US 11232768

I'll research US patent 11232768 using targeted searches, including current litigation/docket information.

Let me now search for CAFC 2026 docket activity and the related district court litigation.

Let me check for the district court litigations and any appellate activity specifically.

US Patent 11,232,768 B2 — Analyst Summary

Bottom line up front: I confirmed the patent's bibliographic data and claim set from the authoritative patent text and corroborating databases. I did not find any Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit 2026 docket activity for this patent — see the litigation section, where I flag that explicitly rather than speculate.

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1. Bibliographic data (as reported, not normalized)

Continuity chain (all claiming benefit back to the 2005 provisional): 11/403,374 (US 7,629,977) → 11/586,016 (US 7,388,587) → 12/140,060 (US 8,035,644) → 13/232,306 (US 8,487,939) → 13/941,589 (abandoned) → 14/262,947 (the patent at issue). The '768 patent is a continuation-in-part of 13/941,589. Later family members include US 11,263,998 B2, US 11,893,965 B2, US 12,051,391 B2, and US 2025/0054465 A1.

Uncertainty flags:

• Number formatting: I interpret the identifier literally as 11,232,768. No other patent number was substituted.
• Data-source discrepancy: Unified Patents' portal renders priority as 2005-04-11, application date 2014-04-27, and grant 2022-01-24 — one day earlier on each than Google Patents/USPTO. This is almost certainly a time-zone/rendering artifact. I am treating the USPTO/Google Patents values above (2005-04-12 / 2014-04-28 / 2022-01-25) as authoritative.
• Ownership ambiguity (material): The face of the patent names Emailfilm Technology, Inc. as applicant/assignee, but the recorded assignment history shows reassignment back to Richardson, Douglas G. individually in 2017 (with an intermediate corrective assignment to "Emailfilm Technologies, Inc."). Google Patents accordingly lists "Original Assignee: Individual." I cannot state with confidence who the record owner is today without pulling the underlying USPTO assignment reels (027525/0231, 041759/0442, 041778/0309, 042721/0425 — cited in the search results but not independently verified here).

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2. Abstract (verbatim)

Provided are techniques for providing animation in electronic communications. An image is generated by capturing multiple photographs from a camera or video camera. The first photograph is called the "key photo." Using a graphics program, photos subsequent to the key photo are edited to cut an element common to the subsequent photos. The cut images are pasted into the key photo as layers. The modified key photo including the layers, is stored as a web-enabled graphics file, which is then transmitted in conjunction with electronic communication. When the electronic communication is received, the key photo is displayed and each of the layers is displayed and removed in the order that each was taken with a short delay between photos. In this manner, a movie is generated with much smaller files than is currently possible.

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3. Plain-language overview of the claims

The patent has three independent claims — claims 1, 8, and 15 — plus 14 dependent claims.

Claim 1 — Method of making the animation

A method for providing animation in an electronic message, comprising:

1. Capture three or more images in sequential order from a location.
2. Receive data indicating a first image (the "key photo") among them.
3. Designate two or more sequential images that differ from the first image because of motion of a user-selected element — the motion is detected by comparing that element in each sequential image against the same element in the first image.
4. Identify two or more blocks of pixels, each block capturing the moving element in its corresponding sequential image.
5. Cut those pixel blocks out of the sequential images to create "cut images."
6. Insert the cut images into the first image as layers, stacked so that each cut image sits on top of the preceding one, and each is placed at the position matching where it appeared in its source image.
7. Save the first image plus the inserted layers as a single web-enabled graphic image file.

Essence: Instead of transmitting an entire frame for every moment, you transmit one still "key" backdrop plus only the small moving-pixel patches, stacked as positioned layers, in one web-embeddable file.

Claim 8 — Apparatus doing the same thing

An apparatus comprising a processor, a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium, and instructions that, when executed, perform the same seven-step method as claim 1 (capture, receive first-image indication, designate motion-differing sequential images, identify pixel blocks, cut, layer into the first image on top of one another at matched positions, and save as a single web-enabled graphic file).

Claim 15 — Method of receiving/displaying

A method for displaying animation in an electronic message, comprising receiving an image, where that image was generated by the claim-1-style process (capture three or more images → receive first-image indication → designate motion-differing sequential images → identify pixel blocks → cut → layer into the first image with stacking and position-matching → save as a single web-enabled graphic file). Written in essentially "receiving a file made by the disclosed process" form.

Dependent claims at a glance

• Claims 2 & 9: capture a second feature by repeating the method (multiple animated elements).
• Claims 3 & 10: designate a second key image and a second set of motion-differing sequential images, producing a second single web-enabled graphic file (multiple animations).
• Claims 4 & 11: the single web-enabled graphic file is a GIF file.
• Claims 5 & 12: implemented on / embodied as a camera.
• Claims 6 & 13: implemented on / embodied as a mobile telephone.
• Claims 7 & 14 (and 17): displaying the file, where each cut image is removed before the next one is displayed (the frame-to-frame "play" behavior).
• Claim 16: capturing a second user-selected element by repeating the claim-15 method.

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4. Litigation / CAFC 2026 docket check

District court (confirmed via the patent record's litigation data):

• D.N.Y. (S.D.N.Y.) Case No. 1:22-cv-07114 — US case filed, S.D.N.Y.
• D.N.Y. (S.D.N.Y.) Case No. 1:22-cv-04963 — US case filed, S.D.N.Y.
• A "first worldwide family litigation" filing is also recorded for Family ID 51487325 (Darts-ip).

Both S.D.N.Y. entries trace to 2022; I did not obtain the case captions/defendants from an authoritative docket source in these searches, so I cannot name the parties.

CAFC 2026 docket — ⚠️ NOT FOUND. I searched for Federal Circuit appellate activity tied to this patent and to Emailfilm/Richardson and found no CAFC docket (2026 or otherwise) for US 11,232,768. I want to be explicit: this is a negative finding, not a verified "no appeal exists" conclusion. The searches returned unrelated 2026 litigation documents (e.g., InterDigital v. Disney, Harbour Antibodies v. Teneobio, Valjakka v. Netflix, and unrelated First Amendment/DMCA matters), none involving this patent. I do not have authoritative confirmation that no appeal was filed, and I will not fabricate a docket number.

Term note: Because the earliest non-provisional filing is April 12, 2006 (with a 2005 provisional), the 20-year term runs to April 12, 2026, consistent with the "Expired – Lifetime" status. Any appeal filed in 2026 would be occurring at or after term expiry, which may bear on mootness/standing — I flag this as a legal question I cannot resolve without the actual docket.

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5. Bottom line

US 11,232,768 B2 is Douglas G. Richardson's "key photo plus moving-pixel layers saved as one web-enabled graphic file" patent, filed April 28, 2014, issuing January 25, 2022, tracing priority to April 12, 2005, assigned on its face to an Emailfilm entity (with record assignments shifting to Richardson individually in 2017). Its three independent claims cover (1) building such an animation, (2) an apparatus that builds it, and (3) receiving/displaying it. It was asserted in two 2022 S.D.N.Y. cases. I found no evidence of a CAFC 2026 appeal docket for this patent, and I cannot confirm the current record owner or the S.D.N.Y. case captions from the sources consulted.

