US 10482164

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

Let me verify the claim structure and check for any CAFC 2026 dockets.

Let me get the actual granted claims of US10482164.

US Patent 10,482,164 — Analyst Summary

Identification (from the authoritative patent text)

Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US10482164B2](/patent/US10482164B2)/en

Continuity (per the "Related Applications" paragraph)

Direct continuation of US 16/243,044 (filed 2019-01-08) → US 16/056,487 (2018-08-06) → US 14/224,002 (now US 10,042,823) → US 12/334,068 (now US 8,682,961) → US 11/384,957 (2006-03-20, now US 7,529,795), which in turn incorporates provisionals 60/784,141 and 60/784,140. This makes the '164 a member of the same sprawling "Hyperlink with Graphical Cue" family as US 10,372,793, US 10,691,874, US 11,308,260, etc.

Abstract (verbatim)

"A system, method, and computer program product are provided for causing display of a first set of representations of a first set of hyperlinks. In operation, a first input from a user is received indicating a selection of one of the first set of hyperlink representations and causes, in response to receiving the first input, display of a second set of representations of a second set of hyperlinks. Further, a second input from the user is received indicating a selection of one of the second set of hyperlink representations, and causes, in response to receiving the second input, navigation to a destination specified by the selected one of the second set of hyperlink representations."

Plain-language overview of the independent claims ⚠️ caveat

Important uncertainty: the authoritative text supplied to me is truncated inside the Detailed Description and does not contain the claims. I could not verify the granted claim set directly from the patent document. Based on the pre-grant publication of the same application (US 2019/0294655 A1), the independent claims appear to be claim 45 and claim 53, both drafted in the "menu items / hypertext" style of this family:

• Claim 45 (independent method claim) — A method of: (a) creating content for a web page that has a set of menu-item representations and a set of hyperlink representations; and (b) storing that page on a server so that, when served, it will: display the menu items while the hyperlink set is initially hidden; accept a first input in the form of hovering over a menu item; immediately display the hyperlink set (in a menu in the same window) in response; accept a second input selecting a hyperlink; and, in response, display another web page corresponding to that hyperlink that includes additional content plus another instance of the menu items, so navigation to both menu items and hyperlinks remains available.

• Claim 53 (independent method claim) — A method of providing a non-transitory computer-readable medium and storing page content configured to: display menu-item representations without any images, with the hyperlink representations initially hidden and in the form of hypertext (textual representations); and then respond to user selection inputs to reveal and follow the hyperlinks.

Dependent claims in that publication (e.g., 46–51) add: the hyperlink menu overlapping a content section; menu items re-displayed in a first page portion with content in a second, overlapping portion; implementation without images and without AJAX (and, separately, without Java) for speed; hyperlink letter appearance unchanged on input; and a search field returning results based on n-tuples (n ≥ 1).

Because the granted claims may differ in wording/numbering from the published application, treat the above as a strong indication rather than a verified recitation. Confirm against the issued patent's claims via USPTO PatentCenter (https://patentcenter.uspto.gov) or the Google Patents "Claims" tab.

CAFC / 2026 docket check

• I found no Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit 2026 docket or opinion specifically addressing US 10,482,164. I cannot rule out a pending appeal, but nothing in the searches ties a CAFC 2026 appeal to this patent number.
• The record does show a litigation family link for this patent (Darts-IP family 36654546) and a US case in the North Carolina Western District (3:22-cv-00513, Schaefer Systems Int'l v. Aloft Media), which asserted a sibling patent (US 10,042,823), not the '164.
• 2025–2026 Aloft Media activity I found concerns sister patents in the family (notably US 10,372,793), including declaratory-judgment actions: Nouryon USA LLC v. Aloft Media, LLC et al., D. Del. 1:26-cv-00193 (filed 2026-02-23, patent 10,372,793); AF Holdco, LLC v. Aloft, LLC, M.D. Tenn. 3:26-cv-00374; and Krueger International Inc. v. Aloft Media LLC, E.D. Wis. 1:26-cv-00425. These are district-court matters, not CAFC appeals, and do not name the '164.

Notes and residual uncertainty

1. The patent is recorded as expired as of 2026-03-20 (20 years from the 2006-03-20 priority). Given the stated current date, no live patent term remains.
2. I could not independently confirm the 2026 CAFC docket status via a direct CAFC docket search — treat the "no CAFC 2026 appeal found" statement as "not located," not as a definitive negative.
3. All identifiers above are transcribed literally. The record shows the original and current assignee as Aloft Media LLC; earlier prosecution history (per third-party complaints) reflects transfers through Stragent Technologies, Stragent LLC, Boadin Technology, and back to Aloft Media — I flag this as alleged in litigation, not verified from USPTO assignment records.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 10482164. Let me search multiple sources.

The first result was an unrelated patent (the '821 patent, Versata). Let me search the specific litigation sources.

I have relevant results. Let me verify the specifics of the case(s) that actually involve the '164 patent and check for any others.

I've gathered the available information. Here is my analysis. Note: I hit the tool-call limit before I could confirm the final disposition from PACER directly, so I flag the confidence level on outcome where relevant.

Litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 10,482,164 ("Hyperlink with Graphical Cue")

The patent (for identification)

Per the authoritative full text you provided:

• US 10,482,164 B2, titled "Hyperlink with graphical cue"
• Inventor: Gal Arav; Assignee: Aloft Media, LLC (Longview, TX)
• Application 16/438,451, filed June 11, 2019; granted/issued November 19, 2019
• Priority date (assumed): March 20, 2006; anticipated expiration March 20, 2026
• Legal status shown on Google Patents: "Expired – Lifetime"
• It is a continuation of App. 16/243,044 (issued as U.S. Pat. No. 10,372,793), which descends from the chain 16/056,487 ← 14/224,002 ('823) ← 12/334,068 ('961) ← 11/384,957 ('795).

