US 10674120

I'll search for authoritative information on this patent and any related 2026 CAFC docket activity.

US 10,674,120 B2 — "Communication and monitoring system"

Scope of my search & an important caveat up front: I searched for the literal number 10674120 / US10674120B2 and US16/570,530. I found no 2026 Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit docket keyed to this patent. The only Federal Circuit docket in the family record I could verify is 22‑1354, which is from 2022, not 2026 (details below). I also note that the US10674120 record you supplied contains the abstract, specification, and the "aspects/features" summary, but not a verbatim claims listing, so my claim overview below is reconstructed from the patent's own summary aspects and from PTAB filings that quote the claims of sibling family patents; I flag where that reconstruction is uncertain.

Bibliographic data (from the patent record)

Continuation chain (literal, from the record): The '530 application is a continuation of Ser. No. 16/225,979 (2018‑12‑19) → 15/237,933 (2016‑08‑16) → 15/237,797 (2016‑08‑16) → 15/237,222 (2016‑08‑15) → 15/201,559 (2016‑07‑04) → 14/968,491 (2015‑12‑14) → 14/962,749 (2015‑12‑08) → 14/794,299 (2015‑07‑08) → 14/670,044 (2015‑03‑26) → 14/338,525 (2014‑07‑23) → 13/453,100 (2012‑04‑23) → 11/929,464 (2007‑10‑30, now US 8,164,614) → 11/618,615 (2006‑12‑29, now US 8,154,581) → 10/682,185 (2003‑10‑09, now US 7,193,644) → provisional 60/418,384 (2002‑10‑15).

Abstract (verbatim)

"An audio-video communication system comprises a wireless exterior module located proximate an entrance, a computerized controller running a software application, and a remote peripheral device. The wireless exterior module includes a proximity sensor for detecting a person at the entrance, a video camera for recording an image of the person at the entrance, a microphone for recording the person at the entrance, a speaker for playing audio to the person at the entrance, a transmitter for communicating sounds and images of the person at the entrance, and a receiver for receiving communications at the wireless exterior module. The computerized controller is disposed in wireless electronic communication with the wireless exterior module via the transmitter and the receiver of the wireless exterior module. The remote peripheral device is configured to electronically communicate with the computerized controller for viewing an image from the video camera communicated from the wireless exterior module."

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

⚠️ Uncertainty note: The fetched record did not include the granted claims verbatim. The '120's summary section presents three independent "aspects," and PTAB filings in this family quote claim 1 of sibling patents (e.g., the '581/'184 patents) with language essentially identical to the first aspect below. Accordingly, I am confident about the substance, less confident about the exact granted claim numbering/wording of the '120 itself.

(1) System claim (apparatus) — "audio-video communication system"
A door‑answering/intercom system made of three pieces:

• (a) A wireless exterior module at the entrance containing, in combination: a proximity sensor (detects a person), a video camera (records the person's image), a microphone (records sound), a speaker (plays audio to the person), a transmitter (sends the sounds and images), and a receiver (receives communications). In plain terms: a wireless door camera/doorbell unit with two‑way audio and detection.
• (b) A computerized controller (e.g., a personal computer) running a software application, wirelessly linked to the exterior module, and configured to record communications and play them back, with a graphical user interface (GUI) that lets a user view the camera images.
• (c) A remote peripheral device (cell phone, video phone, computer, PDA, etc.) that talks to the computerized controller to view the image from the exterior camera.

Dependent/aspect features recited in the summary include: a second wireless exterior module; remote actuation/zoom/pan of the camera from the remote device; streaming video to the remote device; display screen and keypad/touchscreen on the exterior module; portability with a locking mechanism/holster and quick‑connect electrical receptacle or battery; PSTN and Internet connectivity; an electronically actuated lock unlockable by the controller; voice recognition; and image recognition (faces, eyes, fingerprints).

(2) Method claim — "two-way audio-video communications between a first person at an entrance and a second person"

• (a) Detect, with a proximity sensor at the entrance, the presence of a first person; and
• (b) Provide real‑time audio‑video communication between the first person and a second person using a wireless handheld device, by (i) transmitting video of the first person (from the entrance camera) to the handheld device, (ii) transmitting audio of the first person (from the entrance microphone) to the handheld device, and (iii) transmitting audio of the second person (captured by the handheld device) to a speaker at the entrance.

Aspect features add: a computerized controller running a GUI‑based application to establish the link; playing a recorded greeting (selectable, including seasonal greetings, optionally audio + video); posting a video greeting from a remote device; saving the recording in a database; and camera control (zoom/move) from the handheld.

(3) Method claim — "method for receiving a person at an entrance"

• (a) Detect the person's presence with an entrance proximity sensor;
• (b) Transmit video of the person (from the entrance camera) to a computerized controller running a software application; and
• (c) Provide, via that software, a GUI to a remote peripheral device by which a user can view the video.

Aspect features add: saving the video in a database with a timestamp; real‑time viewing, later viewing, and streaming to the remote device; transmitting the person's audio and letting the remote user hear it; the recorded‑greeting features; and remote camera actuation (zoom/pan).

In short: the patent family covers a wireless, motion/proximity‑triggered door camera + two‑way audio system whose video and audio are managed by an in‑home computer (with recording, timestamps, greetings, lock control) and are viewable/controllable from a remote phone or computer.

Litigation / PTAB / docket check (literal)

From the patent record's "Family has litigation" data:

• U.S. ITC – Investigation No. 337‑TA‑1242 (International Trade Commission).
• Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit – No. 22‑1354. Skybell Technologies, Inc., SB IP Holdings, LLC, EyeTalk365, LLC v. International Trade Commission (with SimpliSafe, Inc. and Vivint Smart Home, Inc.). This appeal was dismissed under Fed. R. App. P. 42(b) on June 27, 2022 — i.e., a 2022 docket, not a 2026 one. Source: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/[6618932](/patent/6618932)/skybell-technologies-inc-v-itc/
• E.D. Tex. – 4:20‑cv‑00886, SB IP Holdings LLC v. Vivint Smart Home, Inc. (asserting, among others, 10,674,120). Source: https://ipwatchdog.com/2020/11/25/patent-filings-roundup-battle-tested-off-roading-patent-asserted-jack-henry-battered/
• S.D. Cal. – 3:21‑cv‑00218; C.D. Cal. – 8:22‑cv‑00033; D. Mass. – 1:20‑cv‑12288.

Related PTAB proceedings (Vivint, Inc. v. SB IP Holdings LLC) challenged sibling family patents — IPR2022‑00810, ‑00811, ‑00812, ‑00813, ‑00814, ‑01352, ‑01364, ‑01365, ‑01449 (dealing with e.g. US 8,144,184; US 8,154,581; US 8,164,614). Several resulted in final written decisions holding the challenged claims unpatentable, and the corresponding Federal Circuit appeals (e.g., 24‑1271, 24‑1296, 24‑1307, 24‑1331, 24‑1366, 24‑1874, 24‑1957, 24‑2012, 24‑2189) were voluntarily dismissed on July 10, 2025. Source: https://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-orders/24-1271.ORDER.7-10-2025_2542531.pdf

Explicit uncertainty: I could not locate any 2026 Federal Circuit docket, opinion, or oral‑argument listing naming 10674120. If such a 2026 appeal exists, it is not surfaced by the sources I searched, and I will not speculate about it. Likewise, I did not independently verify the ITC/DC docket numbers against a live USPTO or court docket — those are taken from the patent record's litigation annotations and a secondary source. Also note the patent is listed as Expired – Lifetime (anticipated expiration 2023‑10‑09), which affects the relevance of any post‑2023 enforcement activity.