I'll research litigation involving US Patent 11,232,768. Let me run several targeted searches.

Let me dig deeper into the specific case numbers and the assignee.

Let me verify the second SDNY case and look for related Richardson/Emailfilm suits.

I hit a search-step limit before completing every planned verification query, so I'll give you what I confirmed, clearly separating verified facts from unresolved leads. Per your rule, I have not corrected any identifiers and I flag where I could not independently confirm.

Litigation involving US 11,232,768 ("Embedding animation in electronic mail, text messages and websites")

Patent context (for orientation): The '768 patent names Douglas G. Richardson as inventor, lists Emailfilm Technology, Inc. (Austin, TX) as applicant, and Emailfilm Tech Inc as current assignee per Google Patents. Priority date 2005-04-12; granted 2022-01-25. Google Patents lists the legal status as "Expired - Lifetime" with an anticipated expiration of 2026-04-12 (i.e., 20 years from the 2006-04-12 non-provisional filing in the priority chain), which has now passed as of today's date (April 26, 2026).

Verified case

1) Richardson v. Adobe Inc.

• Court / Jurisdiction: U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (New York Southern District Court)
• Case number: 1:22-cv-07114
• Filed: 08/19/2022 (August 19, 2022)
• Cause of action: Patent Infringement (Nature of Suit 830 – Patent)
• Plaintiff: Douglas G. Richardson (patent owner/inventor)
• Defendant: Adobe Inc.
• Status/Outcome: Closed (docket shows status "Closed"; the specific disposition — dismissal vs. settlement — was not shown on the source I retrieved)
• Source: https://ai-lab-cl-prod.azurewebsites.net/case/dct/nysd/1:22-cv-07114/richardson-v-adobe-inc (case-tracking page); the case is also flagged on the patent's Google Patents record (https://patents.google.com/patent/US11232768/en) under "Family has litigation."

Second S.D.N.Y. case listed on the patent record (parties not independently confirmed)

2) S.D.N.Y. Case No. 1:22-cv-04963

• Court: New York Southern District Court (as listed on the Google Patents "Family has litigation" entry)
• Case number: 1:22-cv-04963
• What is confirmed: The patent's Google Patents record links a U.S. case filed in the New York Southern District Court, case 1:22-cv-04963, sourced to Unified Patents Litigation Data.
• What is NOT confirmed: I could not independently verify the plaintiff, defendant, filing date, or outcome for this case within my search budget. My search for "1:22-cv-04963" returned a different matter — Brocco et al. v. TTX Company, 1:22-cv-04963 (D.N.J.) — which is a different court and unrelated subject matter and should not be conflated with the S.D.N.Y. case.
• Source of lead: https://patents.google.com/patent/US11232768/en ("Family has litigation" → https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/New%20York%20Southern%20District%20Court/case/1%3A22-cv-04963)

Note: Given the case-number sequence and filing window, 1:22-cv-04963 was likely filed in roughly June 2022 in S.D.N.Y. and is plausibly another Richardson/Emailfilm enforcement action, but I did not confirm the parties and will not speculate.

Family-level litigation flag

Google Patents also lists a "First worldwide family litigation filed" entry sourced to Darts-ip for this family (family ID 51487325): https://patents.darts-ip.com/?family=51487325

Unresolved / likely-unrelated lead — flagged, not asserted

One search returned a PTAB IPR petition (Google LLC as real party-in-interest) containing a prosecution table stating that "*the 112 patent" has been involved in Sandpiper CDN, LLC v. Google LLC, 2-24-cv-03951 (C.D. Cal.). I am not treating this as litigation of US 11,232,768 for two reasons:

1. I could not verify that the "112 patent" in that petition is US 11,232,768 (could be a different patent ending in /112).
2. The context (Sandpiper CDN, Google, C.D. Cal., CDN-related prior art such as Glines/Chung/Chiou) does not match the subject matter of the '768 patent (animation embedded in email/websites).

If you want, I can run targeted PACER / CourtListener / Unified Patents queries specifically for case 1:22-cv-04963 and for any Richardson/Emailfilm suits against other defendants to pin down that second case.

Bottom line

• Yes, litigation is known for US 11,232,768.
• Confirmed: Richardson v. Adobe Inc., No. 1:22-cv-07114 (S.D.N.Y., filed Aug. 19, 2022, patent infringement) — closed.
• Listed but unconfirmed: S.D.N.Y. case 1:22-cv-04963 (parties/outcome not verified).
• Additional enforcement appears to be family-wide per Unified Patents/Darts-ip litigation flags.

Caveats: I was unable to directly access the Unified Patents litigation case list page or PACER before reaching my tool limit, and the specific termination details (dismissal, settlement, consent judgment) for the Adobe case were not shown on the aggregator I retrieved. I have not relied on training-data recollections for any of the above; every statement is tied to the sources cited, and I explicitly mark the uncertain items rather than filling gaps.

I'll verify the structured "no proceedings" record against live sources before writing anything up.

Now let me check for PTAB activity under the patent owner's name and any related family patents, plus the district court cases.

Two significant leads: a district court opinion in Richardson v. Adobe and a Unified Patents prior-art bounty on a family member. Let me dig into both.

PTAB / AIA Trial Report — US Patent 11,232,768 B2

("Embedding animation in electronic mail, text messages and websites" — Richardson / Emailfilm; filed 2014-04-28; granted 2022-01-25; expired 2026-04-12)

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Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 11,232,768 B2: 0. The canonical structured record ("PTAB proceedings on file," sourced from the USPTO Open Data Portal) reports no AIA trials for this patent, and my independent web searches — run against PTAB-hosted petition documents, the PTAB decisions corpus, and third-party docket aggregators (Docket Alarm, Unified Patents, Justia, CourtListener) — returned no IPR, PGR, or CBM naming US 11,232,768 B2 as the challenged patent. The defensive posture is therefore neither "hardened by surviving IPRs" nor "claims 1–5 canceled." It is the third thing: all 17 claims are PTAB-untested, and the patent is expired as of 2026-04-12, which shifts the real defense to district court and to the damages window rather than to a PTAB record.

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Per-proceeding detail

There are no proceedings to report. Rather than leave the section empty, here is the verification trail — including the false positives that must not be mistaken for proceedings against this patent.

Homonym traps encountered and excluded

⚠️ A "768 Patent" appears in several PTAB papers that have nothing to do with this patent. Do not cite these as activity on US 11,232,768:

I flag these explicitly because the task is to not invent proceeding numbers, and the inverse risk — importing a real proceeding number onto the wrong patent — is the more seductive error here.

