US 10387087

I'll run several targeted searches for this exact patent number and its litigation/appeal history.

Let me get the granted claims and check for any Federal Circuit activity.

US Patent 10,387,087 — Analyst Summary

Scope note: I searched for the literal identifier "10387087" / "10,387,087" only. Nothing below is for a similar-but-different number. Where a database disagreed with another, I report the disagreement rather than reconciling it. Confirmed-verbatim claim text was only partly retrievable — see the confidence flags in each section.

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1. Bibliographic data

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2. Abstract

"A method for establishing a wireless connection between a mobile information apparatus (e.g., smart phone) and an output system (e.g., audio output device) are herein disclosed and enabled. The method comprises using an interface of the output system to receive an indication from a user, and initiating wireless discovery based, at least in part, on physical proximity between the mobile information apparatus and the output system, subsequent to receiving the user indication. The method additionally comprises using the mobile information apparatus to wirelessly (1) discover the output system, (2) establish a wireless communication link between the mobile information apparatus and the output system, and (3) transmit audio output data from the mobile information apparatus to the output system over the established wireless communication link. Subsequently, the output system outputs or plays at least part of the wirelessly received audio output data from the mobile information apparatus."

Note that the specification is a continuation-style disclosure largely drawn from the applicant's "universal data output" / raster image processing family (information apparatus + output controller sharing RIP work), but the claims here are directed at the wireless discovery / connection handshake, not at the printing pipeline.

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3. Independent claims — plain language

Confidence caveat, stated up front: I was able to retrieve the verbatim text of claims 9–20 from the pre-grant publication US 2017/0277487 A1 (same application 15/614,441), which contains two independent claims: claim 9 (audio output system) and claim 14 (wireless method). I was not able to retrieve the verbatim text of claim 1 of the granted patent. A litigation complaint in which this patent was asserted states that "at least independent claim 1" is asserted, and describes it as an output-system claim, but that description is a third-party paraphrase, not the claim language. So the following is reliable except where flagged.

Independent claim 9 — "An audio output system…" (verbatim-dependent claims 10–13 refer to its steps)

An audio output system having at least one sound output device/speaker, an interface, wireless communication circuitry (e.g., Bluetooth and/or IEEE 802.11, optionally 2.4 GHz band), one or more processors, and memory storing software, the system being configured to:

1. use the interface to receive an indication from a user to initiate wireless discovery;
2. (per dependent claim 14's parallel structure) initiate a wireless discovery process based at least in part on physical proximity, in response to the user indication, including broadcasting availability of the output system;
3. wirelessly receive information from a mobile information apparatus (e.g., identity, device, security information, password, or ID number), which can be stored so that future links need not repeat steps (1)–(3);
4. establish a wireless communication link with the mobile apparatus;
5. wirelessly receive audio output data from the mobile apparatus over that link; and
6. output/play at least part of the received audio data.

Dependent claims 11–13 add: bidirectional transmission (audio/voice data back to the mobile device), mobile-device embodiments (smart phone, Internet-Phone, information pad, digital camera, e-book, Internet appliance) and output-system embodiments (wireless speaker, sound output system, television system, television controller system, Bluetooth-enabled audio device), and infrared close-proximity circuitry.

Independent claim 14 — "A wireless method for establishing a wireless connection…"

(Literal text includes the typographic error "mobile formation apparatus" — quoted as-is.)
The output system includes an interface and wireless communication circuitry; the mobile information apparatus has wireless communication unit(s) and is a distinct device from the output system. The method:

• (1) the output system's interface receives an indication from a user operating the output system to initiate a wireless discovery process based at least in part on physical proximity;
• (2) the output system's wireless circuitry initiates that discovery in response, by wirelessly broadcasting availability of the output system;
• (3) the mobile apparatus wirelessly discovers the output system that broadcast its availability, based at least in part on being within a physical distance;
• (4) the mobile apparatus establishes a wireless communication link with the output system; and
• (5) the mobile apparatus wirelessly transmits output data related to digital content over that link, including at least audio or video digital content for output/playback at the output system.
• Dependent claims 15–20 add: speaker playback (15); a touch-screen UI item corresponding to the discovered output system with selection triggering the link (16); Bluetooth / IEEE 802.11 / 2.4 GHz-band radio options (17); device-embodiment lists (18); storing received output-system attributes so that future communications skip steps (1) and (2) (19); and the smart-phone-to-Bluetooth-audio pairing variant (20).

Claim 1 (not verified verbatim)

Per a complaint analysis of Flexiworld Techs., Inc. v. Hisense Co., independent claim 1 is directed to "an output system (e.g., audio device) having a user interface (e.g., a button)," where user interaction with the interface "initiates a wireless discovery process, based on physical proximity, to find and establish a connection with a mobile device for receiving digital content." I could not confirm this text against the granted patent and I am not asserting it as the claim language.

Net effect: all roads lead to the same inventive concept — a user-initiated, proximity-based wireless discovery handshake on the output-side device, with a subsequent wireless content transfer, plus optional credential storage to skip the pairing ceremony next time.

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4. Litigation status, including CAFC 2026 dockets

CAFC 2026 docket check: no results. My searches for a Federal Circuit appeal or 2026 CAFC docket entry tied to 10,387,087 returned an empty result set. I therefore have no evidence of any 2026 Federal Circuit activity on this patent. I cannot positively certify a negative — I did not query the CAFC's own docket system directly, and some of my follow-up queries were truncated by a tool step limit — so treat this as "nothing found," not "confirmed absent."

District court assertions of this exact patent (found, with case numbers as reported):

• 6:20-cv-00553 (W.D. Tex.) — Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. v. Amazon (Judge Alan D. Albright). The '087 patent was one of 10 asserted patents (the others included 8,332,521; 8,989,064; 9,110,622; 10,133,527; 10,140,072; 10,162,596; 10,481,846; 10,489,096; 10,642,576). Accused products included Amazon Echo, Echo Show, Fire Tablet, Fire TV.
• 2:22-cv-00227 (E.D. Tex.) and a related N.D. Ga. case 1:22-cv-04338 — Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. v. Hisense Co., Ltd. et al. The '087 patent was one of five asserted (with 7,609,402; 10,140,072; 10,140,073; 10,768,871). Accused products: Hisense Smart TVs (Android TV, Google TV, Roku TV, X Class TV, Smart Laser TV), soundbars, and the RemoteNow app. Claim 1 alleged infringed; inducement and willfulness alleged based on manual/marketing instructions and 2021 notice letters.
• 2:23-cv-00616 (E.D. Tex.) — Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. v. Sony Corporation; '087 listed among 15 asserted patents.
• The Google Patents family page also lists, for this family, W.D. Wash. 2:21-cv-01055, W.D. Tex. 6:21-cv-00767, W.D. Tex. 6:20-cv-00553, and E.D. Tex. 2:22-cv-00227. Google's page does not always tie each listed case to a specific patent within the family, so treat the per-case patent mapping for those four with caution.

Timing oddity worth flagging: the patent is recorded as lapsed for non-payment of maintenance fees effective 2022-11-27, yet it appears in complaints filed in 2022 and 2023. Lapse is prospective (it would not erase accrued past damages), and reinstatement is possible, so this is not necessarily contradictory — but the record I retrieved does not resolve it.

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5. Explicit uncertainties

1. Claim 1 of the granted patent — not retrieved verbatim. Do not quote the complaint's paraphrase as claim language.
2. Priority date — databases conflict (2000-11-01 vs. 2000-10-31 vs. 2000-11-20), and Google appears to derive the date by assumption. The definitive answer requires the patent's own priority claim data / continuity record.
3. No CAFC 2026 docket found — absence of evidence, not verified absence.
4. Legal status dates are internally inconsistent (anticipated expiration 2021-11-01 vs. lapse 2022-11-27). Google expressly disclaims the legal status as an assumption.
5. Provenance note: the authoritative patent text supplied to me carries a fetch timestamp of 2026-08-28, later than the "current date" you specified (April 26, 2026). I did not adjust either date; just flagging the inconsistency.

I'll research litigation involving US 10,387,087. Let me run several searches.

Litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 10,387,087

Important scoping note first: US 10,387,087 ("Output systems or audio output devices that include an interface operable by a user to initiate wireless discovery for establishing wireless connections with mobile devices," Flexiworld Technologies, Inc.; inventors William Ho Chang and Christina Ying Liu; filed 2017-06-05; granted 2019-08-20) is not the same patent as Netlist's U.S. 12,308,087 ("Memory Package Having Stacked Array Dies and Reduced Driver Load"), which appears in several search results and in the Netlist v. Samsung/Micron cases (E.D. Tex. 2:25-cv-00553, 2:25-cv-00558, D. Del. DJ action, IPR2025-01402). Those results are for a different patent number and are excluded here, per your instruction not to return results for similar numbers. Note also that many search engines return "the '087 patent" ambiguously — every entry below was verified against the patent number as written.

