly. Run the patent number through PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptabweb/) and the USPTO Patent Center "Proceedings" tab for application 15/989,511, and confirm no AIA trial exists under any style of the patent number. My searches found none, but this is the authoritative step.
2. Verify term and fee status before anything else. Open Patent Center → Fee History / Maintenance Fees for 10,346,105. The Google Patents record (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US10346105](/patent/US10346105)/en) reports "Anticipated expiration 2022‑07‑09" and "Expired – Fee Related." If a maintenance fee was missed, the patent may have lapsed earlier still; confirm whether any § 41(c) petition to accept late payment or intervening-rights issue exists. If the patent is expired, lead with that — it moots damages and most forward-looking infringement theories, and it is cheaper than any IPR.
3. If you are a defendant and the patent is still in force, decide on an IPR within your § 315(b) window. Compute the deadline as one year from service of the first complaint asserting this patent on you, your RPI, or a privy. If you are outside it, an IPR is barred and ex parte reexamination (no time bar, no estoppel) plus district-court §§ 101/102/103 invalidity are your channels.
4. If you do petition, build the ground from the family and prosecution record, not from the 7,173,177 IPR. The '105 patent is the last of a five-link continuation chain — 10/191,606 (now 7,383,321) → 12/105,710 (7,958,205) → 13/087,089 (8,645,500) → 14/137,688 (9,448,750) → 15/265,098 → 15/989,511 — and expressly incorporates five commonly-owned sibling applications (09/870,538; 10/022,924; 10/024,068; 10/191,161; 10/191,892). Those applications' published art and the intervening prior art between 2002 and 2018 are the natural § 102/§ 103 hunting ground. No estoppel restricts you.
5. Consider a § 101 track in parallel. The claims are directed to a printer/server transport protocol (sockets, authentication handshake, chunked print-data transfer, CRC verification) implemented on generic processors and memory. If you are litigating rather than petitioning, an Alice challenge is worth scoping alongside the prior-art defense — but note the patent's specification does describe concrete protocol mechanics, so do not assume a § 101 win.
6. Do not cite the 7,173,177 FWD as a disposition of this patent. If you want the Unified v. Cedar Lane materials as pattern evidence, cite IPR2020‑00006 and the 2021‑02‑12 final written decision expressly as a proceeding on U.S. 7,173,177, and say so.

Sources consulted

• Google Patents, US10346105B2 (full text, family, assignments, litigation list, expiration/status data): https://patents.google.com/patent/US10346105/en
• Unified Patents patent portal page for 10,346,105 (family/assignee data): https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/10346105
• Unified Patents insight on the different patent 7,173,177 (IPR2020‑00006, FWD 2021‑02‑12): https://www.unifiedpatents.com/insights/2021/2/12/cedar-lane-patent-held-unpatentable
• Patexia PTAB docket for IPR2020‑00006 (procedural history, rehearing denial 2021‑12‑08): https://services.patexia.com/lawsuits/Unified-Patents-LLC-v-Cedar-Lane-Technologies-Inc-id-[128967](/patent/128967)/documents
• IPWatchdog patent filings roundup (Cedar Lane assertion wave incl. 10,346,105): https://ipwatchdog.com/2021/03/17/patent-filings-roundup-canonball-runs-itc-district-court-filings-spike/
• KIPO NPE report on Cedar Lane litigation/settlement statistics

Limitation disclosure: I did not access PTAB E2E or Patent Center directly in this run, so the "no proceedings" finding rests on the structured ODP block plus web searches; treat the term/fee-status and no-proceeding points as requiring the confirmations in steps 1–2 above.

I'll research the assignment record and correspondent details for this patent before drafting.

Assignment & Ownership Reconstruction — US 10,346,105 B2

Data-access caveat up front (read before the tables): I could not query the USPTO Patent Assignment Center (assignmentcenter.uspto.gov / assignment.uspto.gov) directly from this environment — it is an interactive query UI with no exposed API reachable by the tools available here. Everything below is reconstructed from the authoritative Google Patents full text supplied for this matter (which surfaces the recorded-assignment events) plus corroborating secondary reporting. Reel/frame numbers and correspondent-of-record fields were retrieved for only one link in the chain (reel 052491/0084). Where a field is blank it is because I could not verify it, not because no record exists. Nothing below is fabricated.

Inventors

Pattern note: All three inventors list Massachusetts addresses, geographically consistent with Polaroid Corporation's Cambridge, MA R&D operation. The priority non-provisional (Ser. No. 10/191,606) was filed July 9, 2002 — i.e., in the immediate aftermath of Polaroid's October 2001 Chapter 11 filing and its 2002 emergence under One Equity Partners. Inventors continuing to file a remote-printer/data-comms application from Polaroid's Massachusetts base during the bankruptcy/restructuring period is exactly the circumstance that frequently precedes a portfolio divestiture — but I found no evidence of the inventors departing the assignee within 12 months, so treat this as background context, not a finding. I could not determine any inventor's post-2002 employment from the sources retrieved.

Original assignee

Entity named on the face of the issued patent: Intellectual Ventures I LLC (per Google Patents' "Original Assignee" field and the 2018 application-by record).

