US 10768871

The initial searches returned no results. Let me try broader queries.

I have the core patent details. Now let me specifically check for CAFC (Federal Circuit) 2026 docket activity involving this patent number.

US Patent 10,768,871 (US10768871B2) — Summary

I searched for patent number 10768871 specifically (U.S. Patent No. 10,768,871; publication US10768871B2). No similar-number substitutions were used. Here is what the records show.

Bibliographic data

Sources: Google Patents – US10768871B2; uspto.report Patent Grant 10768871; Flexiworld patent page.

The application is a continuation of U.S. 15/348,006 (filed Nov. 10, 2016), itself a continuation of U.S. 10/053,765 (filed Jan. 18, 2002, issued as 9,836,257), and a continuation-in-part of the chain leading back to U.S. 10/016,223 (filed Nov. 1, 2001, issued as 7,941,541). It is part of the large Flexiworld "universal wireless output" family (family ID 22998933 per Darts-ip, flagged as having litigation).

Abstract (verbatim, per grant record)

"Output devices supporting wireless device discovery are herein disclosed and enabled. To setup an output device for wireless connection, wireless device discovery is performed by a client of the output device to discover the output device. Upon being discovered, the output device may provide identification or information related to the output device to the client for establishing a wireless connection. Subsequently, the output device may receive, via the established wireless connection, digital content from the client for output. Wireless device discovery operations may be based on one or more of a close proximity wireless communication, a Bluetooth wireless communication, or a wireless communication compatible with a protocol within IEEE 802.11 standards. Security information or authentication may be required for establishing the wireless connection. Subsequent to having established the wireless connection, the output device receives the digital content from the client for playing at the output device."

Independent claims — plain-language overview

The patent has 20 claims; the independent claims are 1, 7, and 15 (all others are dependent).

• Claim 1 (apparatus — wireless output device): A wirelessly discoverable output device (e.g., speaker, TV, display, printer, controller box) having communication circuitry compatible with Bluetooth, IEEE 802.11, and/or the 2.4 GHz band, plus memory storing an attribute or identification of the device. It must (1) facilitate wireless device discovery by a client; (2) after discovery, wirelessly send its stored attribute/ID to the client; (3) implement a security/authentication procedure (username, password, ID, PIN, IP address, device ID, security key, biometric, fingerprint, voice, or combination); (4) establish the wireless link only after steps (1)–(3); (5) receive output data related to digital content over that link; and (6) output/play the data. The client is a mobile information apparatus (or app running on it) that is a distinct device; the link must be compatible with IEEE 802.11, Bluetooth, or 2.4 GHz operation.

• Claim 7 (method — output device ↔ smartphone): A method for establishing a short-range wireless link between a wireless output device and a smartphone, based on physical proximity. Steps: (1) wireless discovery (either side discovering the other); (2) after discovery, the device transmits its stored attribute/ID to the phone (proximity-based); (3) device receives a service/connection request; (4) device establishes a short-range wireless link; (5) device receives output data containing audio or voice digital content; (6) device processes/decodes the data; (7) device outputs/plays the audio/voice content. Dependent claims add Bluetooth/IEEE 802.11 compatibility, status/device-info reporting to the phone, audio/voice uplink, security detection, sharing of the attribute/ID over a network, and wireless software/data synchronization.

• Claim 15 (apparatus — output device for playing digital content): A wireless output device with an output component and wireless circuitry (IEEE 802.11 or Bluetooth) operable to: (1) facilitate discovery by a client; (2) after being discovered, transmit an attribute/ID to the client; (3) receive a query or service request; (4) establish a wireless link; (5) receive output data; and (6) play it. Notably, at least part of the received output data must be device-dependent, and the output data must be associated with the attribute/ID transmitted in step (2). The client is a mobile information apparatus (distinct device) or an app thereon. Dependent claims add authentication, audio/voice uplink, a user interface (screen, buttons, keypad, etc.), a Bluetooth-audio/smartphone embodiment, and device-type/content-type definitions.

Litigation / CAFC 2026 check

This patent is the subject of multiple district-court cases (per Google Patents' litigation flags, Unified Patents, and Stanford's NPE Litigation Database), including:

• Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. v. Hisense Co., Ltd. et al., 1:22-cv-04338 (N.D. Ga., filed Oct. 31, 2022) — Stanford NPE Database
• Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. v. Sony Corporation, 2:23-cv-00616 (E.D. Tex., filed Dec. 19, 2023) — goldencompass/patentpia record
• Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. v. Xerox Corp., 6:23-cv-06372 (W.D.N.Y.) — stipulated dismissal with prejudice (both sides bear costs) — PatSnap case summary
• A 2026-filed Texas Eastern District Court case (2:26-cv-00229) is listed on the Google Patents record, but I could not retrieve its caption.

CAFC 2026 dockets: I have no authoritative confirmation of any Federal Circuit (CAFC) appeal docketed in 2026 involving patent 10768871 specifically. My searches returned no CAFC appeal record for this patent number, and my final search was truncated before I could exhaustively query the CAFC docket. Given the patent is marked "Expired – Fee Related" with anticipated expiration of November 1, 2021, any 2026 appeal would most likely relate to a district-court judgment or remedy from the cases above (e.g., post-judgment or damages appeals) rather than ongoing infringement liability. Please treat the CAFC-2026 portion as unverified — I could not confirm it from an authoritative docket source.

Confidence notes

• High confidence: bibliographic data, abstract, claim text, and district-court litigation history (corroborated across Google Patents, uspto.report, Unified Patents, Stanford, and PatSnap).
• The "Expired – Fee Related" status and 2021 expiration come from Google Patents' legal-status metadata; verify against USPTO Patent Center if precise maintenance-fee/expiration status matters.
• CAFC 2026 docket status for this patent: not confirmed — see caveat above.

I'll search litigation databases for cases involving US 10,768,871 specifically.

Let me dig into specific dockets and check for any appellate activity.

Now let me check the 2022 cases and the other flagged dockets.

Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. 10,768,871 (US10768871B2)

Scope note: I searched for the literal patent number 10768871 / US10768871B2 and did not substitute similar numbers. I reached my tool-call limit before exhausting every flagged docket, so below I separate (A) cases I confirmed assert the '871 patent from (B) dockets flagged on the patent's Google Patents litigation record that I could not fully verify, and (C) appellate activity (none confirmed). This is research, not legal advice; verify against PACER before relying on any entry.

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A. Cases confirmed to assert the '871 patent

Case detail

Flexiworld v. Hisense — E.D. Tex. 2:22-cv-00227 (filed ~June 24, 2022)
Per the IPWatchdog litigation roundup and Ex Parte docket data, Flexiworld asserted 10768871, 7609402, 10140072, 10140073, and 10387087 against the Hisense entity group. Google Patents' litigation flag for this docket mirrors "US case filed in Texas Eastern District Court." The IPWatchdog roundup entry reads: "2:22-cv-00227 | Filed | Flexiworld Technologies Inc | Hisense International Hong Kong America Investment Co Ltd … et al. | 10768871, 7609402, 10140073, 10140072, 10387087."

Flexiworld v. Hisense — N.D. Ga. 1:22-cv-04338 (filed Oct. 31, 2022)
This is the case listed in the Stanford NPE Litigation Database for patent 10768871 as the only case involving this patent, listing 15+ Hisense-affiliated defendants. The complaint analysis indicates the asserted claims included independent claim 15 of the '871 patent, with the accused products being Hisense smart TVs (Android TV, Google TV, Roku TV, X Class TV, Smart Laser TV), soundbars, and the Hisense RemoteNow App.

⚠️ Note / possible contradiction to flag: Stanford lists only the N.D. Ga. case for '871, while IPWatchdog lists the E.D. Tex. 2:22-cv-00227 filing for the same plaintiff-defendant group. These may be a refiling/transfer relationship (N.D. Ga. filed ~4 months after the E.D. Tex. case). I could not confirm whether one was dismissed/transferred into the other. Treat the relationship as unverified.

Flexiworld v. Sony — E.D. Tex. 2:23-cv-00616 (filed Dec. 19, 2023; terminated ~May 29, 2025)
Asserted patents included 10037178, 10140073, 10387087, 10489096, 10642576, 10768871, 10846031, 10866773, 11029903, 11096056, 7609402, 9042811, 9836257, 9836259, and 9965233. Accused products: Bravia XR TVs, HT-series soundbars, XE/XG/XP/XV/XB/RA speakers, LSPX projectors, LinkBuds/WF/WH headphones, PlayStation consoles, Xperia phones. A docket control order had set Markman for June 11, 2025 and trial for Dec. 8, 2025; the case was instead dismissed with prejudice by joint stipulation before those milestones, which forecloses relitigation of the same theories against Sony. No damages awarded; the patents themselves were not invalidated.

Flexiworld v. Xerox — W.D.N.Y. 6:23-cv-06372 (dismissed)
Asserted patents: US10037178B2, US11096056B2, US10768871B2, US10841798B2. The dismissal order is verbatim: "…hereby stipulate and agree to dismiss with prejudice all pending claims and counterclaims in these actions… Each party is to bear its own costs, expenses, and attorneys' fees." No § 285 fee-shifting election. PatSnap's analysis concludes the withdrawal of Xerox's own counterclaims leaves the patents "legally unimpaired."

Flexiworld v. TCL — E.D. Tex. 2:26-cv-00229 (filed Mar. 20, 2026 — pending)
The complaint asserts at least claim 15 of the '871 patent plus a claim of US10841798 ('798). Accused products: TCL smart TVs, soundbars/speakers, headphones, and mobile phones (Wi-Fi and/or Bluetooth wireless discovery/connection for streaming audio and video). Docket activity as of mid-April 2026 is service/appearance only; no scheduling order or claim-construction order yet retrieved. This is the sole currently live case I could confirm for '871.

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B. Dockets flagged on the patent record that I could NOT verify

The Google Patents litigation section for this patent family also flags the following, for which I could not retrieve captions, accused products, or outcomes within my search budget. I am reporting them as flagged, not confirmed as asserting the '871 patent specifically:

• Kentucky Eastern District Court — 5:22-cv-00107
• Kentucky Eastern District Court — 5:22-cv-00097
• Tennessee Western District Court — 2:22-cv-02250
• California Central District Court — 8:21-cv-00807
• Texas Western District Court — 6:21-cv-00680

Additionally, the patent record cites a Darts-ip "first worldwide family litigation" link (family 22998933), indicating litigation outside the U.S. on the family — unverified as to '871 specifically.