The Google Patents record for US10482164 itself flags "Family has litigation" and links to a single U.S. case:
https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/North%20Carolina%20Western%20District%20Court/case/3%3A22-cv-00513

Identified case

Schaefer Systems International, Inc. v. Aloft Media, LLC

How the '164 patent featured: The complaint attached Exhibit 4 – U.S. Patent No. 10,482,164 and Exhibit 10 – "Claim Charts for '164 Patent." The dispute arose from a March 4, 2022 letter from Aloft Media (Exhibit 6) in which Aloft accused Schaefer's website of infringement and provided claim charts. Five patents from the same "Hyperlink with graphical cue" family were placed at issue in that action:

• 10,042,823 ('823) — Exhibit 1
• 10,078,623 ('623) — Exhibit 2
• 10,372,793 ('793) — Exhibit 3
• 10,482,164 ('164) — Exhibit 4
• 11,308,260 ('260) — Exhibit 5

I note that a third-party AI-generated complaint analysis page associated with this docket describes an accused instrumentality of "the MSN Money website (www.msn.com/en-us/money) operated by Microsoft Corporation" for the '823 patent. That description conflicts with the docket records showing Schaefer (not Microsoft) as plaintiff; I could not reconcile it before reaching my tool limit, so treat that specific detail as uncertain.

Searches returned NO other case involving 10,482,164

The other Aloft Media matters that surfaced involve different patents (earlier or sibling patents), not the '164 patent, and therefore are not results for this patent per your instruction:

• Aloft Media, LLC v. Microsoft Corp., No. 6:08-cv-00050 / 6:08-cv-00051 (E.D. Tex.) — earlier Aloft patents (e.g., '625), dismissed 2010.
• Aloft Media, LLC v. Google, Inc., No. 6:08-cv-00440 (E.D. Tex.) — '691 patent; dismissed with prejudice 2009.
• Aloft Media, LLC v. Yahoo!, Inc., Google, Inc., AOL LLC, No. 6:08-cv-00509 (E.D. Tex.) — '351 patent.
• Aloft Media, LLC v. Oracle Corp. et al., No. 6:09-cv-00304 (E.D. Tex.) — '898 and '910 patents.
• Nouryon USA LLC v. Aloft Media, LLC et al., No. 1:26-cv-00193 (D. Del.), filed Feb. 23, 2026 — asserts only the '793 patent (not '164).
• Morse Group Inc. v. Aloft Media LLC, No. 3:25-cv-50188 (N.D. Ill.), filed ~Apr. 22, 2025 — declaratory judgment re the '793 patent (not '164).
• The Brotherhood Mutual declaratory-judgment complaint (referenced at iniplaw.org) likewise concerns the '793 patent.

These are the subject of the same enforcement campaign by Aloft Media / George Street Partners (the Darts-IP "family has litigation" family 36654546), but none asserts U.S. Patent No. 10,482,164.

Bottom line

To the best of the sources I could reach (Google Patents litigation link, Unified Patents case list, Justia dockets, UniCourt, PACER Monitor, and complaint excerpts), the only litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 10,482,164 is Schaefer Systems International, Inc. v. Aloft Media, LLC, No. 3:22-cv-00513 (W.D.N.C.), filed September 29, 2022, now closed. If a more recent or additional case exists (including any appeal), I could not confirm it with the sources I accessed, and I did not find any CAFC appeal specifically naming the '164 patent.

Confidence notes: Case number, parties, court, filing date, and the '164 patent's involvement (Exhibits 4 and 10) are well corroborated across multiple sources. The precise disposition (settlement vs. dismissal, and terms) is not confirmed — the tracking data shows "Closed," but I recommend verifying the final order via PACER docket 3:22-cv-00513 before relying on it.

I'll start by verifying the structured data against public sources.

Let me dig into the patent's litigation family and any Board proceedings on related patents.

Let me check for any Unified Patents IPR filings against this family, and any PTAB proceedings on the sibling patents.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file for US 10,482,164: 0 (zero). The USPTO Open Data Portal returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding for this patent, and my independent web checks of the PTAB docket, CourtListener, and litigation/PATROLL coverage surfaced no petition ever filed against the '164 patent — no institution decision, no FWD, no settlement, no Federal Circuit appeal. That breakdown is simply "0 filed / 0 active / 0 invalidated / 0 sustained / 0 settled / 0 denied." The bottom-line defensive posture is therefore not "hardened" and not "claims canceled" — it is untested: the claims stand exactly as they issued on 2019-11-19, with the full statutory window for an IPR still open, and no § 315(e)(2) estoppel anywhere on this patent.

Because there is nothing to report proceeding-by-proceeding, the sections below document (a) what I searched and found absent, (b) the assertion/litigation backdrop that is not a PTAB proceeding but is the relevant context for a defendant today, and (c) what that means strategically.

No PTAB proceeding — candidate numbers I checked and did not find

• Type: n/a
• Status: No AIA trial on file (ODP-structured source); absence corroborated by web search.
• What I searched (2026-10-01): "US10482164 IPR PTAB," "10,482,164 inter partes review petition," "Aloft Media PTAB IPR," Unified Patents IPR Aloft Media, and family-wide queries across the sibling patents.
• Result: No hits for the '164 patent as the subject patent. Do not treat the absence as certainty — the ODP ingest can lag recently-filed petitions, and a petition filed in the last few months could exist without being indexed. I am flagging that explicitly rather than asserting there is provably nothing.
• Defensive value: Zero estoppel has attached. Any defendant can still file an IPR on any ground without worrying that a petitioner already ran those grounds.

Strategic summary

1. Claim status. Because no IPR, PGR, or CBM was ever instituted, no claim of US 10,482,164 has been canceled, narrowed, or held unpatentable by the Board. Every issued claim — independent and dependent — is UNTESTED, not "sustained." There is no FWD to quote, no claim-level disposition to rely on, and no Certificate of Correction or adverse-judgment certificate affecting the claim set. The provided record gives the abstract-level disclosure (first set of textual hyperlink representations → user selection → display of a second, graphical set → selection → navigation) but I do not have the verbatim claim set in front of me, so I will not characterize individual claim numbers. If you need the exact claim scope, pull the patent's claims from Google Patents US10482164B2 or Patent Center directly.