What the zero count rests on

• USPTO ODP structured feed (canonical): no AIA trial proceedings. No institution, no FWD, no termination, no reexamination certificate tied to this application.
• Independent corroboration: searches keyed to the patent number, the patent owner entity (Emailfilm Technology / Emailfilm Technologies), and the inventor (Douglas G. Richardson) surfaced litigation and prior-art bounty activity (below) but no PTAB docket.
• Consistency check against litigation: the patent was asserted in S.D.N.Y. in 2022 (see below). No coordinated IPR wave followed. That is the substantive signal.

timeline
    title US 11,232,768 — assertion vs. PTAB timeline
    2022-01-25 : Patent grants
    2022-08-19 : Richardson v. Adobe filed (S.D.N.Y. 1:22-cv-07114)
    2022-10-25 : IPR/PGR filing window opens (9 mo. post-grant) / PGR window closes
    2023-10-25 : §315(b) one-year bar would expire for a served 2022 defendant
    2024-09-10 : S.D.N.Y. dismisses induced-infringement counts (incl. '768)
    2026-04-12 : Patent term expires — no IPR ever filed

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Strategic summary

Claim status: all 17 claims are UNTESTED at the PTAB — none canceled, none sustained. Because no petition was ever instituted, no FWD issued, and no certificate under § 318(b) has canceled or confirmed any claim. Claims 1, 8, and 15 (the three independents) stand exactly as they were examined. Dependent claims 2–7, 9–14, 16, and 17 are likewise untouched. A defendant cannot point to a PTAB disposition and say "claim 1 is dead" — there isn't one. Conversely, the patent owner cannot claim its claims were vindicated; a board that never heard the case said nothing about them.

Estoppel: essentially none — the field is wide open for a defendant. Section 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches only to a petitioner (and its RPIs/privies) whose IPR "results in a final written decision under section 318(a)." There is no such FWD here, so no party is estopped from raising any § 102/§ 103 ground, and no ground was ever "raised or reasonably could have been raised" in a completed trial. Concretely: every patent-or-printed-publication ground, every claim, every combination remains available in the district court. There is also no estoppel shadow from a denied petition (denials do not trigger § 315(e)(2)). For a defendant being asserted against today, the practical constraint is not estoppel — it is the § 315(b) one-year clock: anyone served more than one year ago is time-barred from filing, and anyone served now would face an institution decision on a patent whose term has already run (see next steps).

Pattern signals — and one that cuts against the "well-asserted patents attract IPRs" rule of thumb. No serial petitioners, no repeat filings, no PTAB appeal history, and no defensive aggregator in the PTAB chain for this patent. There is an aggregator footprint on the family, but it landed elsewhere: on 2023-07-24, Unified Patents announced a $2,000 PATROLL award for prior art on US 8,035,644 — a sibling in the same Richardson family — describing the '644 as formerly owned by Cine Graphic Solutions, a subsidiary of Strategic Intellectual Solutions, and noting assertion against Motorola, Samsung, and Fujifilm (Unified Patents announcement). I found no evidence that PATROLL submission ripened into an IPR against the '768 — I can only confirm the bounty was awarded; the downstream petition history is unverified in my sources. Finally, the 2022 S.D.N.Y. campaign was met with a Rule 12(b)(6) motion, not a PTAB petition — Richardson v. Adobe, Inc., No. 1:22-cv-07114 (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 10, 2024) — meaning the defendant-side playbook for this family has been pleading-stage attack rather than AIA trials.

Non-PTAB defensive context you should not overlook (clearly labeled as not PTAB): In Richardson v. Adobe, Judge Gardephe's 2024-09-10 opinion addressed Count Four, the indirect induced-infringement theory on claims 1, 4, 7, 15, and 17 of the '768 patent, and granted dismissal of the induced-infringement claims across all patents-in-suit because Richardson could not show Adobe induced its customers to perform the claimed "capturing" step — "[j]ust because an image has been captured by someone does not mean that the person creating the Cinegif or Cinemagraph captured that image." Direct-infringement and willfulness theories were permitted to proceed only as to the '998 sibling, not the '768. See Justia Doc. 40. That is a claim-construction/pleading outcome in district court, not a PTAB holding — but it is the most useful public record a defendant has on how the '768's independent claims behave in litigation.

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Recommended next steps

1. Do not lead with an IPR-based defense. There is no PTAB record to leverage, and the statute of limitations on the filing window is functionally closed: the patent expired 2026-04-12, nine months before today. IPR petitions can theoretically be filed against an expired patent, but there is no economic upside — the term has run, so the only live exposure is past damages within the six-year lookback of 35 U.S.C. § 286, and no injunction is available against an expired right. Budget your defense dollars accordingly.
2. Statutorily, check the doors that are shut before paying to knock. PGR was available only within nine months of grant and closed 2022-10-25. CBM review was never available: the AIA § 18 transitional program sunset on 2020-09-16, and this patent did not issue until 2022. IPR under § 315(b) is barred for any party served in the 2022 S.D.N.Y. cases more than a year ago.
3. Attack the priority chain, not the claims, in the district court. The '768 is a CIP of abandoned application 13/941,589, which traces down through 13/232,306 ('939), 12/140,060 ('644), 11/586,016 ('587), and 11/403,374 ('977) to provisional 60/670,402 (2005-04-12). Every independent claim recites capturing three or more images and comparing the user-selected element in each sequential image against the first image — limitations I cannot confirm appear in the 2005 provisional from the materials I reviewed. A priority challenge that pushes the effective date forward materially changes the § 102/§ 103 landscape. (Note: ±1 day discrepancies exist in the record — Unified renders priority as 2005-04-11, application as 2014-04-27, grant as 2022-01-24; I treat the USPTO/Google Patents values as authoritative.)
4. If the demand letter targets method claims, test the "capturing" and "user selected" limitations first. The 2024 S.D.N.Y. pleading-stage dismissal of induced infringement turned entirely on the "capturing" step. A letter asserting that a customer or a software user infringes by making a cinemagraph runs straight into the Richardson v. Adobe reasoning.
5. Confirm current ownership before negotiating anything. The prior analysis in this file flags a material ownership ambiguity: the patent face names Emailfilm Technology, Inc. as applicant/assignee, but recorded assignments show a 2017 reassignment back to Richardson individually, with an intermediate corrective assignment to "Emailfilm Technologies, Inc." A demand-letter response routed to the wrong entity — or an estoppel/RPI analysis keyed to the wrong owner — is a self-inflicted problem. Pull the assignment reels before relying on either name.

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Verification log and uncertainty flags

Bottom line for a defendant: there is no AIA trial history on US 11,232,768 — a genuinely unusual blank for a patent asserted in two S.D.N.Y. actions. The absence is itself the intelligence: no petitioner ever convinced (or even asked) the Board to take this patent up, no claim has been canceled, and no estoppel binds anyone. Your validity challenge is fully preserved and must be made in court — against an expired patent whose most aggressive theories have already been pared back at the pleading stage in Richardson v. Adobe.

I'll research the assignment record for US 11,232,768, starting with the USPTO Assignment Center and cross-referencing ownership entities.

Let me dig into the specific assignment records and the entity history.

Let me verify the specific reel/frame numbers and correspondent for the '768 patent's own assignment chain, plus the Cine Graphic Solutions relationship.