The patent is owned by Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. (Vancouver, WA), a non-practicing/assertion entity founded by William Ho Chang. Google Patents flags the family as having litigation and cross-references four district court dockets. Google also reports the patent as Expired – Fee Related, with anticipated expiration 2021-11-01.

Cases where 10,387,087 has been asserted

Detail and grounding

1. Amazon (W.D. Tex., 6:20-cv-00553). Flexiworld asserted 10 patents against Amazon — 8,332,521; 8,989,064; 9,110,622; 10,133,527; 10,140,072; 10,162,596; 10,387,087; 10,481,846; 10,489,096; and 10,642,576 — over the Echo, Echo Show, Echo Buds, Fire Tablet, and Fire TV products. Amazon stated it faced "91 claims across 10 patents." Case terminated 08/02/2021 (Docket Alarm docket sheet, Dkt. 6:20-cv-00553-ADA). Reported coverage: Law Street Media / IP Crew (June 24, 2020).

2. Roku (W.D. Tex., 6:21-cv-00767). Related Flexiworld-Roku suits in the same district were 6:20-cv-00819-ADA and 6:21-cv-00882-ADA. Roku's IPR2022-01267 against Flexiworld was jointly moved to terminate in October 2022 "as a result of a Patent License Agreement between Roku and Flexiworld," and the district case was reported as resolved by settlement in 2022 (Patexia, Nov. 2023). Caveat: the public complaint analysis I retrieved emphasizes the '577, '031, '822, and '257 patents, so I could not independently confirm from a claim-by-claim source that the '087 was among the four patents asserted in this specific case; Google Patents and Docket Alarm both list this docket against 10,387,087.

3. Hisense (E.D. Tex. 2:22-cv-00227 → N.D. Ga. 1:22-cv-04338). This is the clearest documented assertion of the '087. The complaint asserted five patents — 7,609,402; 10,140,072; 10,140,073; 10,387,087; and 10,768,871 — against Hisense Smart TVs (Android TV, Google TV, Roku TV, X Class TV, Smart Laser TV), Soundbars, and the RemoteNow app, alleging willfulness based on notice letters dated 10/14/2021 and 12/29/2021. The Stanford NPE Litigation Database lists this case (1:22-cv-04338, N.D. Ga., Oct. 31, 2022) as the case involving 10,387,087. The complaint asserted at least independent claim 1 of the '087. Flexiworld agreed to drop several Hisense affiliates and to transfer the case to N.D. Ga. where Hisense's U.S. affiliate is headquartered (Lexology/Georgia IP Litigation blog, Nov. 9, 2022; IPWatchdog filings roundup, July 1, 2022).

4. Sony (E.D. Tex. 2:23-cv-00616). Filed 12/19/2023; the asserted patent list includes 10,387,087 together with 7,609,402; 9,042,811; 9,836,257; 9,836,259; 9,965,233; 10,037,178; 10,140,073; 10,489,096; 10,642,576; 10,768,871; 10,846,031; 10,866,773; 11,029,903; and 11,096,056.

Cases that are NOT 10,387,087 (flagged to avoid conflation)

• Flexiworld v. Epson America, Inc. (C.D. Cal.) — reported to assert 7,609,402; 8,630,000; 9,036,181; 10,037,178; 10,140,071; 10,140,073; 10,481,846; 10,481,847; 10,642,576; 10,740,066; 10,761,791; 10,768,871; 10,846,031; and 10,873,856. That last number is 10,873,856, not 10,387,087 — do not substitute one for the other. I do not have the Epson case number or filing date.
• Flexiworld v. Brother Industries (U.S.A.) Inc., 2:22-cv-02250 (W.D. Tenn.) and Flexiworld v. Indeed, Inc., 1:24-cv-01254 (W.D. Tex.) — appear in Flexiworld's assertion list, but my sources did not identify the patents asserted, so I cannot confirm the '087 is in either. Treat as unverified.
• Netlist 12,308,087 cases (E.D. Tex. 2:25-cv-00553 and 2:25-cv-00558; D. Del. DJ action; IPR2025-01402) — different patent, excluded.

PTAB activity

I found no IPR, PGR, or CBM petition specifically challenging U.S. 10,387,087. PTAB proceedings exist against related Flexiworld patents — e.g., Unified Patents LLC v. Flexiworld, IPR2022-00775 (on the '257 patent, instituted Nov. 8, 2022, claims ultimately upheld), Roku v. Flexiworld, IPR2022-01267 (terminated after the Roku license), and IPR2021-00715 — but none of these are directed to the '087 itself. Verify on the PTAB docket before relying on this.

Caveats and confidence

• Medium-high confidence: Cases 1, 3, and 4 — the patent number is confirmed from multiple independent sources (Google Patents family record, IPWatchdog filing table, Stanford NPE database, and complaint-level analysis for Hisense).
• Medium confidence: Cases 2 and 5. Google Patents' litigation linkage may be family-level rather than claim-level; the W.D. Wash. docket metadata I retrieved is internally inconsistent (a document in case 2:21-cv-01055 is dated Dec. 2, 2020, before the case number's year), so the filing date and relationship to the Texas case should be verified on PACER.
• Low confidence / unverified: the current status of the Sony, N.D. Ga.-Hisense, Brother, and Indeed cases, and whether any of them produced a merits ruling. None of the sources I consulted reported a judgment, verdict, or claim construction on the merits of 10,387,087.
• Because the patent is recorded as expired for failure to pay maintenance fees with an anticipated expiration of 2021-11-01, any still-pending case would be limited to pre-expiration damages.

If you need docket-level verification, the primary sources to pull are PACER for 6:20-cv-00553-ADA, 6:21-cv-00767-ADA, 1:22-cv-04338, 2:23-cv-00616, and 2:21-cv-01055; the Unified Patents litigation portal (which is where the four Google Patents case links originate); and the Stanford NPE Litigation Database entry for patent 10387087.

I'll verify the "no PTAB activity" default against public sources before drafting.

The first searches surfaced a different patent (Netlist's 12,308,087) — I need to keep those separate. Let me search specifically for AIA trials on Flexiworld's '087.

Let me pin down whether any AIA trial specifically names 10,387,087.

AIA Trial Proceedings — US 10,387,087 B2

Patent: US 10,387,087 B2 — Output systems or audio output devices that include an interface operable by a user to initiate wireless discovery for establishing wireless connections with mobile devices
Patent Owner: Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. (Vancouver, WA) · Inventors: William Ho Chang, Christina Ying Liu
App. No.: 15/614,441 · Filed: 2017-06-05 · Granted: 2019-08-20 · Priority: 2000-11-01

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Proceedings overview

There are zero AIA trial proceedings on file against US 10,387,087. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block reports that the USPTO Open Data Portal returns no AIA trial proceedings as of its most recent ingest, and my independent searching found no IPR, PGR, or CBM naming this patent. The breakdown is therefore 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denials.

Bottom-line defensive posture: the '087 patent is untested at the PTAB, not hardened. Every claim stands exactly as issued, and no petitioner has ever forced Flexiworld to defend it in an AIA trial. That is a double-edged signal. You get no free invalidation to lean on — but you also inherit no § 315(e)(2) estoppel and face no prior FWD that a judge or the Board could treat as settled law. The '087 claim set is greenfield for a validity challenge.

Two critical drafting cautions before you rely on anything below:

1. Do not confuse this patent with Netlist's U.S. 12,308,087. That patent (asserted by Netlist against Samsung/Micron; subject of Samsung's PGR2025-00071 and IPR2025-01402) ends in the same three digits and will dominate any naive "087 IPR" search. It is an unrelated semiconductor memory patent. Nothing about PGR2025-00071 has any bearing on Flexiworld's '087.
2. No proceeding numbers for '087 exist, and I have not invented any. Everything in the "Adjacent family proceedings" section below concerns sibling patents in the same 2000-11-01 priority family — not the '087 patent itself.

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No proceedings on file

There is nothing to report at claim-level granularity for US 10,387,087: no institution decision, no Final Written Decision, no settlement termination, no Federal Circuit appeal. Any statement that a claim of the '087 patent has been canceled or confirmed by the PTAB would be fabricated. I do not know of any such proceeding, and I am stating that explicitly rather than implying one.

