US 10733593

I'll search for authoritative information on US 10,733,593, including any litigation/docket activity.

Let me look for the issued claim set and any CAFC activity on this specific patent.

Let me try to retrieve the issued claim set directly.

US Patent 10,733,593 B2 — Technical Summary

Searches performed: Google Patents full text (authoritative copy supplied), Justia patent publication US2018/0053173A1, USPTO PTAB/PTActs records, Docket Alarm PTAB dockets, govinfo (E.D. Tex. opinion), and general web search for CAFC activity. Findings flagged for uncertainty below.

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1. Bibliographic data

Priority chain (CIP/continuation lineage, per the patent and PTAB exhibits): 13/185,432 (2011‑07‑18 → US 8,554,671) → 13/974,837 (2013‑08‑23, abandoned) → 14/691,499 (2015‑04‑20, abandoned) → 15/786,470 (the '593) → 16/882,006 (US 10,796,296) → 17/009,551 (US 10,937,018) → 17/189,721 (US 11,087,307) → 17/398,789 (US 12,014,347) → 18/746,599 (US 12,462,240). The '593 is thus a continuation-in-part of the 2013 application, which was itself a CIP of the '671.

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2. Litigation / docket status (as of April 2026)

• District court: PayGeo, LLC v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. and [[Samsung Electronics America](/litigations/by-defendant/Samsung%20Electronics%20America), Inc.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Samsung%20Electronics%20America%2C%20Inc.), No. 2:25‑cv‑00334‑RWS‑RSP (E.D. Tex., Marshall Division), filed 2025‑04‑02. Note: one OCR'd copy of the opinion renders the plaintiff as "PAYGEOL, LLC"; the Docket Alarm copy and PTAB filings render it "PayGeo, LLC."
  • The asserted patents are US 8,554,671, 10,796,296, 10,937,018, 11,087,307, and 12,014,347. Patent 10,733,593 is NOT among the asserted patents in that action.
  • On 2026‑03‑31, Judge Robert W. Schroeder III denied Samsung's motion for judgment on the pleadings under § 101, overruling objections and adopting Magistrate Judge Roy S. Payne's report and recommendation (Doc. 68), holding that claim construction is needed before an Alice step‑two analysis of the asserted "security" features.
• PTAB: Samsung filed five IPRs (IPR2025‑01551 through ‑01555, filed 2025‑10‑01/‑02). These were subject to Patent Owner requests for discretionary denial, and at least IPR2025‑01555 was terminated 2026‑01‑27 with a Board decision to deny institution (discretionary denial). I found no IPR petition directed to US 10,733,593 — the petitions I could see concern the related '307, '347 and sibling patents.
• CAFC (2026): I found no Federal Circuit appeal involving the '593 patent. A general CAFC search returned unrelated Samsung cases (e.g., CogniPower v. Samsung, No. 2026‑1559, dismissed 2026‑04‑03; Pictiva Displays v. Samsung Display, No. 2026‑1599). I cannot rule out an unnoticed docketed appeal, but I have no authoritative basis to assert one exists.

⚠️ Confidence note: The patent's own front page states "Family has litigation — First worldwide family litigation filed," which is consistent with the E.D. Tex. action. I have no evidence that the '593 itself has been asserted or challenged.

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3. Abstract (verbatim)

"A system and associated method and service for providing a platform that enables members to transfer, receive, or otherwise exchange cash in various international denominations and commodities, such as precious metals (e.g., gold, silver, etc.), in a mobile highly secured telecommunications environment. The system is capable of delivering cash instantly between two or more users by allowing the exchange of secure transactions between system and cash dispensing machines (ATMs). Users may pay, receive, exchange, deposit, transfer, pay bills, exchange currency, retrieve cash, deposit cash and create accounts based on the mobile phone number or a system generated code."

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4. Independent claims — plain-language overview

⚠️ Important caveat on claim text. The authoritative Google Patents text supplied to me was truncated before the claims section. The claim language I could retrieve is from the pre-grant publication US 2018/0053173 A1 (published version of application 15/786,470). Issued claims in this family were amended during prosecution and differ from the published version (the sibling patents in the family were asserted as claims 1‑2, 4, 6‑9, 11, 13‑14, implying claim sets of at least 14 claims with independent claims in addition to claims 1 and 8). Treat the following as a high-confidence approximation, not a verbatim reproduction of the issued claims of US 10,733,593.

Independent claim 1 — "A system, comprising…"

A memory storing program code for a service offered by a third-party entity, plus hardware processors that cause the system to:

1. present a login interface requesting security credentials before granting access, the user being a previously registered first member of the service;
2. receive and validate those credentials, then present interface(s) letting the user register payment sources — specifically at least (i) a credit card issued by a credit card company and (ii) a financial account at a financial institution, where the third-party entity is different from both the card company and the bank;
3. present a menu of function identifiers, each navigating to a function, one of which navigates to a payment function;
4. receive the user's selection of that payment‑function identifier;
5. present interface(s) to select a payee identifier associated with a payee account belonging to a payee who is a previously registered second member of the service;
6. present interface(s) to select a payment source identifier from the registered sources (the financial‑account identifier, the credit‑card identifier, or the user's own third‑party account with the service entity);
7. receive the chosen payment source identifier and an entered payment amount;
8. present a confirmation request, receive the confirmation, and then request electronic transfer of the amount from the selected payment source to the payee account; and
9. receive a notification of the electronic transfer to the payee account.

Plainly: it is a closed‑loop mobile/browser payment flow among registered members of a third‑party payment service, in which multiple funding sources (bank account, credit card, in‑service wallet account) are pre‑registered and user‑selected at payment time, with an explicit confirmation step before the transfer is initiated.

Independent claim 8 — "A method, comprising…"

A computer‑implemented method reciting the same sequence of operations as claim 1 (login/credential validation → register payment sources including a credit card and a bank account → select a payment function → select a registered‑member payee → select a payment source → enter amount → confirm → request electronic transfer → receive transfer notification).

Dependent claims (as published)

• 2: the system is a mobile device and the program code is a mobile application.
• 3: the system is a server, and the code is server code.
• 4: registration interfaces additionally support a loan account, an international account, or a commodity account.
• 5: self‑payment case — the payee is the user, the source is the user's own bank account or credit card, and the payee account is the user's account with the third‑party service.
• 6: the payee identifier is a telephone number.
• 7: the payee identifier is a contact from an address book.
• 9: method counterpart dependent claim.

Character of the claims: They are drafted as largely functional, result‑oriented data‑entry/workflow steps performed by generic "memory + hardware processors" and a generic network transfer. The only limitations gesturing at the title's "prevent fraudulent financial transactions" are the login/security‑credential validation and the confirmation step. Notably, the specification's more distinctive disclosure — four security levels including a DNA molecular switch 333 (heat source, contact plate, DNA collection plate, nanotube/polymer binding, "denaturation/annealing" current‑matching), a commodity‑backed "Good Money" digital currency, Swipay/Swipmail NFC swipe transfers, and ATM scan‑code generation (codes 477/477R/485/488) — is not recited in the independent claims I could retrieve. This is likely material to § 101/§ 112 exposure, and is the same issue litigated in the related E.D. Tex. action.

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5. Explicit uncertainties

1. Exact issued claim set of the '593 is not confirmed. The claims above are from US 2018/0053173 A1. The issued claims of US 10,733,593 may include additional independent claims (e.g., a non‑transitory computer‑readable medium claim) and may have narrowed language. I did not obtain the issued claims verbatim and will not represent otherwise.
2. No CAFC 2026 docket for the '593 was located; absence of evidence here is not proof of absence.
3. Assignee chain: Google Patents lists "Individual" as original assignee and PayGeo LLC as current assignee, with a 2025 security interest to Piccadilly Patent Funding LLC. Google Patents expressly disclaims having performed a legal analysis of assignments.
4. PTAB: I found five Samsung IPRs against PayGeo in 2025, none of which I could confirm as targeting the '593. The discretionary‑denial outcome is confirmed for IPR2025‑01555 ('347 patent) as of 2026‑01‑27.

Sources: Google Patents US10733593B2 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US10733593B2/en); Justia US2018/0053173A1 (https://patents.justia.com/patent/20180053173); E.D. Tex. opinion, No. 2:25‑cv‑00334 (https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCOURTS-txed-2_25-cv-00334/pdf/USCOURTS-txed-2_25-cv-00334-0.pdf); Docket Alarm IPR2025‑01555 (https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2025-01555/Samsung_Electronics_Co._Ltd._v._PayGeo_LLC/); PTActs IPR2025‑01554 petition documents (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1558503](/patent/1558503)).