Important nuance: the apparatus/method was developed and first assigned by Polaroid Corporation — the recorded chain (Polaroid → Senshin Capital, LLC) shows Polaroid as the original owner of the underlying 2002-era invention. By the time this continuation (Ser. No. 15/989,511) issued on 2019‑07‑09, the recorded applicant/owner was Intellectual Ventures I LLC.

• Intellectual Ventures I LLC — primary business is patent licensing/monetization (an NPE); it does not ship products embodying the claims. Still operating as part of the IV enterprise.
• Polaroid Corporation (the true origin) — consumer imaging/instant-photography manufacturer; filed Chapter 11 in Oct. 2001 and again in 2008; the original corporate entity and its brand/IP were sold off (the "Polaroid" brand continued under PLR IP Holdings / Gordon Brothers after a 2009 §363 sale). Polaroid Corporation as an operating manufacturer is defunct. I could not confirm that Polaroid ever shipped a network-enabled printer embodying these specific claims (its related digital-printing work is documented in co-pending family members, not confirmed as a commercial product reading on claim 1).

Assignment timeline

Chronological. All dates shown are recording dates as surfaced in the Google Patents legal-events list; execution dates were not retrievable, and I could not pull the reel/frame or correspondent fields except where noted. Because the source lists recording dates only, I have flagged the execution-date field as not retrieved rather than guessing.

1. Executed: not retrieved / recorded 2020‑04‑16 — Reel: not retrieved

   • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
   • Assignor: Polaroid Corporation
   • Assignee: Senshin Capital, LLC
   • Correspondent: not retrieved — I could not verify the recording attorney/firm for this link.
   • Context: Transfer of the original developer's patent rights to a Polaroid-affiliated IP-holding entity (restructuring/asset transfer arising out of Polaroid's bankruptcy era).

2. Executed: not retrieved / recorded 2020‑04‑16 — Reel: not retrieved

   • Conveyance: Merger
   • Assignor: Senshin Capital, LLC
   • Assignee: Intellectual Ventures I LLC
   • Correspondent: not retrieved.
   • Context: Internal reorg/merger consolidating the Polaroid-origin portfolio into an IV entity. (Recorded the same day as link 1 — the two recordings were clearly filed together as a chain-of-title cleanup ahead of the sale to IV Assets.)

3. Executed: not retrieved / recorded 2020‑04‑24 — Reel: 052491 / 0084 (inference; see note)

   • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
   • Assignor: Intellectual Ventures I LLC
   • Assignee: Intellectual Ventures Assets 139 LLC
   • Correspondent: not retrieved.
   • Context: Transfer-to-asserter / divestiture — IV moved the asset into a single-purpose Delaware holding LLC ("Assets 139") formed for resale.
   • Note: reel 052491/0084 is the only reel/frame I could confirm, and I inferred its attachment to this link from the corrective assignment at link 4, which expressly references "REEL 052491 FRAME 0084" and states the assignor "confirms the assignment." Treat the correspondence between 052491/0084 and the 2020‑04‑24 IV I → IV Assets 139 conveyance as moderate confidence, not confirmed.

4. Executed: not retrieved / recorded 2020‑05‑01 — Reel: not retrieved

   • Conveyance: Corrective assignment — "to correct the patent numbers 7,593,141 and 7,609,407 previously recorded on Reel 052491 Frame 0084; assignor(s) hereby confirms the assignment."
   • Assignor: Intellectual Ventures I LLC
   • Assignee: Intellectual Ventures Assets 139 LLC
   • Correspondent: not retrieved.
   • Context: Administrative correction to the bulk portfolio assignment (link 3). Confirms link 3 covered a multi-patent portfolio, not just the '105 patent.

5. Executed: not retrieved / recorded 2020‑08‑14 — Reel: not retrieved

   • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
   • Assignor: Intellectual Ventures Assets LLC
   • Assignee: Cedar Lane Technologies Inc.
   • Correspondent: not retrieved — flagged below.
   • Context: Transfer-to-asserter — the closing leg of the IV divestiture, delivering the asset to the Cedar Lane NPE campaign.

Discrepancy to flag: the assignee in links 3–4 is "Intellectual Ventures Assets 139 LLC," but the assignor in link 5 is "Intellectual Ventures Assets LLC" (no "139"). This is either (a) a rename/merger of the 139 SPV into a parent IV Assets entity, or (b) a distinct IV Assets vehicle. I could not confirm which, and I did not find the intermediate IV Assets 139 → IV Assets link in the sources retrieved. This gap is material to a complete chain-of-title and should be verified on the Assignment Center.

(No inventor-to-assignee assignment record was surfaced in the legal-events list for this continuation; the inventorship-to-Polaroid assignment would have been recorded against the 2002 parent, Ser. No. 10/191,606 / US 7,383,321.)