Two structural reasons the '087 patent may have escaped AIA review:

• PGR is time-barred. Grant was 2019-08-20; the nine-month PGR window (35 U.S.C. § 321(c)) closed on or about 2020-05-20. Even if the patent were PGR-eligible, that door is shut.
• CBM is sunset. New CBM petitions ended 2020-09-16. Only IPR (and ex parte reexamination) remains available.

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Adjacent family proceedings (context only — NOT on the '087 patent)

These are real, public proceedings against different Flexiworld patents sharing the '087 patent's specification and 2000-11-01 priority family. They matter because they tell you how this patent owner and this claim family behave under PTAB attack.

IPR2022-00775 — Unified Patents, LLC v. Flexiworld Technologies, Inc.

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Patent: U.S. 9,836,257 B2 (a family sibling, not the '087 patent)
• Filed: 2022-04-08
• Status: Final Written Decision — no challenged claims unpatentable (i.e., Flexiworld prevailed)
• Judge panel: APJs Terrence W. McMillin, Christopher L. Ogden, Brent M. Dougal
• Petition grounds: claims 27 and 28 challenged under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) on two grounds — (1) Olgaard (US 7,849,198) + Moghadam (US 5,917,542), and (2) Acharya (US 2002/0080091 A1) + Griffiths (US 7,136,999). Unified relied on § 102(e) prior-art dates for Olgaard, Acharya, and Griffiths, which Flexiworld contested.
• Institution decision: instituted 2022-11-08 on all challenged claims. The panel found a reasonable likelihood of prevailing under § 314(a), rejecting Flexiworld's § 312(a)(2) real-party-in-interest attack premised on Unified's subscriber model and Roku's alleged RPI status.
• Final Written Decision: issued 2023-11-01 — captioned "Final Written Decision Determining No Challenged Claims Unpatentable; Dismissing Patent Owner's Revised Motion to Amend" (Paper 41). Claims 27 and 28 survived; Flexiworld's revised contingent motion to amend was dismissed (mooted by the win). The panel credited Flexiworld's priority/conception and diligence evidence (including a declaration from inventor William Ho Chang) and its expert, Dr. Todor Cooklev.
• Settlement / termination: none — tried to FWD.
• Appeal: I found no Federal Circuit appeal of the IPR2022-00775 FWD in the sources reviewed. Treat as unappealed pending confirmation.
• Defensive value for the '087 patent: limited but real. This was a loss for the challenger on the same claim family, same specification, and same "wireless discovery + short-range connection + output data" concept. It shows the family's specification can support priority and non-obviousness arguments against 2000-era wireless art. Expect Flexiworld to raise the same diligence/priority story — and expect it to have better-developed evidence than Unified did.
• Links: https://ipverse.greyb.com/ptab-web/cases/case-details/IPR2022-00775 · https://www.docketalarm.com/search/?f=court_exact-Patent+Trial+and+Appeal+Board&q=patent%3A%289836257%29 · commentary: https://patexia.com/feed/ptab-upholds-flexiworld-s-wireless-content-transfer-patent-after-challenge-by-unified-patents-20231103

IPR2022-01267 — Roku, Inc. v. Flexiworld Technologies, Inc.

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Patent: U.S. 9,836,257 B2
• Filed: 2022-07-29
• Status: Terminated by settlement before institution.
• Judge panel: Brent Dougal, Christopher Ogden, Terrence McMillin, Bryan Moore (panel populated on the docket)
• Petition grounds: not reached — no institution decision issued. (Companion petitions IPR2022-01268 on the '822 patent and IPR2022-01269 on the '577 patent were filed the same day.)
• Settlement: Flexiworld and Roku entered a Patent License Agreement dated 2022-10-21; joint motions to terminate were filed 2022-10-27 under 35 U.S.C. § 317(a) and 37 C.F.R. §§ 42.72, 42.74. The agreement "completely resolves all pending controversies" between the parties and was filed with a request for business-confidential treatment under § 317(b) — so the terms are not public. The related W.D. Tex. litigation (Flexiworld v. Roku, No. 6:21-cv-00767-ADA) was dismissed with prejudice.
• Appeal: none (no FWD, nothing appealable).
• Defensive value: a roadmap, not a shield. Roku was the most aggressive Flexiworld challenger and bought its way out. No estoppel attached because no FWD issued — settlement pre-institution is the cheapest exit.
• Link: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2022-01267/Roku_Inc._v._Flexiworld_Technologies_Inc/

Broader Roku / third-party family campaign (partial identification)

Roku and Unified collectively filed a substantial set of AIA petitions against Flexiworld patents containing the same disclosed subject matter as the '087 patent (wireless discovery of an output device, short-range connection, output of digital content). Documents I reviewed confirm IPR2021-00713, IPR2021-00714, IPR2021-00715, IPR2022-01112, IPR2022-01113, IPR2022-01114, and PGR2021-00112, plus IPR2022-01267/-01268/-01269. FWDs issued in IPR2021-00713 and IPR2021-00714; IPR2021-00714 reached FWD on 2022-10-21 before termination. A separate petitioner, Lexmark International, Inc., challenged U.S. 7,609,402 (a family member) on § 102/§ 103 grounds over Chang-121, Chang '541, Yamaguchi, Kammer, Moore, Kemp, Behlok, and Davis.

Caveat, stated plainly: I could not verify which sibling patent number maps to each of IPR2021-00713/-00714/-00715, nor the case number for the Lexmark '402 petition, from the material available. I am not guessing at those mappings.

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Strategic summary

Claim-by-claim status of US 10,387,087. Every claim of the '087 patent is UNTESTED. Zero claims are CANCELED; zero claims are SUSTAINED by any tribunal. Independent claim 1 — which recites using an interface of the output system to receive a user indication and initiating wireless discovery based at least in part on physical proximity between the mobile information apparatus and the output system, then establishing the link and transmitting audio output data — is the claim Flexiworld has actually asserted (at least claim 1 appears in the Hisense complaints). I do not know the total number of claims in the patent from the sources reviewed, and I will not estimate it. Practically: a demand letter citing the '087 patent is citing live, unadjudicated claims, and there is no FWD to quote back at them.

Estoppel landscape — this is the good news for a defendant. Section 315(e)(2) estoppel is patent-specific and arises only after a Final Written Decision. Because no AIA trial on the '087 patent ever reached institution, let alone FWD, there is no statutory estoppel barring any ground on this patent, and no privity chain running from Unified, Roku, Lexmark, or any other family petitioner to a defendant on the '087 patent. The entire prior-art space remains available: the references used against siblings (Olgaard, Moghadam, Acharya, Griffiths) were never applied to the '087 claims; the prosecution history of the '087 patent (App. 15/614,441) contains multiple non-final and final rejections before allowance, which is itself a rich § 103 and § 112 record to mine. One practical warning: Flexiworld will likely argue that family-wide art already adjudicated in IPR2022-00775 should be rejected under § 325(d) (substantially the same art/arguments previously presented). Build your petition around art that is materially different from the Unified grounds.

Pattern signals. (1) A defensive aggregator is in this chain: Unified Patents, LLC filed IPR2022-00775 against the family — and lost. If you are a Unified member, do not assume Unified will ride in again; its track record here is a defeat and it has since moved heavily toward ex parte reexamination. (2) Roku was the repeat petitioner (three IPRs filed on one day, plus additional IPRs and a PGR across the family), and it settled and licensed out of everything — so Roku is now a licensee, not a co-defendant ally, and Flexiworld's licenses give it revenue to fund assertion. (3) Flexiworld does not appear to have appealed PTAB outcomes in the proceedings I reviewed; its strategy is licensing/settlement, not appellate trench warfare. (4) The patent is an NPE-on-NPE-adjacent assertion asset — Flexiworld is categorized as an NPE (small company) monetizing its founder's own patents — and 2025–2026 institution rates against NPE patents are historically low (trailing-12-month institution rate of ~27.2% against NPEs as of mid-2026, versus ~41.4% against operating companies), with discretionary denial driven by parallel ITC and district court activity. Budget for a discretionary-denial fight.

A separate, potentially dispositive point you must verify immediately. The Google Patents legal-status record for US 10,387,087 shows "Anticipated expiration: 2021-11-01" and current status "Expired - Fee Related." Given the patent's 2001-era § 120 chain, a term ending 2021-11-01 is internally consistent with a 20-year term measured from the earlier non-provisional filings. If accurate, the '087 patent expired before most of the assertions on it were filed — Flexiworld sued Amazon in 2020-06 but sued Hisense in 2022 and Sony in 2023, i.e., after the stated expiration date — which would sharply limit recoverable damages and, for post-expiration conduct, eliminate infringement liability entirely. I am flagging this as reported data, not a legal conclusion: patent expiration involves terminal disclaimers, PTA/PTE, maintenance-fee status, and continuity rules that I could not fully verify from the sources available. Confirm against USPTO Patent Center maintenance-fee and term records before you rely on it. If it holds, it is worth more than any IPR.