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 10733593 across the specified sources.

Let me dig deeper into the PayGeo litigation and determine whether the '593 patent specifically is asserted.

The key PayGeo case asserts five related patents, but I need to verify whether the '593 patent itself was ever asserted. Let me confirm.

Answer

Bottom line: I found no litigation in which U.S. Patent No. 10,733,593 has itself been asserted as a patent-in-suit. The '593 patent sits in the middle of a patent family that is in active litigation, but the cases I located plead other members of the family, not the '593.

Here is what my searches (Google Patents, CourtListener, govinfo.gov (RECAP/USCOURTS), Docket Alarm, PTAB/PTActs, Unified Patents-related sources, and Korean press coverage of the case) actually show.

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1. The family litigation that exists (does NOT include the '593)

PayGeo, LLC v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. and [[Samsung Electronics America](/litigations/by-defendant/Samsung%20Electronics%20America), Inc.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Samsung%20Electronics%20America%2C%20Inc.)

• Court/Jurisdiction: U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division
• Case No.: 2:25-cv-00334-RWS-RSP (Magistrate Judge Roy S. Payne; District Judge Robert W. Schroeder)
• Filing date: April 2, 2025
• Plaintiff: PayGeo, LLC (current assignee of the '593 and its family)
• Defendants: Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. and Samsung Electronics America, Inc.
• Patents asserted: U.S. Patent Nos. 8,554,671 ('671), 10,796,296 ('296), 10,937,018 ('018), 11,087,307 ('307), and 12,014,347 ('347). Accused products: Samsung Wallet / Samsung Pay / Samsung Pass (Galaxy phones/watches, servers, APIs).
• Status: Active. Samsung's Rule 12(c) motion for judgment on the pleadings (Alice § 101) was recommended for denial by Magistrate Judge Payne (Dkt. 68); Samsung filed objections March 27, 2026 (Dkt. 71). A Second Amended Docket Control Order sets trial for April 19, 2027. Samsung also moved to stay pending the IPRs.

Critically, the '593 is not among the five asserted patents. Notably, the asserted '018 and '347 patents are continuations/descendants of the same application that issued as the '593 (the '018's specification states it is a "continuation of application No. 15/786,470, filed on Oct. 17, 2017, now Pat. No. 10,733,593"). So the '593 is a parent in the family but is not itself pleaded.

2. Related PTAB proceedings (do NOT involve the '593)

Samsung filed five IPR petitions against PayGeo on October 1, 2025, each on a different patent:

• IPR2025-01551 – U.S. 8,554,671
• IPR2025-01552 – U.S. 10,796,296
• IPR2025-01553 – U.S. 10,937,018
• IPR2025-01554 – U.S. 11,087,307
• IPR2025-01555 – U.S. 12,014,347

All five were discretionarily denied institution (Board decision January 27, 2026; refunds approved March 23, 2026). No IPR petition against U.S. 10,733,593 appears in my results.

3. What I could not confirm

• I found no district-court complaint, ITC action, or PTAB proceeding naming U.S. 10,733,593 as an asserted/challenged patent.
• The Google Patents record for US10733593 carries a "Family has litigation" indicator and a Darts-IP family link. That flag appears to be family-level (driven by the PayGeo–Samsung case and the IPRs on the sibling/descendant patents), not evidence that the '593 itself was asserted. I could not retrieve a specific case tying the '593 to a docket.

Caveat on completeness: My search was bounded (search-step limit reached), so I cannot rule out a complaint that is not well indexed (e.g., a state-court or small-claim action, a case filed very recently, or a sealed/foreign action). I was not able to run a definitive Docket Navigator or Lex Machina "patent-in-suit" query for the '593. Treat the "no litigation on the '593" conclusion as strongly supported but not exhaustively verified.

4. Relevant ownership/prosecution facts (from the patent record, not litigation)

• Application 15/786,470, filed Oct. 17, 2017; issued as US 10,733,593 B2 on Aug. 4, 2020; inventor Rabih S. Ballout; priority claimed to July 18, 2011 (US 13/185,432, now US 8,554,671).
• Assigned to PayGeo LLC (Oct. 18, 2024 assignment recorded); Piccadilly Patent Funding LLC recorded as security holder under a patent security agreement (March 25, 2025) — a security interest, not a litigation outcome.

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Summary table

Conclusion: Based on the sources searched, no litigation asserting U.S. Patent 10,733,593 is known. The related PayGeo–Samsung litigation asserts five sibling/descendant patents from the same family ('671, '296, '018, '307, '347), and the five related IPRs likewise do not involve the '593. If you need this verified at the granularity of a commercial docket database (Docket Navigator / Lex Machina / Darts-IP), that query should be run explicitly, since I could not complete it here.

Sources: CourtListener — PayGeo v. Samsung, govinfo E.D. Tex. 2:25-cv-00334 order, Docket Alarm — IPR2025-01551/01554/01555 filings, PTAB IPR2025-01555 docket, Google Patents US10733593B2, US10937018 (specification noting '593 as parent).

Proceedings overview

US10733593 has zero AIA trial proceedings on file. The USPTO Open Data Portal block for this patent is empty, and my independent web sweep surfaced nothing directed at the '593 patent itself — so the breakdown is 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution-denied, and the bottom line for a defendant is not the "hardened patent" story: '593 is untested, not vindicated. Every claim that issued on 2020-08-04 remains in force, no PTAB panel has ever construed a term, no claim has been canceled, and no petitioner is estopped — which cuts both ways. You get a clean slate to attack it, but you also get no free roadmap and no cancellation order to point at. (Compare the sibling patents in this family, which Samsung attacked in five IPRs filed 2025-10-01/02 and lost on discretionary denial — see below. Those proceedings do not touch '593.)

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No proceedings on US10733593

No IPR, PGR, or CBM petition has been filed or indexed against U.S. Patent No. 10,733,593 (application 15/786,470, filed 2017-10-17, granted 2020-08-04, priority 2011-07-18, current assignee PayGeo LLC as of 2024-10-18, inventor Rabih S. Ballout, subject to a patent security agreement in favor of Piccadilly Patent Funding LLC dated 2025-03-25).

Practical consequences, stated plainly:

• No FWD, no institution decision, no claim-level verdict — so I cannot quote a disposition, and I won't invent one.
• No § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches to '593 from anything, because nothing was instituted.
• No § 315(b) one-year clock has started running against any accused infringer for '593, because (per the sources I retrieved) PayGeo has not asserted '593 in the PayGeo, LLC v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. litigation, E.D. Tex. Case No. 2:25-cv-00334-RWS-RSP. That complaint asserts only the '671, '296, '018, '307, and '347 patents.
• Anticipated expiration 2031-07-18, so the enforcement runway is roughly five more years.

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Adjacent family proceedings (NOT on '593 — flagged for family context only)

These five are the AIA proceedings my search surfaced. None of them names U.S. Patent No. 10,733,593. I include them because they tell you how this patent family is being litigated and how the Board is currently treating it. Every one of them was denied institution on discretionary grounds on 2026-01-27, with post-institution-fee refunds approved 2026-03-23.

IPR2025-01551 — [Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. et al.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Samsung%20Electronics%20Co.%2C%20Ltd.%20et%20al.) v. PayGeo, LLC (U.S. Patent 8,554,671)

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2025-10-02 (IP Verse record; the petition papers carry a 2025-10-01 date stamp)
• Status: "Discretionary Denial" — Director exercised discretion not to institute on 2026-01-27; no claim was ever put on trial.
• Judge panel: none publicly designated in the sources I retrieved (a denial under the Director's interim discretionary processes does not produce an APJ merits panel of record).
• Petition grounds: challenged the asserted claims of the '671 patent (the parallel stay motion notes claim 24 of the '671 patent was not subject to IPR review, so the petition covered claims 1–3 and 22). § 103 grounds built on Look (US 2007/0260558), Stallings (US 2010/0156812), and Tumminaro (US 2007/0255620) — those three are the references Samsung's own Sotera stipulation identified as "any reference named in IPR2025-01551's petition's grounds," alongside a large supporting exhibit set (Chappuis, Davis, Lin, Rackley, Tumminaro '652, Kuttuva, Karnouskos, Lyons, Gandhi, Dunwoody, Paybox/Guardian, Venmo/TechCrunch).
• Institution decision: denied 2026-01-27. Reasoning not fully retrieved; the pattern across the five-petition set (and PayGeo's briefing under the USPTO's Interim Processes for PTAB Workload Management, 2025-03-26) indicates the Director weighed settled expectations and the advanced E.D. Tex. case.
• Final Written Decision: none — trial never began.
• Settlement / termination: no settlement; terminated by non-institution.
• Appeal: none possible — no FWD.
• Defensive value: because there is no institution, there is no estoppel from this petition (and Samsung's 2025-11-06 stipulation was expressly conditioned — "If the PTAB institutes this inter partes review" — so it never took effect). The practical lesson: in a mature E.D. Tex. case, an early-filed IPR against these patents may simply be refused.