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10346105
    2001 : Polaroid files Chapter 11
    2002 : Priority application filed
    2018 : Continuation filed by IV I
    2019 : Patent issues to IV I
    2020 : Polaroid to Senshin recorded
         : Senshin merger to IV I recorded
         : IV I to IV Assets 139 recorded
         : Corrective assignment reel 052491 frame 0084
         : IV Assets to Cedar Lane recorded
    2021 : First Cedar Lane suit on patent
    2022 : Anticipated term expiry

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — PRESENT.
The asset moves from operating manufacturer Polaroid → IP-holding Senshin Capital, LLC → licensing-only Intellectual Ventures I LLC → single-purpose SPV Intellectual Ventures Assets 139 LLC → Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. Concrete support: recorded conveyances 2020‑04‑24 / 2020‑05‑01 (reel 052491/0084) into IV Assets 139 LLC and 2020‑08‑14 into Cedar Lane. Cedar Lane is documented as a British Columbia entity formed 2019‑04‑29 with no parent and no products, and its complaints list an address corresponding to Pigott & Co., an IP licensing firm (RPX). The "Ventures / Assets / Holdings" naming plus zero product activity satisfies the signal.

2. Known asserter in the chain — PRESENT.
Two named entities on public NPE lists appear in the chain: Intellectual Ventures (explicitly named on the comparison list) and Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. Cedar Lane is surfaced by Unified Patents (which filed IPR2020‑00006 against Cedar Lane's US 7,173,177 and won a Feb. 12, 2021 final written decision) and by RPX, and KIPO/Lex‑Machina reporting names Cedar Lane as the single largest patent-plaintiff filer in the U.S. in 2021. Support: IV entity recordings (reel 052491/0084 cluster) and the 2020‑08‑14 IV Assets → Cedar Lane assignment.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR / NOT VERIFIABLE.
This is the signal the task most wants, and I could not retrieve any correspondent-of-record field for this patent's assignment entries from the sources available. I did not fabricate one. Two related but distinct factual anchors that are worth pulling from the Assignment Center:

• Cedar Lane's corporate/recording-side operator: attorney Greg Benoit (director/president of Cedar Lane; signed for conduit entity Steephill Technologies LLC as "authorized person"; former CEO of monetization firm Patent Armory, per RPX). ⚠️ This is corporate/entity governance, not a confirmed assignment correspondent.
• Cedar Lane's litigation counsel: Isaac Rabicoff, Rabicoff Law LLC (Alexandria, VA) — plaintiff counsel of record in the great majority of Cedar Lane's ~1,000+ suits and sanctioned in N.D. Cal. (2020) for bad-faith filings. ⚠️ Litigation counsel ≠ assignment correspondent; do not conflate.
  Because a single appearance is not a finding and I have zero confirmed assignment correspondents, I mark this unclear pending Assignment Center verification.

4. Cascading transfers — PRESENT.
Four recorded transfers in under four months: 2020‑04‑16 (×2) → 2020‑04‑24 → 2020‑05‑01 → 2020‑08‑14, stepping through Senshin → IV I → IV Assets 139 → (IV Assets) → Cedar Lane. RPX further reports that Steephill Technologies LLC was an entity "through which some of Cedar Lane's acquisitions from IV passed," i.e., an additional chained conduit sharing the same operator (Benoit). The Apr‑16 same-day double recording is a textbook chained-cleanup-then-flip pattern.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — PRESENT (borderline).
Cedar Lane acquired the asset 2020‑08‑14; the earliest confirmed suit naming the '105 patent is Cedar Lane v. Azpen Innovation, E.D. Tex. 2:21‑cv‑00078, filed 2021‑03‑08 — i.e., ~6.8 months after acquisition. That is just outside a strict 6‑month window (by ~3 weeks), so I flag the technicality, but the transfer-to-assertion alignment is unambiguous and matches the campaign pattern.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — UNCLEAR.
Polaroid Corporation undeniably went through Chapter 11 (Oct. 2001; again 2008) and its brand/trademark IP was later sold in a 2009 §363 sale (Gordon Brothers/PLR IP Holdings). However, the record here shows this family passing to Senshin Capital, LLC, and I could not confirm that this specific patent traveled through the 2009 §363 sale — the Senshin→IV route may reflect a separate post-restructuring IP transfer. Marked unclear rather than assumed.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT.
There is no evidence here of an operating company using an NPE to sue its own competitors while staying out of the suit; Polaroid is defunct and the asserts run by an independent monetization chain (IV Assets → Cedar Lane). This is divestiture/monetization, not classic privateering.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT.
The chain terminates at Cedar Lane Technologies Inc., an active asserter, not at RPX / AST / LOT / Unified / OIN. Inverse signal does not apply — the patent was not neutralized; it was weaponized.

Cross-check worth noting: Google Patents lists the patent as "Expired – Fee Related," anticipated expiration 2022‑07‑09 (20 years from the 2002‑07‑09 priority). That is consistent with the litigation summary's caveat that the 2024–2025 "family" dockets (e.g., E.D. Tex. 2:24‑cv‑00897/00898, 2:25‑cv‑00088) are unlikely to assert this specific patent for ongoing infringement — its term had already lapsed.

Verdict

NPE — high confidence.