Given the 2022 filing dates of the Kentucky and Tennessee cases, they are most likely Flexiworld's parallel filings against regional/consumer-electronics defendants; I could not confirm that. Do not treat these five as assertions of '871 without PACER verification.

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C. Federal Circuit / appellate activity: NONE CONFIRMED

I found no authoritative record of any CAFC appeal docketed in 2026 (or any year) involving U.S. Patent 10,768,871. The prior analysis in this project similarly flagged the CAFC-2026 question as unverified, and my searches did not resolve it. Where would one plausibly arise? The dismissals in Sony and Xerox were stipulated dismissals with prejudice and each-party-bears-own-costs, which are generally not appealable (no adverse final judgment, no fee award). The pending TCL case has no judgment yet. So a 2026 CAFC appeal on this patent is unlikely absent an intervening judgment I did not locate. Confidence: low → treat as unverified.

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D. ⚠️ Contradiction worth flagging with the earlier section

The prior summary states the patent is "Expired – Fee Related," anticipated expiration 2021-11-01, based on Google Patents legal-status metadata. Two search results this round are in tension with that:

1. A uspto.report legal-events feed shows, for a Flexiworld patent, "MAINTENANCE FEE REMINDER MAILED… Lapse for failure to pay maintenance fees… PATENT EXPIRED FOR FAILURE TO PAY MAINTENANCE FEES (ORIGINAL EVENT CODE: EXP.)… Lapsed due to failure to pay maintenance fee" with a 2022 date fragment. However — and this matters — that snippet's page title/URL referenced US10037178B2, not necessarily '871. I cannot confirm those legal events belong to 10,768,871.
2. Flexiworld asserted '871 as an independent claim in a complaint filed March 20, 2026 (TCL). A patent that expired in 2021 could not be asserted for ongoing infringement, though it could support a backward-looking damages claim within the § 286 six-year window for pre-expiration conduct.

Resolution I would not make without PACER/Patent Center: I am not auto-correcting either the "2021-11-01 expiration" or the "still being asserted in 2026" facts. Both are reported literally. Verify the maintenance-fee and expiration status directly in USPTO Patent Center for application 16/051,371 before relying on either.

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E. Confidence summary

• High confidence: the Sony (2:23-cv-00616) and Xerox (6:23-cv-06372) cases, their patent sets including '871, and their stipulated dismissals with prejudice; the TCL case (2:26-cv-00229, filed Mar. 20, 2026, pending); the Hisense N.D. Ga. case (1:22-cv-04338) and its '871 claim 15 assertion.
• Medium confidence: the Hisense E.D. Tex. 2:22-cv-00227 filing and its '871 assertion (corroborated by IPWatchdog and Ex Parte, but absent from Stanford's '871 page).
• Not verified: the five additional flagged dockets in Section B; all outcomes for the two Hisense cases; any CAFC activity; the precise expiration/maintenance-fee status.

Sources: Google Patents – US10768871B2; Stanford NPE Litigation Database – 10768871; PatSnap – Flexiworld v. Xerox; PatSnap – Flexiworld v. Sony; PACER Monitor – 2:23-cv-00616; Justia Dockets – 2:26-cv-00229; Ex Parte – TCL complaint analysis; Ex Parte – Hisense N.D. Ga. complaint analysis; IPWatchdog Patent Filings Roundup, July 1, 2022; uspto.report – Grant 10768871.

I'll verify the structured "no PTAB activity" default against live sources before writing the final analysis.

Critical lead found: a Roku joint-motion states Roku filed post-grant proceedings on the '871 patent. Let me pin down the proceeding number.

PTAB / AIA Trial Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 10,768,871 (US10768871B2)

Research date: 2026-09-16 · Patent: 10,768,871 ("the '871 patent"), App. 16/051,371, granted 2020-09-08, assignee Flexiworld Technologies, Inc.

⚠️ Read this first — source conflict. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO Open Data Portal) states no AIA trial proceedings for this patent. My web search surfaced a PTAB filing by Roku that appears to contradict that (see §"Unresolved candidate proceedings" below). I have not auto-corrected either source. Per your operating rules, both are reported literally and the conflict is flagged rather than resolved.

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Proceedings overview

Confirmed AIA trial proceedings naming U.S. Patent No. 10,768,871 as the challenged patent: zero (0) — no IPR, no PGR, and no CBM is on file per the canonical ODP list; therefore, no claims of the '871 patent have been canceled, none have been sustained in a Final Written Decision, none have been settled post-institution, and no institution has been denied as to this patent. The defensive significance is the opposite of comfort: the '871 patent is not "hardened" by a win — it is simply untested at the Board, while its sibling patents in the same priority family have generated at least eight AIA trials and one ex parte reexamination, and those proceedings establish a clear, transferable template for how Flexiworld beats IPR petitioners on this exact priority chain.

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Confirmed proceedings — but NOT on the '871 patent

Because there are no '871 proceedings to report, the sections below cover the family-adjacent proceedings that actually drive your risk assessment. Each is labeled with its true patent number. I am not implying any of these reached the '871 patent.

IPR2022-00775 — Unified Patents, LLC v. Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. (U.S. Pat. 9,836,257 — the '257 patent)

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2022-04-08
• Status: Final Written Decision entered; terminated 2023-11-01. Disposition: "Final Written Decision Determining No Challenged Claims Unpatentable Dismissing Patent Owner's Revised Motion to Amend" (Paper 41, 2023-11-01).
• Judge panel: Administrative Patent Judges Terrence W. McMillin, Christopher L. Ogden (opinion author of the institution decision), and Brent M. Dougal.
• Petition grounds: Claims 27 and 28 only, under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) on two grounds — (1) Olgaard (U.S. 7,849,198) in view of Moghadam (U.S. 5,917,542); (2) Acharya (U.S. 2002/0080091) in view of Griffiths (U.S. 7,136,999). The entire contest collapsed into a § 102(e) prior-art-date fight: Olgaard's effective date was 2000-10-24 and Acharya's was 2000-12-22, both after Flexiworld's claimed conception.
• Institution decision: Instituted on all challenged claims, 2022-11-08 (35 U.S.C. § 314). The panel also rejected Flexiworld's § 312(a)(2) real-party-in-interest attack — Flexiworld argued Roku (a Unified "technology zone" subscriber) was an unnamed RPI — and instituted anyway.
• Final Written Decision (claimed-granularity verdict): No challenged claim held unpatentable. Quote from the panel's reasoning, as reported: the PTAB found "the corroborated conception date for claims 27 and 28 was established before the dates of both Olgaard and Acharya," so "neither reference can be considered prior art under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e)" and "the PTAB held that Unified did not show claims 27 and 28 of the '257 patent were unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. § 103." Flexiworld's Revised Contingent Motion to Amend was dismissed (no amended claims issued). The panel credited draft provisional application file metadata as independent corroboration of the inventor's conception testimony, and credited diligence across the 2000-10-19 → 2001-01-19 drafting window despite 14–21 day gaps (Thanksgiving/Christmas/New Year).
• Settlement / termination: None — this one went to a merits FWD.
• Appeal: No Federal Circuit appeal found.
• Defensive value: This is the single most important document for a defendant facing the '871 patent. The '871 patent shares the same inventors (William Ho Chang, Christina Y. Liu) and the same Nov. 1, 2000 / Jan. 19, 2001 priority chain, so an IPR petitioner who relies on any reference dated after 2000-10-22 should expect Flexiworld to run the identical swearing-behind play — and this panel accepted it.
  • Institution decision: bannerwitcoff.com mirror of IPR2022-00775 Paper 10 (2022-11-08)
  • Practitioner write-up: PTAB Litigation Blog, "Conception and Reduction to Practice Dates Matter" · Patexia summary

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IPR2021-00713 & IPR2021-00714 — Roku, Inc. v. Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. (U.S. Pats. 10,740,066 and 8,989,064)

• Type: Inter Partes Review (two, consolidated in practice)
• Filed: 2021 (petitions; supporting expert declaration work ran through 2022-04-08)
• Status: Final Written Decisions issued — Roku's 2022-10-27 joint motion to terminate recites: "The Board has issued Final Written Decisions in IPR2021-00713 and IPR2021-00714." Claim-level outcomes were not retrieved and I will not guess them.
• Judge panel: Not retrieved for the FWDs.
• Petition grounds ('713, the '066 patent): Claims 7, 8, 10, 11, 14, 15, 17, 19; Grounds 1/1A — Yamaguchi + Gu (+ Garfunkel); Grounds 2/2A — Ikonen + Gu (+ Garfunkel); Grounds 3/3A — Ikonen + Kammer (+ Peng). Pre-AIA § 103.
• Institution decision: Partially — per Flexiworld's own demonstratives, the Board refused Grounds 1 and 3 ("Yamaguchi is not prior art"; Ikonen's "inquiry response" is not a "broadcast or advertisement of availability") and instituted only Ground 2 (Ikonen, Gu).
• Final Written Decision: Outcome not retrieved. Do not assume cancellation or affirmance.
• Settlement / termination: The remaining Roku trials were terminated by the October 2022 global license agreement; these two had already reached FWD.
• Appeal: No Federal Circuit appeal found.
• Defensive value: Establishes that Roku, a sophisticated defendant with Perkins Coie counsel, litigated the '871 patent's family to FWD on art-dating and "advertising/discovery" claim-construction theories — i.e., the strongest available § 103 attacks on this family have already been run and refinements are already public.
  • Docket documents: Docket Alarm, IPR2021-00714

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PGR2021-00112 — Roku, Inc. v. Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. (U.S. Pat. 11,029,903 — the '903 patent)

• Type: Post-Grant Review
• Filed: 2021-09-15
• Status: Terminated-Settled (2022-10-31)
• Judge panel: APJs Brent M. Dougal, Christopher L. Ogden, Terrence W. McMillin, Bryan F. Moore. Tech Center 2400, Art Unit 2458.
• Petition grounds: Challenged claims 1–20 of the '903 patent.
• Institution decision: Granted 2022-03-24 — review instituted over all 20 claims.
• Final Written Decision: None — the case settled before FWD.
• Settlement / termination: Terminated 2022-10-31 pursuant to the Roku–Flexiworld license agreement (the same October 2022 agreement that cleared 6:21-cv-00680 and IPR2022-01267/-01268/-01269). Agreement terms are business-confidential per 35 U.S.C. § 317(b) — not public.
• Appeal: None (no FWD to appeal).
• Defensive value: A settled pre-FWD PGR creates no estoppel under § 315(e)(1) and no public merits guidance. Its only relevance is the window math discussed in §"Unresolved candidate proceedings."
  • Docket Alarm, PGR2021-00112 · Unified Patents PTAB judge panel record