IPR2025-01552 — Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. et al. v. PayGeo, LLC

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2025-10-01
• Status: "Discretionary Denial" — terminated 2026-01-27.
• Patent at issue: I could not directly confirm the patent number from the sources retrieved. By elimination against the five asserted patents ('671, '296, '018, '307, '347) and the four confirmed case–patent pairings below, this docket corresponds to U.S. Patent No. 10,796,296 — treat that as an inference, not a verified fact.
• Petition grounds / panel / FWD / settlement / appeal: not retrieved; no FWD, no appeal.

IPR2025-01553 — Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. et al. v. PayGeo, LLC (U.S. Patent 10,937,018)

• Type: Inter Partes Review (Tech Center 3600, Art Unit 3694)
• Filed: 2025-10-01
• Status: "Discretionary Denial"; docket shows Board Director Discretionary Decision: Deny, 2026-01-27, and the case terminated the same day.
• Judge panel: not designated in the public record retrieved.
• Petition grounds: challenged claims of the '018 patent; exhibits include '018-US10937018, its file history, and a declaration of Stu Lipoff. Specific § 102/§ 103 ground table not retrieved.
• Institution decision: denied 2026-01-27 (discretionary).
• Final Written Decision: none.
• Settlement / termination: terminated by non-institution; refund approved 2026-03-23.
• Appeal: none.
• Defensive value: '018 is a continuation of the same application that issued as '593 (the '018 specification recites: "continuation of application No. 15/786,470, filed on Oct. 17, 2017, now Pat. No. 10,733,593"). So this docket tells you which art Samsung thought was worth aiming at the '593-chain, and that the Board declined to take it up.

IPR2025-01554 — Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. et al. v. PayGeo, LLC (U.S. Patent 11,087,307)

• Type: Inter Partes Review (Tech Center 3600)
• Filed: 2025-10-01
• Status: "Discretionary Denial." Institution decision date 2026-01-27; docket reflects "Director Discretionary Decision: Deny, 2026-01-27", followed by Petitioners' Request for Refund of Post-Institution Fee (2026-03-19) and Board Notice: refund approved (2026-03-23).
• Judge panel: not designated in the public record retrieved.
• Petition grounds (verbatim from PayGeo's Request for Discretionary Denial): Ground 1 — claims 1–14, § 103, Lin (Ex. 1005) and Rackley (Ex. 1006); Ground 2 — claims 1–14, § 103, Lin, Rackley, and Tumminaro (Ex. 1007). Petitioners' exhibit list also includes Kuttuva, Karnouskos, Merritt, McClinton, and the iPhone OS 3.1 User Guide.
• Institution decision: denied on 2026-01-27. PayGeo's 2025-12-08 request argued (1) strong settled expectations — a related PayGeo patent had been in force for over twelve years and Samsung had notice since 2017, and (2) the advanced E.D. Tex. case, where the FWD deadline (2027-04-07) sat less than two weeks before the 2027-04-19 trial date. The Director declined institution.
• Final Written Decision: none.
• Settlement / termination: none; terminated by non-institution.
• Appeal: none.
• Defensive value: confirms the current Board posture — for these PayGeo patents in an advanced parallel case, a merits win at the PTAB is hard to buy. Any defendant should budget for fighting validity in district court, not on a PTAB detour.

IPR2025-01555 — Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. et al. v. PayGeo, LLC (U.S. Patent 12,014,347)

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2025-10-01
• Status: "Discretionary Denial" — terminated 2026-01-27; non-institution.
• Judge panel: not designated in the public record retrieved.
• Petition grounds: challenged the asserted '347 claims (1–3, 5–8, 10 per PayGeo's infringement contentions); § 103-style art set disclosed by the exhibit list — Grigg (US 8,195,576), Carter (US 2009/0152343), the Google Security Blog advanced sign-in post (2011-02-10), Preece (US 2012/0166554), Nicoara, Shih, Mathiassen (WO 02/28067), French, Thomas, Osinga, the FFIEC 2005 authentication booklet, Owen, Stambaugh, Sanyal, and Al-Qayedi; expert declaration of Dr. Andrew Cockburn.
• Institution decision: denied 2026-01-27.
• Final Written Decision: none.
• Settlement / termination: none.
• Appeal: none.
• Defensive value: the '347 patent is the newest family member (granted from 17/398,789) and its authentication-focused claims drew a multi-factor authentication prior-art set. That gives you a useful prior-art starting kit for the whole family — including '593 — even though IPR was refused here.

Note on one loose thread: a Patent Owner Preliminary Response in a related Samsung IPR argues that "in its parallel PGR Petition (PGR2026-00001), Samsung presents narrow, implicit constructions… to allege the claim elements lack written description support." A separate docket shows **PGR2026-00001 as Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. v. Netlist, Inc. (filed 2025-11-07, discretionary denial, terminated 2026-03-23, Tech Center 2100). I could not reconcile those two records, and PGR2026-00001 is not a PayGeo proceeding on the record I retrieved. Do not assume a PayGeo PGR exists on the basis of that snippet.

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Strategic summary

Claim status on '593: everything is UNTESTED. No claim of US10733593 has been canceled, narrowed by a PTAB certificate, or held patentable in an FWD — because no trial was ever instituted. There is no "surviving claim" list to give you, because no claim was ever at risk. For the family, the five asserted patents ('671, '296, '018, '307, '347) are likewise entirely unadjudicated at the Board: all five Samsung petitions were denied institution on discretionary grounds on 2026-01-27, so none of those patents has a PTAB validity determination in either direction. The only substantive validity litigation in the chain is Samsung's § 101 motion for judgment on the pleadings in E.D. Tex. (Dkt. 35, 2025-08-29), which Magistrate Judge Payne's Report and Recommendation recommended denying because claim construction was needed before an Alice step-two analysis; the district court addressed Samsung's objections in an April 2026 order and the eligibility challenge did not knock the patents out at the pleadings stage in the excerpt I retrieved.

Estoppel landscape: clean, for everyone. Because nothing was instituted, § 315(e)(2) and § 325(e)(2) estoppel never attached — not to Samsung, not to any privy, and certainly not to '593. Even better for a defendant: Samsung's Sotera-style stipulations in the five IPRs were expressly conditioned on institution ("If the PTAB institutes…"), so they never ripened into binding waivers of district-court invalidity grounds. For a defendant now facing '593, every prior-art ground is available — § 102 and § 103, patents, printed publications, public use and on-sale art (which IPR cannot reach anyway), plus § 112 and § 101 — with no estoppel shadows and no need to route around a petitioner's prior work product. The only clock that matters is § 315(b): one year from service of the first complaint asserting '593.

Pattern signals. (1) The same petitioner, Samsung, filed five IPRs against five sibling PayGeo patents on the same two days — a coordinated, well-funded campaign, not a one-off; and the Board still declined all five. (2) PayGeo is the aggressor, not a defensive aggregator: it sued Samsung (SEC + SEA) in E.D. Tex. on 2025-04-02 across five patents, demanded injunctive relief, damages, royalties, interest, and Samsung's revenue accounting, and, per the family record, this is flagged as the first worldwide family litigation. (3) No Unified Patents–style aggregator appears anywhere in the chain — the only third party with a financial hook is Piccadilly Patent Funding LLC, which took a patent security interest in 2025-03-25. (4) There is no Federal Circuit activity to report; with zero FWDs there is nothing appealable. Read together: this is a patent owner with real monetization backing willing to litigate broadly, whose patents the Board currently declines to review — and '593, the common ancestor of most of the asserted patents, is sitting in reserve, never asserted and never challenged.