2. Estoppel landscape. There is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel because there was no IPR. There is also no § 325(e)(1) PGR estoppel. That means all prior-art grounds remain available to a defendant — § 102 and § 103, in district court and at the Board. Two timing notes that matter:

• PGR is foreclosed. The '164 patent issued 2019-11-19, so the 9-month PGR window under § 321(c) closed on or about 2020-08-19.
• CBM is foreclosed. The Transitional Program for Covered Business Method patents sunset on 2020-09-16 and no CBM can be filed now. (The patent's 2006-03-20 priority date would otherwise have made it a CBM candidate.)
• IPR remains fully available and is the only live AIA route. Critically, Aloft Media's enforcement pattern appears to be demand letters and licensing outreach first (see below), which does not trigger the § 315(b) one-year bar — that bar runs from service of a complaint alleging infringement. A defendant who has only received a demand letter is not time-barred.
• The patent owner's apparent strategy — letters, claim charts, and proposed license agreements — is the classic scenario that keeps the IPR window open indefinitely while the patent is pushed into declaratory-judgment actions rather than infringement suits.

3. Pattern signals. There is no same-petitioner pattern on this patent because there are no petitions. On the defensive-aggregator question: Unified Patents is in the chain, but only at the crowd-sourcing stage. Unified ran a PATROLL contest (opened 2026-03-27, closed 2026-05-02, $2,000 prize, winner announced 2026-05-12) seeking prior art on claim 23 of the sibling patent US 10,372,793 — not on the '164 patent, and PATROLL is a prior-art bounty, not an IPR (Unified Patents announcement; PATROLL contest page). There is no indication Unified has filed an IPR against any patent in this family. Note also that the '164 patent's own Google Patents record links a family-litigation entry to North Carolina Western District case 3:22-cv-00513 — that is a district court DJ action, not a PTAB case.

4. The assertion backdrop (not PTAB, but the reason the '164 patent matters). US 10,482,164 is one of a family (“Hyperlink with Graphical Cue,” inventor Gal Arav, assignee Aloft Media LLC, described publicly as an Oso IP entity) that includes US 10,042,823, 10,078,623, 10,372,793, 11,308,260, and 10,691,874, all tracing to the 2006-03-20 priority chain of US 7,529,795. Assertion activity is by demand letter + claim chart, with George Street Partners / Todd Schmidt as licensing agents and George Andrew Gordon as managing member:

• Schaefer Systems Intl., Inc. v. Aloft Media, LLC, No. 3:22-cv-00513 (W.D.N.C.), DJ complaint filed 2022-09-29 covering, inter alia, the '164 patent; the court denied the defendants' Rule 12(b)(2)/(b)(6) motions on 2023-06-16, finding personal jurisdiction and a viable NC Abusive Patent Assertion Act claim (Dkt. 79).
• Morse Group, Inc. v. Aloft Media, LLC, No. 3:25-cv-50188 (N.D. Ill.), DJ complaint filed 2025-04-22.
• Nouryon USA LLC v. Aloft Media LLC, No. 1:26-cv-00193 (D. Del.), DJ complaint filed 2026-02-23, pleading inequitable conduct based on the family's prosecution history and targeting the '793 patent at claim 23.
• Additional DJ activity by Krueger International is reported in secondary coverage.
  These cases raise unenforceability (inequitable conduct) and prior-art invalidity theories — including the "Instantbull Website" (allegedly public 2006-07-22) and allegations that the 2008-12-12 continuation added new matter, which matters directly to the '164 patent's priority claim.

Recommended next steps

• If you are a defendant facing the '164 patent: there is no FWD to lean on and no canceled claims to cite. Do not tell your client any claim is dead — none is. Your two most promising tracks are (i) an IPR, which remains available and carries no estoppel risk from a prior petitioner, and (ii) § 112 / priority / inequitable-conduct defenses in the district court, borrowing the new-matter and duty-of-candor theories already pleaded in Nouryon and Schaefer. The '164 patent's own priority claim runs through the 2008-12-12 '068 continuation that the Nouryon pleadings attack — that is the family's soft spot.
• Confirm the docket before you rely on the zero-count. Re-run PTAB E2E / Patent Center and the ODP endpoint on the day you file: Patent Center and PTAB E2E. If any petition has appeared, the § 315(a)/(b) clock and the General Plastic follow-on factors become live immediately.
• If you file an IPR, map your deadlines to the statutory framework. From the institution decision, the Board must issue an FWD within 12 months (§ 316(a)(11)); the patent owner's preliminary response is due 3 months after notice of filing, and the institution decision is due 6 months from the petition's filing date (§ 314(b)).
• Watch the parallel litigation for a stay or judgment. A district-court invalidity or unenforceability judgment on the sibling patents would be the strongest material a defendant could get, and any final judgment of unpatentability on the '164 patent itself would be the only path to cancellation absent an IPR.
• Treat the absence of PTAB activity as a signal, not a comfort. Well-asserted patents eventually attract IPRs; that none has been filed here — despite an active demand-letter campaign since at least 2022 — suggests targets have so far chosen DJ actions and pre-litigation leverage over Board challenges. That window will not stay open forever.

Caveats: I found no PTAB proceeding on US 10,482,164 and no Federal Circuit appeal concerning it, and I have not fabricated any proceeding number, panel, or disposition. Two facts I could not verify from an authoritative docket and am therefore not asserting: (1) whether any petition has been filed within the ODP's ingest lag; and (2) the verbatim claim set of the '164 patent. The FWD, institution decision, and CAFC links that the standard format calls for do not exist for this patent because no such documents were ever generated.

I'll research the assignment record for US 10482164. Let me start with several searches.

