US 11347949

I'll run several targeted searches for this exact patent number.

Let me pull the actual claim text and check for any 2026 Federal Circuit activity.

Summary — US Patent 11,347,949 (US 11,347,949 B2)

A caveat up front: I ran multiple searches (Google Patents, Justia, litigation/docket aggregators, CAFC sources). The authoritative Google Patents text supplied to me is truncated partway through the description (mid‑FIG. 30) and therefore does not include the claims or the abstract. I could not retrieve the literal claim set or abstract text. Below I separate verified data from inferred data, and I flag where I am uncertain.

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1. Bibliographic data (verified from the Google Patents record and Justia)

Priority chain (continuation family): the record lists priority claims running from US 11/350,309 (filed 2006‑02‑07), through 11/382,052 / 11/382,050 / 11/382,053 / 11/382,264 / 11/382,054 / 11/382,265 / 11/420,721 / 11/458,620 (US 7,924,156) → 12/577,209 (US 8,816,826) → 14/660,825 (US 9,569,777) → 16/186,543 (US 11,170,185) → the present 17/522,697. Later continuations claiming priority to it include US 11,599,734 B2, US 11,689,612 B1, US 11,687,741 B1 and US 12,039,396 B2. This is the same Colby/Mynette family litigated in Mynette Technologies, Inc. v. United States, No. 1:16‑cv‑01647 (Fed. Cl.), which involved the ’425, ’156, ’458 and ’777 patents — not the ’949 patent.

Note on the title mismatch: the title is directed to a cellular device with an inductive antenna, but the bulk of the specification text is about RFID shielding, ePassport covers/pages, and switchable RFID tags. That is consistent with this being a continuation in which the claims are drawn to one embodiment (the cellular/RFID financial‑transaction embodiment) while the specification carries the earlier disclosure forward.

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2. Abstract

I cannot provide the literal abstract with confidence. The abstract text did not appear in any of my retrievals, and I will not reconstruct one. What can be said from the disclosure itself: the specification describes a portable communication device (e.g., a cellular telephone) that uses two or more communication modes — cellular and a short‑range RFID/inductive mode — with an optionally switchable RFID tag, optionally powered from the device's own power source, optionally with a user interface or biometric approval gating the RFID/financial function. That is a description of subject matter in the specification, not a quotation of the abstract.

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3. Independent claims — plain-language overview (partially verified)

I do not have verbatim claim text. Based on the specification and on claim‑construction material identified in the pending litigation, the independent claims appear to include:

• A system claim (Claim 1) directed to a cellular telephone embodying a circuit with an inductive coupling for short‑range (RFID/NFC) communication of financial/account data, in which an "electronic switch" controls a state of the circuit state (e.g., an authenticated/unlocked state versus a locked/unauthenticated state) and the ability to communicate the data is responsive to that state. The "electronic switch" is the key term identified for construction of Claim 1.
• Further independent subject matter in the specification (which may or may not correspond to issued independent claims) includes: a communication device with an 802.11 or cellular transmitter plus a user interface and a switchable RFID tag switching between active/inactive states; a communication device with two or more memory‑device slots selectable by a user to transmit first or second data (financial account information or a digital key); and RF‑powered remote‑control / tag on‑off methods.

Plain-language overview: the invention, as claimed here, is essentially a cell phone that can also act as an RFID/NFC payment or access device, where an electronic (software/hardware) switch gates whether the short‑range inductive communication of financial data can occur. It is a hardware/apparatus framing of the Colby family's earlier "switchable RFID tag" concept, recast onto a cellular handset with an inductive antenna.

Because the claim text was unavailable to me, treat the above as interpretive, not authoritative.

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4. Litigation / post‑grant activity

District court (verified via search results):

• Surecell Transactions LLC v. [[Samsung Electronics America](/litigations/by-defendant/Samsung%20Electronics%20America), Inc.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Samsung%20Electronics%20America%2C%20Inc.), No. 2:26‑cv‑00106 (E.D. Tex.). Google Patents lists this as a filed U.S. case in the Texas Eastern District Court. A complaint analysis indicates the ’949 patent is asserted against Samsung mobile devices and wearables, with NFC hardware alleged to be the claimed "inductive coupling" and processor/software state changes alleged to be the "electronic switch." The analysis flags "electronic switch" as the central claim‑construction dispute. I did not independently verify the complaint; treat this as secondary‑source information.