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Recommended next steps

• If you are a defendant facing '593: there is no FWD to link to and no canceled claim to quote — do not let opposing counsel tell you otherwise. All claims stand as issued. Your leverage is (a) the § 101 record Samsung already built across this family (the Dkt. 35 motion for judgment on the pleadings and Judge Payne's R&R, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCOURTS-txed-2_25-cv-00334/pdf/USCOURTS-txed-2_25-cv-00334-0.pdf), and (b) the family-wide prior-art kit Samsung assembled and disclosed in the five denied petitions, which is public and reusable, including in the district court where IPR estoppel does not apply.
• Timing/§ 315(b): if and when PayGeo serves a complaint asserting '593, your one-year § 315(b) clock starts that day. Because the Board has now refused institution on five contemporaneous Petitions in an advanced E.D. Tex. case, a parallel-filed IPR against '593 should be expected to face the same discretionary-denial headwind — weigh it against straight district-court invalidity plus a § 101 motion.
• If a proceeding does get instituted later: the statutory clock is one year from institution to FWD (35 U.S.C. § 316(a)(11)), with the institution decision due within six months of the petition's filing date (§ 314(b)). Track both via PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/) — the canonical source for anything filed on '593.
• Monitoring: the underlying infringement case is PayGeo, LLC v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., No. 2:25-cv-00334-RWS-RSP (E.D. Tex.), with jury selection set for 2027-04-19 before Judge Robert Schroeder (Magistrate Judge Roy S. Payne), per the Second Amended Docket Control Order (https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/[10877459](/patent/10877459)/paygeo-llc-v-samsung-electronics-co-ltd-and-samsung-electronics/). Any new IPR against '593 would most likely be filed by a defendant in a follow-on case rather than by Samsung in that one.
• The absence itself is the signal: a 2011-priority family that has been in force since 2013 (the '671 patent) and was first asserted in 2025 has attracted exactly one PTAB campaign, and that campaign just lost on the threshold. Either no other accused party has been sued yet, or accused parties are choosing to litigate validity in court. If your client is next, assume '593 will be the follow-on assertion in a second wave — it is the broadest, oldest-priority, never-litigated member of the group.

Confidence caveats: the proceeding details above for the five Samsung IPRs come from third-party PTAB aggregators and the parties' own filings (PTACTS petition documents, Docket Alarm dockets, IP Verse case records), not from the ODP structured block — the ODP block is authoritative only for '593, and it reports no proceedings. I could not confirm judge panels, complete ground tables, or the final reasoning of the five 2026-01-27 non-institution decisions, and I expressly did not confirm the patent number at issue in IPR2025-01552. Verify anything you intend to rely on against PTAB E2E before filing.

I'll research the assignment record for US 10733593, starting with the two post-issuance events already visible in the Google Patents legal events, then cross-referencing the USPTO Assignment Center and asserter directories.

Let me dig into the assignment specifics, the Piccadilly security agreement, and the asserter directories.

Ownership-chain reconstruction — US 10,733,593 B2

Data-access note (read first). The authoritative source for this task is USPTO Patent Assignment Search (https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ ; mirror https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html). In this session I could not directly query that database — I only had general web search — so I could not retrieve the field-level assignment metadata the task asks for: reel/frame and the correspondent/attorney of record. Rather than invent those values, I flag every missing field explicitly below. The two post-issuance conveyances are confirmed by Google Patents legal events (https://patents.google.com/patent/US10733593/en), which report their existence and dates but not the reel/frame or correspondent. A follow-up run pulled directly from the Assignment Center is required to populate reel/frame and correspondent.

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Inventors

• Rabih S. Ballout (full name Rabih Salem Ballout) — sole named inventor. Multiple litigation/IPR filings identify him as the founder and CEO of PayGeo, LLC (he signs a PTAB power of attorney as "Rabih Salem Ballout, Title: CEO, PayGeo, LLC").
• Employer at time of filing: Not determinable from the record. The 2017-10-17 CIP application was filed with no corporate assignee of record — Google Patents lists the original assignee as "Individual" — i.e., Ballout held title personally. That points to self-employment / individual filing rather than a corporate employer at filing.
• Unusual patterns: No co-inventors on this patent. The distinguishing pattern is not the "all inventors depart within 12 months" fire-sale tell; it is the opposite — the sole inventor kept personal title for ~13 years after the 2011 priority date and only assigned the patent to his own company in October 2024, immediately ahead of an assertion campaign (see timeline). Family follow-ons (US 10,796,296; 10,937,018; 11,087,307; 12,014,347; parent 8,554,671) share this inventor and are the patents actually asserted against Samsung.

Original assignee

• Original assignee of record: "Individual" (Rabih S. Ballout, personally). The patent issued with title in the inventor himself — there was no operating-company assignee on the issued face.
• Did that entity ship a product embodying the claims? No evidence of any product shipped by the inventor-as-individual. There is no known commercial PayGeo product in the record; the accused products are Samsung's (Samsung Wallet / Samsung Pay).
• "PayGeo" business line: PayGeo, LLC is a Texas LLC whose principal place of business is stated in the 2025 complaint as 508 South Airport Boulevard, South San Francisco, CA 94080-6912. It is described in press coverage as a "Texas-based fintech company," but the only concrete activity surfaced is patent assertion against Samsung — not product shipment.
• Current status: PayGeo, LLC is active and litigating (E.D. Tex. plaintiff; PTAB patent owner). It is the current record owner, subject to the security interest below. The LLC received title from Ballout only on 2024-10-18.

Assignment timeline

Two recorded post-issuance conveyances are confirmed (dates per Google Patents legal events). Reel/frame and correspondent are "not retrieved" for both — verify in the Assignment Center.

1. 2024-10-18 (executed) / recorded 2024-10-18 — Reel not retrieved / not retrieved

   • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest ("ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)")
   • Assignor: Ballout, Rabih (Rabih Salem Ballout, individual)
   • Assignee: PayGeo LLC
   • Correspondent: not retrieved. (Could not confirm an assignment-record attorney; do not confuse with litigation counsel — see below.)
   • Context: Transfer of title from the individual inventor to his own newly-formed LLC — the vehicle through which the portfolio is asserted; occurs ~5.5 months before the first infringement complaint.

2. 2025-03-25 (executed) / recorded 2025-03-25 — Reel not retrieved / not retrieved

   • Conveyance: Patent Security Agreement (security interest, not a title transfer)
   • Assignor: PayGeo LLC
   • Assignee: Piccadilly Patent Funding LLC, as Security Holder
   • Correspondent: not retrieved.
   • Context: Securitization / litigation financing — the portfolio is pledged as collateral to a funder. "Piccadilly Patent Funding LLC" appears in patent dockets alongside Davidson Kempner Capital Management LP (e.g., participant in MYW Semitech, LLC v. …, No. 1:25-cv-00504), i.e., a hedge-fund-backed IP-finance vehicle. PayGeo retains title; Piccadilly holds a security interest.

Supporting (non-assignment) events from litigation, for context only:

• 2025-04-02 — PayGeo, LLC v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. et al., No. 2:25-cv-00334-RWS-RSP (E.D. Tex., Marshall Div.), complaint filed.** The five asserted patents are US 8,554,671; 10,796,296; 10,937,018; 11,087,307; and 12,014,347 — US 10,733,593 (this patent) is not among the asserted set at the pleadings stage. Plaintiff's counsel: Elizabeth L. DeRieux, Capshaw DeRieux LLP (plaintiff-side patent monetization firm).
• 2025 — Samsung petitions: IPR2025-01551 ('671), IPR2025-01554 ('307), IPR2025-01555 ('347). Petition-side counsel: Finnegan (Joshua L. Goldberg). Patent-owner counsel: Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer (James Hannah et al.) — this is litigation counsel, filed with a PayGeo power of attorney signed by Ballout as CEO, and is not the assignment-record correspondent.

Finding on the Assignment Center query: the database does contain records for this patent (two conveyances above). It does not appear that title ever passed to an unrelated, anonymous shell LLC. The only two recorded events are (i) inventor → his own LLC and (ii) an LLC collateral pledge to a litigation funder.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10733593
    2011 : Priority application filed by Ballout
    2017 : CIP application filed by individual
    2020 : Patent issues to Rabih S Ballout
    2024 : Assigned to PayGeo LLC
    2025 : Security interest to Piccadilly
         : PayGeo sues Samsung in EDTX

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Unclear. Title moved from the individual inventor to PayGeo LLC (2024-10-18). PayGeo has a real commercial address (South San Francisco) and its founder is CEO, and its name carries no "IP/Patents/Licensing/Holdings/Ventures" suffix — so it does not fit the classic anonymous-shell profile. But no evidence of a shipped product was found, so it functions as a non-practicing holder. Not established as a shell on the current record.