I hit the search-step limit, so here is the assignment reconstruction from the records I retrieved — chiefly the '768's own Google Patents legal-events feed (USPTO assignment data) plus the family-level sibling records for US 7,629,977 and US 8,035,644, which share the same assignment history. I flag explicitly what is confirmed for the '768 itself versus what is family-level, and where I could not retrieve a field (notably the assignment correspondent).

Assignment & Ownership Reconstruction — US 11,232,768 B2

Identifier note: I read "11232768" literally as US 11,232,768 B2, app. 14/262,947, "Embedding animation in electronic mail, text messages and websites," inventor Douglas G. Richardson.

Primary source consulted: Google Patents legal-events feed (which mirrors USPTO assignment data) at https://patents.google.com/patent/US11232768/en , plus sibling records at https://patents.google.com/patent/[US7629977B1](/patent/US7629977B1)/en and https://patents.google.com/patent/[US8035644B2](/patent/US8035644B2)/en . I did not directly pull the USPTO Assignment Center UI (https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ ) before hitting my tool limit, so reel/frame values below are as rendered by the databases, not re-verified against the underlying assignment PDFs. Flagged accordingly.

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Inventors

• Douglas G. Richardson — Dripping Springs, TX (US). Sole named inventor. At the 2014 filing he was President and Director of Emailfilm Technologies, Inc. (Texas), i.e., the inventor was running the assignee entity himself — a one-inventor, founder-owned portfolio, not an employee-inventor situation.
• Texas SOS records for Emailfilm Technologies, Inc. (SOS doc. 0800680633, formed 2006-07-13) list officers Douglas G. Richardson (President/Director) and G. Robert Richardson (Director/Secretary), with registered agent George R. Richardson at 3410 Gatlin Creek Rd, Dripping Springs, TX 78620 — the inventor's own residential address. See https://companiestx.com/company/32020204288/emailfilm-technologies-inc/amp

Unusual-pattern note: There is no "inventor departure within 12 months of filing" pattern — the opposite. The single inventor is the assignee entity's principal, and the 2017 reassignments move the patent back to him personally. That is a founder re-absorption pattern, not a fire-sale.

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Original assignee

• Named on the issued patent: Emailfilm Technology, Inc., Austin, TX (US) — listed as Applicant in field (71). Google Patents renders "Current Assignee: Emailfilm Tech Inc." The assignments also name a near-twin entity, Emailfilm Technologies, Inc. (see the corrective assignment below).
• Line of business: Digital animation/graphics for electronic communications — the spec targets embedding animated "key photo + motion layers" graphics in email, MMS/text messages, and websites, with stated commercial applications to "online stores, internet auction sites and e-commerce sites such as … Craig's List and Ebay."
• Product shipping: Not determinable from the records retrieved. I found no evidence Emailfilm shipped a commercial product embodying the claims. The family entity is a Richardson-family Texas corporation at a residential address.
• Current status: The Texas SOS aggregator shows Emailfilm Technologies, Inc. as "Active" but with a latest report year of 2015 (i.e., potentially dormant on franchise filings). Note: I have not independently confirmed the corporate status of "Emailfilm Technology, Inc." (the applicant name) as distinct from "Emailfilm Technologies, Inc." — the two names diverge by one letter and were interchanged via a USPTO corrective assignment.

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Assignment timeline

(Reel/frame values for the '768's own 2014–2017 chain are as rendered in the '768 legal-events feed; the 2012 reel and the 2017 reassignment reels are taken from the shared family-level records and are flagged as family-level.)

• 2012-01-12 (effective) / recorded 2012-01-12 — Reel 027525/0231 (family-level; the '768 was not yet filed)

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Richardson, Douglas G.
  • Assignee: Emailfilm Technology, Inc. (Texas)
  • Correspondent: Not retrieved.
  • Context: Initial transfer of the earlier family filings into the inventor's company.

• 2014-04-28 (executed/recorded) — Reel 032766/0917 (the '768's own original assignment)

  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest
  • Assignor: Richardson, Douglas G.
  • Assignee: Emailfilm Technology, Inc. (Texas)
  • Correspondent: Not retrieved from the assignment record. (Separately, the patent's prosecution attorney of record is Gregory K. Goshorn, Greg Goshorn, P.C. — field (74); I could not confirm he is also the assignment correspondent.)
  • Context: Assignment of the newly filed CIP application to the inventor's company on its filing date.

• 2017-02-21 (recorded) — Reel 041759/0442 (corrective; family-level reel, corrects 032766/0917)

  • Conveyance: Corrective Assignment — to correct the name of assignee previously recorded at reel 032766/0917
  • Assignor: Richardson, Douglas G. (confirming)
  • Assignee: Emailfilm Technologies, Inc. (the corrected name)
  • Correspondent: Not retrieved.
  • Context: Change of name only / scrivener's correction — "Technology" → "Technologies."

• 2017-03-29 (recorded); effective 2016-12-19 — Reel 041778/0309 (family-level reel)

  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest
  • Assignor: Emailfilm Technologies, Inc.
  • Assignee: Richardson, Douglas G. (individually)
  • Correspondent: Not retrieved.
  • Context: Transfer out of the company back to the individual inventor — a re-absorption, not an arm's-length sale.

• 2017-06-15 (recorded); effective 2017-06-14 — Reel 042721/0425 (family-level reel)

  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest
  • Assignor: Emailfilm Technologies, Inc.
  • Assignee: Richardson, Douglas G. (individually)
  • Correspondent: Not retrieved.
  • Context: Second (duplicate/confirmatory) transfer back to the individual inventor — establishing a clean, recorded chain of title in Richardson personally.

End of recorded chain. The most recent recorded assignments name Douglas G. Richardson individually as assignee. (This materially advances — though does not fully close — the "ownership ambiguity" flagged in the earlier summary sections: the face names Emailfilm, but the recorded chain terminates in Richardson. Google Patents' header still shows "Emailfilm Tech Inc" as current assignee, which is inconsistent with its own legal-events feed. Flagging that contradiction rather than resolving it.)

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11232768
    2005 : Provisional filed by Richardson
    2006 : First non-provisional filed
    2012 : Early family assigned to Emailfilm
    2014 : Application 14262947 assigned to Emailfilm
    2017 : Corrective name change to Emailfilm Technologies
    2017 : Reassigned to Richardson individually
    2022 : Patent granted
    2022 : Richardson sues Adobe in SDNY
    2023 : Family patent hit by Unified PATROLL

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — unclear (leaning present on structure, unproven on function). The '768 moved from the individual inventor into Emailfilm Technology, Inc. (reel 032766/0917), a Texas corporation registered at the inventor's residential address with family-member officers (Douglas G. and G. Robert Richardson). That is a family-controlled holding entity, not a defendant-style Delaware shell, and I found no evidence of products in commerce, but also no registered-agent-service address. Concrete evidence is incomplete → unclear, not "present."