Let me dig deeper into the assignment chain and the Oso IP connection.

I was able to gather substantial evidence but hit tool-call limits before extracting the exact reel/frame entries from the USPTO Assignment Center. Below is my reconstruction, with unverified fields flagged rather than fabricated.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US 10,482,164 B2 ("Hyperlink with graphical cue")

⚠️ Data-access caveat (read first): I could not load the USPTO Assignment Center record pages for this patent within this research session (tool limits). The patent face data, the continuation family, third-party NPE registries, and litigation records below are documented and cited. Specific reel/frame numbers and recorded correspondent addresses are NOT verified here and are marked [unverified] rather than invented. Re-run the reel/frame pull at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search "10482164") before relying on this for any filing.

Inventors

• Gal Arav — Raanana, Israel. Sole named inventor on the '164 patent and on every member of this family (see US 7,529,795; US 7,856,472; US 10,372,793; US 10,042,823, all naming Arav alone).
• Employer at filing: Not determinable from the patent face. The family is catalogued by the Stanford NPE Litigation Database under the asserter category "5 – Individual-inventor-started", i.e., the portfolio originated with a lone inventor rather than a corporate R&D lab.
• Unusual pattern: A single individual inventor, resident in Israel, with no corporate co-assignee at filing and a single company (Aloft Media) as the named owner across a ~13-year continuation chain. That is a classic inventor-originated, monetization-oriented portfolio shape rather than a corporate product team. I did not find evidence of inventors "departing the original assignee within 12 months," because there was no operating assignee to depart from.

Original assignee

• Aloft Media, LLC, Longview, Texas (US).
• Entity named on the issued patent: Aloft Media, LLC. Google Patents lists Aloft Media LLC as both original and current assignee, and Justia lists assignee "Aloft Media, LLC (Longview, TX)."
• Primary line of business: No evidence of any commercial product or service. Third-party NPE registries treat Aloft Media as a licensing/assertion vehicle, not an operating company. Unified Patents describes Aloft Media, LLC as "an NPE and entity of Oso IP, LLC" (Unified Patents PATROLL, 2026-03-29).
• Product embodying claims: None identified. The specification describes a generic web-navigation UI (text menu → hidden hyperlink set revealed on hover), with no indicia that Aloft Media ever shipped it.
• Current status: Appears operational as a licensing entity and remains the named owner. Related entity Oso IP, LLC runs a larger patent-assertion program (per Unified).

Assignment timeline

Plain statement: I was unable to verify any recorded-assignment reel/frame entries for US 10,482,164 in this session. What is documented is the continuation/ownership lineage (from the patent's own "Related Applications" and sibling patents) and the corporate relationship to Oso IP, LLC:

• 2006-03-20 — Non-provisional 11/384,957 filed (Arav), issuing as US 7,529,795. Named owner on issued face: Aloft Media, LLC (Longview, TX). Correspondent/attorney of record across the family: Patrick E. Caldwell, Esq. [reel/frame unverified]. Context: origin of the portfolio (inventor-originated, later housed in an assertion vehicle).
• 2008-12-12 — Continuation 12/334,068 filed (Arav), issuing as US 8,682,961. Owner: Aloft Media, LLC [reel/frame unverified]. Context: continuation-farming of the same disclosure.
• 2014-03-24 — Continuation 14/224,002 filed (Arav), issuing as US 10,042,823. Owner: Aloft Media, LLC [reel/frame unverified]. Context: continuation.
• 2018-08-06 — Continuation 16/056,487 filed (Arav). [reel/frame unverified]. Context: continuation.
• 2019-01-08 — Continuation 16/243,044 filed (Arav), issuing as US 10,372,793 ("Improving Usefulness of Hyperlinks"). Owner: Aloft Media, LLC. Attorney of record: Patrick E. Caldwell, Esq. [reel/frame unverified]. Context: continuation.
• 2019-06-11 — 16/438,451 filed (Arav), issuing as US 10,482,164 (the instant patent) on 2019-11-19. Applicant listed as Aloft Media, LLC, Longview, TX. Attorney/agent of record on the face: Patrick E. Caldwell, Esq. [reel/frame unverified]. Context: continuation.

If the Assignment Center shows NO post-issuance assignment record for '164, that is itself the finding: the patent was owned by Aloft Media at issuance and remains with Aloft Media, meaning there is no operating-company→NPE transfer to date in the recorded chain for this member — because the NPE vehicle was the applicant from the start.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10482164
    2006 : Original app filed by Gal Arav
         : Aloft Media LLC named owner
    2008 : Continuation filed
    2014 : Continuation filed
    2018 : Continuation filed
    2019 : US 10482164 issued to Aloft Media
    2022 : Declaratory judgment suit filed in NCWD

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Present (moderate). The owner of record is Aloft Media, LLC, a Longview, TX single-purpose LLC with no products, tied by Unified Patents to Oso IP, LLC. Longview/East-Texas-area address is consistent with an assertion venue. Names/address alone are not dispositive, so this is moderate, strengthened by the explicit NPE labeling in signal 2.

2. Known asserter in the chain — Present (strong). Two independent registries:

   • Unified Patents states Aloft Media, LLC is "an NPE and entity of Oso IP, LLC."
   • Stanford NPE Litigation Database lists Aloft Media LLC as a Patent Asserter in Aloft Media LLC v. Palm, Inc., 2:08-cv-00292 (E.D. Tex., filed 2008-07-29); Aloft Media, LLC v. Yahoo!, Inc., 6:09-cv-00291 (E.D. Tex.); and Aloft Media, LLC v. SAP AG, 6:11-cv-00110 (E.D. Tex.).
     These suits concern family members (e.g., '795/'625), not necessarily '164, but they establish Aloft Media as a serial assertion entity within the same portfolio.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Present (moderate), but caveat. Patrick E. Caldwell, Esq. is the attorney/agent of record on the family, including the '793 sibling (per its patent face) and appears in third-party reporting as counsel tied to Aloft Media's prosecution; a separate complaint also names attorney Andrew Gordon alongside Caldwell re: the family's prosecution history (iniplaw.org DJ complaint). Caveat: I could not confirm Caldwell as the assignment-recording correspondent (as opposed to prosecution counsel) without the reel/frame pages. Treat recurrence as moderate, not confirmed. Many firms do both operating and NPE work, so this needs the assignment-center pull to firm up.

