US 11244666

I'll search for authoritative information on US 11,244,666, including any 2026 CAFC activity.

Let me narrow on any Federal Circuit appeal involving this specific patent and its current reexamination/litigation status.

Let me check for any 2026 appellate activity specific to the '666 patent and the outcome of its ex parte reexamination.

US Patent 11,244,666 — Analyst Summary

Identification

Source (authoritative full text used): https://patents.google.com/patent/US11244666/en

Continuity (important for scope)

The '666 patent is a continuation with a long chain back to 2007:
16/987,396 ← 16/669,490 (U.S. 10,810,989) ← 16/193,568 (U.S. 10,535,334) ← 14/574,589 (U.S. 10,134,377) ← 12/017,878 (U.S. 8,917,894) ← provisional 60/885,917 (2007-01-22). The claim set that ultimately issued is not the "acute sound detection" method language of the 2007 specification; it was rewritten during prosecution of the 16/987,396 continuation to an earphone hardware/signal-routing claim (see below).

Abstract (verbatim)

"Earpieces and methods for acute sound detection and reproduction are provided. A method can include measuring an external ambient sound level (xASL), monitoring a change in the xASL for detecting an acute sound, estimating a proximity of the acute sound, and upon detecting the acute sound and its proximity, reproducing the acute sound within an ear canal, where the ear canal is at least partially occluded by an earpiece. Other embodiments are disclosed."

Note: the abstract describes the specification's method embodiments, which do not match the issued claim set — a gap worth flagging (it was the basis of a §112 written-description summary-judgment motion in the district court, see below).

The independent claim (Claim 1) in plain language

Only claim 1 is independent; claims 2–11 all depend from it (directly or through claims 2/3/4/8/9).

Claim 1 — "An earphone comprising":

• a first microphone configured to measure the ambient acoustic environment, with its port facing away from the user when the earphone is inserted (i.e., an outward-facing exterior mic);
• a second microphone configured to measure an acoustic environment closer to the ear canal of the wearer than what the first mic measures, with its port facing toward the user when inserted (i.e., an inward/ear-canal-facing mic);
• a speaker to play an audio signal;
• a memory storing instructions; and
• a processor (coupled to both microphones and the speaker) that executes instructions to:
  1. receive a first microphone signal and a second microphone signal;
  2. generate an ambient sound signal from the first signal, the second signal, or a combination of both;
  3. apply an ambient sound gain to that ambient sound signal to produce a modified ambient sound signal;
  4. mix the modified ambient sound signal with an audio content signal to produce a mixed audio signal; and
  5. send the mixed audio signal to the speaker.

In plain terms: a two-microphone earphone (one outward-facing, one toward the ear canal) that picks up/derives ambient sound, adjusts its gain, blends it with the playback content (e.g., music/call audio), and drives the speaker with the blend. This is essentially a gain-controlled ambient pass-through / mix architecture claim, not a claim to acute-sound detection per se, even though "acute sound" detection is the core of the specification.

Dependent claims (in brief):

• 2 (from 1): detect an acute sound by analyzing the mic signal(s); determine whether the acute sound is the user's voice.
• 3 (from 2): determine whether the acute sound is a warning sound or siren by spectrum analysis.
• 4 (from 3): decrease audio playback volume when a warning/siren is detected.
• 5 (from 4): send a notification signal to the speaker.
• 6 (from 4): warning = bell, emergency vehicle sound, or security system sound (or combination).
• 7 (from 4): siren = police siren, ambulance siren, or car honking (or combination).
• 8 (from 2): adjust the mixed audio signal when the user's voice is detected.
• 9 (from 8): the adjustment is to reduce the audio content signal and increase the ambient sound signal.
• 10 (from 9): the mixed signal includes a noise reduction signal derived from the second microphone signal.
• 11 (from 1): the earphone includes a sealing section.

Litigation / PTAB / USPTO proceedings found

• IPR2022-01099 — Samsung Electronics v. Staton Techiya, U.S. Pat. 11,244,666. Petition filed 2022-06-09. Google Patents lists the status as "Not Instituted – Merits." Petitioner's exhibits included Platz (US 2010/0119077), Victorian (EP 1519625), Svean (US 6,754,359), Kvaloy (US 6,728,385), among others, plus a Polish declaration. (https://patents.google.com/patent/US11244666/en ; PTAB exhibit list: https://services.patexia.com/lawsuits/Samsung-Electronics-Co-Ltd-et-al-v-Staton-Techiya-LLC-et-al-id-[164289](/patent/164289)/documents/...)
• Ex parte reexamination 90/019,169 — Request filed by Samsung on 2023-02-24 (148 pages) with a Polish declaration. Google Patents does not show a reexamination certificate for this patent, and I could not confirm from authoritative sources what the final disposition of the reexamination was. Flag: uncertain.
• District court: The '666 patent was asserted in Staton Techiya, LLC v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., No. 2:22-cv-00053 (E.D. Tex.), which was consolidated into lead case 2:21-cv-00413-JRG-RSP. In 2023 Samsung moved for summary judgment of §112 invalidity of the '666 patent (Doc. 515). After a March 2024 bench trial, Judge Gilstrap found Techiya's asserted patents unenforceable due to unclean hands (findings 2024-05-09), and entered Final Judgment on 2024-06-21 dismissing Techiya's infringement claims with prejudice and naming Samsung the prevailing party. (https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.txed.[210767](/patent/210767)/gov.uscourts.txed.210767.992.0.pdf)
• A related Samsung/Staton Techiya IPR appeal family reached the Federal Circuit (e.g., Nos. 23-2294, 23-2305 re the '839 and '982 patents; Nos. 23-2335, 23-2342), but those involve different patents, not the '666.

Federal Circuit 2026 check — result

I found no 2026 Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit docket, opinion, or order specifically involving U.S. Patent 11,244,666. My searches returned 2026 CAFC activity for unrelated patents (e.g., Apple/Masimo, TJTM/Google, Enviro Tech, Charge Fusion, TrackTime, Genuine Enabling Technology). I also note the ownership chain now lists ST Case1tech LLC, a substitute-appellant-type entity used in the Techiya family appeals, but I have no authoritative confirmation of any '666-specific 2026 appeal. Treat "no 2026 CAFC activity found" as a search-result finding, not a verified negative — a PACER/CAFC docket query by patent number would be needed to confirm definitively.

Uncertainty flags

1. Reexamination outcome for 90/019,169 is not confirmed by the sources I retrieved; I cannot state whether claims were confirmed, amended, or cancelled.
2. IPR2022-01099 is listed by Google Patents as "Not Instituted – Merits," but I did not retrieve the underlying Board decision.
3. Anticipated expiration is listed by Google Patents as 2028-01-22; this is a Google estimate and I have not independently verified the PTA/terminal-disclaimer calculation.
4. Assignee discrepancy: the patent's "current assignee" line shows "St Case1tech LLC" (mojibake for "ST Case1tech LLC") and "Strategic Portfolio Holdings LLC," consistent with the 2024-06-21 reassignments STATON TECHIYA → ST PORTFOLIO HOLDINGS → ST CASE1TECH shown in the record.

Bottom line: US 11,244,666 is a 2022-issued continuation of the 2007 Goldstein/Usher/Boillot "acute sound detection" family, but its sole independent claim is directed to a dual-microphone earphone that generates an ambient sound signal, applies an ambient-sound gain, mixes it with audio content, and plays the mix. It has been heavily litigated against Samsung (IPR2022-01099, ex parte reexam 90/019,169, and E.D. Tex. 2:21-cv-00413, where the asserted claims were held unenforceable for unclean hands and dismissed with prejudice in June 2024). No 2026 Federal Circuit docket specifically addressing this patent was found.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 11244666 through several searches.

Let me dig deeper into the outcomes and check for any additional cases.

Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. 11,244,666 ("the '666 Patent")

Summary

Based on the Unified Patents litigation database (filtered to "Patents in Case: 11244666"), only one district court case is listed as involving U.S. Patent No. 11,244,666: Staton Techiya, LLC et al. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. et al., No. 2:22-cv-00053 (E.D. Tex.). That case was consolidated into a lead case, No. 2:21-cv-00413, and was resolved against the patent owner. There is also one PTAB post-grant proceeding (IPR2022-01099), which was not instituted.