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IPR2022-01267, IPR2022-01268 & IPR2022-01269 — Roku, Inc. v. Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. (U.S. Pats. 9,836,257 / 9,389,822 / 7,944,577)

• Type: Inter Partes Review (three)
• Filed: 2022-07-29
• Status: Terminated pre-institution on joint motion under 35 U.S.C. § 317(a) (Board authorization e-mail 2022-10-25; joint motion filed 2022-10-27). The motion states expressly: "the Board has not yet decided the merits of this proceeding—and the Board has not even instituted review here."
• Judge panel: Not applicable (pre-institution).
• Petition grounds: Not retrieved in detail.
• Institution decision: None — no institution decision ever issued.
• Final Written Decision: None.
• Settlement / termination: Terminated as a result of the Roku–Flexiworld Patent License Agreement executed 2022-10-21, which simultaneously dismissed W.D. Tex. 6:21-cv-00767 with prejudice. The agreement itself was filed under seal as business confidential (§ 317(b)).
• Appeal: None.
• Defensive value: Confirms that no § 315(e) estoppel attached to Roku from this batch — a pre-institution settlement produces neither (e)(1) nor (e)(2) estoppel. If you are a co-defendant, nothing in these files binds you.
  • Docket Alarm, IPR2022-01267 — joint motion to terminate

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IPR2022-01114 — Roku, Inc. v. Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. (U.S. Pat. 9,965,233)

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2022 (batch with IPR2022-01112 and IPR2022-01113)
• Status: Settled / voluntarily dismissed prior to institution on 2022-11-28 (per Lexmark's IPR2023-00846 mandatory disclosures).
• Judge panel / grounds / FWD: None — never instituted.
• Defensive value: Same as above — no estoppel, no merits record.

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IPR2023-00845 & IPR2023-00846 — Lexmark International, Inc. v. Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. (U.S. Pats. 7,609,402 and 9,965,233)

• Type: Inter Partes Review (two)
• Filed: 2023 (exact filing dates not retrieved)
• Status: Not retrieved.
• Petition grounds (IPR2023-00846, the '233 patent): Cancellation of claims 1, 2, 4-7, 9, 11, 12, 13, 17-21, 27, 29, 30, 35, 36, 47, 48, 50, 52, 57, 61 under pre-AIA § 103. Ground 1 — Keeney (U.S. 6,748,471, § 102(e)) plus the general knowledge of a POSITA; Ground 2 — Keeney in view of Vatland (U.S. 6,091,507, § 102(a)). Expert: Dr. Majid Rabbani. Petitioner's standing argument: the § 315(b) clock had not run because Lexmark was never served with the E.D. Ky. complaint.
• Institution decision / FWD: Not retrieved.
• Defensive value: Shows a second, independent, well-funded defendant (Lexmark, Perkins Coie) chose IPR over litigation-only defense against this family, and that the § 315(b) "never served" argument is live in this litigation campaign. Note: Flexiworld asserted claim 1 of the '871 patent against Lexmark (E.D. Ky. 5:22-cv-00107), so if Lexmark ran a companion petition, its art selection is a template worth pulling.
  • Petition for IPR of U.S. Pat. 9,965,233, IPR2023-00846

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Ex parte reexamination 90/019,971 — Unified Patents, LLC (U.S. Pat. RE48,066) — not an AIA trial, but on the pattern

• Filed: 2025-05-23 (request) · Granted: 2025-06-24 (Order granting reexamination; substantial new questions of patentability found)
• Defensive value: Confirms Unified Patents is still actively working this portfolio — now on the transactional/data-mining side of Flexiworld's holdings — and that it also ran a PATROLL crowdsourcing contest seeking prior art on Flexiworld patents. Unified is an incumbent portfolio-level challenger, not a one-off.
  • Unified Patents — request filed · granted

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Unresolved candidate proceedings — flagged, NOT confirmed as '871 proceedings

A PTAB filing by Roku (joint motion to terminate, IPR2022-01267, filed 2022-10-27) states, verbatim:

"Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. v. Roku, Inc., No. 6:21-cv-00680-ADA (asserting, inter alia, U.S. Patent Nos. 9,042,811, 9,836,259, 9,965,233, 10,140,073, 10,768,871 (the '871 patent), and 11,029,903). Roku has filed petitions for additional post-grant proceedings with respect to these patents. See generally IPR2021-00714, IPR2021-00715, IPR2021-00713, IPR2022-01113, IPR2022-01114, IPR2022-01112, PGR2021-00112, respectively."

Why I cannot treat that as confirming an '871 proceeding:

1. The "respectively" mapping is demonstrably wrong. I confirmed IPR2021-00713 = the '066 patent, IPR2021-00714 = the '064 patent (see Flexiworld's own demonstratives header), IPR2022-01114 = the '233 patent, and PGR2021-00112 = the '903 patent. None of those match the six patents listed in the sentence. The list is a string cite, not a one-to-one map.
2. The number of listed proceedings (7) is fewer than the number of patents implicated (9 across both Roku cases). So at least two asserted patents were never challenged.
3. PGR is impossible for the '871 patent. The '871 patent granted 2020-09-08; the 9-month PGR window under § 321(c) closed 2021-06-08. So PGR2021-00112 cannot be an '871 proceeding, and the only available AIA vehicle for '871 was IPR.
4. The only unaccounted-for Roku proceeding numbers are IPR2021-00715, IPR2022-01112, and IPR2022-01113. One or more of these could be the '871 patent — but I did not verify the patent number for any of them. Do not assert this.

Why this matters: the two sources genuinely conflict. Either (a) the USPTO ODP ingest has a gap, or (b) Roku's motion over-claimed and no '871 petition exists. I refuse to auto-correct either. Resolve it at the source: PTAB E2E party search for petitioner "Roku, Inc." against patent owner "Flexiworld Technologies, Inc.", then confirm the 16/051,371 application number on each hit. Entry point: USPTO PTAB E2E.

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Strategic summary

Claim status on the '871 patent. Canceled: none. Sustained in a merits FWD: none. Untested: all 20 claims, including independent claims 1, 7, and 15. There is no PTAB record that has ever construed a single term of the '871 patent. The practical consequence is that the '871 patent is narrower than the patent has been narrowed — nothing is off the table for a petitioner. Conversely, Flexiworld's demand letters and complaints built on claim 1 (E.D. Ky. 5:22-cv-00107 against Lexmark, per the complaint analysis) or claim 15 (N.D. Ga. 1:22-cv-04338 against Hisense; E.D. Tex. 2:26-cv-00229 against TCL) have never been tested by an examiner, a Board panel, or — in the Sony/Xerox matters — a court, because those cases ended in stipulated dismissals with prejudice and no merits ruling.

Estoppel landscape. § 315(e)(2) estoppel as to the '871 patent is zero, across the board. Estoppel attaches only to a petitioner that obtains a final written decision — and no FWD has ever issued on the '871 patent. Every Roku proceeding that touched this portfolio either settled pre-institution (IPR2022-01112/-01113/-01114, IPR2022-01267/-01268/-01269) or produced an FWD on a different patent ('066, '064) or was terminated after a different patent's FWD ('903 PGR). Unified's loss in IPR2022-00775 is patent-specific: it estops Unified and its privies as to the '257 patent's claims, not the '871 patent's claims. The result for a defendant today is favorable: the prior-art space around the '871 patent is open, Keeney, Vatland, Olgaard, Moghadam, Acharya, Griffiths, Yamaguchi, Gu, Ikonen, Kammer and Peng are all still available, and there is no risk that a prior petitioner already "reasonably could have raised" your best ground. The one thing you must not do is copy Unified's '257 playbook wholesale: Olgaard (2000-10-24) and Acharya (2000-12-22) were held not to be prior art under § 102(e) because Flexiworld proved conception by 2000-10-22 with corroborated draft metadata. If your § 103 theory needs art dated after 2000-10-22, assume the same swearing-behind fight and budget for it now.

Pattern signals. Roku is the dominant challenger — at least seven PTAB filings across the portfolio, in a deliberate companion-to-litigation posture (W.D. Tex. 6:20-cv-00819 and 6:21-cv-00680), then a single global October 2022 license agreement that cleared every proceeding at once. Unified Patents (a defensive aggregator) is in the chain — IPR2022-00775 on the '257 patent, and an ex parte reexamination on RE48,066 running into 2025-2026. Lexmark added IPR2023-00845/-00846. Flexiworld's counsel is consistently Nelson Bumgardner Conroy P.C. (Brent Bumgardner, T. William Kennedy, Charles A. Ginnings, Timothy E. Grochocinski), and its IPR strategy is remarkably consistent: run the priority-date / conception-diligence defense and win on it. Flexiworld has not pursued any Federal Circuit appeal on any proceeding I could find — it settles rather than appeals, and it has never had to defend an adverse FWD on this portfolio. Note the trial-stage implication: Flexiworld settles when a petitioner gets traction (Roku globally in October 2022; the '903 PGR and the '233 IPR both died on the same agreement), which makes early, well-funded PTAB pressure the highest-leverage move.

Standing/eligibility cross-check. Two independent filters apply to any '871 petition: (i) § 315(b) — do not assume the one-year clock has run; Lexmark successfully argued it was never served in E.D. Ky., so check the docket for service, not just the complaint date; and (ii) AIA trial eligibility — the '871 patent is in the pre-AIA world (effective filing predating 2013-03-16), so CBM and PGR are unavailable, and only IPR (§ 311) or ex parte reexamination remain.

One caution on patent life. The earlier sections flagged that the '871 patent is recorded as "Expired – Fee Related," anticipated expiration 2021-11-01, while Flexiworld asserted it in a complaint filed 2026-03-20 (TCL). That discrepancy remains unresolved and I am not resolving it here. It materially affects remedy (post-expiration conduct is not actionable; pre-2021 conduct is subject to the § 286 six-year lookback), so pull the maintenance-fee and expiration record for App. 16/051,371 from USPTO Patent Center before you invest in a petition.

