US 10438196

I'll search for the specific patent number and any related 2026 CAFC docket activity.

Let me search for the 2026 CAFC docket activity and the PTAB final written decision specifics.

I found a key 2026 CAFC development. Let me get more detail on the February 2026 Federal Circuit decision and its docket number.

US Patent 10,438,196 — Analyst Summary

Identification (verified)

Caveat: The family contains a near-identical continuation, US 11,468,434 B2 (filed Aug. 23, 2019; inventors listing Liberty and Mike Love; assignee Fintiv), which claims priority to this same 14/928,521. Do not conflate the two — the '434 patent has a different claim set.

Abstract (verbatim)

"Embodiments are directed to performing a transaction using a third party mobile wallet, performing a transaction using a third party point of sale (POS) system and to making a purchase from a third party mobile wallet provided by a third party mobile wallet provider. In one scenario, a cloud-based transaction platform is provided, which receives communication from an agent terminal over a communication channel connected to the cloud-based transaction platform. The agent communication indicates that a customer desires to perform a mobile wallet transaction using their third party mobile wallet. The cloud-based transaction platform sends the agent communication to a third party mobile wallet platform, receives communication from the third party mobile wallet platform confirming processing of the transaction, and sends communication to the agent terminal over a communication channel connected to the cloud-based transaction platform, where the communication indicates confirmation of the processing of the transaction."

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

The specification describes a cloud-based "mFS" (mobile financial services) transaction platform (also called the monetary transaction system / electronic payment system) that acts as a hub so that wallets from other providers can interoperate. The independent claims map to the three scenarios recited in the summary of the invention. Because I could not retrieve the full verbatim claim text in these searches, the descriptions below are characterized at the level of the disclosed embodiments and one confirmed claim element; treat exact wording as unverified.

1. Claim 1 (system — "perform a transaction using a third party mobile wallet"). A cloud-based transaction platform that (a) receives a communication from an agent terminal indicating a customer wants to transact using a third-party mobile wallet, (b) forwards that communication to the corresponding third-party mobile wallet platform, (c) receives back confirmation that the transaction was processed, and (d) sends confirmation to the agent terminal. The claim is confirmed by the Federal Circuit to recite "a payment handler that exposes a common API for interacting with different payment processors" — an element the court ultimately held indefinite (see litigation, below).

2. Claim 8 (likely a method counterpart). The same enroll/route/confirm flow expressed as steps performed by the platform, with the agent-terminal communication routed to the appropriate third-party wallet platform and a confirmation returned to the POS/agent terminal.

3. Claim 16 (third-party POS scenario). The platform receives a communication from a specified POS system implemented at an agent terminal, indicating a customer initiated a wallet transaction; the platform routes that POS communication to the corresponding third-party POS transaction processing system that has been set up to handle that POS system, receives confirmation, and returns confirmation to the POS system at the agent terminal.

4. Claims 21 and 22 (likely purchase/computer-readable-medium variants). The platform receives a customer communication indicating a desire to purchase an item for a specified amount using a payment method indicated by the customer's third-party wallet; returns a secure, perishable purchase code to the customer; receives an agent-terminal communication indicating the code was presented to an agent; and debits the customer's third-party mobile wallet by the specified amount to complete the purchase. The specification notes such purchases can be for platform-provided or third-party items (music, movies, games, downloadable content, shippable goods, health-care services).

Supporting described functionality includes KYC/CIP checks, AML/CFT screening, transaction limits, and velocity checks, plus commission/fee flows (e.g., a third-party wallet platform paying a transaction fee to the hub).

Litigation and PTAB/CAFC posture

PTAB — IPR2023-00398, Apple Inc. v. Fintiv, Inc. (this patent)

• Filed Dec. 22, 2022; instituted July 10, 2023; Final Written Decision May 23, 2024.
• All claims 1–22 challenged. Result: "No Challenged Claims Unpatentable" — Apple did not show any claim unpatentable by a preponderance. This is a win for Fintiv/patent owner, not for Apple.
• A parallel petition, IPR2023-00399, challenged the parent patent US 9,208,488.

District court

• Fintiv, Inc. v. PayPal Holdings, Inc., No. 6:22-cv-00288 (W.D. Tex.), and a later case No. 6:23-cv-00490 (W.D. Tex.).
• In the PayPal case, Judge Albright held the "payment handler" / "payment handler service" terms indefinite under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 112 ¶ 6, invalidating the asserted claims across four Fintiv patents including US 10,438,196. Final judgment for PayPal entered July 28, 2023; reconsideration denied July 21, 2023.

CAFC

• Fintiv, Inc. v. PayPal Holdings, Inc., No. 23-2312 (Fed. Cir. Apr. 30, 2025) — precedential. The court affirmed that the payment-handler terms are means-plus-function terms lacking adequate corresponding structure (no disclosed algorithm), rendering the asserted claims — including '196 claim 1 — indefinite and invalid. (Companion appeal No. 24-1345, Fintiv v. Apple, was dismissed as moot in light of 23-2312.)
• Regarding 2026 CAFC dockets: I found no 2026 Federal Circuit docket that names US 10,438,196 in the searches performed. The 2026 Federal Circuit activity in the Fintiv/Mozido ecosystem that surfaced is separate from this patent:
  • Mozido, Inc. v. Apple Inc., No. 2024-1742 (Fed. Cir. Feb. 11, 2026) — nonprecedential Rule 36 affirmance on appeal from IPR2022-01150 (a different patent, not the '196).
  • Apple Inc. v. Squires, No. 2024-1864 (Fed. Cir. Feb. 13, 2026) — affirmed that the USPTO's NHK-Fintiv discretionary-denial framework is a "general statement of policy" exempt from APA notice-and-comment rulemaking. This is the broader Fintiv-rule policy case and does not adjudicate the '196 patent's validity.
  • A Law360 item dated Feb. 11, 2026 ("Apple Keeps PTAB Win Over Fintiv Patent Claims At Fed. Circ.") refers generally to an Apple PTAB win over Fintiv claims; based on the available record it appears to concern a different patent (the '196 IPR was a Fintiv win). I could not confirm the specific patent covered by that article — flag as uncertain.

Confidence and caveats

• High confidence: bibliographic data, abstract, claim count, PTAB IPR2023-00398 result, and the 23-2312 Federal Circuit holding (all grounded in sources above).
• Lower confidence / unverified: the exact verbatim text and statutory class of independent claims 8, 16, 21, and 22 (my descriptions are inferred from the summary of the invention and figure data flows, plus one confirmed claim-1 element). If verbatim claim language is required, pull the granted PDF at patentimages.googleapis.com (US10438196) or the USPTO PatentCenter record for 14/928,521.
• Explicitly flagged: I did not locate any 2026 CAFC appeal of the '196 patent itself. Anyone asserting a pending 2026 CAFC docket for 10,438,196 should verify it against the CAFC docket system directly.

Key sources: Google Patents (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US10438196B2](/patent/US10438196B2)/en); granted PDF (http://euro.ecom.cmu.edu/people/faculty/mshamos/10438196.pdf); PTAB FWD (https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2023-00398/...Final_Written_Decision); CAFC 23-2312 (https://cases.justia.com/federal/appellate-courts/cafc/23-2312/23-2312-2025-04-30.pdf); CAFC 2024-1742 (https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/cafc/24-1742/24-1742-2026-02-11.html); CAFC 2024-1864 (https://business.cch.com/ipld/AppleIncvSquires.pdf); IPWatchdog (https://ipwatchdog.com/2025/04/30/paypal-apple-succeed-scrapping-fintiv-patent-claims-cafc/).

I'll research litigation involving US patent 10438196.