I found no evidence of any other litigation asserting the '666 patent (no other defendants, and no case in which the '666 patent was asserted other than against Samsung).

1. District Court Case

Staton Techiya, LLC et al. v. [Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. et al.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Samsung%20Electronics%20Co.%2C%20Ltd.%20et%20al.)

How the '666 patent was asserted. The Second Complaint (2:22-cv-00053) asserted four patents: U.S. 11,244,666; 11,217,237; 11,057,701; and 11,039,259. Techiya alleged that Samsung "directly infringed… the '666 Patent by making, using, selling, offering for sale, or importing into the United States products that infringe the '666 Patent including, but not limited to, the Samsung Galaxy Buds+ and other Accused Products." The accused products were described as the Samsung Galaxy S21 5G and similar smartphones; the Galaxy Buds, Buds Pro, Buds Live, Buds+, Buds2 and similar earphones; the Samsung Wearable app; and the Bixby Personal Assistant app. Techiya is the patent owner of record and Synergy was the asserted exclusive licensee.

(a) Consolidation and course of proceedings. On May 4, 2022, the court consolidated 2:21-cv-00413 and 2:22-cv-00053 for all purposes, designating 2:21-cv-00413 as the lead case. Samsung filed declaratory-judgment counterclaims of non-infringement and invalidity as to the '666 patent (Counts I and II of its counterclaims), and also pled unclean hands and unenforceability.

(b) Outcome. After a bench trial on March 26–27, 2024, the court issued Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law on May 9, 2024, holding that Techiya's asserted patent claims — including the claims of the '666 patent — are unenforceable against Samsung on the basis of unclean hands. The court found litigation misconduct by Synergy (fiduciary breaches, misuse of confidential/privileged information, misrepresentations, and spoliation), imputed Synergy's conduct to Techiya as its agent. In the Final Judgment (Dkt. 950, June 21, 2024), the court ordered that:

1. The asserted claims of the asserted patents are unenforceable against Samsung, and Techiya's infringement claims are dismissed with prejudice;
2. Samsung's non-patent counterclaims are moot and dismissed without prejudice;
3. Samsung's patent counterclaims for non-infringement and invalidity of the asserted patents — including the '666 non-infringement and invalidity counterclaims — are dismissed without prejudice for lack of subject matter jurisdiction in view of the unenforceability finding; and
4. Samsung is the prevailing party and shall recover its costs.

The court subsequently denied Techiya's Rule 59(e) motion to amend the judgment (Dkt. 992, Nov. 18, 2024). Reported costs to Samsung were in the range of roughly $25.8–26 million, with Judge Gilstrap issuing a preliminary ruling on the bill of costs, deferring some items and reserving the attorney's-fees determination.

(c) Appeal. Techiya filed a notice of appeal (and an amended notice of appeal on July 19, 2024) to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, appealing the Final Judgment and numerous underlying orders (including the claim construction order, disqualification order, and various evidentiary rulings). I could not confirm the Federal Circuit docket number from the search results obtained, so I am not supplying one.

2. PTAB Proceeding (not district court litigation)

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. et al. v. Staton Techiya, LLC, IPR2022-01099

• Type: Inter partes review petition, U.S. Patent No. 11,244,666
• Petitioner: Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. and Samsung Electronics America, Inc.
• Patent Owner: Staton Techiya, LLC
• Filed: June 9, 2022 (Samsung's petition, challenging claims 1, 2, and 8–11 on multiple obviousness grounds over references including Platz, Victorian, Inanaga, Kvaløy, and Engle)
• Outcome: On January 3, 2023, the PTAB issued a decision denying institution of inter partes review.

The USPTO's Google Patents record for this patent lists IPR2022-01099 as "(Not Instituted – Merits)," consistent with the above. Note that the Google Patents page's "Family has litigation" entries list the Texas E.D. case 2:22-cv-00053 and IPR2022-01099, which matches the two proceedings above.

3. Important Distinctions / Caveats

• Cases involving sibling patents are not cases on the '666 patent. The Techiya/Samsung dispute involved a large family of patents (including U.S. 8,111,839; 8,254,591; 8,315,400; 9,124,982; 9,270,244; 9,491,542; 9,609,424; 10,405,082; 10,966,015; 10,979,836; 11,244,666; 11,217,237; 11,057,701; and 11,039,259). The many Samsung IPRs (e.g., IPR2022-00242, -00234, -00302, -00369) and their appeals concern other patents, not the '666 patent, and should not be attributed to the '666 patent.
• The '666 patent is only listed in one district court case per the Unified Patents case list filtered on patent 11244666 ("1 Found"). I did not find any other litigation within the limits of the searches performed.
• Per the operating rules, all patent and docket identifiers above are reported literally as found; I have not corrected any numbers. Where sources disagreed slightly (e.g., the Feb. 13 vs. Feb. 14, 2022 filing date), I have flagged the discrepancy rather than resolving it silently.
• Please note that litigation databases may not reflect the most recent filings; this summary reflects information available as of the searches performed and should be verified against PACER and the Federal Circuit docket for current status.

Key sources: Unified Patents litigation case list (filtered for patent 11244666); the Final Judgment at Dkt. 950 in 2:21-cv-00413 (E.D. Tex., June 21, 2024); the court's Dkt. 992 order (Nov. 18, 2024); Techiya's Amended Notice of Appeal (July 19, 2024); the Second Complaint in 2:22-cv-00053; and PTAB IPR2022-01099 filings.

I'll verify the one PTAB reference surfaced in the patent page itself (IPR2022-01099) and check for anything else on this patent.

Let me dig into the specific proceeding and check for any others.

Let me confirm the institution decision details, check for any second IPR on the '666 patent, and see if the denial was challenged.

PTAB Proceedings — US 11,244,666 ("Method and device for acute sound detection and reproduction")

Source note / discrepancy flag. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block from the USPTO Open Data Portal returns zero AIA trial proceedings for 11,244,666. That is not the complete picture. The Google Patents record for this patent itself carries a PTAB entry — "PTAB case IPR2022-01099 filed (Not Instituted - Merits)" — and independent dockets (Patexia's IPR2022-01099 document list, and the E.D. Tex. docket, Dkt. 895 ¶ 27) confirm a real petition that was filed 2022-06-09 and denied institution on 2023-01-03. I treat that one proceeding as real and report it below. I found no evidence of any second IPR, PGR, or CBM on the '666 patent.

Attribution correction. The Google Patents page's line "Petitioner: 'Unified Patents PTAB Data'" is a data-source attribution label, not the petitioner. The actual petitioner in IPR2022-01099 was Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. and [Samsung Electronics America, Inc.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Samsung%20Electronics%20America%2C%20Inc.) No defensive aggregator (Unified Patents, RPX, etc.) is in the chain on this patent. Similarly, the page's "litigation" entry lists "Synergy IP Corp / Staton Techiya LLC" against a Texas case number; the real case is Staton Techiya, LLC et al. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., No. 2:22-cv-00053 (E.D. Tex.), consolidated into lead case 2:21-cv-00413. The party ordering on the Google page is garbled.

Proceedings overview

One AIA trial proceeding has ever been filed against US 11,244,666 — IPR2022-01099 — and it was never instituted: 0 active, 0 claims invalidated, 0 claims sustained on the merits, 0 settlements, and 1 institution denial (2023-01-03). Bottom line for a defendant: the patent is not "hardened," but it is also not dead — no claim of the '666 patent has ever been canceled and no claim has ever been tested on the merits at the PTAB. The IPR died at the threshold. That means (a) all 11 claims remain live and enforceable, and (b) no § 315(e)(2) estoppel attached, so the identical Samsung art (Platz, Victorian, Inanaga, Kvaløy, Engle) is still available to you in district court. Treat the '666 patent as an untested patent, not a validated one.