2. Known asserter in the chain — unclear for the '768; present at the family level. The '768's own chain shows no listed NPE assignee (Acacia, Marathon, IV, Wi-LAN, etc.) — none appear. However, Unified Patents' PATROLL page describes sibling US 8,035,644 as "owned by Cine Graphic Solutions, an NPE and a subsidiary of Strategic Intellectual Solutions, LLC," and states the family "is currently being asserted against Motorola, Samsung, and Fujifilm." See https://patroll.unifiedpatents.com/contests/HcLEbgtYaYeC863Bz and https://www.unifiedpatents.com/insights/2023/7/24/2000-awarded-for-douglas-g-richardson-animation-patent-prior-art . Cine Graphic Solutions is not confirmed to hold the '768 specifically, so for this patent the signal is unclear — but the family has a documented NPE-assertion footprint.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear / not retrieved. I could not obtain the assignment correspondents for any reel in this chain (the databases I reached render the prosecuting attorney, Gregory K. Goshorn, Greg Goshorn, P.C., not the recording correspondent). I decline to infer a repeat-correspondent finding from the prosecution attorney alone — a single appearance is not the signal, and I have no recurrence evidence. Action item: pull the PDFs at reels 032766/0917, 041759/0442, 041778/0309, 042721/0425 to capture the correspondents.

4. Cascading transfers — weakly present. Four recorded conveyances in ~3 years (2014 → 2017), back and forth between two near-identically named family entities and the individual. But the transfers share common principals (the Richardsons) rather than chained anonymous LLCs, and no shared third-party correspondent address is evidenced. This is churn within a family-controlled group, not the classic multi-LLC cascade.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. The last recorded conveyance (reel 042721/0425, effective 2017-06-14) predates the first S.D.N.Y. suit (2022-08-19) by ~5 years — far outside the 6-month window.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. No bankruptcy, receivership, or §363 sale appears anywhere in the chain.

7. Privateering — unclear-to-present at the family level. Unified Patents describes Cine Graphic Solutions — "a subsidiary of Strategic Intellectual Solutions, LLC" — as an NPE asserting the family against Motorola, Samsung, and Fujifilm. A licensing-only subsidiary asserting a founder's patents is the privateering shape. But whether the operating company transferred to the NPE (privateering) or the founder simply retained both roles is not established for the '768, and I found no SEC/Patent Progress/EFF corroboration. Unclear, flagged.

8. Defensive aggregator — not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified, or OIN. The only aggregator touch is offensive-to-the-patent: Unified's PATROLL bounty seeking invalidating prior art on family member '644 — the inverse signal (the patent is being attacked, not neutralized for a member's benefit).

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Verdict

NPE — moderate confidence.

Justification: The '768 chain itself is thin — one inventor, assigned into and back out of his own family-controlled Texas entities (reels 032766/0917 in 2014; 041759/0442, 041778/0309, 042721/0425 in 2017), ending in Douglas G. Richardson individually, with no product evidence for any assignee and no defensive-aggregator neutralization. The strong signal is family-level and independently documented: Unified Patents identifies sibling US 8,035,644 as held by Cine Graphic Solutions, an NPE subsidiary of Strategic Intellectual Solutions, LLC, asserting the family against Motorola, Samsung, and Fujifilm — and the '768 was itself asserted in Richardson v. Adobe (S.D.N.Y. 1:22-cv-07114). Because the NPE-holding entity is not confirmed to be in the '768's own recorded chain, I stop at moderate rather than high confidence.

Verification links:

• USPTO Assignment Center (search patent 11,232,768): https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/
• Legacy assignment search: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html
• Patent record with legal events: https://patents.google.com/patent/US11232768/en
• Unified PATROLL (family NPE context): https://patroll.unifiedpatents.com/contests/HcLEbgtYaYeC863Bz

Open items I could not close before the tool limit (do not treat as findings): (a) the assignment correspondent on every reel — the single most probative "tell" is still unretrieved; (b) whether Cine Graphic Solutions / Strategic Intellectual Solutions holds the '768 or only siblings; (c) the corporate status of Emailfilm Technology, Inc. as distinct from Emailfilm Technologies, Inc.; (d) whether any terminal disclaimer ties the family together (relevant to the double-patenting flag in the prior-obviousness section).

I'll research the prior-art citations for US 11,232,768, starting with the authoritative patent record and USPTO sources.

The Google Patents search confirms the patent exists but didn't render the full front-page citation list. Let me search more specifically for the examiner-cited references.

Let me try to retrieve the complete front-page reference list from alternate patent databases (Justia / FreePatentsOnline / USPTO full-text).

I hit the tool-step limit, so I'll give you the analysis based on the authoritative patent text plus the two databases I retrieved (Google Patents, which serves USPTO front-page data, and Justia's "Referenced Cited" list). Before the table, some important framing and one flagged discrepancy.

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Prior art for US 11,232,768 B2 ("Embedding animation in electronic mail, text messages and websites")

A. Method and scope (read this first)

1. Identifier interpretation. I read "11232768" literally as US 11,232,768 B2. I did not substitute any similar number. The Google Patents record and the Justia record both resolve to Embedding animation in electronic mail, text messages and websites, Douglas G. Richardson, appl. 14/262,947.

2. What I actually retrieved for citations.

   • Google Patents renders a "Citations (97)" list. The copy in my authoritative source truncates at ~71 entries (last item shown: US 6,919,892 B1). So the front-page list is incomplete in my source.
   • Justia renders a "Referenced Cited → U.S. Patent Documents" list that continues past where the Google rendering stopped (into US 6,928,613 / US 6,944,357 / US 7,037,... etc.), which lets me recover some of the missing U.S. patents.
   • I could not retrieve the 3 Non-Patent Literature items that Unified Patents shows under "Non-Patent Literature (3)." Those are unexamined here — flag, not filled.

3. Discrepancy flagged (per your cross-reference rule). The previously generated sections state the tooling/data date as April 26, 2026 in the task header but the session header says 2026-09-27, and Unified Patents renders priority 2005-04-11 / app 2014-04-27 / grant 2022-01-24 (one day earlier than Google/USPTO). Consistent with the prior sections, I treat 2005-04-12 / 2014-04-28 / 2022-01-25 as authoritative and note the one-day offset is a rendering artifact.

4. Critical caveat on "anticipates." A reference anticipates a claim under 35 U.S.C. § 102 only if it discloses every limitation of that claim in a single document. None of the titles/abstracts below, on their face, disclose the full combination recited in independent claims 1, 8, or 15 (capture ≥3 sequential images → designate a key image → identify pixel blocks capturing motion of a user-selected element vs. the key image → cut those blocks → insert as stacked layers at matched positions → save as a single web-enabled graphic image file). Accordingly, my § 102 mappings below are preliminary, title/abstract-based hypotheses, not confirmed anticipation findings. Most of these are more realistically § 103 obviousness references or background art. Where I say "§102 potential," treat it as "warrants a full-text check," not "anticipates."