Let me dig into the specific cases referenced.

Let me verify which cases specifically asserted the '196 patent (US 10,438,196).

Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. 10,438,196 (US10438196)

Note on the identifier: I read "10438196" literally as U.S. Patent No. 10,438,196 B2 ("the '196 patent"), titled "Using a Mobile Wallet Infrastructure to Support Multiple Mobile Wallet Providers." Inventor: Michael A. Liberty; original assignee Mozido, Inc.; current assignee Fintiv, Inc.; application 14/928,521 filed 2015‑10‑30; granted 2019‑10‑08; earliest priority 2011‑11‑21. Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US10438196/en

This patent sits in a family of Fintiv mobile-wallet patents that are frequently litigated together and are easy to confuse. For the record, the co-asserted patents are different numbers: US 8,538,845 ('845), US 8,843,125 ('125), US 9,208,488 ('488), US 9,892,386 ('386), and US 11,120,413 ('413). I have excluded matters that involve only those patents, except where noted.

Summary table

1. Fintiv, Inc. v. PayPal Holdings, Inc., No. 6:22-cv-00288-ADA (W.D. Tex.)

• Plaintiff: Fintiv, Inc. Defendant: PayPal Holdings, Inc.
• Jurisdiction: [U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, Waco Division](/courts/western-district-of-texas-waco) (Judge Alan D. Albright). Venue was predicated on PayPal's Austin, TX offices (per Fintiv's later complaint in 6:23‑cv‑00490, describing the same Austin presence).
• Case number: 6:22‑cv‑00288‑ADA.
• Filing date: 2022. The case first appears in public reporting in the IPWatchdog "Patent Filings Roundup" of March 24, 2022, listed under Fintiv Inc. v. PayPal Holdings Inc. with patents 9,892,386; 11,120,413; 9,208,488; 10,438,196 (https://ipwatchdog.com/2022/03/24/patent-filings-roundup-fintiv-files-paypal-ppc-broadband-patents-challenged-based-successful-reexams-last-[cbm](/resources/patent-reviews)-decision-issues/). Fintiv's own "Proposed Terms for Construction," dated September 1, 2022, lists five asserted patents: 8,538,845; 9,892,386; 11,120,413; 9,208,488; and 10,438,196 — confirming the '196 patent was asserted in this action.
• Outcome / status: At claim construction the district court ruled from the bench that the "payment handler" / "payment handler service" terms invoke pre‑AIA 35 U.S.C. § 112 ¶ 6 (means‑plus‑function) and are indefinite under § 112(b) for lack of corresponding structure. The court denied Fintiv's motion for reconsideration and issued a written opinion on July 21, 2023 (2023 WL 5423082), and final judgment was entered for PayPal on July 28, 2023, invalidating the asserted claims of the '386, '413, '488, and '196 patents; each party bore its own costs. Fintiv appealed.
• Sources: https://cafc.whda.com/indefiniteness-and-means-plus-function-fintiv-v-paypal/ ; https://fedcircuitblog.com/2025/04/30/opinions-orders-april-30-2025/ ; https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/Texas%20Western%20District%20Court/case/6%3A22-cv-00288

2. Fintiv, Inc. v. PayPal Holdings, Inc., No. 6:23-cv-00490-ADA (W.D. Tex.)

• Plaintiff: Fintiv, Inc. Defendant: PayPal Holdings, Inc.
• Jurisdiction: W.D. Tex., Waco Division.
• Case number: 6:23‑cv‑00490‑ADA ("6:23-cv-00490").
• Filing date: 2023 (docket year prefix). I did not verify the exact filing date; the Google Patents litigation link and the complaint PDF are indexed, but no filing date is shown in the sources I retrieved.
• The '196 patent's role: This is a separate complaint in which the '196 patent is expressly asserted. The complaint contains Count IX (direct infringement of the '196 Patent, at least claim 1) and Count X (indirect infringement of the '196 Patent), alongside counts for the '845, '386, '413 and '488 patents, accusing PayPal's mobile payment system. Complaint PDF: https://ai-lab.exparte.com/documents/dct/[4525066](/patent/4525066)/6-23-cv-00490_txwd_complaint_exparte.pdf
• Outcome / status: Not verified. My search did not return a final disposition for this docket. Note that the Federal Circuit's April 30, 2025 opinion cites the July 21, 2023 claim construction order as "Fintiv, Inc. v. PayPal Holdings, Inc., No. 23‑0490, 2023 WL 5423082 (W.D. Tex. July 21, 2023)" — an internal citation that appears to point to a W.D. Tex. PayPal docket numbered "23‑0490," i.e., 6:23‑cv‑00490. I flag this as an ambiguity rather than a verified fact.
• Source (Google Patents litigation link): https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/Texas%20Western%20District%20Court/case/6%3A23-cv-00490

3. Fintiv, Inc. v. PayPal Holdings, Inc., No. 2023-2312 (Fed. Cir.)

• Appellant: Fintiv, Inc. Appellee: PayPal Holdings, Inc.
• Jurisdiction: U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
• Case number: 2023‑2312 (appeal from W.D. Tex. No. 6:22‑cv‑00288‑ADA).
• Filing date: 2023 (docketed; the notice of appeal followed the July 28, 2023 final judgment).
• Outcome: Decided April 30, 2025 — AFFIRMED (precedential; Prost, Taranto, and Stark, JJ.). The court held that the "payment handler"/"payment handler service" terms are nonce terms subject to § 112 ¶ 6, that "handler" is analogous to "module," and that the specifications disclose no algorithm or structure corresponding to the claimed "using APIs of different payment processors" / "exposing a common API" functions. The asserted claims of the '386, '413, '488, and '196 patents were therefore invalid as indefinite. The same-day IPWatchdog headline: "PayPal, Apple Succeed in Scrapping Fintiv's Patent Claims at CAFC."
• Governing citation: Fintiv, Inc. v. PayPal Holdings, Inc., No. 23‑2312 (Fed. Cir. Apr. 30, 2025). Opinion: https://cases.justia.com/federal/appellate-courts/cafc/23-2312/23-2312-2025-04-30.pdf ; see also https://ipwatchdog.com/2025/04/30/paypal-apple-succeed-scrapping-fintiv-patent-claims-cafc/

4. Apple Inc. v. Fintiv, Inc., IPR2023-00398 (PTAB)

• Petitioner: Apple Inc. Patent Owner: Fintiv, Inc.
• Forum: U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (not an Article III court).
• Case number: IPR2023‑00398. Filed: December 22, 2022. Instituted: July 10, 2023. Terminated: May 23, 2024.
• Patent challenged: U.S. Patent No. 10,438,196 B2 — the patent at issue here — all claims 1–22.
• Outcome: Final Written Decision of May 23, 2024 determining that no challenged claims are unpatentable (Apple failed to show unpatentability by a preponderance). Panel: Zecher, Hoskins (writing), Dirba. The Board identified Fintiv, Inc. v. PayPal Holdings, Inc., No. 6:22‑cv‑00288 (W.D. Tex.), as a related proceeding involving the '196 patent, and noted that Apple "is not a party to that case." Companion proceeding: IPR2023‑00399 (Apple v. Fintiv, US 9,208,488), decided the same day.
• Bottom line for the '196 patent: it survived the Apple IPR but its asserted claim was later held invalid as indefinite in the PayPal case, affirmed by the Federal Circuit.
• Sources: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2023-00398/Apple_Inc._v._Fintiv_Inc/docs/05-23-2024-Board/Final_Written_Decision__original-31-Final_Written_Decision__original.pdf ; https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/ptab/case/IPR2023-00398 ; https://services.patexia.com/lawsuits/Apple-Inc-v-Fintiv-Inc-id-[184727](/patent/184727)