Federal Circuit (CAFC) 2026 docket:

• I found no Federal Circuit docket, appeal, or opinion involving US 11,347,949 or the Surecell/Mynette parties. My CAFC‑oriented searches returned only unrelated 2026 cases (e.g., Contour IP Holding v. GoPro 2026‑2012, Wipqtus v. Samsung 2025‑1596, Headwater Research v. Verizon 26‑1884). If an appeal exists, it was not surfaced; I cannot confirm one, and I am not asserting that none exists.

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5. Identifiers I deliberately did not conflate

Several unrelated patents surfaced and should not be confused with US 11,347,949:

• US 7,395,479 (Teradyne, ATE voltage‑comparison) — a different "’479."
• US 8,274,494, US 11,292,349, US 7,679,637, WO 2017/027872, CN 101951281A, CA 2093938A1, US 2005/0294126 — these appear only in citation/family tables that happen to list US 11,347,949 B2 as a family member or cite it; their titles are not this patent's title.
• The "’479 patent" referenced in the Richards/Zhou IPR and the Rapid litigation is also not this patent.

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6. Uncertainty statement

• High confidence: patent number, title, inventor, application number, filing date, issue date, assignees, and classification data (all consistent across Google Patents and Justia).
• Low / unverified: the abstract text, the verbatim independent claims, the exact count and scope of independent claims, and current ownership (Google Patents itself disclaims accuracy of assignee data).
• Date discrepancy: the source page metadata shows a fetch date of 2026‑09‑23 and lists the patent as "Expired – Lifetime," whereas the working date given to me is April 26, 2026 (before the listed May 7, 2026 expiration). I report the status as listed but cannot reconcile the dates.
• No CAFC 2026 activity for this patent was located, and I would need the actual claim text (USPTO PatentCenter / Patent Public Search) to give an authoritative independent‑claim overview.

I'll run targeted searches focused strictly on US 11,347,949 litigation.

I found a directly relevant case. Let me verify its details and search for any additional cases.

Let me check for any other cases, IPR petitions, or appeals involving this specific patent.

Litigation Involving US Patent 11,347,949 — Findings

Bottom line

One district-court case is known to assert US 11,347,949. It is a 2026 NPE suit filed by the Colby/Mynette-family monetization entity SureCell Transactions LLC against Samsung in the Eastern District of Texas. I found no IPR/PGR petition, no ITC Section 337 investigation, and no Federal Circuit appeal naming this patent. This is consistent with (and now substantially refines) the litigation paragraph in the previously generated section.

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Case 1 (the only identified case)

Asserted patents (six, per the complaint as reported): U.S. 7,924,156; 11,347,949; 11,599,734; 11,687,741; 11,989,612; and 12,039,396. All are Colby/Mynette-family patents, and several are recorded continuations of the '949 patent.

Assertions specific to the '949 patent:

• Infringement theory: the accused Samsung Galaxy S / Note / Z Fold-Flip / A-series smartphones (plus Galaxy Watch wearables and Galaxy Tab tablets, and future/conceptual models such as "Galaxy Z Fold7" and "Galaxy S25 Ultra") are cellular telephones embodying the claimed system. Samsung's NFC hardware is alleged to be the claimed "inductive coupling"; the device's processor/software acting on NFC state is alleged to be the "electronic switch", with the ability to communicate financial data being responsive to an unlocked/authenticated versus locked/unauthenticated state.
• Both induced and contributory infringement are pleaded, along with willful infringement (treble damages requested) premised on notice "at least as early as the dates of service of this Complaint."
• Accused functionality: Samsung Pay / Samsung Wallet, Samsung Blockchain Wallet, third-party payment and financial apps, NFC payments at POS terminals, and NFC interaction with smart locks and automotive digital keys.
• Center of gravity for this case: the term "electronic switch" is flagged as the key claim-construction dispute, across both the '949 and '741 patents — i.e., whether software-mediated gating of NFC on a general-purpose SoC reads on a claimed "switch," or whether the term requires a discrete hardware component as suggested by embodiments such as the sliding switch (FIG. 25A) and membrane switch (FIG. 26A).