One conflict worth flagging: the record's priority-date field lists 2002‑10‑15, while the top-level "Prior art date" field also shows 2002‑10‑15 and the statutory term is measured from the 2003‑10‑09 filing of US 10/682,185. I have reported both literally rather than reconciling them.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 10674120. Let me run several searches.

I found initial leads. Let me dig deeper into each specific case.

Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. 10,674,120 ("the '120 patent")

Patent context: U.S. 10,674,120 — "Communication and monitoring system" — inventor Ronald Carter; original assignee EYETALK365 LLC, later SB IP HOLDINGS LLC. Priority date listed as 2002-10-15. It is a descendant of the application chain including U.S. Pat. No. 7,193,644 and app. Ser. No. 14/338,525 ("the '525 application"), and it is one member of a family of related patents (the '638, '478, '796, '797, '660, '906 and '120 patents) asserted together by the patent owner.

Listed below are the litigations I located that involve the '120 patent. Where the '120 patent was asserted alongside sibling patents, I note that.

1. ITC Investigation No. 337-TA-1242

• Caption: Certain IP Camera Systems Including Video Doorbells and Components Thereof
• Complainants (plaintiffs): SkyBell Technologies, Inc. (Irvine, CA); SB IP Holdings, LLC (Irvine, CA); Eyetalk365, LLC (Cornelius, NC)
• Respondents (defendants): Vivint Smart Home, Inc. (Provo, UT); SimpliSafe, Inc. (Boston, MA); Arlo Technologies, Inc. (San Jose, CA)
• Jurisdiction: U.S. International Trade Commission (Section 337)
• Case number: 337-TA-1242
• Filing date: Complaint filed Dec. 18, 2020 (supplement Jan. 6, 2021); instituted Jan. 25, 2021
• '120 patent asserted: Yes — claim 1 of the '120 patent was among the asserted claims
• Outcome/status: Terminated. ALJ Clark S. Cheney issued Order No. 16 on Sept. 15, 2021 granting Respondents' motion for summary determination that all asserted claims are invalid as anticipated, based on a break in copendency in the priority chain (the '525 application was abandoned by operation of law for failure to pay the filing fee on Oct. 6, 2014, before the '044 application was filed Mar. 26, 2015 — so the inventors' own earlier patent anticipated the claims). The Commission reviewed and affirmed the ID on Nov. 10, 2021, terminating the investigation.
• Appeal: Complainants appealed to the Federal Circuit on Jan. 9, 2022 (No. 22-1354, Skybell Technologies, Inc. et al. v. ITC). By stipulation, the appeal was dismissed June 27, 2022.

Sources: Federal Register 86 FR 7412 (Jan. 28, 2021); Federal Register notice (Nov. 17, 2021), 2021-25061; USITC News Release 21-010 (Jan. 25, 2021); Lexology ITC 337 blog (ALJ Cheney Order No. 16); CourtListener, Skybell v. ITC (CAFC, June 27, 2022).

2. SB IP Holdings LLC v. Vivint, Inc. (E.D. Tex.)

• Plaintiff: SB IP Holdings LLC; Eyetalk365, LLC (third-party plaintiff)
• Defendants: Vivint, Inc. / Vivint Smart Home, Inc.
• Jurisdiction: U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas (Sherman Division)
• Case number: 4:20-cv-00886
• Filing date: Nov. 17, 2020
• '120 patent asserted: Yes (listed among asserted patents; 10,674,120 appears in the case's asserted patents)
• Outcome/status: Date terminated: Aug. 26, 2024 (per the E.D. Tex. civil docket, Judge Amos L. Mazzant). The docket shows substantial motion practice including a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss, improper-venue motion, and invalidity/inequitable-conduct contentions.
• Note: A related Vivint declaratory-judgment action later appeared in the Central District of California (see #5–6).

Sources: IPWatchdog Patent Filings Roundup (Nov. 25, 2020); E.D. Tex. civil docket 4:20-cv-00886-ALM (retrieved via P-TACTS).

3. Arlo Technologies, Inc. v. Skybell Technologies, Inc. et al. (S.D. Cal.)

• Plaintiff: Arlo Technologies, Inc.
• Defendants: SB IP Holdings, LLC; Skybell Technologies, Inc.; Eyetalk365, LLC
• Jurisdiction: U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California
• Case number: 3:21-cv-00218 (originally 21cv218-GPC-DEB; reassigned to 21cv218-JO-KSC)
• Filing date: Feb. 4, 2021
• '120 patent at issue: Yes — the complaint's patent report lists 10,674,120 among the seven patents in suit
• Outcome/status: Stayed (Order, Apr. 7, 2021) pending completion of the parallel ITC Investigation No. 337-TA-1242. Given that the ITC found the patents invalid and the family's district-court matters were resolved around the same period, the stay effectively resolved this action.

Sources: IPWatchdog (Feb. 10, 2021); Justia Dockets (3:21-cv-00218); Patexia lawsuit record 142906.

4. SimpliSafe, Inc. v. Skybell Technologies, Inc. et al. (D. Mass.)

• Plaintiff: SimpliSafe, Inc.
• Defendants: Skybell Technologies, Inc.; Eyetalk365, LLC; SB IP Holdings, LLC
• Jurisdiction: U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts
• Case number: 1:20-cv-12288
• Filing date: Dec. 28, 2020
• '120 patent at issue: This is the declaratory-judgment counterpart to the ITC action brought by the same defendants; the '120 patent was among the patents in the parties' disputes (asserted-patent family).
• Outcome/status: Not confirmed from the retrieved materials (docket last retrieved Dec. 29, 2020). Treated as a parallel DJ action to the ITC/Arlo matters.

Source: Justia Dockets (1:20-cv-12288).

5–6. Vivint / SB IP matters (C.D. Cal.) — numbers listed on the patent record

The USPTO/Google Patents "Family has litigation" listing for the '120 patent also identifies C.D. Cal. case 8:22-cv-00033, and a related 8:22-cv-00034 (Vivint Inc. v. SB IP Holdings LLC, a declaratory-judgment action in which SB IP moved to dismiss the complaint, served Jan. 19, 2022, motion set for hearing Mar. 21, 2022). I was unable to confirm from the retrieved sources that 8:22-cv-00033 specifically names/asserts the '120 patent; treat that listing as coming from the patent's own litigation metadata rather than independently verified pleadings.