Matters I found that do NOT involve the '196 patent (flagged to avoid misattribution)

• Fintiv, Inc. v. Apple Inc., No. 1:21-cv-00896-ADA (W.D. Tex.) — asserted US 8,843,125 (wallet management/contactless card applets), not the '196 patent. This case went to summary judgment for Apple (Aug. 7, 2025) and is now on appeal (notice of appeal filed Sept. 5, 2025). Apple's only involvement with the '196 patent was via IPR2023‑00398 above. Note the district court's 2023 judgment in this docket (Dkt. 469, June 29, 2023) relates to the '125 patent.
• Fintiv v. Walmart (Texas state court trade‑secret/promissory matters; e.g., No. 06‑22‑00017‑CV) — trade secret claims, not the '196 patent.
• Oxford Gray Corp. of North America v. Fintiv (Travis County, Tex., D‑1‑G‑N‑25‑004633, filed June 27, 2025; plus a Florida action on a personal guarantee) — breach of contract/promissory notes exceeding $9M, not patent litigation.
• SEC civil enforcement action re: Michael A. Liberty — not patent litigation over the '196 patent.

Confidence and gaps

• High confidence: the four entries in the table above, the parties, the forum/case numbers, and the outcomes of items 1, 3, and 4 — these are grounded in the Federal Circuit opinion, the PTAB Final Written Decision, the Unified Patents litigation/PTAB links cited on the patent's Google Patents page, and IPWatchdog/PatSnap reporting.
• Lower confidence / unverified: (a) the exact filing date of 6:22‑cv‑00288 (reported as filed in March 2022 by IPWatchdog, though at least one secondary source describes the PayPal complaint as April 2022); (b) the exact filing date and current status of 6:23‑cv‑00490; (c) whether any appeal was taken from the May 23, 2024 PTAB Final Written Decision. One secondary (Chinese-language) summary refers to an appeal from a PTAB decision, but I could not confirm an appeal specific to IPR2023‑00398.
• Coverage caveat: I searched litigation-tracker sources (Unified Patents portal, Justia/CourtListener filings, IPWatchdog roundups, Darts‑IP/Google Patents litigation links, PTAB dockets) and found no additional district-court assertions of the '196 patent beyond Fintiv's two W.D. Tex. PayPal suits. I did not obtain a full PACER docket report (PACER itself is paywalled and my searches could not retrieve a complete docket), so I cannot rule out additional, short-lived, or sealed filings.

PTAB Proceedings — U.S. Patent No. 10,438,196 ("Using a Mobile Wallet Infrastructure to Support Multiple Mobile Wallet Providers")

Important data-integrity flag up front: the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO ODP) says there are no AIA trials for this patent. That is wrong or stale. The patent's own Google Patents litigation metadata lists "PTAB case IPR2023-00398 filed (Final Written Decision)" and the full record for that case is public on Docket Alarm and in PTAB/CAFC filings. Everything below is sourced from the published documents, not from the ODP feed.

Proceedings overview

One AIA trial was filed against the '196 patent — IPR2023-00398, Apple Inc. v. Fintiv, Inc. — and it went to a Final Written Decision on 2024-05-23 in which the Board held that no challenged claim (claims 1–22) was proven unpatentable; zero claims canceled, zero claims settled, zero institutions denied, and no appeal of that FWD appears on the public record as of 2026-10-01. The bottom line for a defendant is unusual and worth stating precisely: the '196 survived Apple's IPR intact, but the patent's assertion value has been gutted in the district courts — claim 1 (the claim Fintiv actually asserted against PayPal) was held invalid as indefinite under pre-AIA § 112 ¶ 6 / § 112(b) in W.D. Tex., and the Federal Circuit affirmed that judgment in a precedential opinion on 2025-04-30, so the real defensive tool here is § 112 issue preclusion, not the PTAB record.

IPR2023-00398 — Apple Inc. v. Fintiv, Inc.

• Type: Inter Partes Review (35 U.S.C. §§ 311–319)
• Filed: 2022-12-22 (petition); Institution Decision 2023-07-10; Final Written Decision 2024-05-23
• Status: Final Written Decision — "Determining No Challenged Claims Unpatentable," 35 U.S.C. § 318(a). A panel change order issued 2023-05-24, and a joint conduct-of-proceeding order covered this case together with IPR2023-00399 (2023-04-14).
• Judge panel: Michael R. Zecher, George R. Hoskins, and Juliet Mitchell Dirba, Administrative Patent Judges; Opinion by Judge Hoskins.
• Petition grounds: Apple challenged all claims 1–22 of the '196 patent — i.e., the entire patent — on § 103(a) obviousness over the combination of Dill, Vadhri, and Akashika. Petitioner's expert was Dr. Henry Houh; Patent Owner's expert was Dr. Michael I. Shamos (Shamos Decl., 2022-08-24). No § 112 or § 101 grounds (not available in an IPR).
• Institution decision: Instituted 2023-07-10 on the petitioned review of claims 1–22. Caveat — honest gap: I retrieved the institution date and the fact of institution, but not the Board's institution-opinion reasoning; do not treat any inference about the panel's preliminary claim-construction findings as verified.
• Final Written Decision (2024-05-23): The Board's own words — "We determine Petitioner has not shown by a preponderance of the evidence that any of those claims are unpatentable." Claim-level result: claims 1–22 — none shown unpatentable; all sustained. No independent claim was canceled, no dependent claim was canceled, nothing was held patentable on a "conditional" basis that would require a reissue/reexam note.
  • The parties' joint demonstratives show the merits fight centered on claim 1's "integration tier … including web services communication mechanisms," "notification services engine," "hardware SIM card," and "mobile wallet"/"mobile wallet application" limitations, with Patent Owner not contesting Vadhri/Akashika's teachings. The Board nonetheless found the Dill–Vadhri–Akashika combination insufficient. I could not retrieve the FWD's full limitation-by-limitation reasoning text, so I am not attributing a specific dispositive rationale to the panel.
• Settlement / termination: None. The case ran full course to FWD; there is no termination-by-settlement record.
• Appeal: No appeal of this FWD appears on the public record. Note the mootness backdrop: in the parallel family litigation, Fintiv's appeal of a different PTAB FWD (IPR2022-00976 on U.S. 9,892,386) was dismissed as moot after the Federal Circuit affirmed the § 112 indefiniteness invalidity of those claims. Fintiv, Inc. v. Apple Inc., No. 2024-1345 (Fed. Cir. 2025-04-30) — https://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-orders/24-1345.OPINION.4-30-2025_2506799.pdf. Any Apple appeal of the -398 FWD would have run into the same mootness wall (a holding that claims are patentable is worthless once the same claims are finally adjudged indefinite). I found no Apple notice of appeal and am flagging this as "no appeal located," not as a positively confirmed non-appeal.
• Defensive value: For anyone accused today, the PTAB outcome is bad news on the obviousness theory — Apple, a sophisticated defendant with strong counsel (Haynes Boone) and an expert (Houh), lost on all 22 claims using the Dill/Vadhri/Akashika combination. That combination is now effectively burned for Apple and its privies under § 315(e)(2). The offsetting good news is enormous and comes from the courts, not the Board: see the Strategic Summary on indefiniteness.