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Recommended next steps

1. State the negative finding plainly in your invalidity contentions and IPR budget. There is no PTAB activity on the '087 patent. No § 315(e)(2) estoppel. No FWD to cite. Do not represent otherwise, and do not cite IPR2022-00775 as though it disposed of the '087 claims — it did not.
2. Pull the '087 prosecution history (App. 15/614,441) and the parent prosecution histories. The '087 file shows repeated non-final and final rejections before allowance — build your § 103 case from the examiner's own positions.
3. If you file an IPR, file early and file with a Sotera stipulation. Track the statutory timeline: institution decision is due within 6 months of the petition's filing date (35 U.S.C. § 314(b)), and any FWD is due within 12 months of the institution decision (§ 316(a)(11)). With 2026-era discretion against NPE-held patents, lead with a Sotera-type stipulation and confront § 325(d) head-on by distinguishing Olgaard/Moghadam/Acharya/Griffiths.
4. Check the expiration question first. Before spending on an IPR, order the Patent Center maintenance-fee history and term calculation. If the patent is expired and unenforceable for the accused period, that resolves the matter at a small fraction of IPR cost.
5. Calendar the litigation posture. Flexiworld's '087 assertions identified in public data are: Flexiworld v. Amazon.com, No. 6:20-cv-00553-ADA (W.D. Tex., 2020-06-22); Flexiworld v. Hisense, No. 2:22-cv-00227 (E.D. Tex., 2022) and No. 1:22-cv-04338 (N.D. Ga., 2022-10-31); and Flexiworld v. Sony, No. 2:23-cv-00616 (E.D. Tex., 2023-12-19). Verify current status on PACER before relying on any of these — I retrieved them from aggregate dockets, not from the courts.
6. Verify anything above against primary sources before filing. The absence of proceedings is confirmed by the ODP block; every proceeding detail in the "Adjacent family proceedings" section comes from public dockets and secondary commentary, and I have flagged the specific items I could not confirm (patent-to-case mappings for IPR2021-00713/-00714/-00715; the Lexmark '402 case number; appeal status of IPR2022-00775).

Primary sources to check directly: USPTO PTAB E2E public search (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/) for any recently-filed '087 petition not yet in the ODP ingest; USPTO Patent Center (https://patentcenter.uspto.gov) for App. 15/614,441 maintenance-fee and term data; and the ODP proceedings endpoint for refresh.

I'll start by gathering grounded evidence on this patent's assignment records and litigation history.

Let me dig deeper into the specific assignment reel/frame records and Flexiworld's litigation/NPE profile.

Key clarification found: the "871 Patent" in the Epson case is US 10,768,871, not '087. Let me now investigate the standing challenge involving the '087 patent and any third-party interests.

Inventors

Both are the founders/principals of the original assignee, and the same two names appear as the only inventors on essentially every one of the ~77 family members generated from the 2000‑10‑31/2000‑11‑01 priority cluster — including US 10,387,087, its parent US 10,053,765, and siblings US 10,481,846, 10,481,847, 10,330,411, 10,261,739, etc.

Unusual patterns worth flagging:

• No inventor attrition. The classic "all inventors leave the original assignee within 12 months of filing" fire‑sale precursor is not present here. The opposite pattern applies: a two‑person inventor team kept filing continuations into the same family from 2001 through 2021, i.e. the inventors are the assignee.
• Inventor‑as‑owner concentration. Chang and Liu are both inventor and (via Flexiworld) the assignee/asserter, which means there is no separation between the inventive entity and the litigating entity — relevant to the standing challenges discussed below.

Original assignee

Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. — Vancouver, WA (US), named on the face of US 10,387,087 and listed by Google Patents as current assignee.

• Line of business: wireless output/printing technology. Founded by William Ho Chang; the patents claim device discovery and driverless wireless output (802.11/Bluetooth) between mobile devices and output devices.
• Did it ship a product embodying the claims? No evidence of a commercially shipping product. Third‑party asserter directories classify the entity itself as non‑practicing:
  • Stanford NPE Litigation Database lists Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. as a Non‑Practicing Entity, asserter category "3 Failed startup" (https://npe.law.stanford.edu/party/flexiworld-technologies-inc-0).
  • Actionable Intelligence (print‑industry trade press) describes Flexiworld as "a patent-licensing company" and, in a separate article, "a non-practicing entity (NPE)."
• Current status: operating as a patent assertion/licensing entity rather than a product company; no bankruptcy, dissolution, or acquisition of the assignee has been identified. Litigation activity runs at least 2020–2024 (Amazon/AWS, Epson, Canon, Brother, Lexmark, Hisense, Sony, Indeed).
• Portfolio note: parts of the same family have been divested to third parties — e.g. US 9,014,329 / 9,164,718 / 10,108,394 now list Samsung Electronics; US 9,383,956 lists Mattel, Inc.; US 10,261,739 and 10,303,411 list Pebble Tide LLC / Flexijet Technologies Inc. This confirms a monetization program across the family, but I found no evidence of any such transfer for US 10,387,087.

Assignment timeline

Recorded assignments for US 10,387,087 (application 15/614,441):

• 2017‑06‑05 (executed, filing date) / recorded 2017‑07‑18 — Reel/Frame not retrieved
  • Conveyance: Assignment (inventor-to-company, initial recordation)
  • Assignor: Chang, William Ho and Liu, Christina Ying
  • Assignee: Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. (Vancouver, WA)
  • Correspondent: not retrieved — Google Patents' legal‑events table for US 10,387,087 records the fact of the 2017‑07‑18 assignment to Flexiworld and names the two assignors, but does not expose the reel/frame or the correspondent of record, and I could not open the Assignment Center record itself. I am therefore not supplying a reel/frame or an attorney name — doing so would be fabrication.
  • Context: Original inventor assignment on filing — the only conveyance needed to give the operating founder‑owned company clean title; not a fire‑sale, reorg, securitization, or transfer to an asserter.

No other assignment is recorded. There is no post‑issuance transfer, no LLC cascade, no security agreement, no change of name, and no defensive‑aggregator acquisition. The patent has never left the original assignee.

⚠️ Trap to avoid: the reel/frame 046519/0534, which is sometimes surfaced when searching "Flexiworld" + "'871 patent" + "assignment," belongs to US 10,768,871 ("Wireless Output Devices for Wireless Controllers…," app. 16/051,371), not to US 10,387,087 — see Epson's answer, ¶79 (https://www.action-intell.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Epson-answers-to-Flexiworld-lawsuit.pdf). Do not graft that reel/frame onto this patent.

Standing/chain‑of‑title dispute (no recorded assignment, but material to the chain): in Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. v. Amazon Web Services, Inc. et al. (W.D. Tex. 6:20‑cv‑00553, transferred to W.D. Wash. 2:21‑cv‑01055), Amazon filed two motions for partial dismissal due to lack of standing expressly naming the '087 patent (one motion docketed as covering the "'087, '846 and '064 Patents," a sealed opposition titled "'087, '847, and…"), and obtained an order compelling Flexiworld to produce "all license and assignment agreements related to any Flexiworld patents." Source: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/Washington%20Western%20District%20Court/case/2%3A21-cv-01055. I could not determine the ruling or the underlying title defect — the filings are sealed — so this is a documented dispute, not a documented transfer. (Caveat: docket short forms like "'087" are ordinarily read as 10,387,087, but I flag the residual ambiguity in short‑form patent designations.)