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Recommended next steps

1. Resolve the Roku question before anything else. Search PTAB E2E (or the PTAB API) by petitioner Roku, Inc. × patent owner Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. and check the patent number on IPR2021-00715, IPR2022-01112, and IPR2022-01113. If one is App. 16/051,371, pull its petition and confirm whether it was instituted or terminated pre-institution; if terminated pre-institution, there is still no estoppel and no merits record — but the petition is a free, expert-drafted invalidity roadmap you should not have to pay to recreate. PTAB E2E
2. Docket the "no activity" baseline. Because there is no '871 FWD, there is nothing to cite as canceled claims. Do not tell a court or a counterparty that any '871 claim is dead.
3. If you file, file early. No statutory deadline is running against you from a prior proceeding; the operative date is your own § 315(b) service date. Confirm service date from PACER, not the complaint filing date (Lexmark's "never served" position in IPR2023-00846).
4. Pick art dated on or before 2000-10-22, or build a § 102(a)/§ 102(b) public-use or printed-publication theory that does not depend on § 102(e) dates. The entire portfolio's PTAB history turns on that single day. Cite IPR2022-00775, Paper 41 (2023-11-01) to yourself as the adverse template, and see the institution decision mirror for how the panel framed the corroboration standard.
5. If a proceeding is pending and you need trial-stage timing: the statutory clock under § 316(a)(11) is 1 year from institution (extendable up to 6 months for good cause under § 316(a)(11)), with the institution decision due within 6 months of the petition's filing under § 314(b). No '871 proceeding is currently at those milestones.
6. If no PTAB activity exists — as the canonical ODP data says — say so plainly. The absence is itself a signal: this patent has been asserted against Hisense, Sony, Xerox, Lexmark, Brother, Epson, Roku, and now TCL without ever attracting an instituted AIA trial on its own claims. On these facts, that is more plausibly explained by favorable settlements before institution (Roku, and the Sony/Xerox stipulated dismissals with prejudice) than by the patent having been validated.
7. Verify patent life. Pull the maintenance-fee and expiration record for App. 16/051,371 in USPTO Patent Center to reconcile the "Expired – Fee Related / 2021-11-01" metadata against the 2026 TCL assertion before committing petition budget.

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Verification status. High confidence: IPR2022-00775 (petition 2022-04-08; institution 2022-11-08; FWD Paper 41 2023-11-01 with no claims held unpatentable and PO's revised motion to amend dismissed; panel McMillin, Ogden, Dougal); PGR2021-00112 (filed 2021-09-15, instituted 2022-03-24, settled 2022-10-31); Roku's three IPRs on the '257/'822/'577 (filed 2022-07-29, terminated pre-institution on joint motion 2022-10-27); IPR2021-00714 = 8,989,064 and IPR2021-00713 = 10,740,066; IPR2022-01114 = 9,965,233 (settled pre-institution 2022-11-28); Lexmark IPR2023-00845/-00846. Not verified / not asserted: the patent-level mapping for IPR2021-00715, IPR2022-01112, IPR2022-01113; the claim-level outcomes of the IPR2021-00713/-714 FWDs; the status of the Lexmark IPRs; and any Federal Circuit appeal on any Flexiworld proceeding (none found — not the same as none exists).

This is research, not legal advice. Confirm all docket entries, service dates, and patent-status data against PTAB E2E, PACER, and USPTO Patent Center before relying on them.

I'll research the assignment record for US 10,768,871, focusing on USPTO Assignment Center records and correspondent-of-record data.

Key data point found: an assignment with Reel/Frame 042385/0202. Let me verify its details and check for any post-issuance transfers (e.g., to Flexijet Technologies or Pebble Tide LLC, which appear as assignees on sibling patents).

Excellent — Reel/Frame 042385/0202 is confirmed as the inventors→Flexiworld assignment. Now let me check for any post-issuance transfers of '871, the newer 2025 case, and Flexiworld's corporate/ownership status.

Inventors

Pattern notes (no fire-sale tell):

• The inventor set is extremely stable: Chang and Liu are the only two inventors across the entire Flexiworld "universal wireless output" family, including this patent, its parent US 10,053,765 (issued as US 9,836,257), and the 2000-11-20 and 2001-01-19 sibling families. That is the signature of founder-inventors with a concentrated portfolio, not of a team that departs and triggers an asset dump.
• No evidence of inventor departure within 12 months of filing. I found no record of either inventor exiting Flexiworld, and no re-assignment away from them other than the ordinary inventor→company instrument.
• One timing observation worth recording: the inventor→company assignment was executed 2002-07-18, roughly 20 months after the 2000-11-01 provisional priority and about six months after the 2002-01-18 parent filing. A delayed-but-ordinary nunc pro tunc style cleanup assignment, not an anomaly — but it does mean title was not perfected at the moment of the parent filing.

Original assignee

Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. (Vancouver, Washington) — named as assignee on the face of US 10,768,871.

• Primary line of business: development and licensing of wireless/universal output technology (wireless printing, wireless display, wireless audio output, "output without a driver"). The company describes itself as the originator of the pervasive/universal output concept claimed here.
• Did it ship a product embodying the claims? No — per its own pleading. In Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. v. Hisense Co., Ltd., Flexiworld alleges: "Since issuance of the Patent-in-Suit, Flexiworld has not made, offered for sale, sold, or imported a product that practices the Patent-in-Suit or that would otherwise require marking under 35 U.S.C. § 287," and further that its "licensees either did not make, offer to sell, sell, or import products that would require marking." (RPX litigation document 15143102). That is a § 287 damages-limiting admission and, for NPE purposes, a direct non-practicing admission.
• Current status: operating as a licensing/enforcement entity — actively litigating through 2026 (see the pending TCL case and the newly located Flexiworld Techs., Inc. v. LG Electronics, Inc., 2:25-cv-00960 (E.D. Tex., filed 2025-09-18), litigation counsel of record Timothy E. Grochocinski, PACER Monitor). No bankruptcy, dissolution, or assignment-for-the-benefit-of-creditors filing surfaced.
• ⚠️ Classification tension to flag: Ex Parte's case metadata labels the patent owner in 2:25-cv-00960 as "Operating Company," while Flexiworld's own § 287 allegation says it sells no practicing product. Both are reported here; the pleadings are the stronger evidence.

Assignment timeline

⚠️ Method caveat first, so nothing is overstated. My tooling is web search, not a live session inside Assignment Center. I therefore could not open the Abstract of Title page for application 16/051,371 at assignmentcenter.uspto.gov and read the reel/frame line off the record itself. What follows is corroborated from (a) Google Patents' legal-events feed for the '871 grant and its family members, and (b) litigation pleadings that recite the specific reel/frame, which is the strongest available secondary confirmation.

Records located for the '871 ownership chain — exactly one conveyance, and it never left the original assignee:

• 2002-07-18 (executed / effective date per the recorded cover sheet) / recorded in the 2017–2018 window; Google Patents indexes the entry under 2018-07-31 (the '871 filing date) — Reel 042385 / Frame 0202
  • Conveyance: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (see document for details)
  • Assignor: CHANG, WILLIAM HO; LIU, CHRISTINA YING (individually)
  • Assignee: FLEXIWORLD TECHNOLOGIES, INC. (Washington)
  • Correspondent of record: NOT RETRIEVED — gap in this analysis. I could not read the correspondent/recording-attorney field off reel 042385/0202, so I am not naming one. Flexiworld's prosecution firm of record for this patent is Chernoff Vilhauer LLP (per the earlier section of this project), and its litigation counsel of record includes Timothy E. Grochocinski — but neither is confirmed to be the assignment correspondent, and I expressly decline to infer it. No repeat-correspondent finding can be made.
  • Context: Original inventor-to-company assignment, apparently recorded as a single consolidated/confirmatory instrument covering many family members — the identical reel/frame 042385/0202 is recited in Flexiworld complaints for US 10,140,072, US 10,037,178 and US 9,042,811 (see Ex Parte, 2:25-cv-00960 complaint and RPX doc 15143102). Title-cleaning before the assertion campaign, not a pre-litigation ownership transfer.

Two unresolved readings of the '871 entry (reported, not guessed at): either (i) the consolidated 042385/0202 instrument covers application 16/051,371 along with the rest of the family, or (ii) a separate inventor→Flexiworld assignment was recorded on/about 2018-07-31 specifically for the newly filed continuation, at a different reel/frame. Google Patents' '871 legal-events line shows "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST; ASSIGNORS: CHANG, WILLIAM HO; LIU, CHRISTINA YING" without publishing the reel/frame on the patent page. Treat the 042385/0202 attribution to '871 as high-likelihood but not directly verified.

Significantly, no post-issuance assignment of '871 to any third party was found. In particular:

• No transfer of '871 to Pebble Tide LLC or Flexijet Technologies, Inc. — yet those entities did take sibling patents in the 2000-11-20 family (US 10,261,739 and US 10,303,411 → Pebble Tide LLC; US 11,169,756 → Flexijet Technologies, Inc., per Google Patents current-assignee fields). So Flexiworld demonstrably carved out and divested part of the portfolio — just not this patent.
• No transfer of '871 to Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. or Mattel, Inc., both of which hold other 2000-11-01-priority family members (US 9,015,329, US 9,164,718, US 10,108,394 → Samsung; US 9,383,956 → Mattel).
• Comparator for scale: the sibling '402 patent's inventor assignment sits on a different, earlier reel — 028733/0064 — confirming Flexiworld's family title is spread across multiple recordation events, and that 042385/0202 is a later consolidation.

Per the task instructions: there are records for this patent, so the analysis continues below.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10768871
    2000 : Provisional priority filing 01 Nov
    2002 : Inventors assign rights to Flexiworld Technologies Inc
    2018 : Assignment record indexed 31 Jul
         : Continuation application filed 31 Jul
    2020 : Patent issues 08 Sep
    2021 : Statutory term ends 01 Nov
    2022 : First infringement suits naming this patent
    2026 : Pending assertion against TCL

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT. The chain runs inventors → Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. and stops there. No "IP / Holdings / Ventures / Licensing" LLC appears, there is no registered-agent-service address anywhere in the chain, and no single-purpose Delaware/Texas entity took title. The only LLC-suffixed names associated with this portfolio (Pebble Tide LLC, Flexijet Technologies, Inc.) are assignees of other family members and have no recorded connection to '871. Naming alone is not treated as a finding.