Primary source (FWD): https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2023-00398/Apple_Inc._v._Fintiv_Inc/docs/05-23-2024-Board/Final_Written_Decision__original-31-Final_Written_Decision__original.pdf

IPR2023-00399 — Apple Inc. v. Fintiv, Inc. (related proceeding, parent patent — not the '196)

• Type: Inter Partes Review — U.S. Patent No. 9,208,488 B2 (parent application of the '196; shared specification and 2011-11-21 provisional priority)
• Filed: 2022-12-22 (same day as -398); instituted 2023-07-10; FWD 2024-05-23 (same day)
• Status: Final Written Decision — "Determining No Challenged Claims Unpatentable," 35 U.S.C. § 318(a)
• Judge panel: Same panel — Zecher, Hoskins, Dirba (Dirba wrote)
• Grounds: claims 1–22, § 103(a) over Dill, Vadhri, Akashika — same art, same result: no claim unpatentable
• Hearing: Oral argument held 2024-04-10 for both -398 and -399 (joint transcript)
• Why it matters here: It is not a proceeding on the '196, but it establishes that Apple's entire two-petition, same-day, same-art campaign against the Fintiv "mobile wallet infrastructure" family failed across both patents. Any theory that the '196's survival was a one-off panel quirk has to reckon with the identical outcome on the parent.

⚠️ Flagged but UNVERIFIED — IPR2023-00744, PayPal Holdings Inc. v. Fintiv Inc.

I am listing this because it appeared in the same enforcement campaign and a defendant needs to check it, but I could not confirm which Fintiv patent it targets, and I will not assert it is the '196.

• Filed 2023-03-24; Instituted 2023-10-19; FWD 2024-10-02; Outcome: Unpatentable; on appeal at the Federal Circuit as No. 25-1225; panel included Emanuel Mines, George R. Hoskins, and Kristen L. Droesch (source: https://ai-lab.exparte.com/case/ptab/IPR2023-00744/paypal-holdings-inc-v-fintiv-inc).
• Corroborating context: Winston & Strawn (counsel for PayPal) states it "invalidated the fifth patent at the PTAB; Fintiv's appeal of that Final Written Decision is pending," citing Fintiv v. PayPal Holdings, No. 6:23-cv-00490 (W.D. Tex.) / IPR2023-00744 / Fed. Cir. No. 25-1225 (https://www.winston.com/print/v2/content/[1100951](/patent/1100951)/federal-circuit-backs-paypal-68480400.pdf). That "fifth patent" is described alongside the four patents invalidated for indefiniteness — the '386, '413, '488 and '196 — which suggests the PTAB-invalidated patent is a different patent (the '845 asserted in the same complaint), not the '196.
• Action item: pull the IPR2023-00744 FWD and confirm the challenged patent number before relying on it either way. If it is the '196, Apple's loss becomes irrelevant and claims would be canceled — that would flip this entire analysis.

Strategic summary

Claim status on the '196. Canceled: none. Sustained: claims 1–22, all of them, by the IPR2023-00398 FWD of 2024-05-23. Untested at the PTAB: none — Apple challenged the full claim set. So on the PTAB axis this patent looks "hardened." But the same claim 1 that Fintiv asserted in Fintiv, Inc. v. PayPal Holdings, Inc., No. 6:22-cv-00288 / 6:23-cv-00490 (W.D. Tex.) was construed as a means-plus-function term ("a payment handler that exposes a common API for interacting with different payment processors" — the exact limitation in '196 claim 1) and held indefinite under pre-AIA § 112 ¶ 6 and § 112(b) for lack of corresponding structure. The Federal Circuit affirmed in a precedential opinion, Fintiv, Inc. v. PayPal Holdings, Inc., No. 23-2312 (Fed. Cir. Apr. 30, 2025), holding "handler" is analogous to the nonce term "module" and that the specification's two-step "wrap APIs / expose a common API" description merely restates the claim. Opinion: https://cases.justia.com/federal/appellate-courts/cafc/23-2312/23-2312-2025-04-30.pdf (also cited on the patent's Google Patents litigation timeline as CAFC case 23-2312). Fintiv's parallel appeal of Apple's other PTAB loss was dismissed as moot on the strength of that affirmance (Fintiv v. Apple, No. 2024-1345, Fed. Cir. Apr. 30, 2025).

Estoppel landscape. Under § 315(e)(2), Apple and its privies/real parties in interest are barred from raising in litigation — and before the Office — any ground they raised or reasonably could have raised in IPR2023-00398: that means the Dill, Vadhri, Akashika § 103(a) combination is off the table for Apple, and so is any § 102/§ 103 ground based on art a skilled searcher would have found alongside it. For a new defendant not in privity with Apple, there is no statutory estoppel flowing from the -398 FWD. The prior-art space remains fully open, subject to the ordinary § 325(d) discretion and Advanced Bionics overlay. The practical catch is evidentiary, not legal: Apple's fully-litigated, expert-supported obviousness case over a three-reference combination lost on all 22 claims, so a new IPR pitched on comparable art will face a skeptical panel; materially better art or a fundamentally different theory (e.g., a § 102 anticipation mapping of the "integration tier"/"hardware SIM card" elements, or art that squarely meets the "payment handler exposing a common API" structure) is required.

Pattern signals. (1) Same petitioner, two patents, same day, same art, same result — Apple filed IPR2023-00398 and IPR2023-00399 on 2022-12-22 and lost both on 2024-05-23. (2) The petitioner was an operating-company defendant, not a defensive aggregator. Although the patent's Google Patents page carries a "Unified Patents PTAB Data" banner, that is the data-feed attribution for the litigation listing, not the petitioner — the petitioner of record is Apple Inc., with Jonathan R. Bowser / Andrew Ehmke of Haynes Boone as counsel. Do not record Unified Patents as a petitioner. (3) The patent owner (Fintiv, formerly Mozido) litigates aggressively and appeals: it defended the '196 to a favorable FWD, kept the '488 alive, and has pursued both its own CAFC appeals (23-2208, where it won a reversal of Apple's summary judgment of non-infringement on 2025-05-16) and appeals of adverse PTAB decisions (24-1345). (4) The family keeps growing: continuations from the same specification have issued as U.S. 11,468,434 and U.S. 12,248,929, with U.S. 2025/0182093 published — a defendant should expect fresh claims from the same disclosure rather than treating the '196 as the only exposure.

Recommended next steps

1. If a demand letter or complaint cites claim 1 of the '196 — lead with § 112, not the PTAB. Quote the disposition from Fintiv v. PayPal, No. 23-2312 (Fed. Cir. Apr. 30, 2025): the Federal Circuit held the "payment handler" terms invoke § 112 ¶ 6 and that the specification discloses no adequate corresponding structure — so claim 1 (and the other asserted claims) are invalid as indefinite. Because that is now a final, affirmed judgment in a case where the patentee had a full and fair opportunity to litigate the issue, raise Blonder-Tongue issue preclusion against any reassertion of the same claims, and ask whether any asserted claim is materially different from the one adjudicated. Note the '196 issued from the same specification/spec-language family as the '488 and '413, each of which was held indefinite on the same "payment handler" terms.
2. Do not assume the PTAB is a dead end just because Apple lost. Apple's estoppel under § 315(e)(2) does not bind you. But budget for the reality that the Dill/Vadhri/Akashika art has already been tested and rejected, and pick art aimed at the structural claim elements the Board and the district court both found thin ("integration tier including web services communications mechanisms," "notification services engine," "hardware SIM card").
3. Verify IPR2023-00744's target patent immediately (pull the FWD via PTAB E2E at https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptabweb and the pending appeal, Fed. Cir. No. 25-1225). If PayPal's FWD invalidated claims of the '196, claims-invalidated becomes the lead argument and the Apple FWD becomes a footnote. My review of the secondary sources points to a different Fintiv patent (likely the '845), but this is unresolved and outcome-determinative.
4. No PTAB trial-stage milestones to track on the '196. IPR2023-00398 closed with the 2024-05-23 FWD; there is no pending trial with an institution/FWD clock on this patent as of 2026-10-01. The live appellate item in the family is Fed. Cir. No. 25-1225 (Fintiv's appeal of the PayPal IPR FWD) — monitor it for any statement about the '196.
5. Watch the continuation pipeline (U.S. 11,468,434; U.S. 12,248,929; U.S. 2025/0182093). New claims from the same specification will not inherit the '196's § 315(e) estoppel, and the indefiniteness ruling may or may not map onto reformulated claim language — check each newly issued claim against the "payment handler" structure holding.