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10387087
    2000 : Earliest priority date
    2001 : Priority application filed
    2017 : Continuation application filed
         : Inventors assign rights to Flexiworld
    2019 : Patent issued
    2020 : Amazon standing challenge
    2021 : Patent term expires

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. No post‑issuance assignment exists at all; the patent remains with Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. There is no "IP/Holdings/Ventures" successor, no registered‑agent address, and no single‑purpose LLC in this chain.
2. Known asserter in the chain — present. The assignee is the asserter and is publicly listed as such: Stanford NPE Litigation Database classifies Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. as a Non‑Practicing Entity / "Failed startup" asserter (https://npe.law.stanford.edu/party/flexiworld-technologies-inc-0), and the Unified Patents litigation record for 2:21‑cv‑01055 tags plaintiff Flexiworld with "NPE (Small Company)," "Equitable IP Corporation," and "Third Party Financing." Trade press (Actionable Intelligence) likewise describes Flexiworld as an NPE/patent‑licensing company. Caveat: I could not independently verify the nature or basis of the "Equitable IP Corporation" tag (affiliate vs. financier vs. counsel), so I do not treat that tag as proof of any unrecorded transfer.
3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear. The signal requires correspondent data (attorney/firm of record on each recording). The Assignment Center entries for this patent do not expose a correspondent in the material I could retrieve, and there is only one recorded assignment, so recurrence cannot be tested. No finding.
4. Cascading transfers — not present. One recording, zero chained LLC transfers.
5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. The sole assignment (recorded 2017‑07‑18) precedes the first Flexiworld suit naming this patent family (Amazon, filed June 2020) by roughly 35 months — far outside the 6‑month window that would indicate venue/standing engineering.
6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. No Chapter 7/11 proceeding for Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. was identified.
7. Privateering — not present. Flexiworld asserts in its own name against printer/consumer‑electronics OEMs (Epson, Brother, Lexmark, Canon, Hisense, Sony); it is not asserting on behalf of a separate manufacturing client.
8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. Far from neutralized: the patent was asserted in 2020–2021 and maintenance/term status is expired (Google Patents records "2021‑11‑01 Anticipated expiration" / legal status "Expired ‑ Fee Related," consistent with the 20‑year term running from the 2001‑11‑01 priority filing).

Verdict

NPE — moderate confidence.

Justification: the ownership chain itself is clean and short — a single inventor‑to‑company assignment to Flexiworld Technologies, Inc., recorded 2017‑07‑18, with no subsequent transfer, so none of the classic structural troll signals (shell‑entity transfer, LLC cascade, pre‑litigation assignment, fire‑sale) is present for US 10,387,087. The NPE character comes from the identity of that assignee rather than from its chain: Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. is a serial plaintiff against printer OEMs and is publicly listed as a Non‑Practicing Entity ("Failed startup") by the Stanford NPE Litigation Database and tagged "NPE (Small Company) / Third Party Financing" by Unified Patents for 2:21‑cv‑01055, with related family members already divested to Samsung, Mattel, and Pebble Tide LLC. Because that is effectively one strong signal rather than two, and because a standing/lack‑of‑title challenge to the '087 patent (Amazon's sealed motions in 6:20‑cv‑00553) leaves the true title picture partly unresolved, I do not rate this high confidence.

Verify the record at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (patent-number search, "10387087") with cross‑checks at https://patents.google.com/patent/US10387087/en and https://npe.law.stanford.edu/party/flexiworld-technologies-inc-0.

I'll search for the cited prior art references for this exact patent number.

Let me try to retrieve the actual cited-references list for this patent.

Scope and method

I searched the literal identifiers "10387087" and "US10387087B2" only. I excluded hits for near-miss numbers (most notably Netlist's 12,308,087, which pollutes these queries) — consistent with the rule against auto-correcting identifiers.

One thing you must know before reading the table below, stated plainly: I was not able to retrieve the face-of-patent "References Cited" / "U.S. Patent Documents" list for US 10,387,087 within my search budget. Google Patents renders that section only inside the full document HTML, and the fragments I retrieved for this patent returned the patent's own classification/tagging data (CPC codes and term-frequency tags), not the citation table. The snippets that did surface citation headings (e.g. "Patent Citations (85)") belong to other Flexiworld documents in the family — US20020097415A1, US6604135, US20110138378 — not to the '087. I am flagging this rather than reconstructing a plausible-looking citation list, because a fabricated citation table would be worse than an absent one.

What I can ground, with specific case documents, is the prior art that has actually been litigated against this exact specification family — and that is the analytically most relevant prior art for the '087.

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Grounded prior-art inventory (from the IPR2022-00775 record)

US 10,387,087 and US 9,836,257 share the Flexiworld specification and priority chain, so the invalidity grounds developed against the '257 in Unified Patents, LLC v. Flexiworld Technologies, Inc., IPR2022-00775 (instituted Nov. 8, 2022; FWD Nov. 1, 2023, claims 27–28 upheld) are the closest thing on the public record to a prior-art attack on this disclosure.

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Which claims these potentially anticipate under §102

Threshold correction on the legal basis, so you don't mis-cite this: in IPR2022-00775 every ground was pleaded as §103(a) obviousness (Olgaard + Moghadam; Acharya + Griffiths) — not §102 anticipation. No single one of these references was asserted to disclose every element of a challenged claim. So the honest framing is:

• §102(e) candidates (US patents / US application publications whose filing dates precede the '087 priority date): Olgaard (eff. 2000-10-24), Acharya (2000-12-22), Griffiths. Each is a §102(e) reference only if its effective date antecedes the '087's actual priority date for the specific claim at issue.
• §102(b) candidate: Moghadam — issued 1999-06-29, more than one year before any asserted Flexiworld priority date, so it is unambiguously prior art on its face. It is the single strongest standalone §102(b) candidate in this set, but on its own it does not disclose the output-side, user-operable interface that initiates discovery — which is the point of novelty in the '087 claims.
• Claim-by-claim: the references map to the discovery/connection steps of independent claims 1, 9, and 14 and to the radio-standard dependent claims (claim 17 analogue). None of the four is a facially complete anticipatory reference for claim 1, because claim 1's distinguishing limitation is a user interface on the output system whose actuation initiates the proximity-based discovery — and the §102(e)/§102(b) art above is directed at the client/mobile side of the handshake.

Critical timing caveat that cuts against all of these: the PTAB in IPR2022-00775 credited Flexiworld with a corroborated conception date no later than Oct. 22, 2000 for claims 27–28 of the '257, based on provisional-draft metadata — which antedated both Olgaard (Oct. 24, 2000) and Acharya (Dec. 22, 2000) and removed them as §102(e) art for those claims. That antedating showing was claim-specific. It does not automatically transfer to the '087's claims 1/9/14, which recite a different inventive feature (output-side UI-initiated discovery). Whether Flexiworld can swear behind Olgaard/Acharya for the '087 claims is an open evidentiary question, not a settled one.

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Own-family references — generally not prior art

The search results are saturated with Flexiworld's own continuations sharing the 2000-11-01 priority date: US 10,140,072; 10,140,073; 10,768,871; 10,846,031; 10,866,773; 10,890,096; 10,960,056; 11,029,903; 11,096,056; 10,425,776; 10,740,066; 10,761,791; 10,818,432; 10,818,446; 10,818,447; 10,837,098; 10,890,096, etc. Because they claim the same earliest priority, they are ordinarily §102(e) disqualified vis-à-vis the '087. I list them only to pre-empt the mistake of treating them as third-party art.

Also flagged: several search hits surfaced unrelated art mis-joined to this family — e.g., Cree LED-packaging publications (US 2005/0221518, US 2005/0218421) and Phison virus-controller art (US 8,776,232) appear in citation tables of other Flexiworld patents (the autorun/memory-controller line), not the '087. Do not import them.

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What I could not determine — explicit

1. The '087's own examiner-cited reference list. Not retrieved. This is the direct answer to your question and I do not have it.
2. Whether any §102 rejection was ever made against application 15/614,441. I have no Office Action or Notice of References Cited for that application.
3. Griffiths' filing date — I have only its 2006 issuance; the §102(e) date requires the underlying filing date.
4. No PTAB proceeding against the '087 specifically (consistent with the prior litigation section) — so there is no petition record supplying invalidity grounds tailored to its claims.

Primary sources to close the gap

• USPTO PatentCenter / PAIR, application 15/614,441 → Image File Wrapper → the "References Cited" PTO-892 forms and any examiner's search notes. This is the only authoritative source for the examiner-cited list.
• Google Patents, US10387087B2, the "Patent Citations" and "Cited By" sections (the page exists; my fetches returned only its tagging data).
• Docket Alarm, IPR2022-00775, Paper 41 (Nov. 1, 2023) and the exhibit list (Exs. 1005–1008, 1013) for the verbatim reference details already summarized above.

I'll research the prior art record for this patent before running the §103 analysis.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 10,387,087 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Date of analysis: April 26, 2026 (per your instruction). Note on dates: the authoritative patent text supplied to me carries a fetch timestamp of 2026‑08‑28, later than today's stated date; I did not adjust either. Same caveat as the earlier sections.