4. Cascading transfers — Unclear / not established. I found no evidence of consecutive chained-LLC assignments (<24 months) for '164. Owner appears constant (Aloft Media) throughout the recorded lineage. Mark not present on current data.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — Unclear. Aloft Media was the applicant/owner at issuance (2019), and the identified suit in the patent's litigation record (W.D.N.C. 3:22-cv-00513) postdates issuance by ~3 years. No ownership change immediately preceding suit is documented. Mark not present / unverified.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. No bankruptcy proceedings or court-supervised patent sale identified for any owner.

7. Privateering — Not present. No evidence that an operating company transferred this patent to an NPE to assert against competitors. There is no operating-company originator in this chain.

8. Defensive aggregator — Not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified, or OIN. Instead, Unified Patents is challenging the family (e.g., PATROLL prior-art contest on sibling US 10,372,793), which is the inverse of neutralization.

Verdict

NPE — high confidence.

Rationale: (a) the current/sole owner Aloft Media, LLC is expressly identified by Unified Patents as "an NPE and entity of Oso IP, LLC", and by the Stanford NPE Litigation Database as a serial patent asserter (Palm 2008, Yahoo 2009, SAP 2011); and (b) the portfolio is inventor-originated with no operating product, held by a single-purpose licensing LLC. These are two strong, independently-sourced signals. The one important gap — I could not verify reel/frame/assignment-correspondent entries in this session, so the "repeat correspondent" and "cascading transfer" signals remain unconfirmed.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number 10482164) — pull the reel/frame entries and the correspondent of record to confirm or refute signals 3 and 4.

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

Let me pull the specific citation data for US 10,482,164.

Scope, method, and what I could verify

I searched for the literal identifier 10,482,164 (B2) and worked from the Google Patents page for US10482164B2, Justia, FreePatentsOnline, and the family front‑page PDFs on patentimages.storage.googleapis.com. Two honest limitations up front, because they materially affect the deliverable:

1. The authoritative body text supplied to me is truncated before the claims (this was already flagged in the previously-generated summary). I therefore could not read the granted claim set of the '164 directly.
2. I could not retrieve the '164's own front-page "(56) References Cited" block through the searches available to me. What I could retrieve are the "(56) References Cited" blocks of the direct family members that share the identical disclosure — specifically US 8,682,961 (a named ancestor of the '164) and US 8,683,003 (same title, "Hyperlink with graphical cue," same examiner/attorney). Because this family re‑files the same specification with only the claims changed, those lists are the best available proxy for the '164's own cited art — but they are a proxy, not the verified '164 list. Treat the exact set and any given reference's presence on the '164 front page as unconfirmed.

I did not find a CAFC or other appellate citation to this number in the searches run.

Identification (literal, no auto-correction)

⚠️ Contradiction check against the prior section: the earlier summary noted a Darts‑IP family/litigation link and a 2022 N.D. Cal./W.D.N.C.‑style case. Those are consistent with what the '164 record shows (litigation family 36654546; W.D.N.C. 3:22‑cv‑00513). Nothing I found contradicts it. One caution: the large "references" lists that appear on Justia pages for US 11,308,260 and US 8,682,961 (Zuckerberg 7,669,123; Cheever 7,827,265; Walker 7,835,950; etc.) look like social‑networking art and may be "Cited By"/cross‑page bleed rather than cited in these patents — I did not verify their provenance, so I exclude them from the analysis below rather than risk misattributing them.

Prior-art citations recovered (from the shared-disclosure family front pages)

A. U.S. patent documents

Printed dates/classes are transcribed as they appear on the front page.

* = marked as a "primary/other" citation of interest on the front page.

(References 12's "11/2002" is printed inconsistently with the B1/2002 sequence — I am transcribing it literally rather than correcting it.)

B. Foreign patent documents (as printed)

• WO 02/03243 A1 — 1/2002
• WO 02/061610 A1 — 8/2002
• WO 2004/029780 A2 — 4/2004
• WO 2007/109264 A3 — 9/2007 (this is the Aloft "Message board aggregator" PCT; family-internal)

C. "Other publications"

The front page reproduces a long list of financial/portal URLs (e.g., moneycentral.msn.com/..., finance.yahoo.com/lookup, bigcharts.marketwatch.com/symbollookup/..., stockcharts.com, siliconinvestor.com, ragingbull.com). These originate from the specification's own "symbol lookup" discussion and are cited as prior-art resources, not as claim-mapping art.

Which references matter for §102 — and my assessment

Caveat that governs the whole section: the granted claims of the '164 were not in my source text. Based on the pre-grant publication, the independent claims are in the "menu items / hypertext, initially hidden, revealed on hover" style (the earlier summary posits claims 45 and 53 there). So I map by claimed feature, not by verified number. If the issued claims differ, the numbering below will shift.

The independent claim concepts break into four feature groups:

• FG1 — a first set of representations of hyperlinks (menu items) displayed; a second set (graphical/logos) initially hidden and revealed on hover/selection.
• FG2 — a second user input selecting from the revealed set causes navigation to the hyperlink destination.
• FG3 — the destination page carries another instance of the menu items, so navigation stays available.
• FG4 — dependent-claim limitations: no images / no AJAX / no Java; letter appearance unchanged; n‑tuple search field.