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Negative findings (searched, nothing located)

• PTAB: No IPR, PGR, or CBM petition against US 11,347,949 was located. (Note: a document in the Western Digital v. Godo Kaisha IP Bridge 1, IPR2024‑01494 record, and the Apple v. Samsung ITC materials, contain a "…949, '697, '501" string referring to US 7,479,949 — the Apple touch-screen patent — and not to US 11,347,949. Do not conflate.)
• Federal Circuit: no appeal involving US 11,347,949 or the SureCell/Samsung case was surfaced. The case is too new for an appeal of a final judgment, though an interlocutory appeal (e.g., § 1292(a)(1) or § 1292(b)) or mandamus petition cannot be ruled out and I did not confirm one either way.
• ITC: no Section 337 complaint naming the '949 patent found.
• Other defendants: no additional complaints against other parties (e.g., Apple, Google) involving this patent were located. The Ex Parte docket entity page reports SureCell Transactions LLC with 1 case total, 1 active.

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Contradictions / items to flag against the earlier-generated section

1. Case number and party match — no contradiction. The earlier section's reference to "Surecell Transactions LLC v. Samsung Electronics America, Inc., No. 2:26-cv-00106 (E.D. Tex.)" is confirmed, and this analysis adds the filing date (2026‑02‑12), division, judges, and the $500M demand.
2. Flagged identifier discrepancy: the earlier summary listed a continuation as "US 11,689,612 B1." The Google Patents family data lists "US11989612B1," and the complaint analysis lists "U.S. Patent No. 11,989,612." Per the strict no-auto-correction rule I am not silently rewriting the earlier text, but these two identifiers are not the same number and the earlier rendering appears to be a transposition. The asserted patent in this case is 11,989,612.
3. Anticipated-expiration date: the earlier section flagged a date conflict (working date vs. listed "Expired – Lifetime / anticipated expiration 2026‑05‑07"). Nothing in today's results resolves it; I report it as unresolved rather than reconciling it.

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Confidence and limitations

• High confidence: existence, parties, court, case number, filing date, judges, nature of suit, $500M demand, and the six asserted patents including 11,347,949.
• Secondary-source basis: the infringement theory, asserted claims, and "electronic switch" construction dispute come from a third-party complaint-analysis page (ai-lab.exparte.com) and Korean trade press (the-biz.co.kr), not from the complaint itself or from PACER/Westlaw. Verified only as reported.
• Not verified: the complete defendant list (the "et al" in the caption), any amended complaints or added defendants, damages theories beyond the lump-sum demand, and any subsequent docket activity after the aggregator snapshot (the aggregator itself labels the docket incomplete).
• I hit a tool-step limit before completing a final confirmation pass on CAFC/ITC dockets; I therefore state the absence of CAFC and ITC activity as "none located," not as an affirmative representation that none exists.

I'll verify what's publicly available for this proceeding and cross-check the litigation/appeal picture.

The IPR was filed only one day ago. Let me confirm the PTAB record and check for anything else on this patent family.

Proceedings overview

One AIA trial proceeding is on file against US 11,347,949: IPR2026-00507 (Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. et al.), filed 2026-09-22 and still pending with no institution decision, no POPR, and no merits ruling of any kind — meaning that as of today (2026-09-23) the patent is wholly untested at the PTAB, no claim has been canceled, no estoppel has attached, and the defensive posture for a defendant is not "the patent is hardened by prior IPR survivorship" but rather "this is a one-day-old petition in an unusually fast-moving, parallel-litigation posture, where the real question is whether the Board institutes at all."

Two framing points that materially change the defensive read:

1. The petition is one day old. The structured record shows filed 2026-09-22, last modified 2026-09-22. Nothing beyond the filing exists to report — no panel assignment, no grounds summary, no POPR, no § 314(b) decision. I will not speculate on grounds, art, or panel.
2. The patent is listed as Expired – Lifetime with an anticipated expiration of 2026-05-07 (Google Patents). If that status is accurate, a defendant is facing a past-damages-only exposure (no injunction as of right under eBay, § 286 six-year lookback), and the PTAB proceeding is being run against an expired patent — which forecloses any meaningful claim-amendment strategy for the patent owner.

I could not locate any PTAB proceeding, Final Written Decision, or Federal Circuit appeal involving US 11,347,949 other than IPR2026-00507. Because the record is one day old, this is an expected absence, not evidence of a weak petition.

⚠️ Flagged contradiction (from the earlier-generated sections): the previously generated summary noted the working date given to it was April 26, 2026, while the Google Patents fetch and this prompt state 2026-09-23. If the earlier April date were operative, IPR2026-00507 (filed 2026-09-22) could not yet exist. I treat 2026-09-23 as operative per this prompt and the structured ODP block, but the discrepancy should be resolved before any deadline is calendared.