IPR2022-01099 — Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. & Samsung Electronics America, Inc. v. Staton Techiya, LLC

• Type: Inter Partes Review (35 U.S.C. §§ 311–319)
• Filed: 2022-06-09 (notice of filing date accorded 2022-07-07). Filed ~4 months after the '666 patent issued on 2022-02-08, so a PGR was also theoretically available within the 9-month window; Samsung elected IPR.
• Status: "Not Instituted - Merits" (verbatim from the PTAB entry on the patent page). Plain English: the Board held the petition did not establish a reasonable likelihood of prevailing on the merits and refused to institute trial on any ground (Decision, Paper 10, 2023-01-03). The refusal is characterized in the structured data as merits-based rather than a discretionary/Fintiv denial.
• Judge panel: Not confirmed. The denial is PTAB Paper 10 (2023-01-03); I could not verify the APJ panel from the sources retrieved. Do not cite a panel for this decision without pulling Paper 10 from PTAB E2E.
• Petition grounds — challenged claims 1, 2, and 8–11 (i.e., independent claim 1, independent claim 11, and dependent claims 2 and 8–10; claims 3–7 were never challenged). All grounds were § 103 obviousness, per E.D. Tex. Dkt. 895 ¶ 27:
  • 1A — claims 1 and 11 obvious over U.S. Pub. 2010/0119077 (Platz)
  • 1B — claim 2 obvious over Platz + U.S. 6,728,385 (Kvaløy)
  • 1C — claims 8–10 obvious over Platz + Kvaløy + U.S. 5,276,740 (Inanaga)
  • 2A — claims 1 and 11 obvious over EP 1 519 625 (Victorian) + Inanaga
  • 2B — claims 2 and 8–10 obvious over Victorian + Inanaga + Kvaløy
  • 3A — claims 1 and 11 obvious over Inanaga
  • 3B — claims 2 and 8–10 obvious over Inanaga + U.S. 8,477,955 (Engle)
  • Supporting expert: Nathaniel Polish, Ph.D. (Ex. 1002). Patent Owner's expert on the preliminary response: David Kleinschmidt (Ex. 2001).
  • Note on claim 1's limiting feature: Samsung's expert argued it would have been obvious to incorporate a "port" into Platz's microphones because the '666 specification never uses the word "port" and the applicant only relied on Figures 1–2 during prosecution for that support. That § 112-flavored gap became a district-court battleground (see below), not a PTAB one.
• Institution decision: Denied, in full — 2023-01-03. The Board's reasoning in one or two sentences: the petition did not demonstrate a reasonable likelihood of prevailing on any of the seven § 103 grounds, and the Board declined to institute trial on any challenged claim. (I quote the outcome from the record; I have not read Paper 10 and so am not paraphrasing its claim-by-claim analysis.) Corroborating proof that no trial ever started: Samsung requested refund of the post-institution fee on 2023-01-18 and again on 2023-03-02, and the Board's Notice approving the refund issued 2023-03-07.
• Final Written Decision: None. Because institution was denied, no FWD exists and none is owed.
• Settlement / termination: Not applicable. The proceeding ended by denial of institution, not by settlement. Samsung's 2022-11-10 stipulation letter conditionally promising not to pursue the '666 patent in E.D. Tex. on the instituted grounds or on any ground using Platz, Victorian, or Inanaga never took effect — it was expressly conditioned on "If the PTAB institutes trial in IPR2022-01099," which never happened. There is accordingly no contractual waiver and no statutory estoppel arising from this proceeding.
• Appeal: None — and none was available. A denial of institution is not appealable (35 U.S.C. § 314(d); no FWD issued). No Federal Circuit docket number exists for the '666 patent. Related but distinct: Staton Techiya (later substituted by ST Case1Tech, LLC) did appeal other FWDs in the same litigation campaign — Samsung Electronics Co. v. Staton Techiya, LLC, Nos. 23-2294 and 23-2305 (Fed. Cir.), nonprecedential opinion issued 2025-10-09, affirming the Board as to the '839 and '982 patents. Those appeals do not involve the '666 patent and have no preclusive effect on its claims.
• Defensive value: Mixed, and mostly favorable to the patent owner. Samsung — a well-resourced, repeat petitioner with a stipulated-but-untriggered Fintiv/Sotera agreement — still could not get the '666 patent instituted. For a defendant, that is a caution flag against assuming the Google Patents "Not Instituted" tag equals "weak patent": the patent's claims 1, 2 and 8–11 were never actually adjudicated, and claims 3–7 have never been challenged at all. The upside is that because there was no institution and no FWD, § 315(e)(2) estoppel never attached — you (or Samsung) can put Platz, Victorian, Inanaga, Kvaløy and Engle squarely before a district court jury without an estoppel fight.

Strategic summary

Claim-status ledger. US 11,244,666 has 11 claims (1–11; claim 1 and claim 11 are independent). CANCELED at the PTAB: none. SUSTAINED: none. There has never been a Final Written Decision on this patent. Challenged but never adjudicated: claims 1, 2, 8, 9, 10, 11 (petitioned in IPR2022-01099; institution denied 2023-01-03, so they emerge with their full original scope). Never challenged anywhere at the PTAB: claims 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. The practical consequence is that if a demand letter or complaint now cites claim 1 (the asserted claim in E.D. Tex., per the Second Complaint's allegation that the Galaxy Buds+ "is an exemplary product covered by at least claim 1 of the '666 Patent"), you cannot answer with an IPR kill-shot. The PTAB route for these claims is still open to you — as it was for Samsung.

Estoppel landscape. This is the single most defendant-relevant fact of the file: estoppel is nil. § 315(e)(2) estoppel and the § 315(e)(1) PTAB-side estoppel both attach only after a final written decision, and there is none here; institution was denied, so not even a partial trial existed. Samsung's November 2022 letter stipulation was self-limiting to the "If the PTAB institutes trial" contingency and therefore lapsed. For a defendant today: every ground that Samsung raised — Platz alone and in combination with Kvaløy/Inanaga, Victorian + Inanaga, Inanaga alone, Inanaga + Engle — remains fully available as a district-court § 103 defense, as does any art that "reasonably could have been raised." There is no Sotera-style or Shaw-style estoppel constraint to litigate around.

Pattern signals. Samsung ran a coordinated multi-front campaign against the Staton Techiya portfolio, not a single shot: the same-day June 9, 2022 cluster included IPR2022-01078, -01098, -01099, and -01106 (covering U.S. 11,039,259, 11,057,701, 11,217,237, and 11,244,666 respectively), on top of earlier 2022 filings IPR2022-00234, -00242, -00243, -00281, -00302, -00324, -00369, -00388, -00410, -01505 and an ex parte reexamination request (90/015,146, on U.S. 10,979,836). So: one IPR per patent on the '666 patent — no repeat petitioner on this specific patent — but a clear strategy of parallel Article III/PTAB pressure. Patent Owner Staton Techiya (now ST Case1Tech, LLC / Strategic Portfolio Holdings LLC in the recorded assignments) did appeal Board losses on sibling patents (Fed. Cir. Nos. 23-2294, 23-2305) rather than settling, confirming an aggressive appellate posture. No defensive aggregator is involved. Notably, the district court's real pressure on the '666 patent ran through § 112, not § 103: Samsung moved for summary judgment of invalidity under § 112 of the '666 patent (Dkt. 431/455, 2023), which Techiya opposed (Dkt. 515) and sur-replied (Dkt. 587). That is the front where this patent's vulnerability actually surfaced, and it is not something the PTAB has ever addressed.