§102 (anticipation) assessment by reference:

• None of the cited references, standing alone, discloses all of FG1–FG3 together. The combination of (a) a textual category representation that on hover reveals (b) a logo/graphical representation set, and then (c) navigation on a second input, with the menu re‑appearing on the destination page, is not something any single one of these 1998–2005 references appears to teach. In practical terms, these references read on §103, not §102, for the independent claims.
• Strongest individual §102 candidates against FG1/FG2 (hover-revealed link sets / bookmarks menus):
  • US 6,282,548 (Burner et al., 8/2001) — bookmark/link-management art; potentially relevant to FG1's "set of hyperlink representations revealed from a hidden state."
  • US 6,366,947 (Kamer, 4/2002) — browser/navigation UI art; potential FG1/FG2 subject matter.
  • US 6,199,077 (Inala et al., 3/2001) and US 6,199,157 (Dow et al., 3/2001) — network-page navigation/annotation art; potential FG1/FG2.
  • US 5,854,630 (Nielsen, 12/1998) and US 5,754,176 (Crawford, 5/1998) — early hypertext/menu UI patents; potential FG1.
  • US 6,216,141 (Straub et al., 4/2001) — hypertext/linking; potential FG1/FG2.
• References most likely to be §103 (obviousness) combiners rather than §102: the Steele-family (6,065,051; 6,253,325; 6,314,458), Tedesco (6,421,651; 6,430,537), McBrearty (6,651,091), Itoh (6,850,972), Douvikas (6,633,311; 6,691,158), Knight (6,515,681), plus the WOs.
• FG3 (persistent menu re-displayed on destination pages): nothing in the recovered list appears to disclose this; it is the feature most likely to survive a §102/§103 challenge.
• FG4 (n‑tuple search / "no AJAX" dependent claims): these track the specification's other subject matter (the symbol-lookup Figures 4A–4C). The financial-portal URLs listed under "Other publications" are the closest art for the n‑tuple lookup dependent claims, and are §102/§103-relevant to those claims only.

Honest bottom line: I can identify the cited art with reasonable confidence, but I cannot responsibly assert that any single listed reference anticipates a specific numbered claim of the '164, because (i) I don't have the verified granted claims and (ii) I have not read the full text of each reference in this session. Descriptions above are characterizations of subject matter, not verified element-by-element disclosures.

What I could not confirm (so it isn't mistaken for settled fact)

1. The '164's actual front-page reference list. My list is reconstructed from US 8,682,961 and US 8,683,003 (same title/disclosure/examiner). The '164, being a 2019 continuation, would ordinarily carry a sub-set of these.
2. Granted claim numbers. The earlier section's "claims 45/53" is from the pre-grant publication; the issued patent may renumber. Do not cite "claim 45" of the '164 as verified.
3. "Other publications" provenance — the URL list is from the spec text; I could not confirm it was formally cited as prior art against the '164 specifically.
4. The Zuckerberg/Cheever/Walker lists seen on Justia family pages — provenance unverified; excluded.

Recommended verification (to make this citation-grade)

• Pull US 10,482,164 B2's front page and "Claims" tab directly at https://patents.google.com/patent/US10482164B2/en (the "(56) References Cited" and "Claims" anchors), or via USPTO PatentCenter (https://patentcenter.uspto.gov) for the as-issued claims and the examiner's Form PTO‑892.
• For §102/§103 mapping, read each primary reference (especially 6,282,548, 6,366,947, 6,199,077, 6,199,157, 6,216,141) against the issued independent claims, element by element.

If you confirm the issued claim set, I can map each of the references in the table above to specific claims with element-by-element citations to the references' columns/lines.

I'll ground my §103 analysis in the prior-art set already assembled, and verify subject matter for the key references before constructing combinations.

Let me verify the subject matter of the remaining core references I intend to rely on.

Obviousness Analysis — US 10,482,164 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

⚠️ Claim-scope caveat (carried forward, and it governs everything below). As the Prior Art and Summary sections already flagged, the authoritative text supplied for the '164 is truncated before the claims. The analysis below maps the cited art to the feature groups (FG1–FG4) that the pre-grant publication (US 2019/0294655 A1) indicates the independent claims recite — not to verified, numbered, as-issued claim elements. Nothing here should be filed as an element-by-element § 103 chart against specific issued claim numbers until the granted claims are pulled. Where the earlier sections and my searches disagree, I flag it explicitly.

1. The presumptive claim scope being tested

Reconstructed from the pre-grant publication (per the Summary section), the independent claims fall into four feature groups:

POSITA definition (assumed for this analysis): a software engineer with a B.S. in CS/EE (or equivalent) and ~2 years' experience building hypertext/web UIs, familiar with browser rendering, HTML/frames, JavaScript, and standard GUI widget design as of the 2006-03-20 priority date. This is the level the AIA/California federal courts have used for web-UI patents of this era, and it is deliberately not a specialist — which matters, because nearly every element is a generic UI building block.

2. The governing legal standard (Graham / KSR)

Under Graham v. John Deere and KSR Int'l v. Teleflex, 550 U.S. 398 (2007), the questions are (1) scope/content of the prior art, (2) differences from the claims, (3) PHOSITA level, and (4) objective indicia. KSR controls the "motivation" inquiry: where elements are known, individually conventional, and combined to achieve a predictable result, the combination is obvious, and the motivation may come from design incentives, market demand, the finite number of identified solutions, and "obvious to try" — not only from explicit teaching in the references. This family is squarely in KSR territory: a two-level hyperlink menu is not a new result, it is an aggregation of well-known UI techniques.

3. Primary combination — the "cascading/hover-revealed menu of links" mapping (attacks FG1 + FG2)

Combination 3-A: Nielsen (US 5,854,630) or Crawford (US 5,754,176) + Knight (US 6,515,681) + Burner (US 6,282,548) + Straub (US 6,216,141).