Important caveats

• The '120 patent's claims were held invalid as anticipated in the ITC action (ALJ Order No. 16, affirmed by the Commission Nov. 10, 2021), for a break in copendency in the priority chain — the same invalidity theory that appears to have driven resolution of the parallel district-court cases.
• I could not fully verify the outcomes of cases #3–6 from primary dockets; my information is strongest for the ITC investigation (#1) and for the E.D. Tex. Vivint case termination date (#2). Where I relied on the patent's own litigation metadata, I have flagged it.
• The '120 patent is typically one of a seven-patent family asserted together; the descriptions above reflect the family-wide campaigns rather than isolating only claim-level '120 issues (except in the ITC, where claim 1 of the '120 patent was expressly asserted).
• If you need PACER-confirmed docket entries (exact filing dates, final judgments, settlement terms) for cases #3–6, those should be pulled directly from PACER/CourtListener, as the public aggregators do not consistently expose post-2021 status for every one of these actions.

I'll start by verifying the structured data and then attempt to surface any PTAB proceedings via web search.

Let me target the patent owner and likely petitioners more specifically.

Let me check the Federal Circuit appeal and any IPR dockets involving this patent family.

Proceedings overview

PTAB proceedings on file for US 10,674,120: none (0). The structured USPTO Open Data Portal block is the canonical source and reports no AIA trial proceedings — no IPR, PGR, or CBM — against this patent as of the most recent ODP ingest. My independent web searches likewise surfaced no petition, institution decision, or final written decision naming the ’120 patent as the challenged patent. I did not find any proceeding number to report, and I will not invent one.

Because there are no PTAB proceedings, the usual breakdown (active / claims invalidated / claims sustained / settled / institution denied) is inapplicable — 0 of 0 in every category. Bottom line for a defendant: this is not a "hardened by IPR" patent and it is not a "claims canceled by the Board" patent — it is an untested-at-the-PTAB patent. That matters, because the ’120 patent's most significant validity event to date did not happen at the PTAB; it happened at the ITC, and it was later unwound in district court. A defendant today should understand the ’120 patent as vulnerable but litigated, with the priority-gap invalidity theory having been accepted by the ITC (2021) and rejected by a district court (2023) after the patent owner revived the abandoned application at the USPTO.

⚠️ Caveat on completeness: ODP indexing lags, and a recently filed petition can take weeks to appear. Before relying on "zero," a defendant should confirm against PTAB E2E / Patent Trial and Appeal Board End-to-End (https://ptacts.uspto.gov) using both the patent number and the owner names (SB IP Holdings LLC; SkyBell Technologies, Inc.; Eyetalk365, LLC).

Closely related validity proceedings (not AIA trials, but dispositive context)

These are the events that actually determined the ’120 patent's validity exposure. They are not PTAB proceedings, so I am labeling them as such — but a defendant ignoring them would miss the whole picture.

ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-1242 — SkyBell / SB IP Holdings / Eyetalk365 (Complainants) v. Vivint, SimpliSafe, Arlo (Respondents)

• Type: Section 337 investigation (U.S. International Trade Commission) — not an AIA trial.
• Filed: complaint filed 2020-12-18 (supplemented 2021-01-06); investigation instituted 2021-01-25/28.
• Asserted claim of the ’120 patent: claim 1 (per the Notice of Investigation, 86 FR 7412). Also asserted: claim 6 of the ’638 patent; claims 9–11, 17 of the ’478 patent; claims 3, 7 of the ’796 patent; claims 6, 8, 9 of the ’797 patent; claims 9, 13, 14, 16, 18 of the ’660 patent; claims 9, 13, 18 of the ’906 patent.
• ALJ / panel: ALJ Clark S. Cheney (assigned 2021-03-29). Commission review panel included Vice Chair Stayin (who wrote separately).
• Grounds: § 102 anticipation — not by third-party art, but by the inventors' own earlier patent (U.S. Pat. No. 8,164,614, "the ’614 patent") on the theory that the priority chain broke: application 14/338,525 ("the ’525 application") was abandoned (~Oct. 2014) for failure to pay the filing fee, and the next application in the chain (14/670,044) was not filed until 2015-03-26, breaking § 120 copendency. Because the ’614 patent issued more than a year before the ’044 filing and discloses every limitation, all asserted claims were said to be anticipated.
• Key decision: Order No. 16, Initial Determination, 2021-09-15 — ALJ Cheney granted Respondents' motion for summary determination and terminated the investigation in its entirety, holding all asserted claims (including claim 1 of the ’120 patent) invalid as anticipated. The ALJ rejected Complainants' argument that abandonment occurs only on mailing of the Notice of Abandonment, holding abandonment occurs by operation of law under 35 U.S.C. § 111.
• Commission disposition: Complainants petitioned for review 2021-09-27; Respondents responded 2021-10-04. The Commission determined to review and affirmed, terminated the investigation, vote taken 2021-11-10 (published 86 FR at 2021-11-17). The Commission corrected the ALJ's AIA-vs-pre-AIA § 111 error as harmless. Vice Chair Stayin joined, viewing the ’525 application as abandoned no later than the 37 CFR 1.136(a) extension deadline (2015-03-04).
• Appeal: Yes — SkyBell Technologies, Inc. v. ITC, No. 2022-1354 (Fed. Cir.), docketed 2022-01-11 (intervenors SimpliSafe, Vivint, Arlo). The appeal was voluntarily dismissed under Fed. R. App. P. 42(b) on 2022-06-27, each side bearing its own costs. No merits ruling. Link: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/[6618932](/patent/6618932)/skybell-technologies-inc-v-itc/ and the order PDF at https://cases.justia.com/federal/appellate-courts/cafc/22-1354/22-1354-2022-06-27.pdf
• Why the dismissal mattered: By 2022-06-02 the USPTO had granted SB IP's petition to revive the ’525 application (based on an unintentional-delay statement). With revival in hand, the ITC's abandonment-based invalidity rationale lost its bite in the parallel district court case, and the appeal was dropped.
• Defensive value: The ITC's finding that claim 1 of the ’120 patent is invalid as anticipated is real and quotable, but it rests on a priority-gap theory that a district court has since rejected. Treat it as a strong negotiating and equitable argument, not as an estoppel-grade knockout.

SB IP Holdings LLC v. Vivint, Inc., No. 4:20-cv-00886 (E.D. Tex.) → transferred to C.D. Cal. 2:21-cv-09472

• Type: District court infringement action — not an AIA trial.
• Filed: SB IP complaint 2020-11-17 (E.D. Tex.), asserting the ’030, ’638, ’478, ’284, ’323, ’290, and ’120 patents. Vivint's counterclaims against SkyBell were transferred to the C.D. Cal. (2021-12-17), Case No. 2:21-cv-09472-GW-GJS.
• The priority-gap fight, round two: On cross-motions for summary judgment, Judge Amos L. Mazzant III held (opinion 2023-09-27) that the USPTO's June 2022 revival of the ’525 application established copendency and could not be collaterally attacked absent inequitable conduct (citing Aristocrat) — granting SB IP's motion on Vivint's improper-revival defenses and denying Vivint's motion for summary judgment of priority/invalidity/non-infringement/no pre-suit damages. The court found the application was abandoned (Oct. 2014) but that the properly granted revival cured the chain.
• Related discovery ruling of note: The court also found that SB IP/Eyetalk waived attorney-client privilege as to the ’525 application by disclosing advice of counsel in its revival petitions to the USPTO (a subject-matter waiver extending to all communications relating to the ’525 application). Docket: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/18641217/sb-ip-holdings-llc-v-vivint-inc/
• Defensive value: This is the counterweight to the ITC win. A defendant asserting the priority-gap anticipation theory today must reckon with the 2023 Vivint ruling; the ITC rationale is not a clean kill in district court.