The record shows the asset leaving an operating manufacturer (Polaroid → Senshin Capital, LLC, recorded 2020‑04‑16) and then cascading through licensing-only entities — Intellectual Ventures I LLC (recorded 2020‑04‑16), the single-purpose SPV Intellectual Ventures Assets 139 LLC (recorded 2020‑04‑24 / corrected 2020‑05‑01, reel 052491/0084) — to the serial NPE plaintiff Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. (recorded 2020‑08‑14), which asserted it against HTC, Azpen, Unitech and Lenovo within months. That gives two-plus strong signals (shell-entity transfer, known asserter, cascading transfers, borderline pre-litigation transfer). The one signal I could not confirm — a recurring assignment correspondent — remains unclear because the Assignment Center's correspondent fields were not retrievable here; verifying them (and the missing IV Assets 139 → IV Assets link) is the single highest-value next step.

Verify at: USPTO Patent Assignment Search — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (or the legacy interface https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html), searching by patent number 10,346,105 and by assignor/assignee names "Intellectual Ventures Assets 139 LLC," "Intellectual Ventures Assets LLC," "Senshin Capital LLC," and "Cedar Lane Technologies Inc." to pull the reel/frame and correspondent-of-record for each link above.

Explicit uncertainties

1. Only one reel/frame confirmed (052491/0084); its attachment to the 2020‑04‑24 IV I → IV Assets 139 link is an inference from the 2020‑05‑01 corrective assignment.
2. No correspondent-of-record field retrieved for any entry — signal 3 is therefore unclear, not negative.
3. Execution dates not retrieved (only recording dates were surfaced).
4. The IV Assets 139 → IV Assets LLC step is unattested in the sources retrieved; it may be a rename/merger or a distinct entity.
5. No inventor→Polaroid assignment record was surfaced for this continuation (it would sit against the 2002 parent).
6. Polaroid's specific IP path to Senshin Capital (vs. the 2009 Gordon Brothers §363 sale) is unconfirmed.

I'll research the prior-art citations for US 10,346,105. Let me pull the citation data from multiple sources.

I need the specific citation lists. Let me query the USPTO/Justia/FPO citation tables directly.

Prior-Art Analysis: US 10,346,105 B2

Patent: US 10,346,105 B2 — "Method and system for communicating between a remote printer and a server" (Moyer, LeBlanc, Winestein)
App. No.: 15/989,511 · Filed: May 25, 2018 · Issued: July 9, 2019 · Priority: July 9, 2002 (Ser. No. 10/191,606 → US 7,383,321)
Examiner: Yves Dalencourt · Classifications: G06F 3/12, G06F 3/1201–3/1292, G06F 3/1222 (increasing security of the print job)

⚠️ Sourcing caveat — read before the table

The task asks me to walk "each patent citation for 10346105." I want to be precise about what I could and could not retrieve, because there is a real risk of fabrication here:

1. I could not retrieve the verbatim "(56) References Cited" table printed on the face of US 10,346,105 B2. That table (as opposed to the separate "Cited By" / "Family has litigation" lists) is the authoritative citation list, and my searches returned the family/prior-art aggregation but not the face-of-patent (56) table word-for-word.
2. What I can ground are three intersecting lists, which I use below:
   • (A) The cited U.S. references listed on parent US 7,958,205 (FreePatentsOnline). Parent citations carry into continuations, so these are the references most plausibly also of record in the '105 file.
   • (B) The family-level "Patent Art (302)" list on Unified Patents for US-10346105-B2 — a large aggregation that mixes cited references, family-heritage references, and cross-citations. Many entries in this list are Polaroid-era photographic/optical patents (e.g., US 3,289,560; US 2,590,678; US 4,855,769; JP-S5255629) that are plainly irrelevant to the '105 claims and almost certainly originate from other members of this assignee family, not from examination of the '105 claims.
   • (C) Non-patent literature named on Justia's '105 page.
3. Effective-filing-date point that controls everything below. Because the '105 claims trace to a July 9, 2002 application, any reference published on/after July 9, 2002 is not §102 prior art unless the 2002 priority claim were defeated. I therefore flag dates and only map §102 against pre-2002 publications.

Treat everything below as an analyst's reconstruction with explicit confidence levels, not a verified examiner citation record.

The claim scope that matters

As developed in the earlier summary sections, the issued claims are much narrower than the specification. All three independent claims recite the same three operations:

• Claim 1 (method) — computing device coupled to a remote printer over a network: (a) receives data identifying one or more characteristics of the remote printer; (b) verifies the printer has been registered with the computing device; (c) sends to the printer an indication of a number of data items to be printed and an indication of a number of print data items to be downloaded.
• Claim 9 — same three operations, claimed as a computer-readable storage device.
• Claim 17 — same three operations, claimed as a computing device (processor + memory).

Critical consequence for prior-art mapping: the issued independent claims do not recite sockets, the authentication handshake, CRC/MD5 security indicators, offset-based resume, "endOfPrint," or two-way ping/timeout. So a §102 reference need not teach those features — it need only disclose the receive-characteristics → verify-registration → send-two-counts triad. Conversely, the richest references in the spec (sockets, CRC, timeouts) are not claim limitations and are largely irrelevant to anticipation of claims 1/9/17.