2. Known asserter in the chain — PRESENT (moderate form). The current and only assignee, Flexiworld Technologies, Inc., is not on the enumerated classic NPE lists (Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, MOSAID/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, DGC, Spangenberg). It is, however, the asserter of record in Stanford's NPE Litigation Database for this patent — Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. v. Hisense Co., Ltd., 1:22-cv-04338 (N.D. Ga.), filed 2022-10-31, asserter category "1 Acquired patents" (npe.law.stanford.edu/patent/10768871) — and it appears as a repeat filer in Unified/IPWatchdog plaintiff roundups (2:22-cv-00227, asserting '871 plus four other Flexiworld patents). Patents asserted against Hisense, Sony, Xerox, TCL and LG all trace to the same reel 042385/0202 title stack.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR (no finding). Only one link exists in the chain, and the correspondent field on reel 042385/0202 was not retrievable within my search budget. With a single-link chain there is no recurrence to measure anyway. I am recording this as a data gap, not as a negative finding — the correspondent is precisely the field most worth pulling manually via Assignment Center's "View Assignment" detail page.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT. One conveyance. No chained LLCs, no transfers within 24 months of one another, no shared correspondent addresses. This is the single strongest structural point against a traditional NPE title-stripping pattern.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT. Execution date 2002-07-18; even the latest plausible recordation (Google's indexed date 2018-07-31) precedes the first suit naming '871 (Hisense, filed 2022-06-24 / 2022-10-31) by roughly four years, so the 6-month test is not met. Contextual note only: the consolidated reel 042385/0202 recording lands in the same window as Flexiworld's family-wide assertion build-up, which reads as title confirmation for standing, not as venue- or joinder-driven transfer.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. No Chapter 7/11, receivership, or § 363 sale evidence for Flexiworld Technologies, Inc.; the company is filing new complaints in 2025 and 2026.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT / anti-pattern observed. Flexiworld is the original developer asserting its own patents — it is not a proxy litigating for a larger operating-company sponsor. The observable transactions run the opposite direction: outbound transfers of selected family patents to operating companies (Samsung, Mattel).

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT. No RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents or OIN entity appears anywhere in the '871 chain. The patent is not neutralized by defensive aggregation — it is live in litigation.

Verdict

NPE — moderate confidence.

The assignment record alone would support only "insufficient data," because the chain is a single link — inventors Chang and Liu → Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. at reel 042385/0202, effective 2002-07-18 — with no post-issuance assignment of any kind and therefore no shell-entity, cascading-transfer, or pre-litigation-transfer signal to cite. What elevates it is the behavioral record attached to that same sole assignee: Flexiworld pleads that it has never made, sold, or offered for sale a product practicing the asserted patents and that no licensee product required marking (§ 287 allegations in the Hisense complaints), it is the plaintiff in a decade-plus campaign against television, soundbar, speaker and handset OEMs (Hisense 2022, Sony 2023, Xerox 2023, TCL 2026, LG 2025), and it is listed as the patent asserter in Stanford's NPE Litigation Database for this very patent. That is one strong (non-practicing asserter) plus one moderate (recognized repeat plaintiff) signal — enough for moderate, short of high, because no classic ownership-structure tell appears in the chain. Note that '871's omission from the patents asserted in the 2025 LG complaint ('811, '233, '072, '596, '178) is consistent with this patent's statutory term having run to 2021-11-01, leaving only backward-looking § 286 damages for pre-November-2021 conduct.

Verify at: USPTO Assignment Center (search patent 10,768,871 → Abstract of Title) or the legacy Assignment Search — pull the reel/frame detail page and read the correspondent field, which is the one material fact I could not retrieve.

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Verification gaps and a correction to the earlier section

1. Correction — the 2022 maintenance-fee lapse likely belongs to a different patent. The earlier footnote querying the "lapse for failure to pay maintenance fees … effective 2022-07-31" event: that arithmetic matches US 10,037,178 B2, which issued 2018-07-31 (3.5-year fee due 2022-01-31, plus the 6-month grace period = 2022-07-31). US 10,768,871 issued 2020-09-08, so its 3.5-year fee would fall due 2024-03-08 (grace to 2024-09-08). The lapsed-fee events should not be attributed to '871 on this arithmetic. Google's separate "Expired – Fee Related / anticipated expiration 2021-11-01" entry for '871 is the statutory 20-year term running from the 2001-11-01 non-provisional — a term expiry, not necessarily a fee lapse.
2. Reel/frame attribution to '871 is high-likelihood, not directly verified — because I could not open the Assignment Center Abstract of Title for application 16/051,371. Reel 042385/0202 is directly confirmed for the '072, '178 and '811 patents by recruitable pleadings, and '871's Google legal-events entry shows the same assignors/assignee, but the '871 record page itself was not read.
3. The correspondent of record for reel 042385/0202 remains unidentified, so no repeat-correspondent finding is made either way.
4. Family-level divestitures (Pebble Tide LLC, Flexijet Technologies, Inc., Samsung, Mattel) are confirmed only for sibling patents — I found no assignment connecting any of them to US 10,768,871.

I'll search for the specific patent's citation records (the "References Cited" / prior-art section) for US 10,768,871.

Let me find the specific citation lists for the '871 patent on Justia and Google Patents.

Let me retrieve the actual "References Cited" lists from Justia and uspto.report for the '871 patent specifically.

Scope and method (important caveat up front)

I searched for the literal identifier 10768871 / US10768871B2 and did not substitute similar numbers. I confirmed the patent record, but I could not retrieve the complete "References Cited" table with titles/abstracts and full citation data within my search budget. I am therefore reporting what I could confirm from the citation lists, and I am not going to invent titles, abstracts, or § 102 mappings for references I could not actually read. Where I lack data, I say so explicitly.

Also note: the task header says "Current Date: April 26, 2026," while the other sections of this project were dated 2026-09-16. I'm treating today as 2026 and flagging the date discrepancy rather than resolving it.

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1. What the '871 patent's citation record actually is

U.S. 10,768,871 has a very large "References Cited" section. This is characteristic of the Flexiworld/Chang continuation family: it is largely an applicant-submitted IDS plus examiner-cited art, spanning roughly 1984 through the 2018 filing date, with hundreds of U.S. patent documents.

Crucial distinction for a § 102 analysis:

• "References Cited" = prior art cited in the '871 patent (potentially § 102/§ 103 art against '871).
• "Referenced By" / family list = later Chang-family patents that cite '871 (e.g., 10,371,780; 10,187,846; 10,489,096; 10,606,535; 10,642,576 …). These are not prior art against '871.

I could reach the "References Cited" list only partially. Two sources surfaced it: the uspto.report grant page for 10768871 (uspto.report/patent/grant/10768871) and the PubChem patent record for US-10768871-B2 (pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/patent/US-10768871-B2). Google Patents' Citations tab (patents.google.com/patent/US10768871B2) holds the authoritative, complete list but its citation block did not render in my retrieved results.

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2. Confirmed cited references (partial list, as retrieved)

The following were returned as cited U.S. patent documents in the '871 record. I have patent number, issue date, and inventor (from uspto.report). I do not have the titles/abstracts, so I am not supplying descriptions — doing so would be fabrication.

The PubChem record additionally lists these cited U.S. patent documents (numbers only — no dates/titles retrieved): 4,431,282; 4,435,059; 4,539,585; 4,541,010; 4,553,835; 4,580,880; 4,602,280; 4,956,665; 4,958,220; 4,979,032; 5,048,057; 5,129,639; 5,166,809; 5,220,674; 5,228,118 — followed by the same 5,257,097-onward sequence, and continuing beyond what I retrieved.

Cited U.S. patent application publications returned in the record include (number — date — inventor): 2001/0011302 (Son); 2001/0012281 (Hall et al.); 2001/0015717 (Mishra et al.); 2001/0019953 (Furukawa et al.); 2001/0029531 (Ohta); 2001/0032254 (Hawkins); 2001/0034222 (Roustaei et al.); 2001/0055492 (Wood et al.); 2001/0055951 (Slotznick); 2002/0002707 (Ekel); 2002/0009988 (Murata); 2002/0010756 (Oku); 2002/0012329 (Atkinson et al.); 2002/0013730 (Bigus); 2002/0017827 (Zuppero et al.); 2002/0026492 (Fujita); 2002/0038612 (Iwazaki); 2002/0042263 (Ishikawa); 2002/0049580 (Kutaragi et al.); 2002/0049839 (Miida et al.); 2002/0051200 (Chang et al.); 2002/0057452 (Yoshino); 2002/0059489 (Davis et al.); 2002/0062398 and 2002/0062406 (Chang et al.); 2002/0065873 (Ishizuka); 2002/0071577 (Lemay et al.); 2002/0077980 and 2002/0078101 (Chang et al.); 2002/0081993 (Toyoshima); 2002/0087622 (Anderson); 2002/0090912 (Cannon et al.); 2002/0092029 (Smith); 2002/0097408–2002/0097419 and 2002/0097433, 2002/0099884 (Chang et al.); 2002/0178272 (Igarashi et al.); 2002/0194302 (Blumberg); 2003/0002072 (Berkema et al.); 2003/0013483 (Ausems et al.); 2003/0013484 (Nishimura et al.); 2003/0028481 (Flitcroft et al.); 2003/0054846 (Parry); 2003/0061381 (Brisebois et al.); 2003/0061606 (Hartwig et al.); 2003/0073431 (Dorenbosch); 2003/0084177 (Mulligan); 2003/0088421 (Maes et al.); 2003/0115256 (Brockway et al.); 2003/0120754 (Muto et al.); 2003/0122934 (Shiohara); 2003/0128272 (Clough et al.); 2003/0160993 (Kang); 2003/0211188 (Kachnic); 2003/0228842 (Heinonen et al.); 2004/0024688 (Bi et al.); 2004/0057075 (Stewart et al.); 2004/0127254 (Chang); 2004/0193900 (Nair); 2005/0078088 (Davis et al.); 2005/0086300 (Yeager et al.); 2005/0114869 (Iwamura et al.); 2005/0125664 (Berkema et al.); 2005/0204176 (Togawa); 2005/0210120 (Yukie et al.); 2005/0222963 (Johnson); 2006/0013630 (Silverbrook et al.); 2006/0112414 (Ikonen); 2006/0129627 (Phillips et al.); 2006/0167784 (Hoffberg); 2007/0125860 (Lapstun et al.); 2007/0129109 (Silverbrook et al.); 2007/0133073 (Shida et al.); 2008/0004925 (Bangel et al.); 2008/0004965 (Park); 2008/0007482 (Morioka); 2008/0049253 and 2008/0049651 (Chang et al.); 2008/0098468 (Cortopassi et al.); 2008/0146283 (Rao et al.); 2008/0201236 (Field et al.); 2008/0218776 (Takami et al.); 2008/0250459 (Roman); 2008/0318602 (Chang et al.); 2009/0002760 (Chang et al.); 2009/0048978 (Ginter et al.); 2009/0070411 (Chang et al.); 2009/0094457 (Lapstun et al.); 2009/0180142 (Suzuki et al.); 2009/0290182 (Hashimoto et al.); 2010/0003966 (Lu et al.); 2010/0020199 (Meitav et al.); 2010/0020382 (Su et al.); 2010/0022755 (Umeda et al.); 2010/0039660 and 2010/0039669 (Chang et al.); 2010/0201996 and 2010/0203824 (Chang et al.); 2010/0227550 (Chang et al.); 2011/0016280 (Chang et al.); 2011/0034150 (Chang et al.); 2011/0035319 (Brand et al.); 2011/0035682 (Chang et al.); 2011/0138378 (Chang et al.); 2011/0145074 (Polizzotto); 2011/0167166 (Chang et al.); 2011/0167175 (Chang); 2011/0197159 (Chaganti et al.); 2011/0211226 (Chang et al.); 2011/0279829 and 2011/0279863 (Chang et al.); 2011/0313775 (Laligand et al.); 2012/0036016 (Hoffberg et al.); 2012/0089299 (Breed); 2012/0226777 (Shanahan); 2012/0230315 (Chang et al.); 2012/0258700 (Chang et al.); 2013/0079141 (Barney et al.); 2013/0095887 (Chang et al.); 2013/0103775 and 2013/0104052 (Chang et al.); 2013/0109353 (Chang et al.); 2013/0267204 (Schultz et al.); 2013/0297670 (Lundberg et al.); 2014/0018130 (Chang); 2014/0082604 (Chang et al.).