Other asserted-against defendants / parallel tracks (context, not proceedings on the ’120 patent)

• SimpliSafe, Inc. v. SkyBell Technologies, Inc. et al., D. Mass. 1:20-cv-12288 (filed 2020-12-30) — declaratory judgment of non-infringement/invalidity, expressly including the ’120 patent, on the same break-in-priority-chain theory.
• Cal. S.D. 3:21-cv-00218 and Cal. C.D. 8:22-cv-00033 are also listed on the patent's Google Patents "litigation" panel.
• Google Patents litigation panel also lists ITC 337-TA-1242 and Fed. Cir. 22-1354 — consistent with the above. No PTAB entry appears.

Strategic summary

Claim status of the ’120 patent. For PTAB purposes it is entirely UNTESTED — no independent or dependent claim has been canceled, confirmed, or construed by the Board, because no AIA trial was ever instituted against it. The only adjudicated validity holding specific to the ’120 patent is the ITC's 2021 determination that claim 1 is invalid as anticipated by the ’614 patent; that ruling was affirmed by the Commission but was never reviewed on the merits (Fed. Cir. 22-1354 was voluntarily dismissed), and the underlying priority-gap theory was rejected by Judge Mazzant in 2023 after the ’525 application's revival. So: no claims canceled by the PTAB; no claims sustained by the PTAB; all claims formally "live" at the Office. Functionally, claim 1 carries a cloud from the ITC you can exploit rhetorically, and no PTAB estoppel binds anyone.

Estoppel landscape — § 315(e)(2) is a non-issue here. Because no IPR/PGR was filed on the ’120 patent by anyone, no petitioner or privy is estopped from raising § 102/§ 103 grounds in district court, and no defendant gets the benefit of an institution decision either. Translate: the full prior-art field remains open to a defendant — including the inventors' own earlier patents (e.g., the ’614 patent) under the priority-gap theory, plus any third-party art. The best § 102/§ 103 ground is the priority/copendency attack, but it now must overcome Vivint's holding that the USPTO's revival is not collaterally attackable absent inequitable conduct. Two practical corollaries: (1) if you want a PTAB vehicle, you are the first mover — no General Plastic successive-petition and no Fintiv-style "the Board already denied this" baggage attaches; (2) if you instead litigate in district court, the estoppel field is clean, but the revival ruling is your obstacle.

Pattern signals. The ’120 patent sits in the large Carter/SkyBell continuation family (all claiming priority to provisional 60/418,384, filed 2002-10-15) that was enforced as a portfolio, not as a single patent. The assertion pattern is portfolio-driven litigation and an ITC action (Vivint, SimpliSafe, Arlo, plus numerous prior Eyetalk suits in W.D.N.C., D. Del., and D. Nev., reportedly all terminated), not a PTAB-centric strategy. The patent owner did appeal the ITC loss (Fed. Cir. 22-1354) but voluntarily dismissed it — consistent with the family's broader pivot to district-court revival fights rather than appellate or PTAB battles. I found no evidence of a defensive aggregator (e.g., Unified Patents) targeting the ’120 patent; the only Unified/aggregator material my search surfaced concerned unrelated patents (e.g., American Patents v. Unified, the ’655 patent) and the ADT IPR on Vivint's ’739 patent — not the ’120.

Cross-proceeding picture in one line: the ’120 patent's validity has been litigated hard in court and at the ITC (and its priority chain nearly broke), but never at the PTAB — so a defendant has a clean estoppel slate and an open prior-art field, tempered by a 2023 district-court ruling that shores up the patent owner's priority story.

Recommended next steps

1. Confirm the zero. Before anything else, check PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov) by patent number 10,674,120 and by owner (SB IP Holdings LLC, SkyBell Technologies, Inc., Eyetalk365, LLC). ODP can lag a newly filed petition; if a petition is pending that ODP has not ingested, that changes the analysis and you should pull the FWD docket immediately. Until confirmed, operate on "no PTAB activity on file."

2. If you are a defendant weighing a validity attack. You are not estopped and no institution decision stands in your way — you can file the first IPR/PGR on this patent. But note the practical headwind: the PTAB's own discretionary-denial and institution landscape (Director-controlled institution under the 2025 Squires memo; the 2025 proposed rules barring IPRs against patents that have already survived a validity challenge) may make a petition against a patent that already went through ITC + district-court validity litigation a discretionary-denial target. Build your petition around art and a theory that was not squarely the ITC's priority-gap rationale, or that supplies the inequitable-conduct hook Vivint left open.

3. If the demand letter rests on claim 1 of the ’120 patent. Quote the ITC's own words back: Order No. 16 (2021-09-15) and the Commission determination (vote 2021-11-10, published 2021-11-17) found claim 1 invalid as anticipated and terminated the investigation in its entirety. Link the ITC notice: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2021-11-17/pdf/2021-25061.pdf. Then immediately flag the counter: the Fed. Cir. dismissed the appeal (2022-06-27) and the E.D. Tex. court (2023-09-27) rejected the priority-gap theory after the ’525 revival, so the ITC ruling is persuasive, not preclusive. Use it to leverage settlement, not as a stand-alone invalidity opinion.

4. Develop the revival/inequitable-conduct angle. Vivint's 2023 opinion expressly conditions the "no collateral attack on revival" rule on absent inequitable conduct, and the same court found SB IP waived attorney-client privilege over the ’525 application communications. That is a documented avenue for discovery and for a § 102/§ 103 or inequitable-conduct theory that sidesteps the revival shield.

5. Watch for new filings. Given active assertion (Vivint, SimpliSafe, Arlo) and a live ITC district-court follow-on, an IPR against the ’120 patent is plausible going forward. If one is filed, the milestones are the § 314(b) institution deadline (6 months from the preliminary-response deadline), § 316(a)(11) FWD deadline (12 months from institution), and § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaching on any ground raised. Re-check ODP and PTAB E2E periodically rather than relying on this snapshot.

Not legal advice; verify all docket facts against PACER, EDIS, and PTAB E2E before acting. Where I could not confirm a fact from a primary source (e.g., any PTAB docket), I have said so rather than infer it.

I'll research the assignment record for US 10,674,120 across USPTO assignment data and related sources.

Let me search for the specific USPTO assignment reel/frame records and correspondent data.

Assignment & Ownership Reconstruction — US 10,674,120 B2

Source note / material limitation: I searched the USPTO Assignment Center entry points (https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ and https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html) and secondary aggregators. The event set below is verifiable from the patent record's own legal-events data and corroborating court/SEC documents, but I was unable to retrieve the reel/frame numbers or the recorded correspondent of record for any of the three post-filing events within this session. I am reporting that as a gap rather than inventing reel/frame values. Do not treat the "Reel not retrieved" placeholders as "no reel exists."