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IPR2026-00507 — [[Samsung Electronics Co.](/litigations/by-defendant/Samsung%20Electronics%20Co.), Ltd. et al.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Samsung%20Electronics%20Co.%2C%20Ltd.%20et%20al.) v. Surecell Transactions, LLC (patent owner identification unconfirmed on the PTAB docket)

• Type: Inter Partes Review (IPR) — AIA trial under 35 U.S.C. §§ 311–319. Not a PGR or CBM (the '949 has a 2005 priority date, so PGR eligibility expired long ago, and CBM review is unavailable post-SAS/post-§ 18 sunset).
• Filed: 2026-09-22
• Status: Pending (verbatim from the structured data: "status: Pending"; last modified 2026-09-22). Plain-English gloss: petition filed and docketed; no notice of accord of filing date, no POPR, no institution decision, no trial.
• Judge panel: Not yet public. Panels are typically assigned at or shortly before the institution decision; no APJ names are available.
• Petition grounds: Not yet public. I did not retrieve the petition, and I will not guess at the claims challenged, the art, or the statutory basis. (For what it is worth, the asserted-patent family is RFID/NFC cellular device art, so § 102/§ 103 challenges on RFID/NFC prior art would be the expected vehicle — but that is inference, not record.)
• Institution decision: None. Statutory framework: under § 314(b), the Director's institution determination is due within 3 months after the earlier of the POPR filing date or the expiration of the POPR period. Patent Owner's POPR is presumptively due ~2026-12-22 (with possible stipulated extension under current Board practice), putting the outside institution deadline around ~2027-03-22. Treat that as an estimate, not a docketed date.
• Final Written Decision: None. If instituted ~March 2027, the FWD deadline under § 316(a)(11) is one year from institution, i.e., ~March 2028. One-year FWD deadlines are extendable for good cause (§ 316(a)(11) allows up to 6 months).
• Settlement / termination: None. No termination, no joinder, no adverse judgment. If the E.D. Tex. case settles, expect the patent owner to seek termination; terms would almost certainly be confidential.
• Appeal: None. § 319 appeal to the Federal Circuit is only available after an FWD, so no CAFC docket can exist yet. As of the earlier section's searches, no Federal Circuit activity involving US 11,347,949 or the Surecell/Mynette parties was located; I did not re-verify that today.
• Defensive value: Near zero for today's defendant on estoppel grounds — § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches only after an FWD, so this petition gives a co-defendant no estoppel cover. Its actual value is strategic: (a) if institution is granted, it supports a motion to stay the E.D. Tex. case (Judge Gilstrap's stay practice is the practical battleground, not the merits); (b) it preserves Samsung's invalidity position against the other asserted family members only to the extent it is followed up; and (c) a denial of institution would be a meaningful negative signal for patent owner leverage in the parallel case.

Note on the parallel litigation (necessary context, not a PTAB event): Surecell Transactions LLC v. [Samsung Electronics America, Inc. et al.](/litigations/by-defendant/Samsung%20Electronics%20America%2C%20Inc.%20et%20al.), No. 2:26-cv-00106 (E.D. Tex., Marshall Division; Judge Rodney Gilstrap; filed 2026-02-12; ~$500M demand; jury demand). The '949 is one of six asserted Colby-family patents (the '156, '949, '734, '741, '612, and '396). The complaint's infringement theory, per a secondary-source complaint analysis, maps the accused Samsung NFC hardware to the claimed "inductive coupling" and the processor/software authentication-state change to the claimed "electronic switch," with "electronic switch" identified as the central claim-construction dispute for the '949 (likely Claim 1). I have not independently verified the complaint's asserted-claim list; treat it as secondary.

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Strategic summary

Claim status: everything is UNTESTED. No claim of US 11,347,949 has been canceled, narrowed, confirmed, or even addressed on the merits by the Board. There is no FWD to link to, no certificate under § 318(b) issued, and therefore no claim-level landscape to report — claims 1 through the last claim are, as a matter of PTAB record, exactly as issued. Any statement that the patent "has survived an IPR" would be false; any statement that a claim "is dead" would be fabrication. The earlier-generated summary's caveat that it lacked the verbatim claim text still stands, and the PTAB record does nothing to cure it. I would obtain the issued claims from USPTO Patent Public Search / PatentCenter before drafting anything claim-specific.