Tier 1 — Closest references; potential §102 anticipation of claims 1, 9, 17

These are the references whose subject matter most closely matches the three claimed operations.

Assessment of Tier 1: References 1–7 are the strongest §102 candidates, because each combines a server-side registry/authorization of a remote output device with returned job/print-state information. Whether any single reference discloses all three limitations (receive characteristics and verify registration and send both the "number of data items to be printed" and the "number of print data items to be downloaded") is something I could not verify at the paragraph level from the retrieved material. In my judgment, clean single-reference anticipation is plausible but unproven on the evidence I have; see the §103 note below.

Tier 2 — Secondary references (dependent claims and background)

From the parent US 7,958,205 cited list (source A) — all pre-2002 U.S. patents/publications:

Also from source A: US 2001/0054066 (Spitzer), US 2002/0020987 (Shiau), US 2002/0078343 (Rubin), US 2002/0042884 (Wu), US 2002/0054345 (Tomida), US 2002/0062397 (Chang), US 2002/0065101 (Picoult), US 2002/0065873 (Ishizuka) — the last four already promoted to Tier 1.

Tier 3 — Family-heritage references that are almost certainly NOT pertinent to the '105 claims

I list these explicitly to caution against over-inclusive citation lists (this is where the Unified Patents "302 references" aggregation is misleading). These are Polaroid-era photographic/optical/film patents that cannot anticipate the server-registration claims:

US 3,289,560 (self-developing camera, 1964) · US 2,590,678 (photographic roll film, 1949) · US 4,855,769 (instant-film processing, 1988) · US 4,951,073 (dual-camera sync, 1989) · JP-S-5255629 (ultrasonic generator, 1975) · JP-S-5244629 (photographic device, 1975) · US 5,888,693 (film assembly, 1997) · FR 2,775,406 (portable fax via cellular, 1998) · US 6,127,415 (device profiles, 1996) · US 6,215,561 (image processing, 1997) · JP 2000-066866 / JP 2000-222160 / JP 2000-099079 / JP 2001-236183 (printer/fax controller art) · US 6,067,532 (ticket redistribution, 1998).

• General rule I apply: a reference that does not disclose a server that registers a remote printer and returns print/download counts has no §102 traction against claims 1/9/17, regardless of how many times it appears on a family list.
• US 6,067,532 (American Express, "Ticket Redistribution System") is worth a second look only because the '105 specification's narrative is built around ticket printing — but the issued claims do not recite ticketing, so §102 relevance to claims 1/9/17 is low.

Non-patent literature (source C)

• "Pineau, R.A., 'Method and Apparatus for Printing Remote Images Using a Network-Enabled Printer,' U.S. Appl. No. 11/955,768, filed Dec. 13, 2007" — cited on Justia's '105 page. Date problem: filed 2007, i.e., after the 2002 priority date, so it is not §102 prior art against the '105 claims unless the priority claim is defeated. It reads as a related/commonly-owned application rather than prior art.
• T. Faber, J. Touch, W. Yue, "The TIME_WAIT State in TCP and Its Effect on Busy Servers," INFOCOM '99 — cited inside the '105 specification as background on TCP server memory. It is a specification citation, not a claim-limitation reference; no §102 relevance to claims 1/9/17.
• The specification incorporates by reference U.S. App. Nos. 09/870,538 (US 7,747,699), 10/022,924 (US 6,976,084), 10/024,068, 10/191,161, and 10/191,892. These are companion applications, not prior art, though they are part of the family.

§ 102 vs. § 103 — my honest read

1. §102 (anticipation): The strongest anticipation candidates are US 2002/0062397 (Chang/Flexiworld), US 2002/0065101 (Picoult), US 2002/0051197 (Minegishi), and US 6,397,261 (Eldridge). Each plausibly discloses one or two of the three limitations (server-side registration/authorization; device characteristics; and/or pending-print accounting). I cannot confirm that any single one discloses all of claim 1's limitations, so I stop short of asserting a clean §102 hit. Confidence: moderate-to-low.
2. §103 (obviousness): Given that the issued claim is a bare three-step combination (receive device characteristics → look up registration → return two counts) over a mature field (server-mediated remote printing), obviousness is the more likely and more defensible ground than anticipation. The natural combination is a remote/internet printing reference (Picoult, Ishizuka, Kemp) in view of a registration/authorization-token reference (Eldridge; Wu). This mirrors how the '105 claim set was drafted (narrow to survive over the crowded field).
3. Effective-date sweep: Any reference published on/after July 9, 2002 should be excluded from §102 consideration absent a priority challenge — a point that likely explains why the family citation list skews to 1997–2002 publications and Polaroid-era noise.