Also flagging a conflict with the earlier-generated litigation section: that section says SB IP sued Vivint in E.D. Tex. as the record owner/plaintiff on 2020-11-17. The assignment timeline below shows SB IP did not take a recorded assignment until 2021-05-18 — SB IP pleaded as an exclusive licensee first and the paper title followed. That inversion matters for signal 5 (pre-litigation transfer) and I call it out there.

Inventors

Unusual patterns noted:

• Single-inventor portfolio. Every patent in this family (the "Carter Patent Family") names Ronald Carter alone. There is no co-inventor team whose departure could be tracked; the relevant "founder exit" signal is instead the Carter↔REVO rupture, which is documented: Carter sued his former patent prosecution firm (Revolutionary Concepts, Inc. v. Clements Walker PLLC, judgment March 20, 2012), and the E.D. Tex. opinion describes REVO as the "previous license holder" of the family with Eyetalk365 taking over prosecution rights.
• Inventor still active in new vehicles. Inventor-profile data lists Carter filings assigned to 1AHEAD Technologies (Charlotte, NC), Re-Volt EV LLC, IQmagine, and further EyeTalk365 applications (62 published applications, latest 2025-10-23) — i.e., Carter continued filing into successor entities well after the '120 was transferred out. By the 2019-09-13 filing date of the '120's application, the applicant of record was EyeTalk365, LLC, not REVO.
• No 12-month mass-departure signal. Not applicable — one inventor.

Original assignee

EyeTalk365, LLC — a North Carolina limited liability company, Cornelius, NC (12213 Potts Plantation Circle; earlier address 9923 Willow Leaf Lane, Cornelius).

• Primary line of business: patent licensing and enforcement, not manufacturing. The 2014 license amendment (Ex-10.10 to REVO's 10-Q) recites that the licensee is granted "the exclusive right to sublicense, sue and collect damages for all past, present, and future infringement," and REVO's own press release frames EyeTalk365 as its "global licensee" running a "strategy of protecting our patented intellectual property rights."
• Did it ship a product embodying the claims? No evidence of any product. Investor-forum commentary (not authoritative) asserts "no such product exists." I found no product, no revenue from products, and no manufacturing facilities attributed to EyeTalk365.
• Current status: superseded as record owner by SB IP Holdings LLC (2021). EyeTalk365 remained a party to the ITC action and later a non-party subpoena target in E.D. Tex. Its managing member is Ross Helfer.
• Predecessor of record: Revolutionary Concepts, Inc. (OTCPINK: REVO), Nevada corp., Charlotte NC — publicly traded, and its "primary business" was described as "the design and development of the 'EyeTalk' Communicator technology." REVO was the subject of an SEC trading suspension on June 17, 2015 (File No. 34-75186) concerning the accuracy of its public statements about the $900,000 Eyetalk365 license fee and related net income. That is a corporate-control/securities red flag on the seller side of the chain.

Assignment timeline

Reel/frame and correspondent: NOT RETRIEVED. The Google Patents legal-events feed and the Justia/ITC/SEC documents I could reach confirm the parties, conveyance types, and recording dates, but do not expose reel/frame or the recording correspondent. I will not fabricate them. To close this gap, pull the three entries below directly from Assignment Center (search "10674120" or app. 16/570,530) — the correspondent name is the single most useful field and it is currently unknown to me.

• Executed ~2014; recorded 2019-12-30 — Reel not retrieved/Frame not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
  • Assignor: Revolutionary Concepts, Inc. (Nevada)
  • Assignee: EyeTalk365, LLC (North Carolina)
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: transfer from the public operating/licensing parent to a single-purpose licensing-and-assertion LLC — the operative paper trail for a Feb. 10, 2014 exclusive license amended (eff. Sept. 16, 2014) to "sell, assign, and transfer all of its right, title and interest in any inventions related to the Patents." Note the ~5-year gap between the 2014 agreement language and the 2019 recording; the recorded instrument postdates the deal.

• 2021-05-18 — Reel not retrieved/Frame not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: EyeTalk365, LLC
  • Assignee: SB IP Holdings LLC (1 Jenner #100, Irvine, CA 92618 — the SkyBell address)
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: transfer-to-asserter / privateering acquisition. Per the E.D. Tex. opinion, SkyBell settled Eyetalk365, LLC v. SkyBell Techs. (W.D.N.C. 3:16-cv-00702) "by purchasing the right to license and/or own the Carter Patent Family," with an "operations fee" owed back to EyeTalk365 and a "cooperation of Eyetalk" covenant. SB IP took the paper title after it had already begun asserting.

• 2022-08-05 — Reel not retrieved/Frame not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Security Interest (Security Agreement)
  • Assignor / Grantors: SB IP Holdings LLC; SkyBell Technologies IP, LLC; SkyBell Technologies, Inc.
  • Assignee / Secured Party: Star Mountain Diversified Credit Income Fund III, LP
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: securitization / lender collateralization. The patent family is pledged as collateral under a credit facility covering the SkyBell group — the opposite of a fire-sale; it indicates the family was leveraged, not abandoned.

No bankruptcy (Ch. 7/11) sale, merger, change-of-name, or release-of-security record surfaced for this patent in the sources I reached.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10674120
    2014 : REVO grants Eyetalk365 exclusive license
    2019 : Application filed by Eyetalk365
         : Assignment recorded from REVO
    2020 : Patent issued June 2
    2021 : Assigned to SB IP Holdings
    2022 : Security interest to Star Mountain

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — PRESENT.
The family moved from a (public, product-development) operating parent to EyeTalk365, LLC, a single-purpose NC LLC with no products, no manufacturing, and a business model expressly defined by the conveyance of "the exclusive right to sublicense, sue and collect damages." Concrete evidence beyond the name: the recorded 2019-12-30 assignment (Reel not retrieved) is from REVO to EyeTalk365; the 2014 license amendment lists only patents/applications as the assets; and the E.D. Tex. record treats EyeTalk365 as the licensing/enforcement vehicle. A second non-operating holder then took title in 2021 (SB IP Holdings LLC).

2. Known asserter in the chain — PRESENT.
Neither assignee appears on the classic lists supplied (Acacia, Marathon, IV, Wi-LAN, etc.), so this is a Unified Patents / docket-derived finding, not a directory match:

• SB IP Holdings LLC is the plaintiff/complainant in a multi-front campaign asserting seven family patents — ITC Inv. 337-TA-1242 (instituted 2021-01-25, '120 claim 1 asserted) and E.D. Tex. 4:20-cv-00886 ('120 named among the patents-in-suit) — plus C.D. Cal. 8:22-cv-00033. Vivint's IPRs (IPR2022-00810 through -01449) and the family's Federal Circuit appeal 22-1354 confirm sustained, coordinated assertion activity.
• EyeTalk365, LLC itself filed serial infringement actions (W.D.N.C., D. Del., D. Nev.) per the ITC complaint's related-litigation recital.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR (data gap).
I could not retrieve the recorded correspondent for any of the three events. This signal therefore cannot be scored, and it is the highest-value missing field: if the same attorney/firm recorded both the 2019 REVO→EyeTalk365 transfer and the 2021 EyeTalk365→SB IP transfer, that would convert this to a strong finding. Pull the correspondent field from Assignment Center before relying on this section.