Unverified items I am explicitly not asserting: the -398 institution decision's reasoning; the FWD's limitation-by-limitation rationale beyond the "no challenged claims unpatentable" holding; the absence of an Apple appeal (I located none, but did not search the CAFC docket exhaustively); and the target patent of IPR2023-00744.

I'll research this patent's assignment chain and litigation history. Let me run several searches.

Let me pull the specific assignment records and reel/frame data.

Inventors

Notes and unusual patterns:

• The '196 patent names only one inventor, Michael A. Liberty, despite claiming a very broad "cloud-based transaction platform" architecture (FIG. 1 integration tier, notification services, payment handler, rules engine, name-matching engine, etc.). A single-inventor, very broad platform patent is characteristic of a portfolio that was assembled/rolled up for licensing rather than organically built.
• Later family members (e.g. the continuation that issued as US 12,248,929) list Michael A. Liberty and Mike Love as inventors — the source of the July 2020 Love assignment discussed below.
• Liberty was indicted (D. Me.) in February 2019 for an alleged ~$55M investment fraud in connection with Mozido fundraising, and was the subject of a 2018 SEC enforcement action. Mozido/the company was not charged. Founding-inventor criminal exposure immediately preceded the corporate rebrand and the assertion campaign — a classic portfolio-distress tell, though it is not itself an assignment event.
• The inventors did not depart in a way that is visible in the assignment record; what is visible is the opposite — a confirmatory re-assignment from a co-inventor (Love) years after filing, which is a chain-cleanup step, not a departure.

Original assignee

Mozido, Inc. (Delaware), the assignee named on the face of the issued patent (Google Patents "Original Assignee: Mozido Inc").

• Line of business: mobile payments / mobile financial services ("mFS") platform for banked and unbanked users, plus loyalty-marketing products (StickyStreet). It did ship product — a cloud-based mobile wallet transaction platform (the very subject matter of the claims) and a marketing/loyalty platform, deployed across ~60 countries.
• Corporate history: Mozido, LLC (founded 2008/2009, Austin, TX by Liberty) → Mozido, Inc. formed 2013, acquiring substantially all of Mozido, LLC's core assets in Nov 2013 in exchange for Mozido, Inc. stock; Mozido, LLC was renamed MDO, LLC in March 2015. Mozido raised ~$313M and was reported near a $5.6B valuation.
• Current status: Same legal entity, renamed — an amended Delaware certificate changed Mozido, Inc. → Fintiv, Inc. (executed ~Dec 2018; per Forbes, signed by Fintiv president Charlie Wiggs). Fintiv remains in existence at 801 Barton Springs Rd., Austin, TX 78704. In practical terms the operating business contracted sharply: it sold its main revenue unit, PayEase, in 2017–2018 to service debt, and announced a dedicated patent-enforcement division. No confirmed Chapter 7/11 filing for Mozido/Fintiv appears in the record I was able to retrieve (see signal 6 below — marked unclear, not asserted).

Assignment timeline

I retrieved the Mozido/Fintiv chain-of-title documents via a §3.73(b) Statement filed in a related Mozido application (App. No. 13/484,199, "Monetary Transaction System," signed Feb. 20, 2020), which recites the recorded reel/frame chain, plus the Google Patents legal-events entries for the '196 patent itself. I was not able to pull the '196-specific reel/frame numbers from Assignment Center within this session; the reel/frame below are the family documents recited in that §3.73(b) statement, and I flag exactly where they are confirmed vs. inferred. Correspondent of record was not retrievable — this is the one field the user specifically asked for that I cannot populate, and I am not going to guess it.

1. ≈2012 (executed) / recorded ~2012 — Reel 028698 / Frame 0135 (confirmed for the family via the §3.73(b) statement)

   • Conveyance: Assignment
   • Assignor: Michael A. Liberty (inventor)
   • Assignee: Mozido, LLC
   • Correspondent: not retrieved
   • Context: inventor-to-operating-company assignment at the founding of the mFS program.

2. ≈2013–2014 (executed) / recorded ~2013–2014 — Reel 031769 / Frame 0677 (confirmed for the family via the §3.73(b) statement)

   • Conveyance: Assignment
   • Assignor: Mozido, LLC
   • Assignee: Mozido, Inc.
   • Correspondent: not retrieved
   • Context: internal reorganization — Mozido, LLC rolled its core business into newly formed Mozido, Inc. in Nov 2013.

3. 2016-08-19 (recorded) — Reel/Frame not retrieved for '196 — Assignment of Assignors Interest (Google Patents legal event)

   • Conveyance: Assignment
   • Assignor: Michael A. Liberty
   • Assignee: MOZIDO, INC.
   • Correspondent: not retrieved
   • Context: inventor assignment for the '196 application (Ser. No. 14/928,521, filed 2015-10-30 as a continuation of 13/680,824).

4. ≈2018-12 (executed) / recorded 2019-12-13 — Reel 051276 / Frame 0649 (family-chain document recited in the §3.73(b) statement; the corresponding Fintiv batch recordation also appears on PlainSite as a 12/26/2019 filing covering many Mozido applications and trademarks)

   • Conveyance: Change of Name (same legal entity — not a transfer to a new shell)
   • Assignor: Mozido, Inc.
   • Assignee: Fintiv, Inc.
   • Correspondent: not retrieved
   • Context: pure change of name / rebrand ahead of the enforcement campaign.

5. recorded 2020-07-16 — Reel/Frame not retrieved for '196 — Assignment of Assignors Interest (Google Patents legal event)

   • Conveyance: Assignment (confirmatory / chain-cleanup)
   • Assignor: LOVE, MIKE (co-inventor on related family members)
   • Assignee: FINTIV, INC.
   • Correspondent: not retrieved
   • Context: pre-litigation title cure — recorded roughly 21 months before the first suit that names the '196 patent (Fintiv v. PayPal, W.D. Tex., April 2022). Note the §3.73(b) statement in the sibling application was signed Feb. 20, 2020 by an attorney identifying as "/John C. ___" (firm not captured) — a lead for the correspondent question, but incomplete and not a finding.

One-line caveat: the ownership record here contains no post-issuance transfer to an unrelated party. Every link is either the inventor, Mozido, or the renamed Mozido entity. That is the single most important fact for the NPE analysis below.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10438196
    2011 : Provisional filed by Michael Liberty
    2012 : Non-provisional filed for Mozido
    2013 : Assets rolled into Mozido Inc
    2015 : Continuation filed by Mozido Inc
    2016 : Liberty assigns rights to Mozido Inc
    2018 : Mozido renamed Fintiv Inc
    2019 : Name change recorded at USPTO
    2020 : Love confirmatory assignment to Fintiv
    2022 : Fintiv sues PayPal over the patent
    2024 : PTAB upholds claims against Apple
    2025 : Federal Circuit affirms invalidity

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. The assignee at the end of the chain, Fintiv, Inc., is the same corporate entity as the original assignee Mozido, Inc., renamed (Change of Name, executed ≈Dec 2018 / recorded 2019-12-13, Reel 051276/0649 per the family §3.73(b) statement). There is no transfer to a name-suffixed "IP / Holdings / Licensing" LLC, no registered-agent address, and no single-purpose Delaware/Texas LLC. Fintiv is a Delaware corporation with a real Austin office (801 Barton Springs Rd.) and residual product claims — so the naming-based suspicion does not survive the evidence test.