I did not retrieve the titles or abstracts for any of these, so I cannot responsibly describe them or assign them to specific claims.

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3. The § 102 problem with this citation list (a point worth stating plainly)

Because the '871 patent claims priority to Nov 1, 2000 / Nov 1, 2001, the only references that can anticipate under § 102 are those publicly available before the effective priority date — unless the priority claim fails for particular claims. Two consequences:

1. Most of the patent citations (earliest 1984 through ~1997, and the 2001–2004 application publications) fall in the correct window and are the realistic § 102/§ 103 candidates.
2. Many cited items postdate the priority date (e.g., 2012–2014 publications; 2017–2019 grants such as 9,819,710; 10,055,634; 10,284,953; RE46,637; RE48,066; RE48,088). Those cannot be § 102 prior art against claims entitled to the 2000/2001 priority and are best explained as applicant IDS material or as art directed at claims/embodiments outside the priority support. I would not cite them as anticipatory without checking the priority-support question.

This is exactly why I am not producing a fabricated per-reference § 102 table.

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4. How the references actually bear on the claims (element mapping)

The independent claims are 1 (wireless output device apparatus), 7 (method: output device ↔ smartphone), and 15 (output device for playing digital content; requires device-dependent output data associated with the transmitted attribute/ID). The claim elements that prior art must disclose are:

The cited corpus clusters into these technical families — printing/raster image processing and output-device drivers (the bulk of the 1984–1998 patents), wireless/short-range networking (e.g., 5,485,634 Weiser; 5,487,069 O'Sullivan; 5,574,979 West; 5,717,688 Belanger), and device attribute/capability management and network print services. On their face, those are the clusters most germane to claims 1, 7, and 15. But naming any single reference as an anticipatory § 102 reference would require reading its disclosure, which I could not do here — so I am flagging them as candidates requiring verification, not conclusions.

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5. What I could not verify (be careful here)

• Complete "References Cited" list with titles: not retrieved. Google Patents' Citations tab and the USPTO file wrapper/IDS are the authoritative sources.
• Designations of which references were examiner-applied vs. applicant-submitted (IDS): not retrieved.
• Foreign patent documents and non-patent literature: the record almost certainly contains them (Flexiworld IDS practice), but none were retrieved.
• Any § 102 mapping: none can be asserted without the underlying text.

To finish this properly, pull the "Citations" → "Patent Citations" and "Non-Patent Citations" tables from Google Patents US10768871B2 and the "References Cited" tab from uspto.report/patent/grant/10768871, plus the IDS/892 list in USPTO Patent Center for application 16/051,371.

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6. Cross-reference flags with the earlier sections

• No contradiction with the earlier sections on this point. The earlier summary correctly emphasized that the family has litigation and a large continuation chain; a large IDS citation list is consistent with that.
• The prior expiration/assertion tension still stands and is untouched here. The earlier sections flagged that Google Patents lists "Expired – Fee Related / 2021-11-01" while '871 was asserted in the TCL complaint filed March 20, 2026. The prior-art analysis above is independent of that issue, but note the practical consequence: if the patent expired in 2021, § 102 prior-art analysis matters mainly for invalidity determinations in the still-pending and previously-filed cases, not for ongoing infringement.
• Date discrepancy: task header says April 26, 2026; the project's other sections are dated 2026-09-16. Reported literally, not reconciled.

Bottom line: I confirmed that US 10,768,871 cites a very large prior-art corpus (large IDS plus examiner art) and retrieved the numbers/dates/inventors for the ~1984–1998 portion of the U.S. patent citations; I could not retrieve titles, abstracts, or foreign/NPL citations, so I am not asserting any specific § 102 anticipation mapping — those must be verified against Google Patents' citation tables and the USPTO file wrapper for application 16/051,371.

I'll research the prior art cited on this patent's record before building the § 103 analysis.

The references list is large; let me verify the content of the most probative third-party references rather than assume.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 10,768,871 (US10768871B2) under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Analyst note on scope and process. I built this on (a) the full patent text supplied in the prompt, (b) the earlier-generated sections (treated as authoritative for claim paraphrases and litigation facts, per your instruction), and (c) the Prior Art portion of the Google Patents/uspto.report/PubChem records for US10768871B2, which I retrieved this round. The "Prior Art" data literally on the record is:

• Prior-art keywords: output device; wireless; output; wireless output; wireless communication
• Prior-art date: 2000-11-01
• References Cited: a large list comprising (i) the applicant's own family members and prosecution papers, (ii) ~500 third-party U.S. patents/published applications, and (iii) a small set of non-patent literature (NPL) references. Source: uspto.report – Grant 10768871; PubChem – US-10768871-B2.

I hit my research budget before I could pull full text for every reference. I therefore mark each reference below as verified-this-round or unverified, and I do not assert disclosure content for references I could not open. Where I rely on general knowledge of a well-known reference, I say so.

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I. Threshold issue that dominates the entire § 103 analysis: which claims are entitled to the 2000 priority date?

This is the single most important point in an obviousness challenge, and it is unresolved on the face of the record.

What the record says (reported literally, no auto-correction):

⚠️ Contradiction flagged (not resolved): the family carries two adjacent priority dates, 2000-10-31 and 2000-11-01, depending on the source. Under the operating rule I have not corrected either. Practically, a one-to-two-day difference is immaterial to the § 103 conclusions below, but it must be pinned down against the actual provisional filings in Patent Center, because it moves the § 102(b) critical date.

Why the priority question matters more than the day: the application is a continuation of 15/348,006 ← 10/053,765 (filed 2002-01-18, issued as 9,836,257) with a CIP leg back to 10/016,223 (filed 2001-11-01). The earlier section records the chain. The claims of '871 as issued are drafted around wireless device discovery, transmission of a device attribute/ID, a security/authentication procedure, subsequent link establishment, receipt of output data, and playing — with audio/voice, Bluetooth, IEEE 802.11, smartphones, and televisions as claim-1/7/15 currency.

Two consequences:

1. If the claims get 2000-11-01, the § 102(b) window closes roughly Oct/Nov 2000, and the analysis rests on the Bluetooth 1.0 (July 1999) and IEEE 802.11b (Sept 1999) ecosystems, SDP work, wireless-PAN literature, and the pre-2000 printing/portable-media art (all of which the applicant itself placed on the face of the patent).
2. If the claims are entitled only to 2002, 2016, or 2018 (a realistic § 112 written-description/enablement attack, since the 2000 provisional-era disclosure is directed principally to the intermediate output data / split-RIP invention described in the "Definitions" text, not to Bluetooth pairing of a speaker or a television), then a very large second wave of art — Bluetooth 1.1/printing profiles, 802.11b WLAN consumer gear, Apple AirPort/iTunes-era proximity streaming, UPnP AV, and TiVo-style network media players — becomes available as § 102 prior art.

Analyst position: I flag this as the highest-leverage § 103 argument, but I do not resolve it here. Nothing in the retrieved record establishes that the issued claims 1, 7 and 15 are supported by the 2000 disclosure; that requires the provisional texts.

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II. The prior art on the face of the '871 patent, organized for a § 103 combination

II.A Non-patent literature (all pre-Nov-2000 printed publications — strongest § 102(b) footing)

These four NPL items are the backbone of any obviousness case, and they were cited by the applicant/examiner, so they are demonstrably before the Office:

Caveat on content. I am relying on the titles and my general knowledge for what NPL-1 through NPL-4 teach (Bluetooth device/service discovery and IP-peripheral access; mapping a service-discovery protocol onto the Bluetooth SDP layer; a comparative survey of SLP/Jini/Salutation/UPnP discovery; a short-range wireless personal access network for handhelds). I did not obtain the full texts this round, so any element-by-element mapping built on them must be re-verified. I am flagging this explicitly rather than asserting quoted disclosure.

II.B Third-party patents cited on the face — the two I verified this round

Reference A — US 5,485,634 A ("Method and system for the dynamic selection, allocation and arbitration of control between devices within a region"), Weiser et al., Xerox Corporation, filed 1993-12-14, issued 1996-01-16. ✅ Content verified this round (SumoBrain; uspto.report).

Verified teachings relevant to '871:

• A ubiquitous computing environment in which a mobile "Tab" device acts as a "remote, adaptable mobile controller for a wide range of resources"; "Mobile controllers may essentially function as a mobile user interface, permitting users to sense and control resources remotely."
• Resources are discovered/presented and selected: in "MANUAL MODE … information concerning the nature and state of all resources in the room is presented to the controller"; the user "presses an icon" to select. There is also "MC AUTOMATICALLY SEEKS A RESOURCE" mode.
• Resource attributes/suitability filtering — the disclosure expressly uses printing as the worked example: a controller requests "a color printer that prints at over 100 pages per minute and that no less capabilities will do"; the system checks "resource suitability" against an activity-type/resource-type matrix (e.g., "SPARC workstation … rating of '10' in performing 'wordprocessing'", black-and-white vs. "5775 printer").
• The Badge/Tab devices "communicate to the room, through a wireless medium."
• Explicitly contemplates security/access control by identity: "security doors would open up for certain individuals and not for others," and location-based call forwarding.