4. Cascading transfers — PRESENT (compressed, with shared control).
Three recorded events inside ~30 months (2019-12-30 → 2021-05-18 → 2022-08-05), passing through two consecutive non-operating holders (EyeTalk365 → SB IP Holdings) before a third instrument pledging the family with SkyBell Technologies Entities to a single lender. SB IP Holdings shares the 1 Jenner, Irvine address with SkyBell Technologies — common-control linkage, not unrelated LLCs.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT (inverted).
SB IP filed 2020-11-17, but the assignment into SB IP was recorded 2021-05-18 — six months after suit. The transfer followed, rather than preceded, assertion. If anything this is a standing-cleanup pattern (assert as exclusive licensee, then perfect record title), not the classic venue/clean-title pre-suit flip.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT.
No Chapter 7/11 record surfaced. The seller-side stress is securities, not insolvency: SEC trading suspension of REVO (June 17, 2015, File No. 34-75186) and the later SEC allegations concerning Solomon Ali. The collateral pledge to Star Mountain (2022) shows the family was financed, not liquidated.

7. Privateering — PRESENT.
SkyBell Technologies, Inc. (an operating company shipping the SkyBell HD, Slim, and Trim video doorbells, named as the domestic-industry basis in the ITC complaint) acquired the family through its affiliate SB IP Holdings LLC and its SkyBell Technologies IP, LLC and asserted it against competitors Vivint, SimpliSafe, and Arlo — jointly filing the ITC complaint with EyeTalk365 and paying EyeTalk365 an "operations fee." Operating-company IP arm suing rivals with a retained share to the originating licensing vehicle is the textbook privateering configuration.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT.
The chain terminates in an assertion/collateral posture (SB IP Holdings, pledged to Star Mountain), not at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified, or OIN.

Verdict

NPE — moderate confidence.

The chain runs through two consecutive non-operating holders — EyeTalk365, LLC (a Cornelius, NC licensing LLC whose only documented asset was the exclusive right to sue and sublicense, recorded 2019-12-30) and SB IP Holdings LLC (recorded 2021-05-18) — with the family then pledged as lender collateral (2022-08-05), i.e. two strong signals (shell/licensing transfer + cascading transfers) plus a documented privateering configuration. I stop short of "high confidence" for two concrete reasons: (i) the reel/frame and correspondent fields — the discriminator for a family run by one repeat attorney — could not be retrieved, and (ii) the current record owner is the IP-holding arm of a genuine operating company (SkyBell) that ships products and pleaded domestic industry, so this reads as privateering by an operating company's assertion vehicle rather than a freestanding troll shell. Note also that the asserted claims were held invalid as anticipated in the ITC (Order No. 16, affirmed 2021-11-10), which blunts the economic motive that drives most NPE acquisition chains.

Verification link (search by patent number or app. 16/570,530):

• https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/
• https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html

Fetch these three fields to close the gaps I flagged: (a) reel/frame for each of the 2019-12-30, 2021-05-18, and 2022-08-05 recordations; (b) the correspondent of record on each; (c) the execution date of the REVO→EyeTalk365 instrument (the 2014 amendment language suggests execution predates the 2019 recording by years).

I'll build on the prior sections by now drilling into the cited references for US 10,674,120 — the patent's own front-page prior-art citations and the examiner-cited art.

Let me pull the citation lists from Justia and FreePatentsOnline for the '120 specifically.

Let me try to directly retrieve the '120's front-page references and the examiner-cited art.

Prior-Art Reference Inventory for US 10,674,120 ("the '120 patent")

Verification status — read this first

The fetched '120 record you supplied contains the abstract, specification, and the aspects/features summary, but it does not contain the '120's front-page "References Cited" table. My searches surfaced the citation tables for sibling patents in the same continuation chain (same specification) rather than the '120's own table. Accordingly:

• Verified: the references the '120 specification itself cites in its BACKGROUND section (I have that text verbatim), and the citation tables of same-specification family members (US 10,523,906, US 10,200,660, US 10,097,797, US 11,477,417, US 2016/0366374).
• Not verified for the '120 specifically: the exact list on the '120's own face. I flag each item below as verified or inferred-from-siblings.
• I am not auto-correcting any identifier; all numbers/dates are reproduced literally as returned.

A. References cited in the '120 specification itself (verified verbatim)

These four are named in the '120's BACKGROUND as the known art in this field. Because the '120 claims priority to 2002‑10‑15 (provisional 60/418,384) with the first non‑provisional filed 2003‑10‑09, all four are more than one year pre‑priority and therefore pre‑AIA § 102(b) art as of the earliest claimed date.

B. Examiner-cited references on the same-specification siblings (inferred for the '120)

The same-specification family members in this chain carry very short examiner citation lists (only three patent references each), which is consistent with continuation applications allowed without substantial new art. Across the siblings the references are:

⚠️ Contradiction flag (from the search results themselves): the two sibling citation tables I retrieved are not identical — US 10,523,906 lists US 5,428,388 / US 5,877,683 / US 7,382,397, whereas US 2016/0366374 lists US 5,245,329 / US 5,428,388 / US 7,382,397. So the '120's own three-and-only list is inferred, not confirmed. Treat US 5,428,388 and US 7,382,397 as the highest-confidence members, with US 5,877,683 and US 5,245,329 as the plausible third slot.

C. Family-wide citation catalog (context; from sibling US 11,477,417, "Patent Citations (112)")

The '417 sibling (identical specification, later in the same chain) carries the family's largest citation list, reported as 112 references. The verified head of that list is the deep catalog of pre‑2002 door/CCTV art — all pre‑AIA § 102(b) art:

• US 3,480,727 A (1966‑03‑30 / 1969‑11‑25) — Moore — "Closed circuit television protection system"
• US 4,075,659 A (1972‑09‑08 / 1978‑02‑21) — Desanti — "Electronic door announcer"
• US 4,370,675 A (1981‑01‑05 / 1983‑01‑25) — Zenith Radio Corp. — "Doorbell actuated television security system" ← directly on the '120's doorbell-triggered-camera concept
• US 4,524,384 A (1983‑04‑21 / 1985‑06‑18) — GBC Closed Circuit TV Corp. — "Video and audio security system" ← two-way audio + video
• US 4,843,461 A (1985‑06‑25 / 1989‑06‑27) — Matsushita Electric Works — "Over-door interphone system provided with a night-vision monitoring device"
• US 4,764,953 A (1987‑05‑22 / 1988‑08‑16) — Chern — "Method and apparatus for remote doorbell answering" ← remote answering, squarely on point
• US 4,959,713 A (1989‑10‑10 / 1990‑09‑25) — Matsushita Electric Industrial — "Home automation system"
• US 5,151,945 A (1990‑09‑11 / 1992‑09‑29) — The Research Foundation of … — (title truncated in the retrieved list)

I could not retrieve the remaining ~100 entries of that list. The three I would prioritize for a § 102 read are US 4,370,675; US 4,524,384; and US 4,764,953, because each independently discloses a door-triggered camera with remote audio/video answering.