Estoppel landscape: none yet, and that is the point. Under § 315(e)(2), estoppel runs only from a final written decision. A pending, uninstituted petition creates no bar for Samsung and certainly none for any other defendant. Concretely for a defendant being asserted today:

• All prior-art grounds remain available in district court — both § 102/§ 103 printed publications and system-art/product-art grounds, which are unavailable in an IPR anyway (§ 311(b) limits IPRs to patents and printed publications).
• § 315(b) one-year clock: the E.D. Tex. complaint was filed 2026-02-12. Assuming service on or about that date, the window for additional IPR petitions by any defendant served in that case closes around 2027-02-12. Any defendant served later has its own one-year clock. This is the single most time-critical item on the calendar.
• § 315(e)(1) (Office) estoppel would only bind Samsung in a later Board proceeding after an FWD on the same grounds.

Pattern signals. Three things stand out. First, this is a single-petition, single-patent challenge, not a coordinated multi-patent IPR campaign — Samsung has not (yet) filed parallel petitions against the five sibling patents it was sued on, even though the same one-year § 315(b) clock applies to all of them. Samsung is a sophisticated, high-volume PTAB petitioner (see its multiple IPR/PGR families against Netlist, Wilus/Sisvel, and others in 2025–2026), so a lone petition against one of six asserted patents is more consistent with a staged or stay-oriented filing than a full invalidity campaign. Second, the patent owner side (Colby/Mynette → Colby Trust → Surecell Transactions, LLC, assignment recorded 2026-01-15) shows no history of PTAB appeals or aggressive motion-to-amend practice that I could verify; the family's prior Article III litigation was Mynette Technologies, Inc. v. United States (Fed. Cl. 1:16-cv-01647) involving the '425, '156, '458, and '777 patents — the '949 was not part of it. Third, no defensive aggregator (e.g., Unified Patents) appears in the chain for this patent; the challenger is the accused defendant itself, which means the petition's scope and any settlement are within Samsung's control.

Two substantive dynamics worth pricing in. (i) Discretionary denial is a live risk in this environment. The current Board/Director practice (e.g., Magnolia Medical Techs., Inc. v. Kurin, Inc., IPR2026-00097, precedential 2026-05-14; Tesla, Inc. v. Bulletproof Prop. Mgmt., IPR2026-00204 et al., informative 2026-06-15) makes parallel-litigation duplication, timing relative to trial, stipulation breadth, and "settled expectations" of the patent owner express discretionary factors. With a 2026-02-12 complaint and a 2026-09-22 petition, a patent owner will argue the petition is litigation-driven and that settled expectations attached to a family dating to 2005 — while Samsung will argue a broad Sotera-style stipulation and that the Board is a true substitute for the district court. The institution-stage briefing, not the merits, will likely decide this case's PTAB fate. (ii) The expired-patent problem. If the 2026-05-07 expiration is correct, the '949's claims can no longer be amended to enlarge scope, the patent owner's amendment runway is essentially gone, and any IPR outcome is a pure kill-and-confirm exercise — which also removes one of the traditional reasons a patent owner fights institution.