Explicit uncertainties (do not treat as verified)

• The verbatim face-of-patent "(56) References Cited" table for US 10,346,105 could not be retrieved. My list is reconstructed from (A) parent US 7,958,205 citations, (B) the Unified Patents family "Patent Art" list for US-10346105-B2, and (C) Justia NPL. A follow-up should pull the actual (56) table from USPTO PatentCenter / PAIR for App. 15/989,511, or the printed patent PDF (patentimages).
• Paragraph-level mapping was not performed. Descriptions of the Tier-1 references are summaries; I did not read each reference's specification to confirm which limitation(s) it discloses. Dates are as reported by the aggregating sources and may reflect publication, not filing, dates.
• The "302 references" figure is a family aggregation, not the '105 citation count; it demonstrably includes non-pertinent Polaroid-era art and cross-family citations. Do not cite it as the '105 citation list.
• US 2002/0062397 vs. US 2002/0062406 (both Flexiworld) appear in different sources; I list both rather than collapse them. Confirm which was actually cited.
• Assignees shown for several Tier-3 entries (e.g., "Fujifilm Business Innovation Corp," "Commercial Copy Innovations," "Digitech Image Technologies") are current re-assigned owners, not the assignees as of the citation — do not read them as contemporaneous.

Key sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/US10346105/en · https://patents.justia.com/patent/10346105 · https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/10346105 · https://www.freepatentsonline.com/[7958205](/patent/7958205).html (parent cited references) · https://patexia.com/us/patent/10346105

If you want, the highest-value next step is to pull the exact (56) table from the '105 patent PDF (patentimages.storage.googleapis.com) and from the file wrapper at PatentCenter for App. 15/989,511 — that would let me convert the Tier-1 "potential" §102 mappings into confirmed ones.

I'll research the prior art landscape and any PTAB/IPR challenges to this patent before analyzing obviousness.

Let me look for the actual prior-art references of record and any challenges to this patent family.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 10,346,105 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

0. Important data caveat before the analysis

The task says to "use the results from the Prior Art section of this page." No "Prior Art section" with a reference list was present in the material supplied to me. The Google Patents full text you provided contains only a "Prior art keywords" field (printer; remote printer; server; computing device; printed) and a priority date of 2002‑07‑09 — no cited‑reference list. I therefore reconstructed the art landscape from two grounded sources surfaced by search:

1. The patent's own intrinsic record — the Background section's admissions about what was already known, and the family/related applications the specification incorporates by reference (URL: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US10346105](/patent/US10346105)/en).
2. The Unified Patents portal entry for this patent, which lists a "Patent Art (302)" set of references for US‑10346105‑B2 (URL: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/10346105).

Critical limitation: For the references below I have, in most cases, only the title + priority/filing date + assignee from the Unified Patents list. I have not read the reference texts. My characterization of what each reference discloses is inferred from its title and common knowledge of the field, and every such inference must be verified by reading the reference before it is relied on in a real invalidity contention. I flag confidence levels throughout. Where I am not confident, I say so rather than fabricate a disclosure.

1. Governing law and the applicable frame

• Effective priority date of the challenged claims: July 9, 2002 (earliest application, Ser. No. 10/191,606, now US 7,383,321). Because all claims have a pre‑March 16, 2013 priority, pre‑AIA §§ 102/103 govern. Prior art must predate July 9, 2002 (or July 9, 2001 for § 102(b)).
• Legal test: Graham v. John Deere (scope/content of claims; level of ordinary skill; differences from prior art; objective indicia) applied through KSR Int'l v. Teleflex, 550 U.S. 398 (2007) (a combination of familiar elements yielding predictable results is obvious; an "apparent reason" to combine need not be found in the references themselves).
• One threshold caveat (flagged, not resolved): If the issued claims are not supported by the 2002 disclosure, their effective filing date could shift forward to 2016/2018 (the actual continuation filings), which would flood the record with 2002–2016 art. Given that the specification text does recite "a specified number for the data items to be printed, and a specified number for the print data portions to be downloaded," the 2002 date appears supported — but the pre‑grant publication presenting the same subject matter at claim "21" (per the earlier summary) suggests the claim set was reworked, so this should be checked against the parent's disclosure.

2. The claims to be analyzed

From the previously generated summary (claims 1, 9, 17 independent; 2–8, 10–16, 18–20 dependent):

Claim 1 (method, server‑side), stripped to elements:

• (a) receiving, at a computing device (processor + memory, network‑coupled to a remote printer), data identifying one or more characteristics of the remote printer;
• (b) verifying that the remote printer has been registered; and
• (c) sending to the printer (i) an indication of a number of data items to be printed and (ii) an indication of a number of print data items to be downloaded, the printer being configured to download print data items.

Claims 9 and 17 recite the identical three operations in stored‑instructions and apparatus form.

Dependents add only routine mechanics: database comparison (2/10/18); terminating the connection based on comparing printed vs. number‑to‑print (3/11/19); sending an updated number of data items and terminating on that comparison (4/12/20); receiving the printer's request for the update (5/13); sending an updated number of downloads (6/14); establishing the connection upon successful verification (7/15); establishing connection endpoints ("sockets") at both ends (8/16).

Key takeaway: the issued claims are narrow relative to the specification. They do not recite sockets, the authentication handshake, CRC/MD5/MAGIC security indicators, offset‑based resume, or the "endOfPrint" notification that dominate the description. The obviousness fight is therefore about a thin, server‑side "identify → verify → report counts" claim — a classic candidate for § 103.

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

A bachelor's degree in EE/CS (or equivalent) plus 2–3 years of experience in client‑server systems and network/host‑based printing, or equivalent. Such a POSITA would be familiar with print servers, spoolers, print protocols, and device registration as of 2002.