Reference B — US 5,574,979 A ("Periodic interference avoidance in a wireless radio frequency communication system"), West et al., Norand Corporation, filed 1994-06-03, issued 1996-11-12. ✅ Content verified this round (SumoBrain; uspto.report).

Verified teachings relevant to '871 — this one is unusually on-point because it is effectively a two-tier wireless architecture with a short-range peripheral link:

• "Each mobile computer device can communicate with peripheral devices via a second, low-power local area network." The parent/roaming device "participate[s] in the multiple networks by selectively processing and controlling the flow of information."
• The short-range network is called a "peripheral LAN or MicroLAN"; its constituents "are generally devices that do not require access to resources outside their immediate group."
• "The characteristics of the peripheral LAN permit the use of radio transceivers of lower cost, lower power consumption, and generally more simplistic operation…"
• Requires the parent device to contain significant processing power — a direct teaching toward the split-processing architecture the '871 specification claims as its contribution.

II.C Third-party references cited but NOT verified this round (listed so the record is complete, not so they can be relied on)

From the "References Cited" list, the following appear and are plausibly material, but I did not retrieve their text or confirm their disclosures, so I do not build claim charts on them:

• US 5,790,907 A and US 5,790,908 A (tagged "(SEA)" on PubChem) — I know these are associated with portable digital-audio-player / digital information library art, but my search for them returned zero results this round. Do not cite for content.
• US 6,263,503 B1 (tagged "(SEA)") — my search was truncated by the step limit and returned nothing usable. Do not cite for content.
• US 5,717,688 A (Belanger et al., 1998-02-10), US 5,625,757 A (Kageyama, 1997-04-29), US 5,867,633 A, US 6,185,996 B1, US 6,192,407 B1, US 6,202,098 B1, US 6,233,611 B1, US 6,453,104 B1, US 6,492,692 B1, US 6,374,586 B1, US 6,498,775 B1 — all appear on the face with pre-2000-ish priority. Unverified.
• US 7,313,381 B1 ("SIM Based Authentication as Payment Method in Public ISP Access Networks", priority 1999-05-02) — appeared in the Unified Patents cross-citation listing for the Flexiworld family; relevant in principle to the authentication limitation. Unverified as to text.
• US 6,170,409 B1 / US 6,581,833 B2 / US 6,581,833-type printing-by-reference family (Hewlett-Packard) appears in the cross-citation graph. Unverified.
• Note: the "Cited By" and "Similar Documents" fields of the PubChem record returned empty, so I have no evidentiary basis from this round regarding what later art cited '871.

II.D The applicant's own family members on the face — not usable as § 103 prior art in the ordinary way

A very large fraction of the "References Cited" list is Flexiworld's own continuations and cousins (e.g., US 7,941,541; US 8,990,000/8,632,000-family; US 10,137,780; US 10,140,071–073; US 10,387,087; US 10,489,096; US 10,642,576; US 11,204,729; US 11,029,903; US 11,096,056; US 11,416,197, etc.). These are same-family documents and generally cannot be used against '871 as § 102(b) art; at most they matter for § 102(e)/§ 102(a)(2) or as admissions about the state of the art (see § IV below). The earlier section's litigation summary correctly identified many of these as co-asserted siblings in Sony and Xerox.

II.E A notable prosecution fact visible in the record itself

The face of '871 cites: "Petition filed in the US Patent Trial and Appeal Board for Post Grant Review of U.S. Pat. No. 10,303,411, filed Dec. 23, 2019, 129 pages" — i.e., a third-party PGR petition was filed against a sibling Flexiworld patent in this very family. That is corroboration that sophisticated challengers have already tested this family's wireless-output claims at the PTAB, and that the family's validity was contested. This is a fact, not an inference; I did not retrieve the PGR outcome this round, so I make no representation as to how it was decided.

Also on the face: "Amcrest Industries LLC's Reply in Support of its Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings … S.D. Tex. … Nov. 6, 2019, 15 pages" — a § 101-style early-disposition posture in related litigation.

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III. Person having ordinary skill in the art (POSITA)

A POSITA as of late 2000 would be a computer/electrical engineer or computer scientist with ~2–4 years' experience in wireless networking and/or printing/peripheral systems, familiar with:

• Bluetooth 1.0 (published July 1999): inquiry/inquiry-scan device discovery, the Service Discovery Protocol (SDP), Class of Device / friendly name, pairing with a PIN, link key storage, piconet formation, and 2.4 GHz frequency-hopping operation.
• IEEE 802.11 and 802.11b (approved Sept 1999): beacons, probe request/response discovery, SSID association, WEP; 2.4 GHz operation.
• The service-discovery arms race of 1999–2000 (SLP, Jini, Salutation, UPnP) — precisely the subject of NPL-2 and NPL-3.
• Existing mobile/pervasive output art (References A and B; NPL-5, NPL-6).
• The applicant's own specification confirms these were routine: the '871 text states the communication interface "is a wireless communication interface such as a short-range radio interface including those implemented according to the Bluetooth or IEEE 802.11 standard," and that "a wireless connection is also possible by using, for example, radio communication or infrared communication." That is a specification admission that Bluetooth/802.11 short-range wireless was conventional at the relevant time.

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IV. Element-by-element mapping for the independent claims

Claim 1 (wireless output device discoverable by a client)

Using the verbatim claim text from Flexiworld's own posting (confirmed against the earlier section):

Assessment: every element of claim 1 is disclosed or rendered obvious by Reference A + Reference B + the Bluetooth/802.11 specifications as recounted in NPL-1/NPL-2. The only genuinely "modern-sounding" features are the breadth of the enumerated authentication types (biometric, fingerprint, voice) and the 2.4 GHz recitation — both of which are either genus-level recitations of known alternatives (KSR: "a patent composed of several elements is not proved obvious merely by demonstrating that each element was independently known" — but here the combination was also known and is merely being applied to a different output modality) or inherent in the cited protocols.

Claim 7 (method: short-range link between a wireless output device and a smartphone, audio/voice output)

From the earlier section's paraphrase (authoritative per instructions; full text not independently re-verified this round):
(1) discovery → (2) proximity-based transmission of the device attribute/ID to the phone → (3) receive service/connection request → (4) establish short-range link → (5) receive output data containing audio or voice content → (6) process/decode → (7) play the audio/voice.

• Steps (1)–(4) map exactly as in the claim 1 table (References A/B + Bluetooth).
• Steps (5)–(7) — a mobile device sending audio to a wirelessly discoverable playback device — are the core of the portable-audio/library art cited on the face (US 5,790,907 / 5,790,908, tagged "(SEA)") plus the "cable-replacement for audio peripherals" rationale that the Bluetooth SIG itself advanced. ⚠️ I could not verify the '907/'908 disclosures this round and will not represent what they teach. If they are what their family names suggest (a portable digital-audio library delivering files to a playback device), they would be highly probative for claim 7; verification is a priority.
• The "smartphone" recital is a species of the claim-1/7 "mobile information apparatus" genus and adds nothing structural; a POSITA in 2000 would treat a WAP/cellular handset with a short-range radio as the same mobile client.

Claim 15 (apparatus: output device for playing content; output data is at least partly device-dependent; output data associated with the transmitted attribute/ID)

• Steps (1)–(4) and (6) track claim 1.
• The "at least part of the received output data is device-dependent" limitation is squarely the admitted prior art of the '871 specification itself: the patent's own "Definitions" and FIG. 1A/1B discussion describe the conventional practice in which the information apparatus generates device-dependent output data for a printer engine (FIG. 1B: "compressed CMKY data with one or more bits per pixel … that can be understood by an output engine"), and the disclosure frames the invention's advance as the intermediate (partially RIP'd) data of the new method — not as the elimination of device dependence. A claim reciting that the received data is device-dependent therefore reads on the conventional system the patent describes as prior art.
• The requirement that the output data be "associated with" the previously transmitted attribute/ID is met by any implementation in which a client selects a device by its advertised attributes and then sends it data — the ordinary operation of Reference A (controller selects a resource by suitability, then uses it).

Assessment: claim 15 is, if anything, weaker than claim 1, because its distinguishing recitation ("at least partly device-dependent output data") is the practice the '871 specification itself attributes to the prior art.

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V. The combinations, and why a POSITA would have made them (KSR motivations)

Combination 1 — Reference A (US 5,485,634) + Reference B (US 5,574,979) + Bluetooth 1.0 / IEEE 802.11b as reflected in NPL-1/NPL-2 → renders claims 1 and 15 obvious.

Motivation to combine (explicit, not hindsight):

1. Reference A supplies the entire application-level logic — a mobile controller that discovers all resources in a region, is presented with their attributes, filters by suitability (its own worked example is printing), applies identity-based access control, and then drives the selected resource. That is claims 1(1), 1(2), parts of 1(3), and the claim-15 "associated with" limitation — in one pre-1996 reference.
2. Reference B supplies the entire physical-link architecture — a two-tier radio network in which a powerful mobile "parent" uses a low-power, low-cost, short-range "peripheral LAN" to reach peripheral devices that need no external network. Reference B's stated design goal — lower cost, lower power, simpler transceivers — is the same objective the Bluetooth SIG pursued (cable replacement for portable devices and peripherals) and the same objective the '871 specification advances.
3. Bluetooth 1.0 makes Reference B's architecture concrete and gives it the claim-1 limitations for free: inquiry-based device discovery, exchange of friendly name / Class of Device / SDP records (the "attribute or identification information"), PIN/link-key pairing (the "security procedure or authentication procedure"), and 2.4 GHz operation. NPL-1 and NPL-2 exist precisely because artisans were, in 1999, working out how to run IP and service-discovery-based peripheral access over Bluetooth — i.e., how to move Reference A's resource-selection model onto Reference B's short-range radio, which is what the claims recite.
4. The field was converging on exactly this combination, as NPL-3 (a 2000 survey comparing SLP/Jini/Salutation/UPnP service discovery for this purpose) demonstrates. Documentation that a POSITA was actively comparing discovery protocols is strong evidence that the problem the claims solve was known and being solved by known means.
5. No teaching away. The '871 specification itself asserts that "a wireless connection is also possible by using, for example, radio communication or infrared communication" and that Bluetooth/IEEE 802.11 are usable — i.e., the specification does not disparage the Bluetooth/802.11 approach; it treats it as the transport. When the reference and the patent agree the technique is usable, there is no teaching away.

Combination 2 — Reference A + Reference B + Bluetooth SDP + the cited portable-audio-player art → renders claim 7 obvious.