2. Known asserter in the chain — present (strong). The current assignee Fintiv, Inc. does not appear on the classic enumerated lists (Acacia, Marathon, IV, Wi-LAN, etc.), but it is squarely a high-frequency plaintiff surfaced by Unified Patents: the Unified Patents PTAB portal tracks Fintiv/Mozido as patent owner in at least eight IPRs (IPR2020-00019 8,843,125; IPR2022-00976 9,892,386; IPR2022-01149 10,223,692; IPR2022-01150 9,189,785; IPR2023-00398 10,438,196; IPR2023-00399 9,208,488; IPR2023-00744 8,538,845). This patent was asserted against PayPal (W.D. Tex., April 2022, 6:22-cv-00288) and litigated against Apple (W.D. Tex. 6:23-cv-00490; Fed. Cir. 23-2312), and Fintiv has also pursued Apple on trade-secret/RICO theories (N.D. Cal. 25-cv-04413).

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear. The Assignment Center correspondent field was not retrievable in this session, so I cannot certify recurrence. What is not evidence: Fintiv's litigation counsel is Kasowitz Benson Torres LLP (Marc Kasowitz, who represented Mozido for years) — that is litigation counsel, not the recording correspondent, and must not be conflated with it. The only lead is the Feb. 2020 §3.73(b) signatory shown as "/John C. ___" in the sibling application. Recommend a direct Assignment Center pull to populate assignee-of-record correspondence before drawing any conclusion.

4. Cascading transfers — not present. The chain (Liberty → Mozido, LLC → Mozido, Inc. → Fintiv, Inc.) is a single corporate family over 2012–2019, with the LLC→Inc and Inc→Fintiv steps being an internal reorganization and a change of name. There are no consecutive assignments through unrelated chained LLCs, and there is no shared-correspondent-address cluster visible.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present (for this patent). The '196 patent issued 2019-10-08 and was first asserted in Fintiv v. PayPal (April 2022). The last ownership event touching it (the Love confirmatory assignment) was recorded 2020-07-16 — roughly 21 months before that suit, well outside the 6-month window. The broader portfolio rebrand (executed ≈Dec 2018) did immediately precede Fintiv's Dec 2018 Apple complaint, but that suit asserted the '125 patent, not the '196, which did not yet exist. So the "transfer-to-enable-assertion" pattern is not supported by the dates on this record.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — unclear. There is genuine distress evidence — Mozido sold its revenue-generating PayEase unit in 2017–2018 to repay a large debt obligation, had unpaid-employee issues, and its founder was indicted in Feb 2019 — but I found no confirmed Chapter 7/11 filing and no confirmed judicial sale of the patent portfolio in the sources retrieved. The patents were not sold; they stayed inside the renamed Fintiv entity. Marked unclear rather than present to avoid over-claiming.

7. Privateering — not present. Privateering requires an operating company transferring rights to an NPE that asserts on its behalf. Here the operating company became the asserter (Mozido → Fintiv). No third-party NPE was interposed. (There is a related, distinct thread — Fintiv's claim that Apple misappropriated CorFire/SK C&C mobile-wallet technology after 2011–2012 NDAs — but that is a trade-secret narrative, not a privateering assignment.)

8. Defensive aggregator — not present. The chain terminates at Fintiv, Inc., an active plaintiff; it does not end at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. The patent has not been neutralized defensively — and, separately, its claims have been judicially killed: Judge Albright (W.D. Tex.) held the "payment handler" limitations indefinite under §112 ¶6, invalidating the asserted claims of the '196 in Fintiv v. PayPal (final judgment 2023-07-28), and the Federal Circuit affirmed on 2025-04-30. Apple separately lost its IPR on the '196 (IPR2023-00398, Final Written Decision 2024-05-23, no claims held unpatentable), so the operative kill was the indefiniteness ruling, not the PTAB.

Verdict

NPE — moderate confidence.

The only strong signal the ownership record itself supports is signal 2: the current assignee, Fintiv, Inc., is a documented high-frequency patent plaintiff (Unified Patents-tracked in 8+ IPRs; serial W.D. Tex. suits against Apple and PayPal on this exact family). Two signals that would normally push this to "high" are absent on the documents: there is no shell-entity transfer — the "Fintiv" name is a Change of Name of the same Mozido, Inc. legal entity (Reel 051276/0649 per the family §3.73(b) statement), and there is no fire-sale or pre-litigation transfer within six months (recorded title events 2016-08-19, 2019-12-13, and 2020-07-16 all predate the April 2022 PayPal suit). The recurring-correspondent signal (3) remains unresolved because the Assignment Center correspondent field was not retrievable here, and confirming it is the single highest-value next step. What tips the call to NPE rather than "operating-company assertion" is the substance around the chain: the original operating assignee sold its revenue-generating PayEase unit, rebranded, formed a dedicated patent-enforcement division, and monetized the portfolio through serial licensing-first litigation against Apple and PayPal — notwithstanding Fintiv's residual StickyStreet/loyalty product line.

Verify: USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search "10438196"); mirror index at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html. For the family chain-of-title documents cited above, see the §3.73(b) Statement in App. No. 13/484,199 (signed Feb. 20, 2020). Litigation/PGR cross-references: Unified Patents PTAB case list for Fintiv/Mozido (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/ptab/caselist) and IPR2023-00398 final written decision (2024-05-23).

Data gaps I did not paper over: (a) the '196-specific reel/frame numbers for the 2016-08-19 and 2020-07-16 records; (b) all correspondent-of-record names and addresses; (c) confirmation of any bankruptcy/ABC proceeding. Each requires a direct Assignment Center and PACER pull before it can be stated as fact.

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

I have partial reference data. Let me retrieve the complete "References Cited" list and the forward citations.

Let me try to retrieve the full "References Cited" list from the granted patent documents.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 10,438,196 B2

1. Search verification (specific-number check)

I searched the specific identifier 10,438,196 (not a similar number). The record retrieved matches exactly:

No similar number (e.g., 10,438,169; 10,438,190; the continuation 11,468,434) was substituted. The justia/Google Patents record confirms this is the '196 patent itself.

2. Important methodological caveat

The task asks for "each patent citation for 10438196." I must be explicit about two things:

1. The '196 patent's "References Cited" is a long prosecution IDS list (on the order of ~100+ U.S. patents from 1993–2006, several foreign documents, and a set of non-patent literature). These are references cited by the applicant in an Information Disclosure Statement — they are not examiner-applied anticipatory references, and citation in an IDS carries no presumption that they anticipate or render obvious any claim.
2. I was not able to retrieve the complete, authoritative IDS list in this session (the granted PDF at euro.ecom.cmu.edu/.../10438196.pdf OCR'd only partially, and the Google Patents "Patent Citations" table did not load in full). What follows is the verifiable subset plus the non-patent literature, which I could retrieve in full. I flag this rather than reconstruct the list from training memory.

3. U.S. patent documents cited (verified subset)

From OCR of the granted '196 specification and its near-identical continuation US 11,468,434 (which reproduces the same reference list). Dates are as printed in the "References Cited" table.

Honest limitation: For the entries marked "—", I could not verify the titles/subject matter from the retrieved sources, so I will not fabricate a description or a claim mapping for them. Every one of these, however, has a publication date well before the Nov. 21, 2011 priority date, so each is temporally available as prior art under pre-AIA § 102(a)/(b) (or § 102(a)(1) post-AIA) if its content reads on a claim.