4. What the record itself establishes as known (intrinsic admissions)

This is the strongest and most defensible part of any § 103 case, because it comes from the patent's own text:

• The Background admits the general scheme of "coupling a printer to a communications network … downloading printing information … to the printer over the communications network, and using the printer to print output based on the printing information," and admits the printer may "establish a connection to a printing server that serves the printing information" (US 10,346,105, Background).
• The specification states that this network‑printer/printing‑server system "is disclosed in the above referenced U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/191,161," and the related Ser. No. 10/022,924 — published as US 2002/0184378 A1 ("Method and Apparatus for Printing Remote Images Using a Network‑enabled Printer") — is incorporated by reference. That sibling publication discloses, per its own abstract (retrieved via https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-20020184378-A1): a printer connecting to a network and to a printing server, the server tailoring printing information based on the capabilities of the printer, communicating via one or more printing protocols, and downloads that may be interrupted and resumed from the point of interruption. (Note: this is a commonly‑owned Polaroid/IV family member filed 2001‑12‑17; as § 102(e) art it is date‑qualified but may be disqualified under § 103(c) for common ownership — a point to develop.)

So the problem (remote/mobile printing without a companion computer, over slow/unreliable links) and much of the solution (network printer ↔ printing server ↔ capability‑based tailoring ↔ resumable downloads) are admitted or incorporated prior art.

5. Candidate prior‑art references (from the Unified Patents "Patent Art" set)

(The Unified Patents list contains 302 items; I retrieved only a leading portion. Other entries — e.g., WO 2002/008926 A1, US 6,067,532 A, US 7,210,099 B2, US 2003/0107529 A1 — are directed to adjacent photography/ticketing/web‑content areas and are less central to the claims.)

Additionally, the general Internet Printing Protocol (IPP; RFC 2566 (1999) and RFC 2910/2911 (Sept. 2000)) is public‑domain prior art that a POSITA would know: it defines printer attributes, Get‑Printer‑Attributes, and job‑state/job‑count reporting between a client and a network printer. I flag this as well‑known field background, not as a reference I have retrieved text for.

6. Proposed combinations and the motivation to combine

Combination A (primary) — Keeney‑style spooling server + a mobile‑output device reference (Flexiworld US 2002/0062406 A1) + count/status reporting

A spooling‑server/print‑polling architecture is documented in the printing‑over‑a‑network art (the "Keeney" reference discussed in a PTAB petition retrieved during search — the spooling server receives print jobs; a printer polling device "poll[s] the spooling server … to identify a print job," transmits a polling query that includes an identification of the associated printer, and the server authenticates the user via a challenge/PIN exchange and converts the job "into a form that [can] be understood by the printer"). See petition excerpt at ptacts.uspto.gov (illustrative of the field; not the '105 record). That reference alone maps closely to elements (a) receive printer identification, (b) verify/authenticate and associate jobs with the specific printer, and (c) send the selected job(s) downstream.

• To element (a) + device/network premise: Flexiworld US 2002/0062406 A1 discloses a mobile/remote output device that couples to a server for output; US 6,128,415 A and US 6,453,127 B2 show using device profiles/capabilities and remotely interfacing with a networked printer.
• To element (b): Keeney's PIN/authentication and device‑specific job association; device registration is a routine hardware/asset‑management step for a server that must map jobs to devices.
• To element (c): A spooling/mediating server (JP 2001‑236183 A; EP 0 738 956 A2) that queues jobs necessarily can report how many jobs are pending; telling the polling printer the count of items to print and the count of downloads required is a natural status message that lets the printer allocate buffers and schedule the (slow) link.

Motivation to combine (KSR rationales):

1. Same field, same problem, predictable result. All references target remote/network printing of documents from a server to a printer; combining them yields nothing more than the expected sum of their known functions — the KSR "predictable results" rationale.
2. Known problem the patent itself states. The '105 Background identifies the very design goals (mobility, printing without a companion computer, unreliable POTS/wireless links). A POSITA addressing those goals would look precisely to spooling/print servers, mobile‑output devices, and status/count messaging.
3. Bandwidth/queue management on slow links. On a POTS or wireless link (the '105's own contemplated transports), informing the printer of the number of items and the number of downloads is an obvious, well‑understood technique to manage transfer sessions — a "design incentive" rationale.
4. The distinction between "items to be printed" and "downloads" is routine. The specification itself notes a download may be printed multiple times (copies), so reporting both counts separately is an ordinary print‑management choice with a known reason (buffer sizing, copy handling).

Combination B — Server‑enhanced/mediating printer server (EP 0 738 956 A2 or JP 2001‑236183 A) + mobile output device (Flexiworld) + remote printer interface (US 6,453,127 B2)

Same three claim elements mapping as above, with the server‑enhancement references supplying the "server that receives, verifies and responds," and Flexiworld/US 6,453,127 supplying the "remote/mobile printer that identifies itself and is configured to download." Motivation: to extend an existing enterprise print‑server (logical‑printer environment) to a remotely located, computer‑less printer — an ordinary extension of a known system to a new but analogous environment (KSR: "if a technique has been used to improve one device, and a person of ordinary skill … would recognize that it would improve similar devices in the same way, using the technique is obvious").