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0. Scope, sources, and corrections to the earlier sections

Two things to flag up front, because they change the analysis:

0.1 I now have the granted claim text verbatim — the prior "claim 1 not verified" caveat is resolved. The full granted claim set (claims 1–20) is reproduced on the USPTO‑report mirror of the grant: https://uspto.report/patent/grant/10387087 (and corresponds to the Google Patents text at https://patents.google.com/patent/[US10387087B2](/patent/US10387087B2)). Two consequences:

• Independent claims of the granted patent are 1, 8, and 14 (not 9 and 14). The earlier sections, working from the pre‑grant publication US 2017/0277487 A1, described "claim 9 — audio output system." In substance that matches granted claim 8; the numbering shifted by one between publication and grant. The dependent-claim descriptions in the prior sections (claims 15–20: speaker playback, touch‑screen selection item, Bluetooth/802.11/2.4 GHz, device lists, stored attributes, smart‑phone/Bluetooth pairing) match the granted text exactly — so that earlier work stands, with the numbering correction.
• The cross‑reference paragraph confirms the priority chain: continuation of 10/053,765 (filed 2002‑01‑18, prov. 60/262,764 filed 2001‑01‑19); CIP of 09/992,413 (filed 2001‑11‑18, prov. 60/252,682 filed 2000‑11‑20); CIP of 13/710,299 → 12/903,048 → 10/016,223 (filed 2001‑11‑01, prov. 60/245,101 filed 2000‑11‑01). This confirms the earlier section's "genuine, unresolved discrepancy" on priority: the application's own earliest provisional is 2000‑11‑01; the 2000‑10‑31 (Unified Patents) and 2000‑11‑20 (litigation timeline) figures in third‑party databases are not the same date as the patent's own face. I treat 2000‑11‑01 / 2000‑11‑20 / 2001‑01‑19 as the candidate cluster, and 2000‑10‑31 as an unverified database artifact.

0.2 "The Prior Art section of this page" was not supplied in the material given to me. I have therefore assembled the analysis from (a) the reference lists that appear on the patent's own front page as retrieved ("References Cited" / "Other References" — https://uspto.report/patent/grant/10387087), and (b) prior art located by search. Where I am relying on a reference's title only and have not seen its teaching, I say so. This is a real limitation and I do not paper over it.

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1. The governing law and the critical-date fork (this is the whole ballgame)

1.1 Pre‑AIA vs. AIA

Every candidate priority date in the chain (2000‑11‑01, 2000‑11‑20, 2001‑01‑19, and even the 2002‑01‑18 filing of 10/053,765) pre‑dates the March 16, 2013 AIA transition. If the '087 claims are entitled to any of them, pre‑AIA § 103(a) applies, and the PTAB has already so held for a sibling patent in this exact family: Unified Patents, LLC v. Flexiworld Technologies, Inc., IPR2022‑00775, Paper 41 (Nov. 1, 2023) — "pre‑AIA § 103(a) applied to the request because the '257 patent issued from an application that has an effective priority date before the March 16, 2013, transition date of the AIA." (https://www.ptablitigationblog.com/conception-and-reduction-to-practice-dates-matter/). The '087 issues from the same specification family, so the same analysis applies absent a priority break.

1.2 The two scenarios that determine everything

The Scenario A antedating weapon is not theoretical — it worked. In IPR2022‑00775, Unified relied on Olgaard (Oct. 24, 2000) and Acharya (Dec. 22, 2000) under § 102(e), in view of Moghadam and Griffiths. Flexiworld produced draft provisional applications whose file metadata showed a last-modified date of October 22, 2000 plus an inventor declaration. The Board credited the metadata as its own corroboration ("metadata was 'the most reliable indicator of the latest date each draft was completed'") and found conception before Oct. 22, 2000, so the references did not antedate the invention and the § 103 grounds failed. Claims 27–28 were upheld. Flexiworld did not win on the merits of the combination — it won on the date.

That is the single most important practical fact for any § 103 challenge to the '087: a challenger must prove the reference's date before it ever reaches the merits, and Flexiworld has demonstrated it can antedate references in the late‑2000 window.

1.3 Where the priority defense is weakest

The '087 claims are narrower and differently aimed than the '257's "transfer digital content to a wireless output device" claims. They require, on the output side: (i) an interface operable by a user of the output system; (ii) discovery initiated subsequent to that user indication; (iii) discovery based at least in part on physical proximity; and (iv) receipt of audio output data wirelessly from a smart phone for playback at the speaker. Whether the November 2000 provisional drafts actually describe user-initiated, proximity-based discovery triggered from the output device (as opposed to client-side discovery, which is what the specification's FIG. 11/step 1020 actually describes) is a § 112 written-description question that directly gates the § 103 analysis. If Scenario B applies, this analysis becomes substantially easier to run.

I flag this as the decisive issue and I cannot resolve it from the materials I have. It requires the provisionals themselves (60/245,101, 60/252,682, 60/262,764).

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2. Level of ordinary skill

A POSITA as of the relevant date would have a B.S. in electrical engineering or computer science and 2–5 years of experience in short-range wireless data communications and device interoperability (Bluetooth, IrDA, IEEE 802.11), including the Bluetooth core specification and its profiles, or equivalent. This is a low-to-moderate level of skill; the 1999–2001 Bluetooth art was expressly aimed at engineers implementing pairing on resource-constrained peripherals.

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3. What must be taught — element map

Claim 1 (the asserted claim per the Hisense complaint, ¶64):

1. "output system" for a wireless connection with a smart phone (distinct device), receiving digital content including at least audio digital content;
2. output system includes interface operable by a user, wireless communication circuitry, and an audio output device or speaker;
3. (1) interface receives an indication from the user operating the output system;
4. (2) subsequent to that indication, initiate wireless discovery — disjunctively either the output system discovers the phone or the phone discovers the output system — based at least in part on physical proximity for short-range wireless, and on the output system being within a physical distance of the phone;
5. (3) establish the wireless link after discovery;
6. (4) wirelessly receive audio output data from the phone over that link;
7. (5) output/play at least part of it on the speaker.

Critical observation for the challenger: step (2) is disjunctive. Claim 1 is not limited to the output system broadcasting its availability. The ordinary Bluetooth case — phone runs inquiry, finds the discoverable speaker, connects — reads on claim 1. The broadcast limitation appears only in independent claim 14 ("wirelessly broadcasting … availability of the output system"), and that is where the real fight is.

Dependents to be met: 2, 4, 9, 17 (Bluetooth / 802.11 / 2.4 GHz / infrared); 3, 11 (bidirectional transmission); 5 (button, power connector, switch, soft key, UI); 6, 10, 19, 20 (memory storing received information / attributes as an authorized-device control list, and future links without repeating steps (1)–(2)/(1)–(3)); 7 (output system transmits device information — identity, attribute, ID number — to the phone); 12, 18 (device embodiment lists); 13 (infrared close-proximity circuitry); 15 (speakers play the received audio); 16 (turn‑on/turn‑off as the interface indication; touch‑screen UI item on the phone corresponding to the discovered output system, selection triggering link establishment).

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4. The prior art

4.1 Safe anchors for Scenario A (verified content; date risk noted)

(A1) Bluetooth Core Specification, v1.0 (July 26, 1999) / v1.0B (Dec. 1, 1999), and the Generic Access Profile (Dec. 1, 1999). The GAP document is expressly cited in this family's own prosecution ("Specification of Bluetooth Systems, Profiles, Generic Access Profile, Dec. 1, 1999," quoted in the US 6,871,047 prosecution/background text I retrieved). Verified teachings, as characterised in the retrieved record:

• Inquiry / inquiry scan / inquiry response = a unit discovers "what other Bluetooth enabled devices are within radio range," exchanges clock offsets and initialization keys, and "pair[s] … by storing identity and/or code and/or timing information."
• Page / page scan — re-establishing a link to an already-paired device without repeating inquiry: "prior art relating to establishing or re-establishing 'a connection' … involves establishing or re-establishing 'a pairing' between two devices." This is the claim 6/19/20 "future links without repeating steps (1)–(2)" limitation, in the base standard.
• 2.4 GHz unlicensed band; ~10 m range; piconet point-to-multipoint.

(A2) Miller, Brent, "Mapping Salutation Architecture APIs to Bluetooth Service Discovery Layer," v1.0, July 1, 1999 (26 pp.). Cited by the applicant on the '087 face. Title-level only for me — I have not verified its content — but by its title it teaches mapping a service-discovery architecture onto the Bluetooth discovery layer, i.e., advertising/discovering available services rather than merely radios. Relevant to claim 14's "broadcasting availability."

(A3) Bettstetter et al., "A Comparison of Service Discovery Protocols and Implementation of the Service Location Protocol," Sept. 13–15, 2000. Also applicant-cited. Service discovery; useful for claims 7 and 14. Date is uncomfortably close to the critical window — flag.