2. Known asserter in the chain — Unclear. PayGeo, LLC does not match any entity on the listed NPE rosters (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg entities). It is, however, now an active EDTX plaintiff (No. 2:25-cv-00334) and PTAB patent owner. Could not confirm a Unified Patents / RPX high-frequency-plaintiff listing for PayGeo. Verify directly.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Insufficient data. Correspondent of record was not retrievable for either recording, so recurrence cannot be tested. (Do not substitute litigation counsel Capshaw DeRieux or Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer — those are not assignment-record correspondents.) This is the single highest-value field to pull from the Assignment Center; a repeat-player attorney on both the 2024-10-18 and 2025-03-25 recordings would materially raise confidence.

4. Cascading transfers — Not present. Only two recorded events, ~5 months apart, and they are of different types (title assignment vs. security agreement). No chained LLC hopscotch; no shared-principal relay.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — Present (portfolio-level); unclear (patent-specific). The assignment to PayGeo LLC on 2024-10-18 precedes the first complaint (2025-04-02) by ~5.5 months — inside the 6-month window. Caveat: the April 2025 suit asserts the sibling patents, not US 10,733,593 itself, so the "transfer to enable suit on this patent" inference is weaker for '593 than for its family members.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. No Chapter 7/11, no estate sale; assignor was an individual, not a distressed public company.

7. Privateering — Not present. No operating company transferred this patent to an NPE to assert on its behalf. The patent originated with an individual inventor and stayed within his own controlled entity.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present. Chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. The security holder (Piccadilly) is a funding vehicle, not a defensive aggregator.

Verdict

NPE — moderate confidence.

The record owner, PayGeo LLC (title per the 2024-10-18 assignment from individual inventor Ballout), shows no evidence of a product embodying the claims and is actively asserting the patent family against Samsung (PayGeo v. Samsung, No. 2:25-cv-00334, filed 2025-04-02; PTAB IPR2025-01551/-01554/-01555). Two facts drive the call: (a) the 2024-10-18 inventor→PayGeo assignment lands ~5.5 months before the first complaint (pre-litigation transfer, signal 5 present at portfolio level), and (b) the 2025-03-25 Patent Security Agreement to Piccadilly Patent Funding LLC pledges the portfolio to a litigation-finance entity linked to Davidson Kempner (monetization/securitization). Confidence is held to moderate rather than high because PayGeo is the inventor's own company — not a classic anonymous shell or a name on the published NPE rosters — and because the reel/frame and correspondent of record could not be retrieved, leaving the repeat-correspondent test (signal 3) unresolved.

Verify at: USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (mirror https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html) — search patent number 10733593; and Google Patents legal events — https://patents.google.com/patent/US10733593/en.

Fields still to confirm directly at the Assignment Center: reel/frame for the 2024-10-18 and 2025-03-25 recordings; correspondent of record for each; and whether Piccadilly Patent Funding LLC's recording names a registered-agent/service address.

I'll research US patent 10733593 and its cited prior art. Let me run several searches.

I'll dig into the specific citation lists and the claims of US10733593.

Let me try to retrieve the actual citation lists from patent databases.

Important scope note up front

I was able to verify the bibliographic record for US 10,733,593 B2 and the patent-family/priority chain, but I was not able to pull the complete USPTO/Google Patents “(56) References Cited” table for this specific patent in this session (Google Patents' citation table for this family did not render in the results I retrieved, and the USPTO PatentCenter/PTAB file-history pages I reached were for the sibling patents). Per your standing rule, I will not invent a citation list, DOIs, or patent numbers I could not confirm. Below I separate verified references from unverified/flagged ones.

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1. Verified identification of the target patent

Continuity chain (verified from the patent's own cross-reference and from PayGeo's later filings):
15/786,470 (2017-10-17) ← CIP of 14/691,499 (2015-04-20, abandoned) ← CON of 13/974,837 (2013-08-23, abandoned) ← CIP of 13/185,432 (2011-07-18, now US 8,554,671).

Downstream continuations: 16/882,006 → US 10,796,296 B2; 17/009,551 → US 10,937,018 B2; 17/189,721 → US 11,087,307 B2; 17/398,789 → US 12,014,347 B2; 18/746,599 → US 12,462,240 B2.

Litigation/PTAB context: IPR2025-01551, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. et al. v. PayGeo, LLC, challenging US 8,554,671 (the priority patent), co-pending with an E.D. Tex. case (PayGeo, LLC v. Samsung Elecs. Co., No. 25-cv-00334).

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2. Prior-art references cited in the patent itself (verified — these are the citations I can ground)

These are the only two patent documents the specification expressly cites, both in the Background of the Invention, and both admitted as prior art by the applicant:

(a) US 2009/0068982 A1 — Chen et al., “Mobile wallet and digital payment”

• Application: US 11/852,488 (filed 2007)
• Publication date: 2009-03-12
• Status vs. priority date (2011-07-18): Published more than one year before the earliest priority date → qualifies as prior art under pre-AIA § 102(b) (and, if AIA applies to any claim, under § 102(a)(1) as a printed publication/patent-application publication).
• Substance (per the ’593 specification’s own characterization): a terminal component receives payment data for goods/services; a mobile device carries a mobile payment card (“m-card”) created by linking to an account associated with a form of currency; the mobile device uses public-key cryptography (PKC) to securely and wirelessly transmit payment to the terminal using the m-card and linked account.
• § 102 mapping — claim themes potentially anticipated:
  • Claims reciting a mobile device storing a wallet/payment instrument linked to a currency-denominated account, and secure wireless transmission of payment data to a terminal/payment-processing device — Chen discloses these elements directly. Any dependent claim limited to “secure wireless payment from a mobile device to a merchant terminal” would be at § 102 risk from Chen alone.
  • Claims reciting a notification to a payee device — Chen is weaker here (terminal-centric, not payee-device-centric).
  • Claims reciting multiple, source-specific communication interfaces (credit-card-company interface vs. financial-institution interface vs. third-party-service interface) and selection of the interface based on the selected payment source — Chen does not disclose this. Chen does not teach a service-provider intermediary that dynamically routes the transaction over a different interface depending on whether the funding source is a credit card, a bank account, or a stored-value account. These claims are not anticipated by Chen (they may be relevant to § 103, not § 102).
  • Claims reciting function-identifier menus, payee-identifier selection, points/mileage redemption, ATM scannable-code cash withdrawal, DNA/fingerprint/voice multi-factor security — not disclosed by Chen.

(b) US 2008/0010191 A1 — Rackley III et al.

• Publication date: 2008-01-10 (application filed 2007)
• Status vs. priority date: Published more than four years before the 2011-07-18 priority date → pre-AIA § 102(b) (and § 102(a)(1) if AIA applies to a given claim).
• Substance (per the ’593 specification’s own characterization): methods/systems for paying a payee using a mobile device or wirelessly connected PDA. The user inputs at the mobile device (i) the payee, (ii) the payment source, and (iii) the payment method; the mobile device generates a mobile payment instruction and wirelessly sends it to a mobile financial transaction system (MFTS); the MFTS then generates and forwards an MFTS payment instruction (payment source, amount, payee, method) to a payment-instruction recipient, which effects payment to the payee without any required action by the payee.
• § 102 mapping — claim themes potentially anticipated:
  • Claims reciting user selection, at a mobile device, of (1) a payee, (2) a payment source, and (3) a payment amount/method, followed by generation and wireless transmission of a payment instruction to a central financial transaction system that then effects the funds movement — Rackley discloses this element-by-element in substance.
  • Claims reciting presenting the member with multiple selectable payment source identifiers (card/bank/service account) and receiving the selection — Rackley's “identify a payment source” teaching is close; whether it discloses the three-interface architecture and interface-selection-on-source-type limitation turns on the specific claim language.
  • Claims reciting real-time notification delivered to the payee's computing device — Rackley is arguably contrary in part, because its stated advantage is payment “without any required action by the payee,” whereas the ’593 claims require generating and transmitting a notification to the second member's device so the payee has immediate access to up-to-date transfers. That is a distinguishing limitation, not an anticipating one.
  • Claims reciting login/security-credential interface before the member can access the service, third-party-entity-operated multi-member service, coupon/points accumulation and transfer, ATM code generation/scanning, commodity (“Good Money”) or precious-metal backing, DNA molecular-switch verification — not disclosed by Rackley.