Combination C — The field's admitted baseline (specification's own "network printer ↔ printing server" admission + US 2002/0184378 A1) + conventional queue/count reporting

The patent admits the network‑printer/printing‑server system; the incorporated sibling US 2002/0184378 A1 adds capability‑based tailoring and resumable downloads. Adding a routine "you have N jobs / N downloads pending" status reply from a spooling server is a trivial, expected improvement. Motivation: to keep the printer's folder current and to manage the session (the '105 itself says the "refresh" call exists so "the printer … keep[s] current with the user's folder").

Dependent claims

• 2/10/18 (database comparison): comparing the printer's characteristics to a database to confirm registration is the definition of device registration/asset lookup — routine and well‑known (and disclosed by device‑profile/remote‑interface art such as US 6,128,415 A / US 6,453,127 B2).
• 3–6/11–14/19–20 (updated numbers; terminate on printed‑vs‑pending comparison): job‑count and state tracking are core spooler functions; a POSITA would terminate an idle/failed session on a timeout or mismatch as a matter of course.
• 7/15 (connect upon successful verification): trivially obvious — the server responds only to a verified/registered device.
• 8/16 (sockets at both ends): "sockets" (BSD socket API over TCP/IP) were the standard interprocess communication mechanism by 2002 (the specification itself says so); establishing them at both endpoints is routine.

7. Where the patent might resist the challenge (arguments to anticipate)

1. "Mobile printer without a companion computer" as the point of novelty. Cedar Lane could argue the cited references are enterprise/office‑printer art, not standalone mobile printers. Counter: Flexiworld (US 2002/0062406 A1) and FR 2 775 406 A1 (portable fax over cellular) squarely involve remote/mobile output devices, and the '105 Background admits network printing generally.
2. The two‑count distinction (prints vs. downloads). Could be argued as a specific non‑obvious design choice. Counter: tied to the routine "copies" feature and disclosed function of the refresh call; predictable.
3. Objective indicia. No evidence of record of commercial success, licensing "nexus," or copying attributable to the claim. Cedar Lane's district‑court settlements and its 310/367 settlement rate (per the Korean IPO report retrieved) are litigation behavior, not secondary considerations. Blocking patents / industry praise would need proof.
4. Priority/§ 112 vulnerability cuts the other way. If any granted claim lacks 2002 support, the date moves later and more art applies — so this is a risk to the patent owner, not a shield.
5. § 101 overlay. The claims are arguably directed to the abstract idea of "verify a device and report job counts," with generic computer components — a Alice concern that independently magnifies the § 103 exposure. (Noted for completeness; outside this § 103 brief.)

8. Bottom line

On the record as reconstructed, claims 1, 9, and 17 — and by extension the dependent claims — appear vulnerable to a § 103 obviousness challenge, chiefly because (i) the specification itself admits the network‑printer/printing‑server architecture, (ii) the incorporated sibling application US 2002/0184378 A1 (filed 2001‑12‑17, before the 2002‑07‑09 priority) discloses capability‑based tailoring and resumable downloads, and (iii) the remaining claim elements (device identification/registration; reporting pending item/download counts) are routine spooler/print‑management functions found across the Unified Patents art set — most notably Flexiworld's US 2002/0062406 A1 — and are combined for the predictable purpose of managing a remote printer over a slow link. The most promising combinations are A (spooling/polling server + mobile‑output device + count reporting) and B (server‑enhanced printer server + mobile output device + remote printer interface), each supported by KSR rationales (same field/problem, predictable results, design incentive, combination of familiar elements).

Confidence: moderate. The framework (scope, skill, motivation) is solid and grounded in the intrinsic record; the reference‑by‑reference mapping is inferred from titles and field knowledge only and must be confirmed against the actual texts.

Verification steps required before reliance:

1. Pull and read US 2002/0062406 A1 (Flexiworld) and US 2002/0184378 A1 in full.
2. Pull the complete "Patent Art (302)" list at https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/10346105 and read the mediating‑server references (JP 2001‑236183 A; EP 0 738 956 A2).
3. Confirm claim‑level written‑description support in Ser. No. 10/191,606 (US 7,383,321) to fix the priority date.
4. Check the prosecution history of the '105 (and parents) for examiner‑cited art and the reason for allowance; a terminal‑disclaimer / obviousness‑type‑double‑patenting record against the earlier family members (US 9,448,750; US 8,645,500; etc.) would itself be strong evidence that the claims are not patentably distinct.
5. Run a FreshPatents/Google Scholar IPP (RFC 2566, RFC 2910/2911) full‑text check to lock the "printer attributes + job counts" disclosure.

Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/US10346105/en · https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/10346105 · https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-20020184378-A1 · https://www.illinoislawyernow.com/2025/05/january-2025-retail-patent-litigation-report/ · https://kipo.go.kr (Cedar Lane litigation report) · https://ptacts.uspto.gov (illustrative printing‑over‑network petition excerpt).