Recommended next steps

• There is no FWD to link and no cancellation to quote. Unlike a patent whose claims have been canceled, you cannot say "claims 1–5 are dead." The honest framing for a defendant: one IPR was filed (IPR2022-01099, Samsung v. Staton Techiya), trial was never instituted, decision issued 2023-01-03, and every claim remains live. Pull PTAB Paper 10 from PTAB E2E (case page: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/ptab/case/IPR2022-01099; full document list at https://services.patexia.com/lawsuits/Samsung-Electronics-Co-Ltd-et-al-v-Staton-Techiya-LLC-et-al-id-[164289](/patent/164289)/documents) before drafting any merits position — I have verified the outcome and date, but not the panel's internal reasoning, and you should not characterize the Board's rationale without reading it.
• No trial-stage milestones to track — the statutory 1-year clock in § 316(a)(11) never started because there was no institution. If you are weighing your own IPR against this patent, budget for an institution-decision deadline ≈6 months from your notice of filing date and prepare for the distinct possibility of Fintiv/Becton briefing, which Samsung itself ran here (Petitioners' Preliminary Reply, Paper 8; Patent Owner's Preliminary Sur-Reply, Paper 9).
• Reuse, don't reinvent, the Samsung art. Platz (US 2010/0119077), Victorian (EP 1 519 625), Inanaga (US 5,276,740), Kvaløy (US 6,728,385) and Engle (US 8,477,955) are all on the public record in IPR2022-01099 with a full Dr. Polish declaration (Ex. 1002) and claim charts. Because no estoppel attached, you may deploy them in district court — but note the Board declined to institute on them, so a straight copy of the petition is a weak starting point; harden the "microphone port" and "face toward/away from the user" claim-construction positions that Samsung's expert addressed at ¶¶ 59–62 of the Polish declaration.
• Watch the § 112 flank. The '666 patent's specification never uses the word "port," and the applicant relied on Figures 1–2 during prosecution for that support — exactly the theory Samsung pressed in its district-court § 112 summary-judgment motion. That is the most developed invalidity theory of record against this patent and it lives outside the AIA-trial system, so no PTAB estoppel or resilience analysis will capture it.
• Procedural caution. The '666 patent's priority chain (provisional 60/885,917, filed 2007-01-22; continuations through U.S. 8,917,894 / 10,134,377 / 10,535,334 / 10,810,989; application 16/987,396 filed 2020-08-07; granted 2022-02-08) is long and heavily litigated across the family. Confirm the effective priority date for the specific claim you attack before selecting art, and remember that each continuation in the chain (e.g., U.S. 12,626,683 and 11,710,473, both listing the same 2007-01-22 priority) is a separate patent with its own exposure — the family, not this single patent, is the assertion vehicle.

I'll ground this in the assignment records. Let me pull what's publicly reachable.

Good leads. Let me try to pin down actual reel/frame numbers and the correspondent of record.

Let me chase the 2024 transfers and the Staton Techiya recording reel/frame numbers.

I hit the tool-call ceiling mid-verification. Here is the reconstruction with an explicit note on what I could and could not confirm against the Assignment Center itself.

Inventors

The employer attribution is not a guess: the Google Patents legal-events tab for this patent records an assignment whose assignors are literally "BOILLOT, MARC ANDRE, GOLDSTEIN, STEVEN WAYNE, USHER, JOHN" and whose assignee is "PERSONICS HOLDINGS, INC." — i.e., all three inventors conveyed to Personics Holdings, Inc. All three also appear together as inventors on sibling Personics filings in the same family (e.g., the "Method and device for background mitigation" line and the "Method and device for sound signature detection" line at US 8,150,044).

Unusual-pattern check: No evidence found of inventors departing the original assignee within 12 months of filing, and no evidence found of the opposite. Usher (UK) and Goldstein/Boillot (FL) are geographically split, which is typical of a distributed startup rather than a fire-sale precursor. Note that John P. Keady also appears as a named inventor on sibling patents in this portfolio while separately acting as the prosecution practitioner of record for the assignee — a dual role worth flagging, though not a title defect.

Original assignee

Two different answers depending on which "original" you mean — this distinction matters here.

• Assignee named on the issued face of US11244666 (per Google Patents "Original Assignee"): Staton Techiya LLC. This is the downstream owner at issue, not the inventor-side assignee.
• Entity that originally took the inventors' rights: Personics Holdings, Inc. The Google Patents legal-events record shows an Inc. → Personics Holdings, LLC step as well, indicating a conversion or merger of the corporation into the LLC.

Personics Holdings, Inc. — business and status. It was a Florida-based developer of in-ear/"personal sound" earpiece technology (occluded-ear audio, ambient sound management, ear canal measurement) — the technology actually described in the specification. Its address of record in this family's filings is in the Delray Beach / Boca Raton, FL corridor; the chain-of-title documents describe DM Staton Family Limited Partnership as assignee of Staton Family Investments, Ltd., and the successor entity Staton Techiya takes its name from the same "Staton" source.

Did it ship a product embodying the claims? I found no commercial product tied to Personics Holdings or to any successor for this invention. The portfolio's second-life activity is entirely licensing/litigation, not product. Current status: not verified. Personics Holdings disappears as an owner before the 2017–2020 recordings; I did not find a dissolution, bankruptcy, or acquisition filing. Treat the "dissolved" characterization as unconfirmed.

Assignment timeline

Important caveat, stated plainly: I could not complete a direct query of the USPTO Assignment Center results page for patent number 11244666 within this session. The recording dates below come from the Google Patents legal-events ("Reassignment") tab embedded in the authoritative patent text you supplied. Reel/frame numbers were not surfaced in that source, and I will not invent them. Where I do have reel/frame numbers, they come from PTAB and district-court exhibits that recite the chain of title for sibling patents in the same family — they are strong but not yet '666-specific.

Family chain-of-title reels recited in PTAB / litigation exhibits (sibling patents, not yet tied to the '666 record):

• Reel 043393 / Frame 0001 — recited as recorded 2017-06-21. The PTAB petition text at ptacts.uspto.gov (petition 1556502 / 1556505, IPR2024-01299 exhibit pages) states: "06/21/2017 The document was recorded in the United States Patent and Trademark Office at Reel 043393, Frame 0001." Conveyance chain item: DM Staton Family Limited Partnership, assignee of Staton Family Investments, Ltd. → Staton Techiya, LLC.
• Reel 042992 / Frame 0524 — recited in the same 37 CFR 3.73(c) chain-of-title statement: DM Staton Family Limited Partnership, assignee of Staton Family Investments, Ltd. → Staton Techiya, LLC.

Recorded assignments per Google Patents legal events for US11244666:

• Executed date not verified / recorded 2020-12-28 — Reel not surfaced

  • Conveyance: Assignment (inventor-to-company)
  • Assignor: Boillot, Marc Andre; Goldstein, Steven Wayne; Usher, John
  • Assignee: Personics Holdings, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not stated in the source I reached
  • Context: original inventor assignment — the foundational link of the chain

• Executed date not verified / recorded 2020-12-28 — Reel not surfaced

  • Conveyance: Assignment / internal reorganization
  • Assignor: Personics Holdings, Inc.
  • Assignee: Personics Holdings, LLC
  • Correspondent: not surfaced
  • Context: internal reorg — corporate conversion of Inc. into LLC (name form only, no change in beneficial owner discernible)

• Executed date not verified (agreement text suggests ~2017; unverified) / recorded 2020-12-28 — Reel not surfaced (family reels 042992/0524 and 043393/0001 cover this conveyance for siblings)

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Personics Holdings, Inc. and Personics Holdings, LLC
  • Assignee: DM Staton Family Limited Partnership (a Wyoming partnership, assignee of Staton Family Investments, Ltd., 6800 Broken Sound Parkway, Suite 200, Boca Raton, FL 33487 — address taken from the executed Intellectual Property Assignment Agreement filed as an exhibit in Staton Techiya v. Samsung, E.D. Tex. 2:21-cv-00413, Doc. 469-3)
  • Correspondent: not surfaced
  • Context: transfer to a holding partnership — the operational IP leaves the operating entity

• Executed date not verified / recorded 2020-12-28 — Reel not surfaced (family reels 042992/0524 and 043393/0001)

  • Conveyance: Assignment (the "Intellectual Property Assignment Agreement" quoted above)
  • Assignor: DM Staton Family Limited Partnership
  • Assignee: Staton Techiya, LLC (a Delaware LLC, 16193 Bridlewood Circle, Delray Beach, FL 33445)
  • Correspondent: John P. Keady, Reg. No. 56389, appears as the practitioner/contact on this family's USPTO correspondence; customer number 154598 is recorded as "Staton Techiya, LLC, John Keady, 16193 Bridlewood Circle, Delray Beach, FL 33445" and customer 150139 (Staton Techiya LLC, same address) is associated in the family's filings with Akerman LLP, 777 South Flagler Drive, Suite 1100 West Tower, West Palm Beach, FL 33401. This is the first of two Keady-associated customer numbers in the family — see the recurrence flag below.
  • Context: transfer-to-asserter — the passive holding partnership drops the assets into the active licensing/assertion vehicle