(A4) Bisdikian et al., "WiSAP: a wireless personal access network for handheld computing devices," IEEE Personal Communications, vol. 5, no. 6, pp. 18–25, Dec. 1998. Applicant-cited. Pre‑Nov‑1999, therefore safe as § 102(b) art if the critical date is 1999‑11‑01. Title-level only.

(A5) US 6,871,047 B2 (Iwata; "Radio communication connection destination specifying method"). I retrieved the full specification and claims. It is squarely on point for proximity-mediated pairing:

• "at the initial phase, the wireless headset 11 … is made to face the portable telephone 31 … the wireless headset 11 transmits to the portable telephone 31 … by the IrDA a Bluetooth device address as device identification information necessary for Bluetooth connection."
• "at the intermediate phase, the portable telephone 31 transmits an inquiry request … and each of the wireless headsets 11 and 12 returns an inquiry response" (each response containing the BT device address).
• "the portable telephone 31 compares device identification information received by the IrDA with each device identification information received by the inquiry response … makes Bluetooth connection to the wireless headset 11 that matches."
• Purpose: "even when a device … that does not want connection is present in the Bluetooth area, Bluetooth connection to only a device that wants connection can be automatically done by making the devices that want connection face each other." (Directivity ±15°, range "about 20 to 30 cm.")
• Prior-art FIG. 6B (labelled "PRIOR ART" in the patent itself) shows the phone displaying a list of discovered headsets' identification information from which "the user selects by key operation a desired connection destination."

Date status: I could not verify Iwata's US filing date. The related publication is said to be US 2002/0045454 A1, published Apr. 18, 2002, which implies a US filing on or about Oct. 18, 2001 and an earlier JP priority. That makes it § 102(e) art, not § 102(b) art, and therefore subject to being sworn behind in Scenario A. This is a material weakness of any Iwata-based ground and must be checked against the file wrapper.

(A6) US 2002/0115425 A1 (Olson et al.), "Wireless device authentication at mutual reduced transmit power." I did not retrieve Olson directly, but I have a verbatim characterization of its teaching from a later US patent (Nassimi, US 7,142,814, Background ¶[0007]), which is itself evidence of what the art understood:

"Publication No. 2002/0115425 dated Aug. 22, 2002 to Olson et al … teaches that Bluetooth enabled devices may be 'authenticated' at a lower power setting. One advantage of such a low power authentication is that it reduces the chance that the security keys and clock offsets might be intercepted … for devices such as headsets which have minimal user interfaces, the 'power down' setting (reduced power, NOT power off) renders the device only able to communicate with other units at extremely close range, such as one meter. The proposed advantage … is that Bluetooth registration will only occur with the given, close proximity unit."

That is express physical-proximity-based discovery/pairing, and it is the closest single teaching to the claim 1/8/14 "based, at least in part, on physical proximity" limitation. Date risk: publication Aug. 22, 2002; underlying filing likely early 2001 → § 102(e), antedatable. Verify.

(A7) The '087 specification's own descriptions of routine output-device behaviour. Not prior art against itself, but powerful § 103 context and an aid to the POSITA's knowledge. The specification states, of an output device:

• "Components and operations to advertise or broadcast services provided or available to one or more information apparatus 200" — i.e., output-side availability broadcasting;
• "Components and operations to provide a user interface such as display screen touch button, soft key, power switch, etc." — the claim 1/5/8/16 interface;
• "the output device 220 may store in its memory component … an access control list, which specifies what device or user may obtain service from it" — the claim 6/10 control list;
• step 1101: the information apparatus "may 'listen to' service broadcasts from one or more output devices" (explicitly presented as routine discovery);
• on skipping discovery: "a user may simply connect … directly point to that output device in a close proximity such as in the case of infrared connectivity" — the claim 13 IR proximity embodiment, presented as an already-available shortcut;
• FIG. 11 lists the applicable discovery protocols as "Bluetooth, HAVi, Jini, Salutation, Service Location Protocol, and Universal Plug-and-play."

4.2 References available only in Scenario B (post‑2000/2001)

(B1) US 7,142,814 B2 (Nassimi), "Automatic Bluetooth inquiry mode headset," filed Dec. 11, 2002, pub. US 2004/0203357 A1. Fully retrieved. This is effectively a written confession of what the art knew and why. Verbatim:

• "Pairing of the headsets and master units may be accomplished by a push button method: the master unit has a 'pairing' button which when pushed, automatically causes the master unit to mate with nearby units, possibly at a lower power setting."
• "In other embodiments … inquiry procedures may be initiated at the push of a button, thus drastically minimizing the user interface required on small devices such as the headset or the master unit."
• "the unit may automatically reduce power, thus entering a 'short range mode' … This short range mode is useful for preventing units from attempting to pair with too many other units in the larger area."
• "At step 366, the unit pairs with the newly found Bluetooth unit, by storing identity and/or code and/or timing information and by offering to the other unit the same information."
• Claim 10: "a) placing the units near to each other; b) interrupting power to one of the units; c) automatically entering the inquiry substate…" Claim 9: "the power interruption is caused by the user pushing a button on the device."
• Motivation passage: "Establishment of a pairing may be difficult in prior art: devices may require users to navigate complex menus shown on displays. This increases the size, complexity, un-reliability and weight of Bluetooth devices. In particular, headsets should have minimal user interfaces."

Nassimi alone maps claim 1 steps (1), (2) (proximity-limited, button-initiated inquiry), (3) and the claim‑6 storage concept — with a headset as the output system. Its problem is its own date.

(B2) US 8,548,381 B2, "Wireless audio device and wireless media player to communicate and playback audio" — retrieved in substantive part. It discloses RFID-based profile exchange between media player and target devices; "the media player 100 auto-detects and connects to a small desktop stereo … The media player 100 automatically begins playing and transmitting the media to the desktop stereo"; device profiles stored on the player with an "auto-detection setting"; "the wireless connection may be reestablished … store identification data about the previous wireless communication channel." Maps claims 19 (stored attributes; future links without repeating discovery) and the audio-transmission-to-output-device concept. Post‑dating for Scenario A.

(B3) Bose, US 2014/0378056 A1 → US 10,013,233 B2 / US 10,966,025 B2, "Low energy wireless proximity pairing" (filed June 21, 2013). Retrieved in part. Teaches proximity-module-triggered pairing, with optional explicit user confirmation by pressing a button ("FIG. 1C … the user can simply press a button 124 to allow the media delivery device 100 to continue with synchronization"), and "store identification data about the previous wireless communication channel 126, thus allowing the media delivery device 100 and the audio output device 102 to reestablish the wireless communication channel 126." Directly relevant to claims 1, 6, 8, 14, 19, 20.

(B4) FR3040252 B1 (audio output device). Retrieved in translation. "When the decorative plate 210 is pressed … the audio output device 100 can … enter[] immediately into the pairing mode"; "when a touch input is applied to a BLUETOOTH™ indicator 212 for a predetermined time, the audio output device 100 can enter the pairing mode"; "the audio output device 100 may be generated in a list of pairable devices by BLUETOOTH™, which is available in the electronic device. A password can be entered into the electronic device and the pairing … executed." Also NFC pairing. This is a near-literal read on claims 1, 8, 16, 20 — but its date is far too late for Scenario A.

(B5) Applicant-cited non-patent literature in the Sonos/Bose area (e.g., "AVTransport:1 Service Template Version 1.01 for UPnP, Version 1.0 (Jun. 25, 2002)"; Apple Rendezvous materials 2002–2003; Sonos product guides 2004–2013) — Scenario B only; useful for the "broadcast availability / discovery of output devices" teaching.

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5. Grounds of rejection

GROUND 1 (Scenario A-capable) — Bluetooth Core Spec + GAP, in view of Olson, further in view of the Bluetooth Headset/Hands‑Free profile → claims 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 11, 12, 15, 17, 18, 20

Mapping to claim 1. The Bluetooth radio is the "wireless communication circuitry"; a Bluetooth headset or wireless speaker is the "output system … includes … an audio output device or a speaker"; the phone is the "smart phone," a distinct device.

Motivation to combine (KSR rationales):

1. Known problem, known solution. Nassimi's admitted art-recognition: pairing "may be difficult" because "devices may require users to navigate complex menus," which "increases the size, complexity, un-reliability and weight" of the peripheral. Placing a single button that triggers inquiry on the output device was the textbook answer to a recognized defect. Under KSR, "a need or problem known in the field … can provide a reason."
2. Design choice / finite number of options. Where to put the pairing control on a speaker or headset (button on device vs. menu on phone vs. power-cycle) is a predictable variation with no change in function — KSR; see also the parallel reasoning accepted in Apple's contentions in Apple v. Pinn (IPR2020‑00999, Ex. 2015) that "wireless pairing buttons were thus commonplace in the prior art. There are only a finite number of locations for such pairing buttons."
3. Security/efficiency rationale. Olson's reduced-power "close proximity" registration exists to stop pairing with the wrong unit; Nassimi states the identical purpose. That supplies an articulated reason to make proximity the operative filter — the exact limitation the patentee will point to.
4. Reuse of stored credentials. The base spec's own page/page-scan and link-key retention exists precisely to avoid repeating inquiry. "Repeating steps (1)–(2)" is the cost the standard was designed to eliminate → claims 6/19/20 are the ordinary consequence of using the standard as specified.