• Substituting an audio output modality for a printer is a predictable variation of a known technique to a known device type — the same discovery/attribute/security/link/data-transfer sequence, applied to a speaker or headset instead of a printer. KSR: where a technique has been used to improve one device, "a person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that it would be obvious to improve similar devices in the same way." The claims' own drafting confirms the interchangeability: the '871 specification states verbatim that "printer and printing used in the discussion of present invention refer to one embodiment … to simplify the description," and that references to printers "are intended to be applied or extended to the larger scope … of output devices." The patent's own specification supplies the motivation to generalize across output modalities.
• ⚠️ Dependency: this arm of the analysis is only as strong as the content of US 5,790,907 / 5,790,908, which I could not verify this round (empty search result). If those references do not teach mobile-to-playback-device audio delivery, a challenger would instead need NPL-1/NPL-2 plus general Bluetooth headset/audio art — which is itself widely known but which I have not cited with a verified record.

Combination 3 — A wireless-media-receiver/television reference + Bluetooth/802.11 discovery → the television/soundbar embodiments (claims 15 dependents; the accused-product theory in Hisense, Sony and TCL)

• The earlier sections record that the asserted products are smart TVs, soundbars, speakers, headphones, projectors and phones and that Hisense asserted independent claim 15; TCL (2:26-cv-00229, filed 2026-03-20) likewise asserts at least claim 15.
• The face of '871 cites US 6,263,503 B1 (tagged "(SEA)") — which I believe, from general knowledge, is the wireless-television art, but which my search did not confirm (I hit the step limit). I will not characterize its disclosure. If it is a wireless television system (a base station streaming A/V to a television receiver), then combining it with Bluetooth/802.11 device discovery yields claim 15's television species by the same predictable-variation logic as Combination 2. Verification is required.

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VI. Dependent claims (secondary considerations and secondary references)

Based on the earlier section's inventory, the dependents add: Bluetooth/IEEE 802.11 protocol compatibility; status/device-info reporting; audio/voice uplink; security detection; sharing the attribute/ID over a network; wireless software/data synchronization; authentication; a user interface (screen, buttons, keypad); a Bluetooth-audio/smartphone embodiment; and device-type/content-type definitions.

• Protocol-compatibility dependents (compatible with 802.11 / Bluetooth) are inherent in any Bluetooth/802.11 implementation and add nothing.
• "Software/data synchronization" over the wireless link is the stated purpose of the Bluetooth SIG's original effort (per NPL-1's framing of IP services over Bluetooth) and is well-trodden (NPL-6, printing/sharing over a network; NPL-7, Microsoft NT/Word network printing screenshots).
• "User interface" dependents (screen, buttons, keypad, soft keys) recite hardware the '871 specification itself lists as conventional: "one or more of a mouse, a keyboard, a touch-sensitive or non-touch-sensitive screen, push buttons, soft keys, a stylus, a speaker, a microphone."
• Voice/audio uplink and voice-activated commands — the specification's own definitions contemplate voice output devices, and the FR-27/G10L-15/22/30 classifications assigned to '871 show the Office treating speech interfaces as a distinct, separately-classified field. Any voice-command dependent claim is vulnerable to straightforward voice-control-art combinations.

Bottom line on dependents: none of them introduces a structural or functional element that is not either (a) inherent in the Bluetooth/802.11 protocols, (b) an admitted-conventional hardware item from the specification's own list, or (c) a predictable add-on. They do not rescue claims 1/7/15.

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VII. Secondary considerations (Graham factor 4)

I found no evidence in the retrieved record of the objective indicia that would rebut a prima facie case:

• No evidence of unexpected results — the advance the specification touts (moving RIP work off a low-power mobile device to the output device) is exactly the architecture of Reference B ("the parent device contains significant processing power" but peripherals are low-cost/low-power) and is the express design goal of the Bluetooth peripheral model.
• No nexus evidence for commercial success — the accused products are third-party TVs, soundbars and phones; there is no evidence in the retrieved record that any Flexiworld product practiced the claims such that market success could be attributed to them.
• Long-felt need cuts both ways — the '871 specification itself asserts the need was long felt ("It is therefore desirable that an information apparatus can output to more than one output device without the inconvenience of installing multiple dedicated device dependent drivers"). But a long-felt need satisfied by combining known discovery + known pairing + known short-range radio is not patentable: the whole point of the cited 1999 SDP literature is that artisans were working the problem. A need that the field is already actively solving is not a need that confers patentability.
• Industry praise / licensing — no evidence in this record.

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VIII. Prosecution-history observations relevant to § 103

1. Extraordinary examiner allowance pattern. The face of '871 cites on the order of ~30 Notices of Allowance for the parent/grandparent applications 10/053,765, 11/929,445, 11/929,501, 12/581,868, 12/606,178, 12/764,015, 12/764,032, 12/783,504, 13/476,947, 13/477,987, and many 15/xxx and 16/xxx siblings, often with very large page counts (e.g., "Notice of Allowance … May 23, 2012, 71 pages"; "Nov. 23, 2015, 49 pages"). This is a family that was repeatedly re-filed and repeatedly allowed after extended prosecution with many RCEs (multiple Office Actions per case, e.g., 15/713,546 has four). Repeated allowance across dozens of continuations, on claims whose scope migrated from 2000-era "intermediate output data" to 2018-era "wireless output device discovery / 802.11 / Bluetooth / 2.4 GHz," is a classic indicator that the issued claims' effective priority — not the 2000 disclosure — is doing the work.
2. The PGR against sibling US 10,303,411 (petition filed 2019-12-23, 129 pp.) shows the family has been challenged at the PTAB. I did not confirm the outcome.
3. Litigation posture. The earlier sections and the Unified Patents "Related Cases" data show a sustained campaign (Epson, Canon, Amazon, Roku, Lexmark, Brother, Hisense, Sony, Xerox, and the live TCL case). Broad assertion across many disparate device categories — printers, TVs, speakers, phones — is itself consistent with claims that read on the generic combination of discovery + pairing + short-range radio + content delivery rather than on any specific technical contribution.

⚠️ Discrepancies with the earlier-generated sections (flagged, not corrected):

• Earlier section: Flexiworld v. Xerox = W.D.N.Y. 6:23-cv-06372. Unified Patents' "Related Cases" for sibling US10481846 shows Flexiworld v. Xerox = 6:23-cv-06371 (filed 2023-06-28, closed). Two different docket numbers. Both are reported literally; I did not reconcile them.
• Earlier section (Section B, unverified): Tennessee W.D. 2:22-cv-02250 vs. 2:22-cv-02237 (Unified Patents, naming Brother International Corp. / Brothers Industries Inc., filed 2022-04-14, closed).
• The earlier section's five "unverified flagged dockets" are partially resolvable from the Unified Patents Related Cases data (attached to a sibling patent's page, so they are not confirmed as '871 assertions): 5:22-cv-00097 / 5:22-cv-00098 → Lexmark International; 8:21-cv-00807 → Epson America; 6:21-cv-00680 / 6:21-cv-00767 → Roku / Canon; 2:21-cv-01055 and 6:20-cv-00553 → Amazon. Treat as family-level, not '871-specific.
• The earlier section's "Expired – Fee Related / 2021-11-01 expiration" note vs. the 2026 TCL complaint remains in tension. Note that if the patent lapsed for non-payment of maintenance fees in 2022 (as a uspto.report legal-events feed suggested, though that feed appeared to belong to US 10,037,178, not '871 — unverified), then only backward-looking damages within the 35 U.S.C. § 286 six-year window for pre-lapse conduct are at stake. Expiration/lapse does not change the § 103 analysis of validity; it changes only the remedy.

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IX. Conclusion

Claims 1, 7 and 15 of US 10,768,871 are, on the cited record, vulnerable to a § 103 obviousness challenge. The strongest single combination is:

US 5,485,634 (Weiser/Xerox — mobile controller discovers resources in a region, is presented their attributes, filters by suitability, and applies identity-based access control, using printing as its worked example) in view of US 5,574,979 (West/Norand — short-range, low-power "peripheral LAN" over which a powerful mobile parent device drives peripheral devices) in further view of Bluetooth 1.0 (July 1999) / IEEE 802.11b (September 1999) device discovery, SDP, Class-of-Device/name exchange, PIN pairing and 2.4 GHz operation, as documented by the applicant's own cited Albrecht (Oct. 1999), Miller (Jul. 1999), Bettstetter (Sep. 2000) and Bisdikian (Dec. 1998) references.

Motivation to combine is supplied by (i) the shared, expressly stated objective of low-cost/low-power short-range wireless peripheral access in References A and B; (ii) the Bluetooth SIG's cable-replacement mission that made discovery + pairing + 2.4 GHz operation the normative way to do it; (iii) the contemporaneous SDP literature (NPL-2, NPL-3) showing artisans actively working on exactly this service-discovery problem; and (iv) the '871 specification's own admissions that Bluetooth/IEEE 802.11 short-range radio was a usable, conventional transport and that the printer embodiment is merely exemplary of a broader class of output devices.

Claim 15 is weaker still, because its "at least partially device-dependent output data" element describes the very prior-art practice the '871 specification sets out in its FIG. 1B discussion.

Do not overstate this conclusion. Two gaps must be closed before this becomes an opinion: (1) full text of NPL-1 through NPL-4 (I relied on titles and general knowledge); and (2) the effective priority date of claims 1/7/15, which determines the entire prior-art universe. I also could not verify US 5,790,907/'908, US 6,263,503, or US 7,313,381 this round, and the searches for them returned nothing usable — they must not be cited for disclosure content until re-verified.

Confidence summary:

• High: the cited-reference list on the face of '871, including the NPL citations and the ~500 third-party references; the verified disclosures of US 5,485,634 and US 5,574,979; the element-by-element mapping of claim 1 against those two references plus Bluetooth/802.11; the specification's own admissions about Bluetooth/802.11 and about printers being exemplary.
• Medium: the content of NPL-1 through NPL-4 (title + general knowledge only — not retrieved); the proposition that the portable-audio and wireless-television references on the face supply claims 7 and 15's media-specific elements.
• Not verified / do not rely on: US 5,790,907/'908, US 6,263,503, US 7,313,381, the PGR outcome for US 10,303,411, the "Cited By" field, and the effective priority date of the issued claims.

Sources: Google Patents – US10768871B2; uspto.report – Grant 10768871 (references cited); PubChem – US-10768871-B2; SumoBrain/US 5,485,634 (Weiser, Xerox); uspto.report/US 5,485,634; SumoBrain/US 5,574,979 (West, Norand); uspto.report/US 5,574,979; Flexiworld – US 10,768,871 claim text; Unified Patents – family/related cases.