Net § 102 assessment on the verified record: Chen and Rackley are strong § 102 anticipators only for the narrow, generic “mobile-device electronic payment” claim themes. Both are better characterized as § 103 references against the broader architecture claims. Neither discloses the claimed combination of (i) program code for a third-party-entity service with (ii) three distinct communication interfaces (credit-card-company device, financial-institution device, third-party-entity device), (iii) interface selection keyed to the selected payment source, and (iv) real-time transfer notification pushed to the payee's device. That combination is the apparent point of novelty and would need a different reference or an obviousness combination.

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3. Items I could identify but that are NOT § 102 prior art (flagged to avoid mischaracterization)

Same-family documents (same priority; cannot be § 102 art against the ’593 patent):

• US 8,554,671 B2 (13/185,432, filed 2011-07-18) — “System and associated method and service for providing a platform that allows for the exchange of cash between members in a mobile environment”
• US 2014/0058944 A1 (13/974,837, filed 2013-08-23)
• US 2015/0227913 A1 (14/691,499, filed 2015-04-20)
• US 10,796,296 B2 (16/882,006); US 10,937,018 B2 (17/009,551); US 11,087,307 B2 (17/189,721); US 12,014,347 B2 (17/398,789); US 12,462,240 B2 (18/746,599)

These are continuations/CIPs of the same disclosure and share the 2011-07-18 priority. They are relevant to double-patenting/obviousness-type double-patenting analysis, not to § 102. (Caveat: a CIP can contain new matter not supported by the parent; to the extent US 15/786,470 claims matter not supported by 13/185,432, that matter would not enjoy the 2011 date and would instead be measured from 2015-04-20 or 2017-10-17 — see § 5 below.)

Forward citations (documents that cite this patent — the reverse direction, not prior art):

• US 2020/0402335 A1 — “Methods and systems for access control and awareness management” (cites US 10,733,593)
• US 10,198,597 B2 — “Managing mobile application security” (cites US 10,733,593)

I flag these because they appear in Google Patents' “Similar Documents”/“Cited By” tables and are easily mistaken for asserted art. They post-date the ’593 priority and cannot be § 102 art.

Prior art named in the co-pending IPR against the parent (identifiers NOT verified):
The IPR2025-01551 papers I retrieved (PayGeo's Patent Owner Preliminary Response for US 8,554,671) frame the challenge around three references identified only as “Look,” “Stallings,” and “Tumminaro,” and argue that “Look Does Not Disclose Financial Transactions between Two User Mobile Stations” and that “Tumminaro Does Not Cure Deficiencies in Look/Stallings.” I could not verify the exact patent numbers or publication dates of these three references in this session, so I am deliberately not supplying citations, dates, or claim mappings for them. If they are indeed the references the examiner applied against the shared 2011-priority disclosure, they would be equally or more pertinent to US 10,733,593 (same specification, same priority), and would be the first thing to pull for a complete § 102 analysis.

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4. Which claims are exposed — structural read of the ’593 claims

I could not verify the exact numbered claim set of US 10,733,593 B2 in this session. The substantive claim language that is available in the record belongs to the sibling US 10,796,296 B2, which shares the specification and the 2011 priority and which recites, in substance:

• a memory storing program code associated with a service provided by a third-party entity to a plurality of registered members;
• a first communication interface to a device associated with a credit card company, a second communication interface to a device associated with a financial institution, and a third communication interface to a device associated with the third-party entity;
• a login interface requesting security credentials, validated before access;
• interfaces to register payment sources (credit-card account and financial account) for a future transaction;
• interfaces to select a function identifier, including one navigating to a payment function;
• selection of a payee identifier (a third-party account belonging to a second registered member);
• selection of a payment source identifier from a set including a financial-account identifier, a credit-card identifier, and a third-party-account identifier;
• entry of a payment amount;
• selecting the communication interface that matches the particular payment source and establishing the communication link on that interface;
• requesting electronic transfer of the amount from the particular source to the payee account;
• generating a notification of the transfer and transmitting it over a communication network to the payee's computing device in real time, so the payee has immediate access to up-to-date transfers.

Mapping that structure to § 102:

Conclusion of the § 102 pass: on the references I could verify, only the generic mobile-payment claims are genuinely exposed to § 102. The distinctive architecture (source-dependent interface selection among three interfaces; third-party-entity multi-member service; real-time payee notification) is not anticipated by Chen or Rackley. The realistic invalidity theory against the independent claims is § 103, likely combining a payment-platform reference with a mobile-wallet reference — which is precisely the posture Samsung has taken against the parent in IPR2025-01551.

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5. Statutory framework caveat (matters for § 102 vs. § 103 and which art counts)

Because the priority chain crosses the AIA effective date of 2013-03-16:

• Claims whose subject matter is supported by the 2011-07-18 disclosure (13/185,432) get pre-AIA § 102/§ 103 treatment. Art qualifying as “prior art” includes pre-AIA § 102(a), (b), (e), (f), (g), and pre-AIA § 103(a) with the pre-AIA § 103(c) exception.
• Claims reciting new matter first introduced in the 2013-08-23 CIP (13/974,837) or the 2015-04-20 CIP (14/691,499) get the earlier AIA § 102(a)(1)/(a)(2) and AIA § 103 treatment measured from the respective CIP filing date.
• This matters concretely: the “three-interface / interface-selection / third-party-entity service” language appears heavily in the CIP-era and post-2015 continuations. If those limitations are new matter, then art published between 2011 and 2013–2015 that would be excluded under pre-AIA § 102(b) could become available under AIA § 102(a)(1)/(a)(2).

I did not have access to the file history/IDS for 15/786,470, so I cannot tell which of the granted claims the examiner treated as entitled to the 2011 date.

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6. What I do not know (stated explicitly rather than guessed)

• The complete “(56) References Cited” list on the face of US 10,733,593 B2, and which of those the examiner used in § 102 rejections vs. § 103 rejections.
• The examiner name, art unit, and interview/after-final history for 15/786,470.
• The exact patent numbers, dates, and cited passages for the “Look,” “Stallings,” and “Tumminaro” references asserted in IPR2025-01551.
• The exact numbered claim set of US 10,733,593 B2 (I used the substantively identical sibling US 10,796,296 B2 as a proxy — the two share a specification, but a claim chart must be run against the granted ’593 claims themselves).

7. Recommended next retrieval steps to close the gaps

1. Pull the USPTO PatentCenter “References Cited” / IFW for 15/786,470 to get the verified (56) list and any § 102/§ 103 rejections.
2. Pull the IPR2025-01551 petition and Exhibits 1002–1005 to obtain the exact citations for Look, Stallings, and Tumminaro — these are the art being used against the shared 2011 disclosure and are the highest-value § 102 candidates for the ’593 claims.
3. Pull the E.D. Tex. invalidity contentions in PayGeo, LLC v. Samsung Electronics Co., No. 25-cv-00334 (Dkt. 52) for Samsung's asserted prior-art combinations across the PayGeo family.
4. Run a claim-by-claim chart against the granted claims of US 10,733,593 B2 (not a sibling) once retrieved.

If you'd like, I can run a focused follow-up to nail down the verified (56) list and the exact Look/Stallings/Tumminaro identifiers.

I'll ground this analysis in the actual claim language and the cited prior art before reasoning about § 103. Let me pull the claims, the cited references, and any prosecution/litigation context.

I have the claim language. Now let me pull the actual prior-art references of record and any litigation/IPR context for this patent.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 10,733,593 (35 U.S.C. § 103)

Prepared by: Patent analyst | Date: April 26, 2026
Patent: US 10,733,593 B2, "Kit, system and associated method and service for providing a platform to prevent fraudulent financial transactions"
Assignee of record: PayGeo LLC (per the Google Patents page) | Inventor: Rabih S. Ballout
Application: 15/786,470, filed 2017‑10‑17; granted 2020‑08‑04; priority date listed: 2011‑07‑18 (claimed from 13/185,432).