• Nielsen (US 5,854,630, 12/1998) and Crawford (US 5,754,176, 5/1998) — early hypertext/menu-navigation UIs. These supply FG1's "first set of textual representations of hyperlinks" and the basic hypertext-navigation paradigm. Both were cited on the family front pages (per the Prior Art section), i.e., the examiner treated them as the art of record.
• Knight (US 6,515,681, 2/2003; class 345/751) — menu-display art. A cascading/pop-up menu is the two-tier "reveal a second set on selection of the first" structure. This supplies FG1's "reveal the hidden second set on a first input" — the mechanism the '164 relies on. (I verified only the Dun & Bradstreet-style hierarchy; I did not re-read Knight's spec this session, so treat the element mapping as strong-but-not-verified.)
• Burner (US 6,282,548, 8/2001; Alexa Internet) — verified: it discloses a button bar / "where to go next" area that displays a set of links in a popup, concurrently with the web page, and where "user chooses link from client's button bar → client sends a DDE request to browser to go to the requested page." That is FG1's second-set display and FG2's "select → navigate" in one reference. Its popup-of-links structure is directly analogous to the '164's logo menu.
• Straub (US 6,216,141, 4/2001) — hypertext linking. Supplies FG2 navigation-on-selection as a generic-but-disclosed element (and, if the second set is text, the "letter appearance unchanged" dependent limitation).

Motivation (KSR-compliant):

1. Same field, same problem. Every reference is browser/GUI navigation art addressing the '164's own stated problem — telling the user where a link goes without spending visual real estate (see the '164 Background).
2. Predictable result. Combining a cascading/hover menu (Knight) with a popup-of-links that navigates on click (Burner) yields exactly the '164's behavior, with no new functional result — the classic KSR "predictable combination of known elements."
3. Design incentive / market demand. The '164's own specification concedes that graphic images "must typically occupy a significant area" and that this is a limitation to be solved. A PHOSITA facing that stated constraint has an explicit incentive to nest a graphical/logo menu inside a compact textual trigger — i.e., to build precisely the two-tier structure.
4. Finite solutions. "Hidden-until-invoked menu" is a small, well-known design space (flyouts, cascading menus, hover popups). Selecting one is not innovation; it is KSR's "finite number of identified, predictable solutions."

4. Secondary combination — portal/aggregator framing (attacks FG2 + the server-side "creating content" step)

Combination 4-A: Inala (US 6,199,077) + Dow (US 6,199,157) + Burner + Straub.

• Inala (US 6,199,077, 3/2001) — verified: an Internet Portal that "lists the user's URL's in the form of hyperlinks such that a user may click on a hyperlink and navigate to the page," with a server-side portal application presenting a personalized page. This maps to the independent method claim's "creating content for a web page … storing on a server" step and the portal-hosting architecture, and to FG2.
• Dow (US 6,199,157, 3/2001) — network-page presentation/annotation art; supplies the server/client content-delivery framing and the "additional content" on the destination page.
• Motivation: a portal that already lists categorized hyperlinks (Inala) is the natural host for a two-tier categorized link menu; adding the reveal-on-input behavior of Combination 3-A is an improvement to the same portal's usability, the classic KSR "a PHOSITA is a person of ordinary creativity, not an automaton" rationale.

5. The FG3 attack — "menu re-displayed on the destination page"

FG3 is the feature most likely to survive a § 102 challenge (the Prior Art section flagged it as such), so it needs its own combination.

Combination 5-A: Steele family (US 6,065,051; US 6,253,325; US 6,314,458) or Dow (US 6,199,157) or McGee (US 6,393,468) + Combination 3-A.

• Frames-based persistent navigation. The persistent-navigation-frame pattern — a menu frame that stays displayed while content loads into a target frame — is the canonical way to keep navigation available across page changes. The '164 itself uses frames (frames 502a/502b) for exactly this, and its specification repeatedly describes a first frame holding the link representations and a second frame holding the target content. Any of the Steele-family network-navigation references, Dow, or McGee discloses the client/server navigation constructs from which the persistent-menu-on-destination feature follows directly.
• Motivation: once the designer elects a two-tier menu (Comb. 3-A), keeping the menu available after navigation is an obvious convenience/consistency improvement — the whole point of a navigation menu is persistent availability. This is "use of a known technique to improve a similar device in the same way" (KSR), and it produces a predictable result with no unexpected behavior.
• Caveat: I did not verify this session that any single one of these references expressly re-renders the identical menu items on the destination page. If FG3 is drafted narrowly (same menu items, same window, no re-fetch), the mapping is strongest via the frames references but requires element-by-element confirmation. This is the combination's soft underbelly and the place a patent owner would defend.

6. The dependent-claim / negative-limitation attacks (FG4)

Combination 6-A (n‑tuple / type-ahead search field): US 6,208,339 + the "Other publications" financial-portal URL list + Tedesco (US 6,421,651 / US 6,430,537).

• My search indicates US 6,208,339 is "User-interactive data entry display system with entry fields having distinctive and changeable autocomplete" — i.e., type-ahead completion of a partially typed entry against a library of proposed entries, with on-screen status indicia. That is, on its face, the n‑tuple/autocomplete subject matter of the '164's FIGS. 4A–4C (match typed text "aap" against AAP/AAPH/AAPL ticker-name tuples and display matches). This is a strong, direct § 103 (arguably § 102) reference for the search-field dependent claim.
  • ⚠️ Contradiction to flag: the Prior Art section transcribed US 6,208,339 as "Alma/Atlas et al.," class 715/750–780. My search ties 6,208,339 to the autocomplete patent. These may be the same document (inventor-family/assignee attribution differs by source) or a mis-transcription. Verify inventor/assignee before relying on this reference, but the autocomplete mapping is the right subject matter regardless of the naming discrepancy.
• Financial-portal URLs (moneycentral.msn.com, finance.yahoo.com/lookup, bigcharts.marketwatch.com/symbollookup, etc.) — printed on the family's own front pages under "Other publications." These are printed publications evidencing that symbol/name lookup with tuple-style matching against ticker databases was routine in the same financial-message-board context the '164 addresses. Combined with 6,208,339, the searching step is squarely obvious (and likely anticipated).
• Tedesco (US 6,421,651 / US 6,430,537) — business/information-management art useful as a secondary combiner for the data-organization aspects.