• Executed date not verified / recorded 2024-06-21 — Reel not surfaced

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Staton Techiya, LLC
  • Assignee: ST Portfolio Holdings, LLC
  • Correspondent: not surfaced
  • Context: internal re-labeling ahead of the 2024 IPR wave and the Federal Circuit appeal — the same date appears on a second transfer, so this is a coordinated two-step

• Executed date not verified / recorded 2024-06-21 — Reel not surfaced

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: ST Portfolio Holdings, LLC
  • Assignee: ST Case1Tech, LLC
  • Correspondent: not surfaced
  • Context: cascading transfer to a fresh LLC — ST Case1Tech is the entity that was substituted as appellant before the Federal Circuit (see ST Case1Tech, LLC v. Squires, Nos. 23-2294 / 23-2305 / 23-2306, Fed. Cir. Oct. 9, 2025, where the court records that Staton Techiya "assigned the patents to a related entity, ST Case1Tech, LLC, which was substituted as the appellant")

Lead I could not close: a PTAB exhibit in this family lists an assignment record with reels/frames 025775/0191, 044625/0361, 044625/0315, 051192/0596, 051238/0718, and a corrective assignment referencing 052853/0153. Reel 051xxxx-era numbers would be roughly contemporaneous with the Staton Techiya and 2024 transfers. I could not verify that any of these belong to the '666 record — treat as an unverified lead only, and check them against the Assignment Center by patent number.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11244666
    2007 : Provisional filed by Personics team
    2008 : Non provisional filed by Personics Holdings Inc
    2017 : Staton family entity records assignment
    2020 : Continuation filed as app 16987396
         : Four assignments recorded 2020 12 28
    2022 : Patent issued 2022 02 08
         : Asserted against Samsung in EDTX
    2024 : Staton Techiya assigns to ST Portfolio Holdings
         : ST Portfolio assigns to ST Case1Tech
    2025 : Fed Cir affirms PTAB on related patents

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — PRESENT. The chain runs Personics Holdings, Inc./LLC (operating earpiece developer) → DM Staton Family Limited Partnership (a passive Wyoming holding partnership) → Staton Techiya, LLC (Delaware, at 16193 Bridlewood Circle, Delray Beach, FL 33445 — a residential street address rather than a commercial office) → ST Portfolio Holdings, LLC → ST Case1Tech, LLC. Four of five links carry "Holdings"/"Techiya"/"Portfolio"/"Case1Tech" style naming and no product footprint. Recoding dates 2020-12-28 and 2024-06-21. Note the countervailing detail: DM Staton's address (6800 Broken Sound Parkway, Suite 200, Boca Raton) is a commercial business park, so the "registered-agent service address" tell is only partly satisfied.

2. Known asserter in the chain — PRESENT, but by directory classification rather than the classic list. None of Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, or Round Rock appears anywhere in this chain. However, Unified Patents' litigation portal classifies Staton Techiya LLC as "NPE (Patent Assertion Entity)" for Synergy IP Corp / Staton Techiya LLC v. [defendant], E.D. Tex. 2:22-cv-00053, filed 2022-02-13 (Unified Patents case-list filter on patent 11244666), and lists the patent family as carrying US case 2:22-cv-00053 and PTAB IPR2022-01099 (Not Instituted – Merits) on the patent's own Google Patents page. Corroborated by the assertion set in Staton Techiya v. Samsung (2:21-cv-00413, filed 2021-11-08), where the AO-120 attachment lists Staton Techiya, LLC as holder of ten patents including 10,979,836 and 10,966,015, and by the Korean KIPO litigation bulletin listing 11,244,666 among the fourteen patents in suit. Inventor-affiliated assertion vehicle rather than a third-party NPE — but still an assertion vehicle.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — PRESENT, with a precision caveat. John P. Keady, Reg. No. 56389 appears repeatedly across this family: as the named inventor on sibling patents, as the signatory/filer on Application Data Sheets and provisional filings (e.g., provisional 62/575,713 signed "/John P. Keady/" on 10/23/2017), and — most directly — as the named contact on two separate customer numbers for the same assignee at the same address: 150139 ("Staton Techiya LLC, 16193 Bridlewood Circle, Delray Beach, FL 33445", with Akerman LLP as the firm of record) and 154598 ("Staton Techiya, LLC, John Keady, 16193 Bridlewood Circle, Delray Beach, FL 33445"). Also of record as appellant's counsel in the Fed. Cir. appeal for ST Case1Tech are Timothy Devlin, Devlin Law Firm LLC, Wilmington, DE, with Andrew Peter DeMarco and Robert J. McAughan. Caveat: I could not confirm which of these acted as the named correspondent on the cover sheet of the specific '666 assignment records, so I am not asserting a recurring correspondent-of-record on the assignment documents themselves — only a recurring practitioner-of-record for the assignee entity across the chain. That is a real recurrence pattern, and the two-customer-number split for a single-address assignee is itself the kind of tell the brief asks about.

4. Cascading transfers — PRESENT in batched form. Two multi-link batches on single days: four assignments on 2020-12-28 (inventor→Personics Inc.; Personics Inc.→Personics LLC; Personics chain→DM Staton Family LP; DM Staton Family LP→Staton Techiya LLC) and two assignments on 2024-06-21 (Staton Techiya→ST Portfolio Holdings; ST Portfolio Holdings→ST Case1Tech). This is not the textbook "unrelated LLCs in <24 months" pattern — the links share principals and a common Delray Beach address — but it is chained multi-step repapering concentrated on two days, which is the same operational signature (clean up standing before asserting, then re-paper again before the appeal).

5. Pre-litigation transfer — UNCLEAR / partially present. The 2020-12-28 recordings predate the first filed suit (2:21-cv-00413, 2021-11-08) by roughly ten months, not within six, so the classic six-month tell is not satisfied for the first suit. However, the 2024-06-21 transfer into ST Case1Tech, LLC lands before the 2024 IPR wave (e.g., IPR2024-01015, IPR2024-01032, IPR2024-01034, where "Assignee: ST PORTFOLIO HOLDINGS, LLC" is recorded) and before ST Case1Tech's substitution as Federal Circuit appellant. That reads as standing-and-venue housekeeping for the appellate phase rather than for the original complaint.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. No Chapter 7/11 proceeding is evidenced anywhere in this chain. I found no docket or SEC-adjacent record of a Personics bankruptcy sale. The transfers read as negotiated intra-family asset movements (the executed Intellectual Property Assignment Agreement recites "good and valuable consideration" and lists Schedule 1 patents), not a trustee sale.

7. Privateering — UNCLEAR, leaning not present. Normally privateering means an operating company handing patents to an NPE to sue its competitors. Here the original operating entity (Personics Holdings) had already stopped being the owner before the first assertion campaign, and the assertion vehicle is name-linked to the same "Staton" family lineage. That is closer to inventor/founder monetization than to a third-party proxy war on behalf of a live product company. I found no SEC filing, EFF, or Patent Progress coverage documenting a privateering arrangement, and I will not infer one.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — NOT PRESENT. The chain terminates at ST Case1Tech, LLC, an active assertion-side appellant, not at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. The patent has not been neutralized by aggregation. If anything, the opposite: Samsung prevailed on the merits against related patents and obtained a large cost award (Gilstrap cost order reported at roughly $25.8M), and the Federal Circuit affirmed the Board's invalidity holdings on the '839 and '982 patents on 2025-10-09 — but that is a merits defeat of sibling patents, not a defensive-aggregation event for the '666.

Verdict

NPE — high confidence.

Two or more strong signals are met on the record: (a) a fossilized chain of shell-holdings — Personics Holdings, Inc./LLC → DM Staton Family Limited Partnership → Staton Techiya, LLC → ST Portfolio Holdings, LLC → ST Case1Tech, LLC, recorded in two single-day batches on 2020-12-28 and 2024-06-21, with Staton Techiya's address of record at 16193 Bridlewood Circle, Delray Beach, FL 33445; and (b) Unified Patents classifies Staton Techiya LLC as an NPE in connection with 2:22-cv-00053 (2022-02-13), and this patent (11,244,666) was in fact asserted against Samsung in E.D. Tex. (2:21-cv-00413) per the KIPO litigation bulletin and the IPR assertion record. The recurring practitioner John P. Keady, Reg. No. 56389, holding two customer numbers for the same single-address assignee, is the "shells change, the lawyer doesn't" tell — though I could not confirm him as the named correspondent on the '666 assignment cover sheets specifically.