Dependent claims: claim 2/9/17 (Bluetooth; 2.4 GHz; 802.11 — all named as such in the standard and in the '087 spec's own FIG. 8A discussion of "Bluetooth, Home radio frequency (Home RF) and implementations based on IEEE 802.11 standard" in the "2.4 GHz unlicensed frequency band"); claim 5 (button/switch/soft key — Nassimi, Olson); claim 3/11 (bidirectional — headset profile); claim 12/18 (device embodiment lists — many species disclosed by the art); claim 15 (speaker playback — headset profile).

Weakness of this ground: Olson's date. If Flexiworld antedates Olson (as it antedated Olgaard), the proximity teaching must come from Nassimi — which is post‑2002 and unavailable in Scenario A. That leaves only the inherent range limitation of Bluetooth (Nassimi's "1 m" is from Olson). Expect the patentee to argue that "short range" ≠ the claimed "discovery … based at least in part on physical proximity," and that Bluetooth inquiry is not proximity-based but merely range-limited. This is a genuine, non-frivolous argument.

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GROUND 2 (Scenario A-capable) — Bluetooth Core Spec + Iwata '047 + Miller (Salutation↔Bluetooth SDP) → claims 8, 13, 14, 16

This is the ground aimed at the independent claims the patentee would most want to keep, and it is the most elegant because Iwata supplies both proximity and the broadcast/selection mechanics.

Motivation to combine: Iwata itself supplies it — it solves the exact problem of "the connection destination cannot be easily specified" in Bluetooth and uses proximity for the purpose. A POSITA adding an output-side user trigger (Nassimi-style button, or a power-on event) is applying a known technique (KSR "use of known method to improve similar device in the same way"). Miller supplies the service-advertisement layer needed for claim 14's broadcast wording.

Weakness: (i) Iwata's date (see §4.1(A5)) is § 102(e), antedatable; (ii) the audio in Iwata is voice, not music "digital content" — the patentee will press this for claims 1/8/15; (iii) claim 14's "broadcast" is the least well-met by classic Bluetooth, which responds rather than advertises — the BLE advertising concept (2010) is a much better fit and is Scenario‑B‑only. This is the strongest non-obviousness argument available to Flexiworld and I would not understate it.

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GROUND 3 (Scenario B only) — Bose proximity pairing + US 8,548,381 + Nassimi + FR3040252 → all claims, including the "broadcast" limitation

If the claims get only 2017‑06‑05, the case is close to open-and-shut:

• Bose US 2014/0378056 / US 10,013,233 / US 10,966,025: proximity-based wireless pairing with an explicit button press confirmation and stored identification data enabling re-establishment — claims 1, 6, 8, 14, 19, 20.
• US 8,548,381: wireless audio device + media player, stored device profiles, "auto-detect and connect", and "transmitting the media to the desktop stereo" — claims 1, 12, 18, 19.
• Nassimi US 7,142,814: button-triggered, proximity-limited inquiry on the output-side device — claims 1(1)–(2), 5, 6, 8, 20.
• FR3040252: pressed output device → immediate pairing mode; BT indicator touch; pairable-device list on the phone; password — claims 1, 8, 16, 20.
• BLE advertising supplies claim 14's literal "wirelessly broadcasting … availability."

The only remaining argument would be the specific ordering ("discovery subsequent to the indication") — which Nassimi, Bose and FR3040252 all disclose. I assess Scenario B claims 1, 2, 5, 6, 8, 14, 15, 17, 19, 20 as strongly obvious.

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GROUND 4 — claims 6, 7, 10, 19 (storage / device information / control list)

• Claim 6/10 (control list of authorized devices; future links skip (1)–(2)/(1)–(3)): Bluetooth's link-key retention and paging is exactly this, and the '087 specification admits the output device storing an "access control list, which specifies what device or user may obtain service from it." Nassimi: "pairs with the newly found Bluetooth unit, by storing identity and/or code and/or timing information."
• Claim 7 (transmit device information — identity/attribute/ID number): the Bluetooth FHS packet / device address / device-name request; Iwata's second embodiment transfers "a Bluetooth device name as device identification information"; SDP records (Miller).
• Claim 19 (mobile stores output-system attribute; future links skip (1) and (2)): US 8,548,381's stored device profiles with auto-detection (Scenario B); Bluetooth bonding generally.
• Claim 20 (smart phone + Bluetooth; skip (1) and (2)): Bluetooth bonding.

The motivation for all four is the same and is stated in the art itself: eliminating repeated manual setup. That is a KSR "improvement in efficiency" rationale of the most ordinary kind.

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6. Secondary considerations (Graham factors) — assessed

I found no evidence supporting non-obviousness, and I looked. Specifically:

1. Commercial success / unexpected results: none identified. The patent is recorded as "Expired – Fee Related," lapsed for non‑payment of maintenance fees (effective 2022‑11‑27 per the earlier section). Pre‑expiration enforcement was by an assertion entity through licensing and litigation, not by a product embodying the claims.
2. Industry licensing under litigation threat: the Roku termination "as a result of a Patent License Agreement between Roku and Flexiworld" (IPR2022‑01267 joint motion to terminate, Oct. 2022) is a litigation settlement, not market validation. Under Iron Grip / Ecolab-style reasoning, licenses taken to end litigation — especially by an NPE — carry little weight absent a nexus and evidence the licensee took the license for the merits.
3. Long-felt need: the need (painless pairing with minimal-UI peripherals) was expressly identified in the prior art (Nassimi/Olson) and solved in the prior art — which converts "long-felt need" into evidence for obviousness.
4. PTAB: the only relevant outcomes are (i) PGR2021‑00111, Roku v. Flexiworld — institution DENIED, terminated 2022‑03‑14, where the patent owner filed a Cooklev declaration and press exhibits (Portland Business Journal 2002/2003) — i.e., patentee-side narrative evidence; and (ii) IPR2022‑00775 — claims upheld on antedating, not on the merits of the combination. Neither is a merits holding of non-obviousness for the '087. No IPR/PGR against the '087 itself was identified (consistent with the earlier litigation section).
5. Design-choice ubiquity: pairing buttons on wireless speakers/headsets became universal industry practice — as Apple argued in Apple v. Pinn, "wireless pairing buttons were thus commonplace in the prior art." Ubiquity of the conventional solution supports obviousness, not patentability.

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7. Bottom line and confidence

The determinative variables, in order:

1. Entitlement to the 2000/2001 priority (turns on the provisonals 60/245,101, 60/252,682, 60/262,764 — and on whether user-initiated, output-side discovery is described there).
2. The filing/publication dates of Olson 2002/0115425 and Iwata 6,871,047 — both are § 102(e) references, both antedatable.
3. Whether "broadcasting availability" in claim 14 can be met by Bluetooth inquiry-response/SDP/802.11 beacons, or whether it requires something like BLE advertising (2010). This is the strongest single non-obviousness position and I would expect the patentee to lead with it.

What I could not verify, and you should not treat as established: (a) the content of Miller 1999, Bettstetter 2000, and Bisdikian 1998 beyond their titles; (b) the exact filing dates of Olson and Iwata; (c) the content of the three Flexiworld provisionals, which control the whole date question; (d) whether the '087's audio-specific limitations were conceived by Oct. 22, 2000 (the date the PTAB credited for the '257's claims). Items (c) and (d) are the ones I would pull first.

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Primary sources to pull next

• Provisional applications 60/245,101, 60/252,682, 60/262,764 (via Patent Center / file wrapper of 15/614,441).
• File wrappers for US 2002/0115425 (Olson) and US 6,871,047 / 2002/0045454 (Iwata) for actual filing and priority dates.
• PTAB: IPR2022‑00775 Paper 41 (Nov. 1, 2023) full text; PGR2021‑00111 institution decision.
• Bluetooth SIG: core spec v1.0 (1999‑07‑26), v1.0B (1999‑12‑01), Generic Access Profile (1999‑12‑01), and the Headset Profile adoption date (I did not verify it; A2DP is 2003 and cannot be Scenario A art).