Combination 6-B (negative "no images / no AJAX / no Java" limitations): any pre-2002 GUI reference + the ordinary-knowledge baseline.

• "Without AJAX" is self-defeating as a patentable distinction. The AJAX acronym was not coined until February 2005 (Adaptive Path), and asynchronous-XML page updates were not standard practice at the '164's 2006 priority and certainly not at the 1998–2004 dates of the cited references. Every cited reference is therefore inherently "without AJAX." A negative limitation that is inherently met by all prior art cannot confer novelty or non-obviousness; it at most describes the absence of a technique that did not yet exist. If anything, the '164's own spec embraces AJAX (it touts pre-downloading logos via AJAX as the fast embodiment), which undercuts any argument that "without AJAX" is the inventive core.
• "Without images / without Java" — likewise negative limitations. In re Wilson / In re Gulack line: negative limitations are given weight only if the reference teach-away or the absence produces a non-obvious result. Here, "no images" is contradicted by the '164's own Summary and FIG. 5A, which use logo images as the second set — so the scope depends entirely on drafting, and a reference that reveals a textual second set (Nielsen/Crawford) reads on it directly. "Without Java" is met by any reference that simply does not use applets — again inherently.
• "Letter appearance unchanged" — a visual-formatting detail. Under KSR and the Federal Circuit's "non-functional descriptive/design choice" cases, an aesthetic/formatting choice that does not change function is obvious. Straub (hypertext linking) supplies the text-link rendering baseline.

7. Motivation-to-combine synthesis (the KSR factors, aggregated)

A single paragraph a litigation team can use:

At the 2006 priority date, every claimed element was individually known: Nielsen/Crawford (textual hyperlink menus), Knight (reveal-a-hidden-subset cascading menus on user input), Burner (a popup set of links, displayed concurrently with the page, that navigates on selection), Inala/Dow (server-hosted portal listing categorized hyperlinks), Straub (navigate-on-selection), the Steele family/Dow/McGee (persistent navigation across page changes), and 6,208,339 + the financial-portal publications (type-ahead tuple lookup). The references are in the same field (browser/GUI navigation), address the same stated problem (indicating a link's destination without spending screen real estate), and combine to a predictable two-tier menu with no new functional result. The '164's own specification supplies the design incentive by conceding that graphical links consume excessive space — the precise motivation to nest a graphical set inside a compact textual trigger. And the solution space was small and finite (flyouts, cascading menus, hover popups). That is KSR obviousness.

8. Objective indicia / secondary considerations

• No unexpected results. The '164 does not describe any behavior that would surprise a PHOSITA given the combination; the "advantage" claimed (speed/intuitiveness) is the ordinary expected benefit of an already-prepopulated menu, not a surprising one.
• No teaching away. Nothing in the cited art disparages two-tier link menus — the reverse; the art is replete with cascading/popup invocations.
• No long-felt unmet need is evidenced by the record I have: the disclosure is a UI convenience layered on known web-navigation infrastructure, and I found no evidence of prior failure of others.
• Commercial success / licensing must be tied to the claims to count (Graham); Aloft Media's demand-letter program (documented in the Litigation section) is not evidence of non-obviousness.
• ⚠️ Copying is inapplicable — no accused product is identified here.

9. Where the obviousness case is weakest (and what a defendant must do)

1. FG3 (same menu re-rendered on the destination page). Strong but reference-dependent; needs element-by-element confirmation against the issuing claims and the frames/navigation references. If the patent owner narrows to "same menu items, same window, persisted without navigational round-trip," a § 103 case is harder and a § 112/priority attack (new-matter, as pleaded in Nouryon) becomes the better track.
2. The "graphical/logo" versus "textual" character of the second set. The Summary notes the independent claims may recite the second set as hypertext/textual (claim 53 in the publication) while the abstract emphasizes graphical representations. If the issued claims read textual, the mapping to Nielsen/Crawford/Straub is stronger; if graphical, Burner's popup-of-links plus ordinary logo usage controls. Pin down which before briefing.
3. Verification debt (carry forward, unresolved):
   • The '164's verbatim issued claims — pull from Google Patents US10482164B2 or Patent Center.
   • Knight (6,515,681), Straub (6,216,141), Nielsen (5,854,630), Crawford (5,754,176), and the Steele/Dow/McGee references' actual disclosures — I verified subject matter for Burner (6,282,548) and Inala (6,199,077) from primary sources this session, but the rest are characterized from their citation role, not re-read element-by-element.
   • The 6,208,339 inventor/assignee discrepancy noted in §6.
   • The family front-page citation lists used by the Prior Art section are a proxy for the '164's (56) references; the '164, as a 2019 continuation, would ordinarily carry a subset. Confirm the '164's own front page.

10. Bottom line

Every presumptive limitation of US 10,482,164 — two-tier link representation (FG1), navigate-on-selection (FG2), and type-ahead tuple search (FG4) — is disclosed or rendered obvious by the cited 1998–2004 art, and the negative "no AJAX / no Java" limitations are inherently met by all of it (AJAX did not exist as a technique at the references' dates). The two strongest, most filable § 103 combinations are:

1. Nielsen/Crawford + Knight + Burner + Straub (FG1 + FG2) — with Burner doing the heaviest lifting because it verifiedly discloses a concurrently-displayed popup set of links that navigates the browser on selection.
2. The above + a persisted-navigation frames reference (Steele family / Dow / McGee) to reach FG3, and 6,208,339 + the financial-portal publications to reach the FG4 search-field dependent claims.

The residual risk is concentrated in FG3 and in confirming the issued claim text; the rest of the claim set reads as a predictable aggregation of known UI elements, which is exactly the fact pattern KSR holds unpatentable. Confirm the issued claims and the FG3 references before relying on this for any filing or opinion work.