D. The dominant § 102 reference for the '120: the family's own earlier patent

This is not an "examiner citation" — it is the inventors' own earlier patent asserted as anticipatory art, and it is the single most consequential § 102 reference in the '120's history (covered in your Litigation and PTAB sections; I add only the citation-level detail here, not repeating the analysis).

Same-family patents that stand as the equivalent § 102/§ 103 arsenal (all Carter/Revolutionary Concepts, all sharing the '120 specification, all cited against the '120 in the ITC/SkyBell campaigns): US 8,154,581 B2 (2012‑04‑10); US 8,144,184 B2 (2012‑03‑27); US 8,144,183 B2 (2012‑03‑27); US 8,139,098 B2 (2012‑03‑20); US 8,016,676 B2 (2011‑09‑13); and US 7,193,644 B2 (2007‑03‑20). The earlier published applications in the chain — US 2005/0285934 A1 (Carter, 2005‑12‑29) and US 2007/0103541 A1 (Carter, 2007‑05‑10) — are the pre‑grant counterparts and are the same-family publications that also appear in sibling citation tables.

E. § 102 mapping by claim (reconstructed claim structure)

⚠️ As flagged in your Patent Summary, the '120's granted claims were not in the fetched record. The mapping below is keyed to the three "aspects" in the '120's own summary (system claim; two-way audio-video method claim; receive-a-person method claim) and to the ITC's asserted claim 1. Verify against the granted claim text before relying on this.

F. Gaps I could not close (stated explicitly, not inferred)

1. The '120's own face-page citation table was not retrievable in this session. I could not fetch patents.google.com/patent/US10674120B2/en's "References Cited" block, the Justia 10674120 citation list, or the FPO equivalent. My searches returned sibling tables instead. Action: pull the '120's front page directly (USPTO PatentCenter / Google Patents) to confirm the exact examiner-cited set and whether any applicant-cited references beyond the four in the BACKGROUND were listed on the IDS.
2. The "112" family citation list is only partially retrieved (the head of the alphabetical/numeric list). The middle and tail — which is where the most recent and most dangerous art usually sits — were not visible.
3. Non-patent literature is unaddressed here. The '120's chain includes NPL-type citations in the broader family (e.g., the sibling US 5,428,388-lineage entries and the Scalisi/SkyBell and Siminoff/Ring petitions reference commercial and web-based art). Those are outside the "patent citation" scope you asked for but are relevant to a full § 102/§ 103 sweep.
4. No § 102 reference was applied by an examiner against the '120 during prosecution in any record I could verify — consistent with a continuation allowed on the strength of the parent's allowance. The only adjudicated § 102 event is the ITC's '614-based anticipation holding, which the Federal Circuit never reviewed (22‑1354 dismissed 2022‑06‑27) and which the E.D. Tex. court's 2023‑09‑27 priority ruling undercuts.

Bottom line on prior art: For the '120 patent, the strongest § 102 reference is not third-party art at all — it is US 8,164,614 (Carter), the family's own earlier patent, on which the ITC adjudicated claim 1 invalid. Among true third-party prior art, the highest-value references are US 5,428,388 (von Bauer, video doorbell), US 4,764,953 (Chern, remote doorbell answering), US 4,370,675 (doorbell-actuated TV security), and US 4,524,384 (video + audio security) — all pre‑2002 and therefore § 102(b) art; plus US 7,382,397 as § 102(e) art for the networked-controller limitation. All of the above should be re-verified against the '120's actual granted claim language and its own PTO citation table before use.

Not legal advice; all citation data above is reproduced literally and flagged where unverified.

I'll research the prior art landscape for this patent, focusing on the references cited in the patent's own background, the family's earlier patents, and the art used in the PTAB challenges against sibling family patents.

I have strong leads. Let me retrieve the key prior-art references' content and the actual claim text of the '120 patent.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 10,674,120 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Scope note and a flagged contradiction

Two framing points before the analysis, because they affect how much weight to give anything below:

1. "Prior Art section of this page." The material supplied to me does not contain a discrete labeled "Prior Art" section for the '120 patent. What is available as prior art is (a) the references the '120 patent's own Background cites, and (b) the reference set the PTAB actually applied against the sibling family patents in the Vivint v. SB IP Holdings IPRs. Those sibling claims are textually the same claims as the '120's summary "aspects," so the PTAB's § 103 record is the best available proxy. I use it, and I flag where it substitutes for a direct '120 record.

2. The '120's granted claims are still not in the record I was given. As flagged in the earlier Patent-summary section, the fetched '120 record omits a verbatim claims listing. I earlier reconstructed the claims from the summary "aspects" and from sibling claims — that reconstruction stands, and everything below should be read as resting on the near-identical sibling claim language quoted by the Board. I did not "correct" any reference number; all identifiers below are reproduced literally from the sources retrieved.

Bottom line up front: On the family's IPR record, claim 1 and the dependent claims of the '120's siblings were held unpatentable under § 103 over exactly the combinations below (IPR2022-00810 FWD, Oct. 19, 2023, claims 1–10, 13–21 unpatentable; and the parallel decisions). Because the '120 recites the same limitations, the same combinations would render the '120's claims obvious.* I flag, however, that the '120's validity at the ITC was resolved on § 102 anticipation (priority-gap), not § 103, and that theory was later undercut — so the § 103 grounds are the more durable attack.

1. Person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA)

Consistent with the declaration testimony the Board credited (Dr. Bertrand Hochwald, IPR2022-00810), the POSITA at the 2002–2003 priority date would have: a bachelor's degree in electrical/computer engineering (or equivalent) with ~2–3 years' experience, or equivalent education; familiarity with networking, wireless RF/Wi-Fi communications, digital video/audio capture and streaming, and consumer/security monitoring systems. Critically, the Board's decisions rest on the finding that wireless communication, IP cameras, and remote video/audio delivery were well-known and predictable by that date.

2. The claim 1 limitations the combinations must meet

Sibling claim language quoted in the IPR petitions (identical in substance to the '120's first "aspect") reads:

(a) a wireless exterior module located proximate an entrance, having a proximity sensor for detecting a person at the entrance, a video camera, a microphone, a speaker, a transmitter for communicating sounds and images of the person, and a receiver for receiving communications;
(b) a computerized controller running a software application disposed in wireless electronic communication with the exterior module via the transmitter/receiver, configured to control recording of communications and playback of such recording, with a graphic user interface enabling a user to view images from the camera; and
(c) a remote peripheral device configured to electronically communicate with the controller for viewing an image from the camera.

The dependent/aspect features (per the '120 summary) add: a second exterior module; remote camera actuation/zoom/pan; streaming video; display screen and keypad/touchscreen; portability with a locking mechanism, holster, quick-connect receptacle/battery; PSTN/Internet connectivity; an electronically actuated lock; voice recognition; and image recognition (faces, eyes, fingerprints).

3. The prior-art reference set

4. Obviousness grounds and motivations to combine

Ground A — Vaios + Menard (primary § 103 combination)

• Vaios supplies elements (b) and (c) and the camera/mic/TX-RX of (a): a wireless camera in a networked surveillance system with a host computer running software that records/plays back and lets a remote device view images.
• Menard supplies the integrated "exterior module 200D" — proximity detector (camera 370), video camera, intercom 330 (mic and speaker), and transceiver 150 (RF transmitter/receiver) — the weather-resistant single-unit elements of (a).