4. Foreign patent documents cited

(List is truncated; additional foreign documents appear in the IDS but could not be fully retrieved.)

5. Non-patent literature cited (retrieved in full from the Justia record)

These are the references most capable of being characterized, and are the strongest candidates for § 102(a)/(b) art:

Plus a set of prosecution "Other References" (Office Actions/Allowances in co-pending Mozido applications 13/484,199; 13/527,466; 13/680,824; 13/528,720; 13/964,707; 14/012,822; 14/213,543) — these are not prior art; they are procedural documents.

6. Anticipation analysis under 35 U.S.C. § 102

Independent claims at issue: 1, 8, 16, 21, 22 (per the PTAB Final Written Decision, as noted in the prior section). Section 102 anticipation requires a single reference disclosing every limitation.

Temporal qualification. Every U.S. patent and every NPL item above published before Nov. 21, 2011 and therefore qualifies as § 102(a)/(b) art (pre-AIA) if its disclosure is enabling and reads on a claim.

Candidate anticipatory mappings (analyst assessment, not examiner/adjudicated findings):

• Labrou et al., "Wireless Wallet" (2004) — the single most conceptually on-point reference. It describes a mobile wallet abstraction on a wireless device with payment flows. It is a plausible § 102(b) candidate against the mobile-wallet limitations of independent claims (esp. the purchase/transfer flows of claims 1/8 and 21/22). However, the '196 claims are directed to a cloud-based hub that routes an agent-terminal communication to a third-party wallet platform / third-party POS processing system — a multi-provider orchestration element Labrou does not appear to disclose. So I would rate it a § 102 candidate for the wallet/payment elements but not a complete-claim anticipatory reference as far as I can determine.
• Gao et al., "P2P-Paid" (2005) — plausible § 102(b) candidate against the transfer/money-movement limitations (claims 8/16-style), but again does not appear to disclose third-party-wallet-platform routing or a "secure, perishable purchase code."
• Motorola M-Wallet Solution (2006) — a printed publication describing a commercial mobile-wallet deployment; relevant to the enroll/deposit/withdraw/top-up functionality, but as a product brochure its disclosure is high-level and unlikely to disclose every limitation of any independent claim.
• Valcourt et al. (2005) and Wei et al. (2005) — general mobile-payment/ticketing background; not anticipatory of the hub-routing claims.
• US 5,221,838 (Gutman, 1993) and US 7,089,208 (Levchin, 2006) — electronic-money / payment-network art; potentially relevant to stored-value and payment-handler-type limitations, but decades-removed in architecture.

Critical legal reality check (grounded in the record):

• The examiner allowed all claims over this IDS art — i.e., no § 102 anticipation rejection was sustained using these references.
• In Apple v. Fintiv, IPR2023-00398, the PTAB's Final Written Decision (May 23, 2024) held "No Challenged Claims Unpatentable" for claims 1–22 — meaning Apple failed to prove any claim anticipated or obvious by a preponderance.
• The patent was later invalidated in Fintiv v. PayPal (W.D. Tex.) and affirmed (Fed. Cir. 23-2312, Apr. 30, 2025) on § 112 ¶ 6 indefiniteness of the "payment handler" terms — not on § 102 prior art.

Conclusion on § 102: Based on the retrievable record, no cited reference is established to anticipate any independent claim of the '196 patent. The most one can responsibly say is that Labrou (2004) and Gao (2005) are § 102(b) candidates against discrete limitations, and Levchin/Gutman are payment-art background. I cannot, on this record, assign a specific anticipatory claim mapping with confidence.

7. Contradictions / flags

1. Claim-1 subject matter discrepancy. The pre-grant publication US 2016/0055483 A1 shows claim 1 as the purchase-flow claim (customer communication → secure perishable purchase code → agent-terminal communication → debit wallet/credit agent → confirmation) plus the system components (integration tier, notification services engine, service connectors, payment handler, security services engine, rules engine), with claim 8 as its method counterpart. The previously generated summary instead mapped claim 1 to the third-party-mobile-wallet routing scenario. These are inconsistent; the granted claims must be pulled from the USPTO PatentCenter / granted PDF to resolve, which I could not complete here. Flag: unresolved.
2. The NPL list above is anchored to the Justia record for patent 10438196; moderate confidence that these items are in the '196 IDS specifically (some may belong to sibling Mozido applications). Flag: moderate confidence.
3. Law360 (Feb. 11, 2026) "Apple Keeps PTAB Win Over Fintiv Patent Claims" appears, per the prior section, to concern a different patent — consistent with the fact that the '196 IPR was a Fintiv win, not Apple's. Flag: uncertain.

8. Sources

• Google Patents — https://patents.google.com/patent/[US10438196B2](/patent/US10438196B2)/en
• Granted '196 PDF (OCR) — http://euro.ecom.cmu.edu/people/faculty/mshamos/10438196.pdf
• Continuation US 11,468,434 PDF (same reference list) — http://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/57/5d/f8/2cfbc94aecd861/US11468434.pdf
• Justia — https://patents.justia.com/patent/10438196 (NPL / "Other References")
• Pre-grant pub. claims — https://patents.justia.com/patent/20160055483
• PTAB IPR2023-00398 Final Written Decision; Fintiv v. PayPal, No. 6:23-cv-00490 (W.D. Tex. final judgment July 28, 2023); CAFC No. 23-2312 (Apr. 30, 2025).

Bottom line: I confirmed the exact patent and retrieved a partial but verified list of its cited references plus the complete non-patent-literature list. I do not find a reference that anticipates any '196 claim on this record, and I have flagged the one place where my findings conflict with the prior section (the identity of claim 1's subject matter) rather than papering over it.

I'll gather the prior-art references of record for this patent and the art relied on in the IPR, then build the § 103 combinations.

Let me pull the FWD grounds and the patent's "References Cited" list.

Obviousness Analysis — US 10,438,196 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

1. Scope, legal standard, and an important caveat

Effective law. The '196 patent claims priority to Provisional 61/562,301 (filed Nov. 21, 2011) via application 13/680,824 (filed Nov. 19, 2012). Both dates precede March 16, 2013, so pre-AIA § 102/§ 103 govern the priority case, with the pre-AIA "prior invention" date of Nov. 21, 2011 as the critical date. (Note: the '196 was itself filed Oct. 30, 2015, but as a continuation it takes the parent's date.)

Standard. Under Graham v. John Deere and KSR Int'l v. Teleflex, I resolve (a) scope/content of the prior art, (b) differences from the claims, (c) the level of ordinary skill, and (d) secondary considerations. Motivation to combine need not be explicit in any single reference; it may come from the nature of the problem, market pressure, the finite number of identified solutions, or the known desirability of the improvement (KSR, 550 U.S. at 417–421). MPEP rationales available here: combining known elements per known methods; simple substitution; using a known technique to improve a similar device; and "obvious to try" where the solution set is small and predictable.

Caveat carried over from the prior section. I could not verify verbatim claim text for independent claims 8, 16, 21, and 22. The element-level mapping below is therefore built on (i) the confirmed claim-1 element ("a payment handler that exposes a common API for interacting with different payment processors"), (ii) the three scenarios recited in the Summary, and (iii) the FIG. 7–9 data flows. Treat the claim-mapping as a likelihood analysis, not a chart. Where claim text is unverified I say so.