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0. Evidence base and important caveats (please read)

1. Authority for the claims used below. The Google Patents page I was given is truncated inside the "Description," so I could not read the granted claim set from that page. I therefore used the claims of US 2018/0053173 A1, the pre‑grant publication of the same application (15/786,470), available at https://patents.justia.com/patent/20180053173. The granted claims are very likely identical or nearly so, but if claim 1 was amended during prosecution, the element mapping below must be re‑run against the granted text.
2. Prior art to be used (per your instruction, the "Prior Art" section of the page). The patent's own Background and "Definitions" sections identify two references, both reproduced verbatim in the patent:
   • US 2009/0068982 A1 — Chen et al., "Mobile wallet and digital payment" (Google Patents: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20090068982A1/en; the search results also show an apparently corresponding granted patent, US 8,041,338, "Mobile wallet and digital payment," Microsoft).
   • US 2008/0010191 A1 — Rackley III et al., "Methods and systems for providing a payment in a mobile environment" (Google Patents: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20080010191A1/en; the same family includes US 2008/0010190, 0010192, 0010193, 0010196, 0010204 and 0010215, and PCT publication WO 2008/005018).
3. Prior‑art status. Both references published in 2008–2009. Even on the earliest asserted date (2011‑07‑18) both are more than one year before the filing/priority date, so both are prior art under § 102(b) (pre‑AIA) and, if the AIA applies to any claim, under § 102(a)(1). No antedating is realistically available.
4. CIP caution. 15/786,470 is a continuation‑in‑part of 14/691,499 (2015) ← continuation of 13/974,837 (2013) ← CIP of 13/185,432 (2011). Any claim limitation first supported only by the 2017 CIP would get a 2017 effective date, which would additionally open the door to 2015–2017 intervening art. This is a secondary attack vector worth flagging, but it is not needed for the grounds below.
5. What I could not verify. I could not retrieve the exact "References Cited" list or the file‑wrapper rejections for 10,733,593. I also did not independently confirm the merits of any litigation or IPR. The Google Patents page states the family "has litigation" (Darts‑ip link), and search results show a Petition in IPR2025‑01555 ([[Samsung Electronics Co.](/litigations/by-defendant/Samsung%20Electronics%20Co.) Ltd.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Samsung%20Electronics%20Co.%20Ltd.)) whose Exhibit‑1002 is the file history of later family member US 12,014,347, whose chain expressly recites "15/786,470 10/17/2017 PAT 10733593." I treat these only as evidence that the art is being tested, not as substantive authority.

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1. Governing framework and level of ordinary skill

• Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966) factors: scope/content of the prior art; differences between the prior art and the claims; the level of ordinary skill; and secondary considerations.
• KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007): a combination is obvious where the prior‑art elements are known, the combination is of familiar elements according to known methods, and it yields no more than predictable results; an explicit "teaching, suggestion, or motivation" is not required; design incentives and market forces count.
• In re Keller / In re Merck: the test is what the combination teaches, not the references individually; a reference must be considered for everything it fairly teaches.
• Level of ordinary skill: a person with a bachelor's in computer science/electrical engineering or equivalent, plus ~2–4 years of experience in mobile payments/telecommunications, or equivalent work experience. At the 2011 priority date, mobile wallets, PKC‑secured mobile payments, PIN/digital‑certificate two‑factor authentication, and wallet‑to‑wallet transfers were all established engineering arts.

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2. Representative claim (claim 1, per US 2018/0053173 A1)

Claim 1 is a system claim comprising, in substance:

1. memory storing program code associated with a service provided by a third‑party entity, and one or more hardware processors executing it;
2. a login interface requesting security credentials before access, the user having previously registered as a first member;
3. if credentials are validated, interfaces to register payment sources, including a credit card issued by a credit card company and a financial account associated with a financial institution, the third‑party entity being different from both;
4. interfaces to select a function identifier from a set, one navigating to a payment function to request sending a payment amount to a payee account that is a third‑party account associated with the third‑party entity and belonging to a payee who has previously registered as a second member;
5. after selection, interfaces to select a payee identifier and receive that selection;
6. interfaces to select a payment source identifier from a set, where the code is capable of presenting a financial‑account identifier, a credit‑card identifier, and a third‑party‑account identifier associated with the third‑party entity and belonging to the user;
7. receiving the payment‑source selection; interfaces to enter the payment amount; receiving the amount;
8. an interface to request confirmation, and receiving confirmation; and
9. after confirmation, requesting electronic transfer from the particular payment source to the payee account, and receiving a notification of the electronic transfer.

Dependent claims add: mobile device/application (2); server/server code (3); loan / international / commodity account registration (4); payee = the user, self‑funding into the user's own third‑party wallet account (5); payee identifier = telephone number (6); payee = contact from an address book (7); plus method counterparts (8 et seq.).

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3. The two references as applied

3.1 Rackley III et al., US 2008/0010191 A1 (primary reference)

As the patent itself summarizes, Rackley teaches: a user inputs into a mobile device information identifying (i) a payee, (ii) a payment source, and (iii) a payment method; the device generates a mobile payment instruction and wirelessly sends it to a mobile financial transaction system (MFTS); the MFTS generates an MFTS payment instruction to a payment instruction recipient, which effects payment to the identified payee without any required action by the payee. The published Rackley disclosure further teaches, expressly:

• a downloadable "Mobile Wallet" application with selectable commands including "PayAnyone," "Payment Source" and "Payment Method" (20080010191, ¶¶ [0036], [0323]–[0329]);
• registration/enrollment of users, accounts, and payees, with web‑ and mobile‑based interfaces (id. ¶¶ [0194], [0200], [0322]–[0326], and FIGS. 37–42 for the sibling filings);
• login authentication — a PIN that must be entered each time the client is launched, plus a unique digital key/certificate per client, expressly described as "two‑factor authentication," and account lockout after failed logins (id. ¶¶ [0264]–[0267]);
• selecting among multiple payment sources, including credit cards and bank accounts at different financial service providers, with real‑time/cached balances (id. ¶¶ [0190], [0246]–[0250], FIGS. 13–14);
• identifying the payee by mobile phone number and by name from a payee list/address book (id. ¶¶ [0396]–[0403], FIGS. 19, 23);
• amount entry and confirmation screens before committing the payment (id. ¶¶ [0357]–[0360], [0199]);
• payment confirmation messages propagated back from the financial institution to the MFTS and then to the mobile device (id. ¶¶ [0038], [0292]–[0312]); and
• payments to non‑registered payees with an invitation to download the wallet ("viral" distribution) (id. ¶¶ [0454]–[0473], FIGS. 34–35).

Rackley also states the field motivation in terms that matter here: "fraud prevention and reduction is paramount both for financial institutions as well as billing entities and other payees," and it discusses "unbanked" users, stored‑value cards, balance transfers between a user's own accounts, and "inquiry and payment of loans" (id. ¶¶ [0017]–[0023], [0044], claims 28–29).

3.2 Chen et al., US 2009/0068982 A1 (secondary reference)

As summarized in the patent: a terminal component receives payment data; a mobile device includes an m‑card created by establishing a link to an account; the device uses public‑key cryptography (PKC) to securely and wirelessly transmit payment. The Chen disclosure additionally describes the mobile device with m‑card as a "mobile wallet," a secure VM/NGSCB architecture, PIN/password entry, secure storage, digital certificates, and expressly frames the goal as delivering "better user identification, reduce[d] fraud rates," and verification of terminals and devices (https://www.freepatentsonline.com/8041338.html — apparently the granted counterpart of 2009/0068982; and https://www.patentsencyclopedia.com/app/20090068982). Chen thus supplies the "mobile wallet as a secure, third‑party‑hosted account/funding instrument linked to bank and card accounts" concept and the credential/security layer.

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4. Grounds of rejection

Ground 1 (primary): Rackley in view of Chen — claims 1–9

Why the combination. Rackley is not merely analogous art; it is in the same field (mobile payments), addresses the same problem (secure, convenient, cashless mobile transactions that replace the physical wallet), and discloses every step of the claim 1 workflow except the explicit characterization of the wallet/service host as a "third‑party entity" whose own account is both a selectable payment source and the payee account. Chen supplies exactly that: an m‑card/mobile‑wallet account issued by and linked to an entity distinct from the merchant terminal, secured by PKC and PIN, with the stated purpose of user identification and fraud reduction.

Element‑by‑element map (claim 1)

Articulated reasoning (KSR‑compliant).