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Recommended next steps

1. Pull the actual petition and any Notice of Accord. The authoritative public source is PTAB E2E / the USPTO PTAB Petitions portal under proceeding IPR2026-00507 (https://ptab.uspto.gov). The petition PDF, the § 42.104 mandatory notices (real parties in interest, related matters), the asserted grounds, and the § 42.104(b) claim-by-claim basis are all public on filing, even though the ODP summary is sparse. Confirm (a) the exact claims challenged, (b) the named RPIs, and (c) whether Samsung filed a Fintiv/Sotera stipulation, which is now materially outcome-determinative under Magnolia/Tesla.
2. Calibrate the calendar off the filing date. POPR presumptively due ~2026-12-22 (extendable); § 314(b) institution deadline ~2027-03-22; if instituted, § 316(a)(11) FWD due ~2028-03 unless extended up to six months. § 315(b) cutoff for further petitions on the five sibling asserted patents: ~2027-02-12. Verify actual service dates from the 2:26-cv-00106 docket rather than assuming.
3. Coordinate with the E.D. Tex. case, not around it. Because estoppel does not attach until an FWD, a co-defendant should not assume Samsung's petition protects it. If you are a different defendant served in the same case, the one-year § 315(b) window is running independently; and if the case has an early Markman/trial setting, video-deposition-free expert discovery and the Fintiv-style discretionary analysis in Judge Gilstrap's court (should it exist at the relevant time), not the PTAB's merits, will drive whether a stay is realistic.
4. Brief "electronic switch" now. The secondary-source complaint analysis identifies "electronic switch" as the pivotal construction for the '949 (and the '741). If the patent owner's theory is that a processor-mediated authentication state change is an "electronic switch," a § 112 indefiniteness or a specification-disclosure-disclaimer construction argument (the disclosure's mechanical/membrane switch embodiments are a long way from an SoC state machine) is the highest-leverage non-PTAB defense and is preserved regardless of whether the IPR is instituted.
5. Do not represent to a court or client that any claim is invalidated. There is no FWD. If asked for the disposition, the accurate statement is: "One IPR petition is pending, filed 2026-09-22, no institution decision as of [date]." Flag the April 26, 2026 vs. September 23, 2026 working-date discrepancy in your own file before relying on any of the estimated deadlines above.

I'll run targeted searches against the assignment records and NPE directories before writing up.

Let me probe the assignment-specific details and attorney correspondents.

Analyst's note on sourcing

I was unable to retrieve the actual USPTO Assignment Center records (reel/frame numbers, correspondent of record) for US 11,347,949. The Google Patents record you supplied does expose a legal-events assignment chain (assignor/assignee/date), and that is what the timeline below is built on. Reel/frame numbers, execution dates (as distinct from recording dates), and the correspondent attorney of record are not something I could verify, and I will not invent them. Treat every "Reel —" line below as an open item to be filled from https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ or https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html. My searches also returned a name — Gregory M. Howison, Reg. #30646 — in an unrelated PTAB filing, not in this chain; I am deliberately not reporting him as this patent's correspondent.

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Inventors

Unusual patterns — present and material.

• Single-inventor, self-assigned chain. There is no corporate co-inventor and no employee-invention assignment agreement. The inventor is the transferor at every link until 2016. This is the classic shape of an inventor-controlled assertion portfolio rather than a corporate R&D spin-out.
• No inventor departure issue (that tell is inapplicable with one inventor who is also the assignor/principal). The inverse tell is present instead: the inventor never left — he retained an ownership stake through a trust and stayed on the assignee's board.
• Inventor/owner doubles as litigant. In Mynette Techs. v. United States, No. 16-1647 (Fed. Cl.), Colby was dismissed as a plaintiff for lack of standing (he had assigned "all rights, title and interest" and held "less than all substantial rights"), while remaining an officer, director and shareholder of the plaintiff NPE.

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Original assignee

Mynette Technologies, Inc. (Menlo Park / Verdi, CA–NV), named as assignee on the face of US 11,347,949.

• Primary line of business: patent licensing and litigation. Nothing else. The Court of Federal Claims record is unusually blunt: defendants argued — and the court accepted the framing — that "litigation is Mynette's only business activity" (Mynette Techs. v. United States, No. 16-1647, Opinion and Order, ECF 153/187, discussing the Blackbird Tech prosecution bar and covenant not to sue).
• Did it ship a product embodying the claims? No evidence of any. The accused products in the family litigation were third-party: U.S. e-passports (government), and the passport hardware of Gemalto/Thales and IDEMIA as intervenors. Mynette did not make passports or RFID inlays.
• Current status: assigned away. On the Google Patents legal-events record, Mynette transferred the '949 to Surecell Transactions, LLC on 2026-01-15. Mynette remains the plaintiff-of-record on older family litigation; there is no bankruptcy, dissolution or SEC-reporting event (Mynette is private and files no 10-K/8-K, so no SEC cross-reference is available — that absence is itself consistent with a non-operating entity).
• Litigation sanctions history: the court in Mynette v. United States imposed terminating sanctions (Dec. 5, 2022) because Mynette's counsel, Robert Yorio, failed to disclose his ownership interest and board position in Mynette while negotiating an attorneys-eyes-only protective order, and required a broad covenant not to sue covering "all of Mynette's current and future patents… related to the technology in discovery." That covenant is a documented encumbrance on the family and worth checking against the '949 for a license/standing defense.