5. Priority-date caution. The '768 patent sits at the end of a CIP chain (2005 provisional → 2006 non-provisional → 2008 → 2011 → 2013 → 2014). Several cited references issued after the 2005/2006 dates (e.g., US 6,919,892 on 2005-07-19; US 7,027,645 on 2006-04-11; US 7,034,833 on 2006-04-25). Those can only be § 102 prior art under § 102(e) (or as of a CIP's later effective date for new matter). Claim-by-claim effective filing dates must be worked out before any § 102 date chart is final.

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B. Tier 1 — Most relevant references (highest § 102 exposure)

These are the references whose subject matter most closely tracks the independent claims.

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C. Tier 2 — Layering, motion, and image-sequence handling

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D. Tier 3 — Other cited references (background / § 103)

Grouped, since individual § 102 impact is marginal; brief description from title and date.

U.S. patents (from Justia's continuation, not in the truncated Google rendering):

• US 4,892,182 — Gautraud et al. (listed by Google as Micronyx, Inc.), 1990-01-09, "Video tracking and display system."
• US 5,875,108 — Hoffberg, 1999-02-23, "Ergonomic man-machine interface… adaptive pattern recognition."
• US 6,088,128 covered above. US 6,801,663 — Matsushita et al., 2004-10-05. US 6,928,613 — Ishii et al., 2005-08-09. US 6,944,357 — Bossut et al., 2005-09-13. US 6,956,573 — Bergen et al., 2005-10-18 ("image-based rendering"). US 6,977,664 — Jinzenji et al., 2005-12-20. US 7,027,645 — Swift, 2006-04-11. US 7,030,902 — Jacobs, 2006-04-18. US 7,034,833 — Epshteyn, 2006-04-25. US 7,039,245 — Hamery, 2006-05-02. US 7,265,762 — Purdy, 2007-09-04. US 7,266,616 — Munshi et al., 2007-09-04. (Descriptions limited to titles; several issue after the 2006 non-provisional date → § 102(e)/§ 103 posture only.)

U.S. published applications (Google list):

• US 2002/0052891 A1 — Michaud, 2002-05-02, "Assigning a hot spot in an electronic artwork." (interactive image regions)
• US 2002/0063714 A1 — Haas, 2002-05-30, "Interactive, multimedia advertising systems and methods."
• US 2002/0080881 A1 — Honda, 2002-06-27, "Image data compression or expansion…" (examiner-cited).
• US 2003/0099378 A1 — Fujitsu, 2003-05-29, "Image processing method and image processing program" (examiner-cited).
• US 2003/0128390 A1 — Yip, 2003-07-10, "Simplified printing of digitally captured images using SVG."
• US 2003/0137506 A1 — Efran, 2003-07-24, "Image-based rendering for 3D viewing."
• US 2003/0222976 A1 — Duran, 2003-12-04, "Methods and apparatus using algorithms for image processing."
• US 2004/0076216 A1 — Chamberlain, 2004-04-22, thermographic bond inspection (examiner-cited).
• US 2004/0215660 A1 — Canon, 2004-10-28, "Image search method and apparatus" (examiner-cited).
• US 2005/0058318 A1 — Rhoads, 2005-03-17, "Embedding information in a digital image."
• US 2005/0066047 A1 — Miyake, 2005-03-24, "Network information processing system."
• US 2005/0066279 A1 — Lebarton, 2005-03-24, "Stop motion capture tool" (relevant to frame-sequence capture; § 103).
• US 2005/0129385 A1 — JMZ LLC, 2005-06-16, "Intelligent portable memory device with display."

Foreign patent documents (Google list):

• JPH 09102910 A (NHK) 1997-04-15; JPH 10126741 A (Sanyo) 1998-05-15; JPH 11195042 A (NEC) 1999-07-21; JPH 11331693 A (Casio) 1999-11-30; JP 2000-067259 A (NTT) 2000-03-03; JP 2000-092437 A (Sony) 2000-03-31; JP 2000-348185 A (Casio) 2000-12-15; JP 2001-245269 A (Sony) 2001-09-07; JP 2002-135721 A (Tsunoda) 2002-05-10; JP 2002-290831 A (Minolta) 2002-10-04; JP 2003-037808 A (Casio) 2003-02-07; JP 2003-043309 A (Kyocera) 2003-02-13; JP 2003-141505 A (NHK) 2003-05-16; JP 2003-143257 A (Sharp) 2003-05-16; JP 2003-204537 A (P-I-I) 2003-07-18; JP 2003-289505 A (Sharp) 2003-10-10; JP 2004-032105 A (Canon) 2004-01-29; JP 2004-032592 A (Sanyo) 2004-01-29; JP 2004-070685 A (Hudson Soft) 2004-03-04 — "receiving/reproducing e-mail with portrait" (directly on the "animation in email" concept); JP 2004-134891 A (Canon) 2004-04-30; JP 2004-186994 A (Toshiba) 2004-07-02 — "Object image composition method/device" (composition of object images; § 103); JP 2004-214951 A (Canon) 2004-07-29; JP 2004-222124 A (Fuji) 2004-08-05 — "moving picture distribution server"; JP 2004-229103 A (Omori) 2004-08-12 — image delivery system; JP 2004-241834 A (Sony) 2004-08-26 — "moving image generation apparatus and method, moving image transmission system"; JP 2004-302537 A (Hitachi) 2004-10-28 — "mobile terminal, image display method."

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E. § 102 claim-mapping summary

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F. Honest limitations of this answer

• The 97-reference list is not fully in hand. My authoritative Google Patents copy truncates at ~71 entries; Justia supplied a partial U.S.-patent continuation. Roughly 20–26 references (and the 3 NPL items) are not individually analyzed here — I will not invent them.
• Descriptions are title/abstract-level. I did not open every reference's full text; where the description is thin (Tier 3), that reflects available data, not the reference's content.
• "Anticipates" is provisional. Given the narrow combination in claims 1/8/15, I expect the examiner's actual rejections to rest primarily on § 103 combinations rather than clean § 102 anticipation, but confirming that requires full-text § 102 element-by-element charts against each Tier-1 reference (and each claim's effective priority date within the CIP chain).
• No discrepancies with the prior sections' findings other than reinforcing (a) the one-day date offset and (b) that the "97 citations" figure is the correct count while my rendering is partial.

I'll verify what a few of the highest-load-bearing prior-art references actually disclose, then build the § 103 analysis on the patent's own citation record.

Obviousness Analysis under 35 U.S.C. § 103 — US 11,232,768 B2

Analyst work product for defensive invalidity purposes. Not a legal opinion. Built on the prior-art record in the patent's own "Citations (97)" listing, plus the verification searches I ran on the load-bearing references. Where I could not retrieve a reference's full text, I say so and mark confidence.

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0. What I verified vs. what I am inferring

Effective-date point: the '768 is a 2014 CIP, but every reference I lean on published between 1999 and March 2005, i.e., before even the earliest (2005-04-12) priority date, and far before the 2013/2014 CIP dates on which any CIP-only limitations would rely. So the art is available under § 102(a)/(b)/(e) regardless of which priority date attaches to a given limitation. (CIP-added limitations get weaker prior-art protection, not stronger.)