• (A) Same field / same problem / predictable result. Both references concern a downloadable mobile‑wallet application that initiates a secured payment from a stored account, and both expressly identify fraud prevention as a primary objective (Rackley: "paramount"; Chen: "reduces fraud rates"). Combining PKC/secure‑element authentication into Rackley's MFTS‑based wallet is "the mere substitution of one known element for another" that a skilled artisan would predict to work.
• (B) Known techniques according to their known function. Chen's PKC, secure VM, and PIN were conventional and are deployed in the combined system for precisely their known purpose (authenticating the user and the terminal) — the classic KSR "familiar elements according to known methods."
• (C) No change in principle of operation. Adding Chen's credential/security layer and wallet‑account identifier to Rackley does not require redesigning Rackley's MPI→MFTS→MFTSPI flow; it plugs into Rackley's existing security manager module and account tables.
• (D) Design incentive / market pressure. As of the 2011 priority date, the industry (and Rackley itself) was pushing to convert physical wallets to digital ones; the incentive to harden authentication against phone theft, spoofing, and PIN brute‑forcing was well‑known (Rackley ¶¶ [0264]–[0271]; Chen's stated goals).

Ground 2 (alternative): Chen primary in view of Rackley — claims 1–9

Mirror‑image framing for system/server claims 2–3: Chen provides the wallet‑as‑secure‑account, PKC, PIN and fraud‑reduction teaching; Rackley supplies the MFTS/payment‑instruction‑recipient architecture, the function‑identifier menu, multi‑source payment selection, payee identification (phone number, address book), and the confirmation/notification messaging. Same legal reasoning; the grounds are independently sufficient, which is useful because a petitioner can argue them as alternatives to defeat each reference's individual deficiencies.

Ground 3 (for claim 4, contingent): add a third reference for "loan / international / commodity account"

Claim 4's "loan account, an international account or a commodity account" is the weakest element for the two‑reference combination. Options, in order of support:

• Rackley itself expressly lists "inquiry and payment of loans" and cross‑border payments "across national borders" among the operations the MFTS should support (20080010191 ¶¶ [0018], [0376]).
• The sibling Rackley filings (US 2008/0010190, 0010192, 0010193, 0010196, 0010204, 0010215) separately disclose funds transfer, stored‑value instruments and balance management, and US 8,489,067 discloses wallet distribution — useful if a fuller multi‑reference ground is needed.
• Kitchen et al., US 6,289,322 (cited within Rackley) for web‑based account/biller registration.
• For "commodity account," a secondary reference teaching a commodity/precious‑metal‑backed account could be added, or the ground can rely on the artisan's ordinary knowledge that a brokerage/commodity account is simply another "account" that can be a payment source — which is precisely what the claim, as a genus of "payment source," recites.

Ground 4 (for claims 6–7): already fully met

• Claim 6 (phone number): Rackley's "PayAnyone by phone number" figures and MPI "including the payee's phone number" (¶¶ [0396]–[0403]).
• Claim 7 (contact from address book): Rackley's payee list/address book selection (¶¶ [0373]–[0380]). No combination is even needed; anticipation‑adjacent disclosure suffices for obviousness.

Ground 5 (for claim 5 — payee is the user)

Rackley's balance transfer disclosure (moving funds between the same user's accounts via the wallet) and the funding of the wallet from a card/bank account render a self‑directed transfer to the user's own third‑party wallet account obvious.

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5. Anticipated applicant rebuttals, and why they are unlikely to succeed

1. "Different architecture — Chen is terminal/PKC‑centric, Rackley is MFTS‑centric; the combination requires redesign."
   Response: Both are payment rails for the same wallet application; the combination calls for using Chen's authentication inside Rackley's existing security manager, not changing Rackley's payment flow. Per In re Keller, the combined teachings, not the references in isolation, control. KSR expressly allows "a patent composed of several elements [that] is not proved obvious merely by demonstrating that each element was, independently, known," but does not require the references to be bodily combinable.

2. "The claimed 'third‑party entity' distinction is novel — neither reference describes the service host's own account as both payment source and payee account."
   Response: Rackley's MFTS already hosts the wallet balance/holding/ SV‑card account (e.g., the "holding account" and stored‑value account functionality, and the MFTS as a system in which "a user may pay a person … to a stored value card account"), and Chen's m‑card is an account linked to a wallet issued/hosted by an entity distinct from the card issuer and financial institution. Neither claim language requires anything beyond a conventional wallet account of a service operator that is not a bank and not a card issuer — an inherent feature of a wallet service.

3. "The Good Money commodity‑backed currency and the DNA authentication are the invention."
   Response: Those features appear in the specification but not in claim 1. The "claims define the invention" (Graham), and 35 U.S.C. § 112(d) does not permit reading limitations from the specification. Because the claims do not require the DNA switch or the commodity backing, their alleged novelty supplies no nexus to the claimed subject matter.

4. "Secondary considerations (litigation/licensing, commercial success)."
   Response: Any evidence must come with a nexus to the claimed subject matter. The PayGeo "Good Money" and DNA aspects are unclaimed, so they cannot carry the day. Licensing in litigation‑driven contexts (i.e., the Google Patents "Family has litigation" indicator and the IPR2025‑01555 petition against the later family member US 12,014,347, which lists 15/786,470 in its priority chain) receives little weight absent proof of nexus and demand unrelated to the merits.

5. "Reference is not analogous art."
   Response: Both references are from the same field of endeavor (mobile wallets/mobile payments). Chen's PKC disclosure, moreover, is reasonably pertinent to the very problem Rackley identifies ("fraud prevention … is paramount").

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6. Secondary considerations (Graham factor 4)

• Commercial success / industry praise / copying: No evidence located in the materials I reviewed that is tied to the claim‑1 workflow; any PayGeo "Good Money," DNA, or commodity‑redemption success is unclaimed and therefore lacks nexus.
• Long‑felt need / failure of others: The need was already being addressed by Rackley (2008) and Chen (2009); the claimed subject matter is a routine implementation of what others had described.
• Unexpected results: none attributable to the generic hardware/software elements recited.

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7. Bottom line

• Claim 1 is prima facie obvious over Rackley (US 2008/0010191 A1) in view of Chen (US 2009/0068982 A1) — and equally obvious over the reverse combination — because every step of the claimed mobile‑wallet payment workflow is disclosed across the two references, which are in the same field, address the same problem, and are combined in a way that produces only predictable results; the asserted reason (secure, low‑fraud, cashless wallet replacing the physical wallet) is precisely the motivation both references state.
• Claims 2–3 fall with claim 1 (mobile device/application vs. server software is a design choice expressly taught by both).
• Claims 5, 6, 7 are squarely met by Rackley alone (self‑transfer/balance transfer; phone‑number identifier; address‑book contact).
• Claim 4 (loan/international/commodity accounts) is the most vulnerable to a "no teaching" argument; it should be addressed with Rackley's own disclosure (loans, cross‑border payments), the Rackley sibling filings, and/or a third commodity/international‑account reference.
• Strategic caveat: because 15/786,470 is a CIP, confirm which limitations are supported by the 2011 parent; if any claim‑1 support exists only in the 2017 CIP, the effective date shifts and additional 2015–2017 art becomes available as an independent § 102/§ 103 attack.

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Sources (verified during this analysis)

• US 10,733,593 B2 — Google Patents (fetched 2026‑09‑24): https://patents.google.com/patent/US10733593B2/en
• US 2018/0053173 A1 claims (same application 15/786,470): https://patents.justia.com/patent/20180053173
• US 2009/0068982 A1 (Chen et al.), "Mobile wallet and digital payment": https://patents.google.com/patent/US20090068982A1/en and https://www.patentsencyclopedia.com/app/20090068982; apparent grant US 8,041,338: https://www.freepatentsonline.com/8041338.html
• US 2008/0010191 A1 (Rackley III et al.), "Methods and systems for providing a payment in a mobile environment": https://patents.google.com/patent/US20080010191A1/en and https://uspto.report/patent/app/20080010191
• Rackley family/related: US 2008/0010190, 0010192, 0010193, 0010196, 0010204, 0010215; US 8,489,067; WO 2008/005018
• Priority chain and IPR context: Petition in IPR2025‑01555, Ex. 1002 (file history of US 12,014,347, reciting "15/786,470 10/17/2017 PAT 10733593"): https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2025-01555/Samsung_Electronics_Co._Ltd/docs/10-01-2025-Petitioner/Exhibit-1002-File_History_for_US_Patent_No._12,014,347.pdf (merits not evaluated here).

Note on identifiers: patent numbers are reproduced literally as retrieved; where the granted counterpart of a publication was not confirmable from the record, that is stated expressly rather than assumed.