What I could not verify, and you should check first: the reel/frame numbers and executed dates for the six '666-specific assignment records. Google Patents legal events surfaced the events but not the reels; the reels I do have (02992/0524, 043393/0001) are recited for sibling patents in the same chain of title. Run the patent-number search at the USPTO Assignment Center (also reachable via assignment.uspto.gov) and pull the cover sheets for reels 042992/0524, 043393/0001, and the unconfirmed leads 044625/0315, 044625/0361, 051192/0596, 051238/0718, 052853/0153 — the correspondent block on those cover sheets is the piece that would upgrade signal #3 from "recurring practitioner" to "recurring correspondent of record."

I'll research US Patent 11244666 and its prior art citations. Let me start with searches.

I found key leads: an ex parte reexamination (90/019,169) and IPR2024-01004 (Samsung). Let me dig into the actual prior-art citations on the patent face and the reexam/IPR grounds.

Let me pin down the specific prior-art references and their identifiers.

I hit the tool-call limit before I could fully verify the front-page "References Cited" list, so I'll give you what the retrieved records establish with confidence, and clearly flag what I could not confirm. Below, everything is grounded in the USPTO/PTAB/litigation documents I retrieved plus the authoritative full text of the patent you supplied.

1. Patent verification (do not auto-correct)

Because the effective priority is Jan. 22, 2007, the pre-AIA version of 35 U.S.C. § 102 governs. Every reference below must therefore date before Jan. 22, 2007 to be § 102 prior art.

URL: https://patents.google.com/patent/US11244666/en and https://patents.justia.com/patent/11244666

2. Important distinction about "citations"

A literal reading of the '666 record yields three different sets of "citations," which are often conflated:

1. Backward citations ("References Cited") — patents/publications cited on the face against the '666 family. These are the § 102/§ 103 prior art. (Google Patents' scraped text for US11244666/en that you supplied does not reproduce this section, so I could not read the front page verbatim.)
2. Forward citations ("Cited By (10)") — later documents citing the '666. These are not prior art to the '666.
3. Prior art asserted in the USPTO/litigation challenges (ex parte reexam 90/019,169; IPR2022-01099; IPR2024-01004; E.D. Tex. invalidity contentions). This is where the substantive § 102/§ 103 art actually lives.

The challenges of record:

• Ex parte reexamination 90/019,169 of US 11,244,666 (request document dated 2019-12-24 in the file; the '666 reexam exhibit was later filed as EX1009 in IPR2024-01004).
• IPR2022-01099 (Unified Patents, petitioner) — Not Instituted (Merits) per the Unified Patents portal.
• IPR2024-01004 (Samsung v. Staton Techiya) — challenged US 11,710,473, terminated/settled Dec. 12, 2024 before institution; it used the '666 reexam file as EX1009.
• Staton Techiya v. Samsung Electronics, E.D. Tex. Nos. 2:21-cv-00413 and 2:22-cv-00053-JRG-RSP.

URLs:

• https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/ptab/case/IPR2022-01099
• https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2024-01004/Samsung_Electronics_Co._Ltd/docs/06-12-2024-Petitioner/Exhibit-1009-EX1009___USSN_90_019,169_RE_of_US_11,244,666_Part_1_of_5.pdf (the '666 reexam file)
• https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/Texas_Eastern_District_Court/2--21-cv-00413/Staton_Techiya_LLC_et_al_v._Samsung_Electronics_Co._Ltd_et_al/docs/515/2.pdf (invalidity/claim analysis)

3. The most relevant prior art (backward citations / asserted art)

Caveat: the tribunals applied this art almost entirely as § 103 obviousness combinations, not standalone § 102 anticipation. The § 102 column below is my analytical mapping of where a single reference could arguably disclose the whole claim, and should be treated as a starting point, not a litigation-grade conclusion.

Also asserted in the IPR2024-01004 petition (though aimed at the sibling '473 patent — treat as related-family art, not '666-specific): US 4,455,677 (Fox); US 4,827,458 (D'Arc); EP 0 495 653 A1 (Smiedt); US 5,647,011 (Garvis); US 6,782,106 (Kong); US 2007/0041589 A1 (Patel); US 4,947,432 (Topholm); and the printed publications Basu, "Smart Headphones" and Mueller, "Transparent Hearing" (Exs. 1023–1032, 1028–1029).

Candidate front-face "References Cited" list (unverified — confirm on the '666 front page)

A References-Cited–style list surfaced in the family's file/prosecution papers containing, among others: US 6,748,238 B1 (Lau, 6/2004); US 6,754,359 B1 (Svean, 6/2004); US 7,003,099 B1 (Zhang, 2/2006); US 7,039,195 B1 (Svean, 5/2006); US 7,983,433 B2 (Nemirovski, 7/2011); US 7,983,907 B2 (Visser, 7/2011); US 7,986,802 B2 (Ziller, 7/2011); US 8,014,553 B2 (Radivojevic, 9/2011); US 2004/0264938 A1 (Felder, 12/2004); US 2005/0028212 A1 (Laronne, 2/2005); US 2005/0058313 A1 (Victorian, 3/2005). I could not confirm this list is printed on the '666 front page (it most likely derives from the original '894). Note the 2011-dated items post-date the 2007 priority and can only qualify as § 102 prior art via an earlier effective filing (e.g., § 102(e) as continuations of pre-2007 applications).

4. The "Cited By (10)" list (forward citations — NOT prior art)

Per Google Patents, these later documents cite the '666. They are not § 102 art against the '666 (nearly all post-date it, and most share the Staton Techiya inventorship/assignee):

1. US 2022/0230616 A1 (2022-07-21, Staton Techiya; priority 2007-01-22) — same family
2. US 12,349,097 B2 (2025-07-01, St Famtech; priority 2010-12-30)
3. US 12,363,223 B2 (2025-07-15, ST R&DTech; priority 2013-09-22)
4. US 12,374,332 B2 (2025-07-29, ST Fam Tech; priority 2008-09-22)
5. US 12,389,154 B2 (2025-08-12, St Famtech; priority 2012-12-17)
6. US 12,581,233 B2 (2026-03-17, ST Case 1 Tech; priority 2007-04-13)
7. US 12,586,680 B2 (2026-03-24, St Famtech; priority 2007-02-01)
8. US 12,591,407 B2 (2026-03-31, ST R&Dtech; priority 2014-10-24)
9. US 12,621,598 B2 (2026-05-05, St Famtech; priority 2017-10-23)
10. US 12,634,653 B2 (2026-05-19, St Vrtech; priority 2024-06-07)

(Note: items 9–10 carry publication dates later than the "current date" of Apr. 26, 2026 given in the prompt, yet the page was fetched 2026-09-29 — an internal inconsistency in the source dates. I report them literally.)

5. Claim-by-claim recap of where § 102 exposure concentrates

• Claim 1 (independent): Best single-reference § 102 candidate = Nemirovski '368 or Svean '359 (both show two-microphone earpieces + speaker + reprocessing/mixing of ambient sound).
• Claims 2, 8, 9 (acute sound / user-voice determination; adjust mixed signal): Nemirovski '368 (own-voice vs. external discrimination) plus Rothschild.
• Claims 3, 4 (warning/siren determination; decrease volume): Rast '304 and Rothschild.
• Claims 5–7 (notification; enumerated warnings/sirens): Weakest § 102; typically obviousness only.
• Claim 10 (noise-reduction signal from second mic): Victorian '813 and Nemirovski '379.
• Claim 11 (sealing section): Nemirovski '368 (hearing-aid/headphone housing) / Svean '359.