2. Level of ordinary skill

A POSITA here would be a software engineer/architect with ~2–4 years' experience in payments or mobile financial services, familiar with: stored-value/eMoney ledgers, ISO 8583 POS/ATM messaging, SMS/USSD/WAP mobile channels, payment gateways and processor abstraction layers, and KYC/AML controls. That person would read the '196 patent's components (integration tier, service connectors, payment handler, rules engine) as generic, well-known middleware, not as novel architecture.

3. The prior art set (of record and analogous)

From the '196's own "References Cited" list and its siblings (US 9,208,488 / US 9,892,386, which share the same examiner and field), and from the foreign-reference list, the relevant art clusters are:

4. Claim-by-claim (hypothetical) combinations

Ground 1 — Claim 1 (system; hub → third-party wallet platform → confirm → agent terminal)

Primary: WO 2005/086593 A1, in view of US 8,380,177 Laracey and a stored-value/ledger reference (e.g., US 7,089,208 Levchin or US 6,873,974 Schutzer).

• WO '593 teaches a central, interoperable mobile-payment platform expressly designed to sit between multiple operators, banks and merchants — i.e., the claimed "cloud-based transaction platform" that forwards a transaction to the wallet platform belonging to the customer's provider and returns a result. The "multiple mobile wallet providers" limitation is the reference's stated raison d'être.
• Levchin/Schutzer supply the hosted stored-value account and credit/debit of the wallet.
• Laracey supplies the agent-terminal/POS confirmation leg.

Motivation. Fragmentation of the mobile-wallet market (each operator running a closed wallet) created a recognized, market-driven need for interoperation so that a merchant/agent could accept any wallet. The '593 title and abstract frame this as the problem to be solved; combining a routing hub with known stored-value ledgers and known POS terminal confirmation is the predictable application of known techniques to a known problem (KSR). No reference teaches away; the field was moving toward open/interoperable wallets.

Claim-1 "payment handler exposing a common API" element. A payment-gateway abstraction that wraps heterogeneous processors behind one API was a staple of the art by 2011 (e.g., gateway/processor-connector products; the '196 itself describes the handler as merely "wrap[ping] APIs of different payment processors"). A POSITA would regard this as an obvious design choice for a hub that must talk to many processors. However — this is precisely the element the Federal Circuit held indefinite for lack of disclosed structure (see §7), so a § 103 theory that depends on it is exposed to a collateral § 112 problem.

Ground 2 — Claim 16 (specified POS system → corresponding third-party POS processing system → confirm)

Easterly US 2011/0208659 (POS transaction routed to a selected processing network based on the transaction) in view of Luz US 2014/0346291 and the hub of WO '593.

• Easterly discloses identifying/locating the appropriate downstream processing system from POS parameters — the functional equivalent of "sends the POS communication to a corresponding third-party POS transaction processing system that has been established to process POS transactions from the specified POS system."
• The differing terminus (a wallet platform in claim 1 vs. a POS processor in claim 16) is a simple substitution of one known back-end for another at the same interface — a classic § 103 variation.

Motivation. Once a platform already routes to arbitrary third-party back-ends, targeting the specific processor configured for a given POS system is the obvious extension; it requires no new mechanism.

Ground 3 — Claims 21/22 (purchase: customer request → secure, perishable purchase code → code presented to agent → debit third-party wallet)

Laracey US 8,380,177 and/or Boneh US 7,016,532 (scannable one-time code) in view of WO '593 and a wallet-debiting reference.

• Laracey/Boneh disclose generating a single-use scannable/perishable code, presenting it at a merchant terminal, and settling against a linked payment account — element-by-element the "secure, perishable purchase code… presented to an agent… debits… wallet."
• Whether the debit lands on a third-party wallet (vs. an account held by the platform) is the only delta, supplied by WO '593's multi-provider routing.

Motivation. A one-time code is a known anti-fraud mechanism (reduces replay/theft), and applying it to a third-party wallet via a routing hub is the predictable combination of two known techniques. For claim 22 (computer-readable-medium form), the medium recitation adds no patentable weight.

5. Motivation-to-combine synthesis (applicable to all grounds)

1. Same field / same problem. All references are directed to mobile payments/POS settlement — no field-of-endeavor gap.
2. Recognized need. Closed-loop wallets could not interoperate; a hub "supporting multiple wallet providers" was the stated industry goal (WO '593, and Mozido's own WO 2013/025273).
3. Finite, predictable solution set. Routing to a provider-specific back-end, confirming, and returning status is standard request/response middleware; a one-time code at the POS is a known mechanism.
4. No teaching away. No reference disparages interoperability or perishable codes.

6. Secondary considerations

The record I have shows no evidence of objective indicia (no nexus-backed commercial success, long-felt need, failure of others, or licensing tied to the claimed subject matter). Notably, the '196 was found indefinite and invalid in litigation (§7), which further undercuts any presumption of nexus-based non-obviousness.

7. Reality check — what actually happened on the merits

This is essential context, and it cuts against the hypothetical grounds above:

• PTAB, IPR2023-00398 (Apple v. Fintiv), Final Written Decision May 23, 2024: all claims 1–22 challenged; the Board held "No Challenged Claims Unpatentable" — Apple did not prove any claim obvious by a preponderance. So on the actual record and actual Apple grounds, the § 103 attack failed.
• CAFC, Fintiv v. PayPal, No. 23-2312 (Apr. 30, 2025) (precedential): the asserted claims including '196 claim 1 were held indefinite under pre-AIA § 112 ¶ 6 because "payment handler"/"payment handler service" are means-plus-function terms with no disclosed corresponding algorithm. This is a § 112 ground, not § 103 — but it neutralizes claim 1 regardless of any obviousness theory.

Practical takeaway: a § 103 case against the '196 is not the same as an invalidity case. The claim set as issued survived a full PTAB trial on obviousness; the successful invalidation vector was § 112 indefiniteness. Any obviousness analysis must contend with the Board's finding that the applied art did not teach the full combination, and must supply a motivation the Board found lacking.

8. Confidence and open items

• High confidence: the § 103 legal framework, the identity/scope of the references cited on the patent's face (WO '593, WO 2005/079254, Laracey, Boneh, Levchin, Easterly/Luz/Keresman from the related IPRs), the PTAB FWD outcome, and the CAFC § 112 holding.
• Lower confidence / needs verification: the verbatim text and element-by-element scope of claims 8, 16, 21, 22. My mapping is inferred from the Summary and FIG. 7–9. If a formal invalidity chart is required, pull the granted claim text (USPTO PatentCenter for 14/928,521 or the granted PDF) and re-run the mapping.
• Explicitly flagged contradictions/uncertainties:
  • The prior section noted a Feb. 11, 2026 Law360 item ("Apple Keeps PTAB Win Over Fintiv Patent Claims") that appears to concern a different patent — it does not describe the '196's IPR, which was a Fintiv win. Do not cite it as an '196 obviousness outcome.
  • I found no 2026 CAFC docket naming the '196 itself.
  • The task header says "Current Date: April 26, 2026," while the session metadata says 2026-10-01; this does not affect the analysis, which turns on the Nov. 21, 2011 critical date.

Sources: Google Patents (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US10438196B2](/patent/US10438196B2)/en); granted PDF (http://euro.ecom.cmu.edu/people/faculty/mshamos/[10438196](/patent/10438196).pdf); foreign/reference lists via FPO US 9,208,488 (https://www.freepatentsonline.com/[9208488](/patent/9208488).html); PTAB FWD, IPR2023-00398 (https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2023-00398/Apple_Inc._v._Fintiv_Inc/); CAFC 23-2312 (https://cases.justia.com/federal/appellate-courts/cafc/23-2312/23-2312-2025-04-30.pdf); Apple v. Mozido IPR2022-01150 exhibits (Easterly/Luz/Keresman) via docketalarm.