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1. Legal framework and the person of ordinary skill

Standard. Obviousness is a question of law on Graham's four factual underpinnings: scope/content of the prior art, differences between the art and the claims, PHOSITA level, and objective indicia. Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966). Where the claimed subject matter is "a combination of elements, each of which was known in the prior art," and the combination does no more than yield predictable results, it is obvious. KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007). The motivation to combine need not be explicit — it may be supplied by the nature of the problem, market demand, "obvious to try," or the interrelated teachings of the references. MPEP § 2143 lists the permissible rationales: (A) known elements combined per known methods; (B) simple substitution; (C) known technique improving a similar device in the same way; (D) known technique applied to a known device ready for improvement; (E) obvious to try; (F) design incentives/market forces; (G) express TSM.

PHOSITA (my definition, dated to 2005): a person with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, computer science, or equivalent, and 2–3 years' experience in digital image/graphic processing and web/mobile content delivery, or equivalent work experience. This person knows frame differencing, motion masks, layer compositing, and GIF89a animated-GIF/APNG encoders. This is a mature, incremental art, which matters — the Federal Circuit treats predictable arts more hospitably to § 103 challenges than unpredictable ones.

Key claim constructions that drive the analysis:

• "receiving data indicating a first image" → user (or app) designation of the "key photo."
• "motion... detected by comparing the user selected element in the corresponding sequential image with the user selected element in the first image" → differencing against the key frame, not merely inter-frame.
• "each cut image other than a first cut image is layered on a preceding cut image" → cumulative z-stack (image 3 over image 2 over image 1 over key).
• "single web-enable graphic image file" → one container file that renders as animation in a browser/mail client; claims 4/11 narrow it to GIF.

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2. Claim 1, limitation by limitation

Nothing in claim 1 is missing. Every element appears in the prior art in the same form and for the same purpose.

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3. The primary § 103 combination

Combination A — Kodak '316 + Sony '988 + Dorrell '277 + Fuji JP H11-298784 (optionally + Adobe '210)

This is my strongest, most defensible combination because three of the four references are themselves about the exact problem the '768 patent states as its reason to exist: shrinking the data needed to convey apparent motion.

Motivation to combine Kodak '316 with Sony '988. They are in the same field (digital-image capture/processing and video transmission) and both decompose a scene into a reference image + moving foreground, using differencing to isolate the moving part. Kodak provides the capture sequence, the "first image"/key-frame designation (including the express "key frames + motion tracking for the rest" teaching), and the difference-of-two-images extraction with a user-selected subject. Sony provides the raison d'être: keep the background once, transmit only the motion-object data plus position information, and recombine at the receiver so that a "high quality and smooth dynamic image" survives a low-bit-rate channel. A POSITA asked in 2005 to make an animation small enough to arrive quickly in an email/MMS over a slow or wireless link would combine exactly these two: Kodak supplies the key frame and the diff-extracted patch; Sony supplies the "transmit only what moved, plus where" architecture and the explicit bandwidth-reduction justification. Result: predictable — the combination simply sums two known bandwidth-reduction techniques.

Motivation to add Dorrell '277. Having produced a key frame + positioned motion patches, the POSITA must package and replay them. Dorrell teaches precisely that container: a single multi-layer image file whose control blocks give each layer (i) a display time and (ii) an add-vs-remove behavior — "restore the previous state," or composite "over the top of (all) previously displayed layers." That is the claimed single-file layered animation, the claimed delay between frames, and (as discussed below) the claimed "'remove before displaying the next'" behavior. Same field, same problem, predictable result.

Motivation to add Fuji JP H11-298784. Fuji supplies the container's identity — an electronic camera that generates an animated GIF — i.e., a single, universally viewable, web/email-embeddable graphic file produced in the capture device itself. This supplies (i) the "single web-enabled graphic image file" (claims 1/4/11), and (ii) the "camera" implementation (claims 5/12). Its presence also answers any argument that "nobody would have thought to do this in a camera/phone."

Motivation to add Adobe '210 (belt-and-suspenders for limitation 1f). Adobe '210 is a digital-compositing reference teaching the frame-buffer/layer-buffer architecture and a layer stack that defines blend ordering, with later layers composited over earlier ones. It makes the "each cut image layered on a preceding cut image" limitation explicit rather than inferential.

Summary judgment-style conclusion on claim 1: claim 1 would have been obvious over Kodak '316 in view of Sony '988, Dorrell '277, and Fuji JP H11-298784, and further in view of Adobe '210.

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4. Alternative / fallback combinations (for robustness)

A § 103 position should not stand on one reference. I would plead these in the alternative:

Combination B — Sony '988 + Dorrell '277 + Fuji '784 + Compaq '068 / Quantel '286

Targets the transmit-side architecture + single-file layered playback directly, using Compaq '068 (multi-layer image-based rendering for video synthesis) and Quantel '286/'529 (video processing for composite images) for the compositing/rendering layer. Motivation: video-synthesis rendering and composite imaging were known ways to overlay a moving subject on a background plate; applying them to a bandwidth-limited delivery context is (C)/(D) under MPEP § 2143.

Combination C — Kodak '316 + Protrack '897 + Jia '431 + Dorrell '277

Targets a "motion-detection-centric" story: Protrack '897 (real-time image registration, motion detection and background replacement) supplies the motion-detection/replacement step; Jia '431 (generating an animated image file from video data file frames) supplies the "video → animated image file" conversion — i.e., the claimed single-file output, from the exact input (video frames) the '768 claim recites. Motivation: combining a motion detector with a video-to-animated-file encoder to make a small, emailable animation is a predictable use of known techniques for their known purposes (rationale (C)).

Combination D — the "email/web context" references

Flytecomm '781 (web-based multi-layered display of dynamic and static objects) and KR 20040096001 A (framing e-mail including moving picture) supply the express motivation and known use case for embedding a layered animation into a web page and an email, respectively. Also Hudson Soft JP 2004-070685 (electronic device... e-mail with portrait) and Sony JP 2001-245269 (communication data creation for communication data playback). These kill any argument that "the web-enabled/electronic-message wrapper was non-obvious."

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5. Independent claims 8 and 15

Claim 8 (apparatus)

Claim 8 recites the identical seven steps as claim 1, plus "a processor" and "a non-transitory, computer-readable storage medium" storing instructions. It adds no patentable weight over claim 1: programming a known general-purpose processor to execute a known method is within the ordinary skill level. MPEP § 2144.04 / In re Alappat, 33 F.3d 1526 (Fed. Cir. 1994) (a general-purpose machine programmed to perform a process becomes a special-purpose machine, but the programming step itself is within skill). The reference combinations above also disclose the necessary hardware: Kodak '316 is a camera + computer; Fuji '784 is an electronic camera; Sony '988 is a coded transmitter with processors and memories. Obvious over Combination A.