6. Explicit limitations of this analysis

• I could not open the '666's literal front-page "References Cited" section; the Google Patents text you supplied omits it. The strongest verified prior art is what was asserted against the '666 family in reexam 90/019,169, IPR2024-01004, and the E.D. Tex. contentions.
• Several exact identifiers/dates I could not confirm and have flagged inline (Rothschild's number/date; the precise issue dates of Nemirovski '368/'379; whether the "References Cited" list belongs to the '666 or its parent '894). Do not treat those as verified.
• The proceedings of record disposed of the art on § 103 obviousness grounds; the § 102 "anticipation" column is my analytical mapping, not a holding. Notably, IPR2022-01099 was not instituted on the merits, which undercuts a strong standalone-anticipation theory for at least the challenged claims.
• Per your strict rule, I did not auto-correct any number (e.g., "Nemirovski 368," "Svean 359," "Victorian 625," "Nemirovski '379") and I interpreted each literally.

I'll ground this analysis in the actual prior-art record for this patent. Let me pull the reference lists and the IPR record.

Let me pull the actual IPR petition grounds and the reference details.

Obviousness Analysis — US 11,244,666 B2 ("Method and device for acute sound detection and reproduction")

Sources used: the Google Patents record for US 11,244,666 B2 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US11244666/en) and the document/exhibit list from the IPR filed against this patent, IPR2022-01099 (https://services.patexia.com/lawsuits/Samsung-Electronics-Co-Ltd-et-al-v-Staton-Techiya-LLC-et-al-id-[164289](/patent/164289)/documents/sort_by/created/sort_dir/asc).

Important limitation on this analysis: the "Prior Art" section of the US11244666 page as provided does not contain a "Cited Patent" (examiner-cited references) list. What it does contain is (a) prior-art keywords (signal, sound, microphone, processor, earpiece), (b) prior art date 2007-01-22, (c) a "Cited By (10)" list, and (d) a "Families Citing this family (73)" list (truncated mid-entry at US9703524B2). Sections (c) and (d) are forward citations — overwhelmingly published after the 2007-01-22 critical date — and therefore are not §103 prior art against these claims. I flag below the few entries that deserve a second look. I also could not retrieve the text of the IPR petition itself (only its exhibit list), so the specific passage-level mappings attributed to the secondary references are identified as hypotheses to verify.

1. Governing law and critical date

• Standard: 35 U.S.C. §103(a) (pre-AIA), Graham v. John Deere, 383 U.S. 1 (1966); KSR Int'l v. Teleflex, 550 U.S. 398 (2007).
• Pre-AIA applies. US 11,244,666 issued from App. No. 16/987,396 (filed 2020-08-07), which is a continuation chain running back to App. No. 12/017,878 (filed 2008-01-22) and Prov. No. 60/885,917 (2007-01-22). Because the application claims priority to a pre-16-March-2013 application, the AIA first-inventor-to-file provisions do not apply. This matters: pre-AIA §102(e) and pre-AIA §103(c) (common ownership) control what secondary art may be used.
• Critical date: 2007-01-22. The page lists this as the prior art date and priority date. Art published after that date is not §102(a)/(b) art; a reference may still qualify under §102(e) (U.S. patent/published application or U.S.-designating PCT filed before the critical date), but §103(c) disqualifies §102(e) art that was commonly owned at the time of invention.

2. Person of ordinary skill in the art (POSA)

A POSA here is someone with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, acoustics, or a related discipline plus ~2–3 years of experience designing ear-worn audio devices (hearing aids, hearing protectors, in-ear monitors, headsets), including digital signal processing for microphones, adaptive gain, mixing, and voice/event detection — or equivalent practical experience. This is a predictable, mature, crowded art (the "Families Citing" list on the page alone shows dozens of ear-level devices), which strengthens predictability-based KSR reasoning.

3. What the claims actually cover

This is decisive for the obviousness posture. Independent claim 1 does not recite acute-sound detection at all. It recites, in substance:

1. an earphone with a first microphone whose port faces away from the user (outward/ambient mic);
2. a second microphone measuring an acoustic environment closer to the ear canal than the first, with a port facing toward the user;
3. a speaker;
4. memory + processor;
5. signal flow: receive both mic signals → generate an ambient sound signal from one or both → apply an ambient sound gain → mix with an audio content signal → send the mixed signal to the speaker.

That is the canonical "hear-through / ambient pass-through plus media playback" earphone architecture. Claim 11 merely adds "a sealing section." The acute-sound subject matter of the specification (and of the title) appears only in dependent claims 2–9 (acute-sound detection; user's-voice discrimination; warning/siren spectral detection; ducking audio; notification; reducing audio content while increasing ambient sound) and claim 10 (a noise-reduction signal derived from the second microphone signal).

4. Ground 1 — Platz alone (US 2010/0119077 A1): claims 1 and 11

US 2010/0119077 A1 ("Active hearing protection system"; Ex. 1005 in IPR2022-01099) is the strongest primary reference in the record. From its published text (https://patents.google.com/patent/US20100119077):

• A left and right earplug each with a hard shell providing "an acoustic attenuation of at least 10 dB averaged over the audible frequency range" → claim 11's "sealing section" and the occluded-ear environment.
• Each earplug's active unit 24 comprises a microphone 28 for capturing audio signals from ambient sound and a loudspeaker 30 delivering into the ear canal via sound channel 26 → the first microphone + speaker of claim 1.
• The audio signal processing unit 34 receives and processes the microphone signals and supplies the loudspeakers: ambient sound captured by microphones 28 is passed to speakers 30 "despite the acoustic attenuation provided by the shell 22 for relatively low sound pressure levels (for high sound pressure levels the gain will be progressively reduced in order to provide for a hearing protection function)" → the ambient sound signal and the ambient sound gain limitations.
• Audio signals received from the communication device 20 (mobile phone or FM radio) "are also to be provided to the user's ear via the central unit 14 and the speakers 30" → the audio content signal and mixing limitations; sending the result to the speaker is inherent in the described playback.
• Platz repeatedly refers to "microphones 28, 31" and to a boom microphone 16 as sources for the user's voice → more than one microphone per earplug is contemplated.

Assessment: Claim 1 as drafted is very close to Platz's disclosure. The only limitation that is not shown verbatim in the portions I retrieved is the specific port orientation of the second microphone ("port that is configured to face toward the user"). If, as is likely, mic 31 or a companion ear-canal microphone is provided for occlusion/own-voice sensing, that limitation is met; if not, it is supplied by any of the second-microphone references below. Claim 11 (sealing section) is squarely met by Platz's ≥10 dB sealing shell. This ground is strong.

5. Ground 2 — Platz + a dual-port/ear-canal-microphone reference: claim 1

The remaining claim 1 element (a second microphone sensing nearer the ear canal, port facing the user) is the classic occlusion-effect / in-ear sensing microphone arrangement, long standard in hearing aids and ANR headsets. The IPR2022-01099 exhibit list identifies precisely the references a petitioner would use for this: US 6,728,385 (Kvaloy), US 8,477,955 (Engle), US 6,754,359 (Svean), EP 1 640 972 A1 (Dijkstra), and EP 1 519 625 A2 (Victorian) (Exs. 1008–1011, 1006). (I could not verify the specific disclosures of each of these from the retrieved material; the mapping below is the expected role each fills and should be checked against the petition.)

Motivation to combine: both references are in the same field (occluded-ear listening devices) and address the same problem — restoring audibility of ambient sound and preserving communication while the ear canal is sealed. Adding an inward-facing/ear-canal microphone to a sealed earplug to measure the residual in-canal sound field (for occlusion compensation, gain control, or ANR) was a known, predictable design choice with an expected benefit and no teaching away; KSR, 550 U.S. at 416–17 ("a court must ask whether the improvement is more than the predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions").

6. Ground 3 — Platz + ANR art: claim 10

Claim 10 ("the mixed audio signal includes a noise reduction signal derived from the second microphone signal") is straightforward active noise reduction / residual-noise cancellation using an in-canal error microphone. Feed-forward plus feedback (in-canal) microphone topologies were ubiquitous in headsets and hearing protectors well before 2007 (and in portable-consumer headsets). The rationale: Platz's system already delivers a mixed signal to the ear-canal speaker; adding a feedback noise-cancellation path derived from the in-canal microphone is the routine application of a known technique to a known sealed-ear device to improve a known problem (residual occlusion/low-frequency noise). Strong under KSR.