Motivation (KSR-aligned): Both are analogous security/monitoring art. Combining them = substituting Menard's single self-contained exterior module for Vaios's separate exterior components and packaging known components in a known way to yield the predictable benefits Menard itself touts — simpler installation (no running separate wiring), two-way audio with a visitor, and a more user-friendly, convenient monitoring device. Reasonable expectation of success because both rely on standard RF/wireless links and off-the-shelf A/V components (the Board credited that wireless video/monitoring was routine by 2002).
Record: this was the Board's primary ground in IPR2022-00810, and the combination the PTAB found persuasive enough to invalidate claims 1–10 and 13–21 of the sibling '098 patent.

Ground B — Klein (+ Menard) (independent § 103, and Klein alone as § 102(e))

• Klein supplies nearly all of (a)–(c) on its own: a wireless "video camera 60" locatable at an entry door, motion detection, a host computer 20 running "control software" that "control[s] recording, interpretation and reaction" and presents an interface through which a user views video, plus a microphone and a speaker system enabling a remote user to speak to a person at the door.
• Menard is added to supply the single-housing module form factor (combining mic/speaker/TX/RX/camera into one exterior unit) and the cellular/video-phone peripheral.

Motivation: Substitution of Menard's module for Klein's camera + discrete components; combining known elements in a known manner with predictable results; both address the same problem (remote security monitoring of an entrance). Note the practical caveat: Klein's status as prior art depends on the '120 not being entitled to its 2002-10-15 priority date — this is the same § 112 written-description dispute the Patent Owner fought in IPR2022-00812/'352.

Ground C — Naidoo-068 + Menard (+ Vaios, + Saylor) (system/communications-and-monitoring claims)

• Naidoo-068 supplies the computer/server + gateway architecture, the two-way audio stream between a remote client and the premises, PSTN communication, per-user access privileges, and biometric authentication (mapping the '120's access-lock, PSTN, and face/eye/fingerprint features).
• Menard again supplies the integrated exterior module (proximity sensor/camera/mic/speaker/RF TX-RX).

Motivation: Naidoo's separate outdoor components (sensors 105, audio stations 107, cameras 112) and Menard's module 200D are interchangeable monitoring devices performing substantially the same function (monitor an entrance, deliver A/V/sensor data to an on-premises device). Selection between them would be dictated by suitability/cost/desired functionality, with no engineering hurdle and predictable success — a textbook KSR "known technique applied to a similar device" rationale. Record: the ground on which IPR2022-00813 ('614 patent) was decided.

Ground D — Jae (+ Menard) (method claims — two-way A/V with a handheld)

• Jae is close to a complete anticipation/obviousness reference for the second aspect (two-way A/V between a person at an entrance and a second person using a phone): outdoor terminal 100 with camera 110, speaker 130, microphone 140, LCD 120, and two-way real-time A/V delivered to a user's mobile phone, plus door-lock control. Record: the ground on which IPR2022-00814 was decided.

Motivation: apply Jae's known two-way cellular A/V intercom technique to an entrance-monitoring system; predictable result; no technical obstacle (video phones with GUI/keypad control and 3G data were known by the priority date).

Ground E — Dependent-claim combinations

Each secondary reference supplies a known element for a known purpose, satisfying the KSR "predictable use of prior-art elements" test.

5. Why a POSITA would combine — consolidated rationale

1. Common field & problem. All references address the same problem the '120 identifies: remotely screening and communicating with a visitor at an entrance. All are analogous art.
2. Known components, known manner. Each claimed element (wireless camera, proximity/motion sensor, mic, speaker, RF transceiver, host-computer recording/playback, GUI, remote peripheral, remote camera control, electronic lock, biometrics) was independently known. Combining them is a predictable packaging/integration step with no unexpected results.
3. Stated benefits supply the motivation. Menard explicitly touts a single exterior device that collects A/V, communicates wirelessly, and enables two-way communication as more user-friendly, convenient, and easily installable — exactly the improvements the '120 claims. Under KSR, an explicit design incentive to consolidate and simplify supports the combination.
4. Interchangeability. Naidoo/Menard/Vaios exterior components are substitutable for one another with no change to the surrounding system (same data — video/audio/sensor — flows to the same on-premises device), which the Board accepted as a KSR substitution rationale.
5. Reasonable expectation of success. Off-the-shelf components, standard wireless/IP protocols (802.11, IPv6), and commercially shipped products (Panasonic BB-HCM371) meant success was predictable.

6. Rebuttal considerations (the Patent Owner's side, honestly stated)

• Teaching away / no wireless in Vaios. In IPR2022-00812 the Patent Owner argued Vaios's "squiggly line" graph is not wireless, its camera adapter requires wires, and its compression teaches away from wireless. The Board did not accept these as dispositive. A defendant should expect the same fight.
• Menard's "Bluetooth can't do video" argument. The Patent Owner argued (IPR2022-00812/'352) that as of 2002 Bluetooth was primarily audio and did not transmit video/images. This is a genuine factual hook that must be rebutted with evidence that the POSITA would have used other disclosed wireless paths (Menard also discloses RF transceiver 150).
• Priority / written description. Klein is only prior art if the '120 loses its 2002-10-15 priority (the "remote peripheral device configured to view an image" limitation is where the Patent Owner's provisional support was attacked). If the '120 keeps priority, drop Klein-based grounds and rely on Vaios/Menard/Jae/Naidoo art with pre-2002 dates.
• Secondary considerations. No evidence of unexpected results, skepticism, or industry praise appears in the record; the family's commercial success is tied to the asserted SkyBell/SB IP products, but nexus to the claimed features has not been established in the PTAB record.

7. Bottom line

• Primary § 103 ground: Vaios + Menard. It maps to every limitation of claim 1 and was the basis on which the Board invalidated the sibling '098 claims (1–10, 13–21) in IPR2022-00810.
• Independent/alternative grounds: Klein (+Menard); Naidoo-068 + Menard (+Vaios, Saylor); Jae (+Menard) — each corresponding to a decided IPR in the same family.
• Dependent features are met by Schnell/Choi (portability/display/holster/power), Knudson/Jacob/Mozer (recorded/seasonal greetings), Naidoo-068/Olson (access/biometrics), Vaios/Jae/Panasonic (remote camera control).
• The motivation in every combination is the KSR core: known elements combined in a known manner, with an explicit design incentive (simplify installation, add two-way audio, enable remote viewing) and a reasonable expectation of success.

⚠️ Two caveats you must weigh: (1) The '120 itself has no IPR on file (per the earlier PTAB section), so the above is a prediction grounded in sibling adjudications, not a holding against the '120. (2) The '120's only adjudicated invalidity finding was the ITC's § 102 anticipation ruling on a priority-gap theory (later undercut by the '525 revival and the 2023 E.D. Tex. ruling) — that is a different theory from the § 103 combinations above, and it is the § 103 record, not the ITC ruling, that carries the durable obviousness case.

Not legal advice. The '120's verbatim granted claims were not in the source record; confirm them against the issued patent before relying on any specific claim mapping.