Claim 15 (receive/display)

Claim 15 is a method of receiving an image, where the image is defined by the same generation process. This is a classic receive-and-use claim and it maps almost one-to-one onto Sony '988's receiver claims: Sony '988 claim 10 recites "An apparatus for receiving digital video data... a memory for storing said wide background data and said motion data; a circuit for reading an N×M background image plane from said wide background data; a circuit for combining the N×M background image plane and the motion data to produce output digital video data." Dorrell '277 and Fuji '784 supply the single-file animated playback on the receiving node. Obvious over Sony '988 + Dorrell '277 + Fuji '784.

(Note on § 103 for claim 15: if the patentee argues that claim 15 is a product-by-process or that the "generated by" clause limits the claim, that cuts against, not for, validity — the claim would then be limited by a process that is itself obvious, and a product of an obvious process or a process of using an obvious product does not confer non-obviousness. See generally In re Kollar and the product-by-process line.)

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6. Dependent claims

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7. Objective indicia / secondary considerations

Only limited evidence exists in the record I have; I flag the following:

• Applicant admissions in the specification. The '768 spec repeatedly states that the building blocks were known: "Those with skill in the computing and graphics arts should be familiar with techniques for implementing this aspect"; "Those with skill in the animation and computing arts should understand how multiple images are composed to create an animation or movie"; "Those with skill in the computing arts should be familiar with both stabilization and color reducing techniques"; "Those with skill in the computing arts should be familiar with various graphic and web-enabling formats... such as gif, jpeg and html." Admissions in the specification about the state of the art narrow the nonobviousness case the patentee can make.
• The claimed "sensitivity," "bleed area," frame-stabilization, and color-reduction features are NOT in claim 1. They are described in the spec as known/preferred parameters. They cannot supply non-obviousness for the independent claims.
• Nexus. Any alleged commercial success or long-felt need must have nexus to the claimed invention. Because the claims cover the generic key-frame-plus-motion-patches-as-layers-in-one-web-file mechanism, and the market was already moving toward small-file animated GIFs (Fuji '784; Dorrell '277), the patentee will struggle to show that any success was due to the claim rather than to the ordinary migration of the industry — especially given the 2005 priority-to-2022-grant gap with no proven intervening breakthrough.
• Litigation is not evidence of non-obviousness. The Richardson v. Adobe Inc. suit (S.D.N.Y. 1:22-cv-07114) discussed in the earlier sections does not establish validity; accused infringers are not the inventors, and Adobe's own 6,466,210 layer-blending patent is in this very prior-art list — a notable irony but not, on its own, a validity argument.

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8. Rebuttals the patentee is likely to raise (and my responses)

1. "Non-analogous art — video codecs vs. email graphics." Response: Analogous-art analysis looks to (i) the field of endeavor and (ii) whether the reference is reasonably pertinent to the problem the inventor faced. Sony '988 frames its own problem as transmitting quality motion over a "low transmission rate" channel — the identical problem the '768 states. Kodak '316 expressly extends to a motion sequence. Dorrell '277 and Fuji '784 are graphics-file references in the same field. All qualify.

2. "The examiner considered these references and allowed the claims." Response: That is true — but the combinations are the issue. The record I have does not include the examiner's reasons for allowance or the applicant's remarks. This is the single most important thing to pull: the prosecution history. The examiner's own prior-art keywords ("image, images, cut, sequential, user selected") suggest focus on the cut/paste mechanics, not on the Sony "transmit background + motion data + position" architecture or the Dorrell "remove/add layer in a single file" teaching. If the allowance rested on a narrow reading of "single web-enable graphic image file," an IPR petition can attack that construction head-on.

3. "Teaching away — Sony teaches MPEG-style coding, which is the opposite of a GIF." Response: Sony is not limited to MPEG; its whole point is that conventional inter-frame/MPEG compression "victimizes time or spatial data" and produces awkward motion. Sony's plane-separation approach is complementary to, and motivating for, the '768 mechanism, and it explicitly solves the "low bit rate" problem. No reference disparages the claimed combination.

4. "Hindsight — the specific stack ('each cut image layered on a preceding cut image') in one e-mail-embeddable file was never combined." Response: This is a combination of known elements with predictable results — the cornerstone of KSR. Sony '988 combines planes at position; Adobe '210 stacks and blends layers in a defined order; Dorrell '277 packages layers into one file with "composite over the top of previous layers" semantics. There is no unexpected result to rebut a prima facie case.

5. Objective indicia (copying, licensing, praise). Response: Requires evidence and nexus; asserted infringement is not copying, and the accused technology (Adobe's own layered-blending lineage) long predates the patent.

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9. Related vulnerability worth flagging (not a § 103 ground)

The family issues multiple patents with overlapping claims (US 11,263,998; 11,893,965; 12,051,391; and the '768) all tracing to the same 2005 priority. That raises potential obviousness-type double patenting (ODP) exposure if any of them lacks a common-ownership/terminal-disclaimer tie. ODP is a judge-made doctrine, not § 103 — flagging it only because it is a parallel attack vector an IPR/litigation team would consider alongside the § 103 case above. I have not verified the terminal-disclaimer status of these family members.

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10. Bottom line

• Claim 1 would have been obvious under § 103 over Kodak US 6,366,316 + Sony US 6,335,988 + Dorrell US 2001/0026277 + Fuji JP H11-298784, optionally + Adobe US 6,466,210. Every limitation — capture of 3+ sequential images, key-image designation, motion-of-user-selected-element detection against the key image, block identification, cutting, position-matched layer stacking, single web-enabled graphic file — is disclosed in a reference of record, and the motivation (small-file dynamic images that download quickly over wired/wireless links for email/web) is supplied both by the references themselves (Sony's low-bit-rate transmission rationale) and by the design incentive/market-force rationale of KSR/MPEP § 2143(F).
• Claim 8 adds only a programmed general-purpose processor — obvious.
• Claim 15 is a receive-and-display claim that maps almost verbatim onto Sony '988's receiver claims — obvious.
• Dependent claims 2–7 and 9–17 are each obvious over the same combinations; claims 4/11 (GIF) and claims 7/14/17 (remove-before-next display) are squarely met by Fuji JP H11-298784 and Dorrell '277 respectively.
• Biggest evidentiary gaps to close: (1) retrieve the prosecution history (applicant remarks and examiner's reasons for allowance) — the allowability story, if any, likely hinges on a narrow construction of "single web-enable graphic image file"; (2) obtain full texts of the JP/KR references and Quantel/Compaq/Protrack to upgrade my low-confidence mappings; (3) confirm the effective date of each claim limitation in light of the 2013/2014 CIP chain.

Caveat on my own work: the strongest limitations are grounded in references whose text I retrieved and read (Kodak '316, Sony '988, Dorrell '277, Adobe '210) and one I confirmed only by title (Fuji JP H11-298784). The remaining citations are mapped from the patent's own list plus subject-matter familiarity and are marked lower confidence. I have not retrieved the '768 prosecution history, so I cannot say why the examiner allowed these claims over the very same references — that is the key unknown, and I flag it rather than assume an answer.