7. Ground 4 — Platz + voice-activity / own-voice detection art: claims 2, 8, 9

Claims 2, 8 and 9 require (i) detecting an acute sound, (ii) determining whether it is the user's own voice, and (iii) responsive adjustment — "reduce the audio content signal and increase the ambient sound signal."

• Detection of an acute/transient sound is a routine signal-processing step: thresholding the short-term SPL against an adaptive background-noise estimate, peak detection in a buffer, and abrupt per-band magnitude changes (all of which the '666 specification itself describes as conventional techniques; see its own description of BNL estimation, hysteresis, and thresholding in FIGS. 4 and 8).
• Own-voice discrimination using two microphones by cross-correlation and lag analysis (a zero/near-zero interaural lag indicating a source "inside the head," and an ASM-vs-ECM lag polarity test) is textbook time-difference-of-arrival/coherence processing. The petition's Ex. 1014 (Mulgrew 2002) — a standard digital signal processing text — is consistent with the petitioner treating correlation/lag-based detection as within the ordinary skill level; US 5,276,740 (Inanaga) (Ex. 1007) is also consistent with a voice/speech-detection role. (Verification needed.)
• Ducking media and boosting ambient when speech or an alert is detected is the very reason sealed personal-audio devices need hear-through in the first place (the '666 background section itself acknowledges users "turn up the volume to hear their personal audio over environmental noises" and become unable to hear warnings).

Motivation: avoiding amplification of the user's own voice in a sealed ear (own-voice/occlusion annoyance) while still passing external sounds is a recognized design problem; the solution — detect own-voice and gate the pass-through accordingly — is an obvious application of known VAD/TDOA techniques with predictable results.

8. Ground 5 — Platz + warning/siren detection: claims 3–7

Claims 3–7 require spectral detection of a warning or siren, ducking the audio, sending a notification signal, and recite exemplary categories (bell, emergency vehicle, security system; police siren, ambulance siren, car honking).

• These are species of "acute sound" classification, and the classes recited (bells, sirens, horns, alarms) were the subject of a well-developed pre-2007 literature in auditory warning and emergency-vehicle detection (spectral template matching on siren harmonic structure and frequency-sweep patterns). Note also that the '666 specification's own FIG. 4 "warning signal detection (e.g. car horns, klaxons)" block treats such detection as an ordinary module, and the patent concedes that the processor may search for "on-sets … without initially attempting to … recognize the sound source."
• Notification (claim 5) is anticipated by the earpiece's own audio path — Platz already routes communication-device audio to the loudspeaker, so injecting a notification is trivially enabled.

Assessment: claims 3–7 add subject matter that is largely a design/classification detail obvious to try (KSR at 421), supported by the explicit naming of the categories in the specification.

9. Motivation-to-combine summary (KSR rationales)

1. Same field / analogous art: hearing protectors, hearing aids, in-ear monitors and headsets all concern delivering sound to an occluded ear canal; all references are reasonably pertinent to the problem.
2. Same problem, express motivation: Platz states the objective of hearing protection with communication and hear-through at low levels — the precise problem claim 1 solves.
3. Predictable combination of known elements: microphones, DSP gain, a mixer and a loudspeaker each performing their known function yields nothing more than an expected result (KSR at 415–17).
4. Finite number of identified, predictable solutions: providing an in-canal microphone, ANR feedback, VAD and alert classification in a sealed earphone were known options, not novel architectures.
5. Market/design pressure: portability of media players and telephony drove hear-through + ducking designs (the patent's own background describes this pressure).
6. No teaching away: nothing in Platz or the secondary references disparages adding a second, inward-facing microphone, mixing media with ambient, or ducking on detected alerts.

10. Entries on the page that are not usable §103 art (and two worth checking)

• Not prior art (post-2007-01-22 publications): the "Cited By" list — including US 2022/0230616 A1 (itself a family member with the same 2007-01-22 priority), US 12,349,097 B2, US 12,363,223 B2, US 12,374,332 B2, US 12,389,154 B2, US 12,581,233 B2, US 12,586,680 B2, US 12,591,407 B2, US 12,621,598 B2, US 12,634,653 B2 — and the likely-tarred "Families Citing this family" entries such as the Doppler Labs patents (2014–2016), Sonion, Asius, Sonova, Natan Bauman, etc. These are evidence of how crowded the field was, but they cannot be combined as §103 art.
• Two entries meriting verification as potential §102(e)/§103 art: WO 2007/147077 A2 (2006-06-14, "Earguard monitoring system," Personics Holdings) and WO 2008/008730 A2 (2006-07-08, "Personal audio assistant device and method," Personics Holdings). Both have international filing dates before the critical date but published after it. Under pre-AIA §102(e), a U.S.-designating, English-language PCT can be prior art as of its international filing date — but because both are Personics Holdings filings, pre-AIA §103(c) common-ownership would likely disqualify them from obviousness combinations. This is exactly the sort of self-collision that makes this family hard to attack with its own portfolio.

11. Litigation posture and what cuts against the challenge

• The page records an E.D. Tex. case (2:22-cv-00053) and IPR2022-01099, which the page labels "Not Instituted - Merits." The page does not state the reason for denial, and I will not speculate as to whether the Board relied on §314(a)/Fintiv (a parallel district-court trial existed) or on a merits/threshold defect. Non-institution is not a holding of validity; it simply means the petitioner did not persuade the Board to institute on that record.
• The petition's exhibit list (US 2010/0119077 A1 Platz; EP 1 519 625 A2 Victorian; US 5,276,740 Inanaga; US 6,728,385 Kvaloy; US 8,477,955 Engle; EP 1 640 972 A1 Dijkstra; US 6,754,359 Svean; US 2008/0175411 A1 Greve; US 2007/0189544 A1 Rosenberg; Mulgrew 2002) shows the challenger treated the dual-microphone hear-through + mixing architecture as the central attack, i.e., consistent with the analysis above.
• Weaknesses of the claims: claim 1's "ambient sound gain" and "mixing" steps contain no numerical or structural limits and are function-only; the two-microphone port orientation is the only meaningful structural hook, and it is a longstanding ergonomic/functional arrangement. Claims 3–7 recite claim categories ("bell," "emergency vehicle," "security system," "police siren," "car honking") that are illustrative lists of the genus already disclosed, which invites the In re design-choice/obvious-species response.
• Where the patent is more defensible: the specific acute-sound pass-through mechanisms disclosed in the specification but not claimed here — reproducing the acute sound at the same SPL and frequency representation as measured at the ear-canal entrance, maintaining an approximately constant ACL/iASL ratio, and the iASL = ECL − ACL estimation — are the genuinely distinctive contributions. A challenger attacking claims 1–11 will not need to reach them at all.

12. Bottom line

• Claim 1 and claim 11: highly vulnerable. US 2010/0119077 A1 (Platz) alone discloses a sealing earplug shell, ambient microphone, ear-canal loudspeaker, DSP-applied ambient gain, and mixing of communication-device audio into the same loudspeaker; the residual port-orientation element is supplied by the ordinary in-canal/dual-port microphone art (Kvaloy/Engle/Svean/Dijkstra/Victorian as identified in IPR2022-01099). Motivation: same field, same problem (sealed-ear hear-through plus communication), predictable result.
• Claim 10: vulnerable over Platz in view of standard in-canal feedback ANR.
• Claims 2, 8, 9: vulnerable over Platz in view of routine transient detection plus cross-correlation/lag-based own-voice discrimination (the Mulgrew 2002 text and Inanaga-type voice-detection references in the IPR record).
• Claims 3–7: vulnerable as obvious classification/notification details of the acute-sound genus, with the recited warning/siren categories being well-known species.
• Unusable art: essentially the entire "Cited By" and "Families Citing" material on the page post-dates 2007-01-22 and cannot support a §103 combination.

Caveats I want to be explicit about: (1) I could not obtain the petition body for IPR2022-01099, so the limitation-by-limitation mappings for Victorian, Kvaloy, Engle, Svean, Dijkstra, Inanaga, Greve and Rosenberg are hypotheses based on their roles in the exhibit list, not verified quotations; (2) the page shows no examiner-cited "Cited Patent" list, so no assertion is made about references considered during prosecution; (3) the "Not Instituted - Merits" label is reproduced from the page, and the Board's reasons are not stated there.