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Assignment timeline

Sources: Google Patents legal-events block for US 11,347,949; Mynette Techs. v. United States, No. 16-1647 (Fed. Cl.) claim-construction opinion (for the 2016 family assignments). Dates below are the USPTO recording dates as surfaced by Google Patents; executed dates and reel/frame were not retrievable.

• 2005-05-06 (priority) — no assignment. Context: priority date assumed by Google Patents for the family.
• 2016-09-25 (executed; recorded date not retrieved) — Reel — (not retrieved)
  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Steven M. Colby (individually)
  • Assignee: Steven M. Colby Trust
  • Correspondent: not retrieved — no recurrence call possible.
  • Context: estate-planning / asset-holding step inserted between the inventor and his NPE; recited in the Fed. Cl. claim-construction opinion for the ’156, ’425, ’825 and ’907 filings (the ’949's ancestor line).
• 2016-09-26 (executed; recorded date not retrieved) — Reel — (not retrieved)
  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Steven M. Colby Trust
  • Assignee: Mynette Technologies, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved.
  • Context: transfer-to-asserter; two-step Colby → trust → Mynette sequence completed in 24 hours.
• 2022-02-22 (record date per Google Patents) — Reel — (not retrieved)
  • Conveyance: Assignment (Google Patents: "reassignment")
  • Assignor: Colby, Steven M
  • Assignee: Colby Trust, Steven M
  • Correspondent: not retrieved.
  • Context: internal reorg / asset-holding step — the same trust-then-company pattern repeated, this time mere months before the '949 issued.
• 2022-02-25 (record date per Google Patents) — Reel — (not retrieved)
  • Conveyance: Assignment (Google Patents: "reassignment")
  • Assignor: Colby Trust, Steven M
  • Assignee: Mynette Technologies, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved.
  • Context: internal reorg — re-consolidation into the NPE of record three days later, so the printed patent and the assignment record both name Mynette.
• 2026-01-15 (record date per Google Patents) — Reel — (not retrieved)
  • Conveyance: Assignment (Google Patents: "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNOR'S INTEREST")
  • Assignor: Mynette Technologies, Inc.
  • Assignee: Surecell Transactions, LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrieved — this is the single most important missing field in the whole chain; it is the link that would show whether a repeat NPE-recording attorney runs both Mynette and Surecell.
  • Context: transfer-to-asserter, timed to litigation. The '949 was conveyed to Surecell 28 days before Surecell filed suit.

Findings on the records themselves: (a) the pre-issuance 2022-02-22/25 pair shows the trust vehicle is used every time, not once; (b) the 2026-01-15 → 2026-02-12 gap of 28 days is the operative pre-litigation transfer; (c) all reel/frame and all correspondent fields are unverified in this analysis.

Discrepancy to flag (per your instruction to surface contradictions): the co-pending members of the Samsung suit are reported inconsistently across sources. Google Patents' family block lists US 11,599,734 B2, US 11,687,741 B1, US 11,989,612 B1, US 12,039,396 B2; the earlier-generated summary in this project rendered two of these as "US 11,689,612 B1" and "US 11,687,741 B1"; a Korean trade-press account renders them "11,687,741" and "11,989,612." These are transcription conflicts, not a legal finding — but at least one rendering is wrong and the asserted-patent list should be taken from the complaint itself.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11347949
    2005 : Colby files first RFID application
    2006 : Related switchable tag applications filed
    2016 : Colby assigns family to Colby Trust
         : Colby Trust assigns family to Mynette
    2021 : Application 17/522697 filed
    2022 : Issued as US 11347949
         : Colby assigns 949 to Colby Trust
         : Colby Trust assigns 949 back to Mynette
    2026 : Mynette assigns 949 to Surecell Transactions
         : Surecell sues Samsung in EDTX Marshall

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — PRESENT.
Concrete evidence, not naming: (i) the Fed. Cl. record establishes that the intermediate Steven M. Colby Trust exists solely to hold the portfolio between the individual inventor and the company, and it was used twice — 2016-09-25/26 for the ancestor filings and again 2022-02-22/25 for the '949; (ii) the Fed. Cl. court recorded that "litigation is Mynette's only business activity," which is a judicial statement that Mynette is non-operating; (iii) the 2026-01-15 conveyance to Surecell Transactions, LLC precedes the only known commercial use of the patent by 28 days, so the LLC's function in this chain is litigation and nothing else. Caveat: I could not verify Surecell's state of formation, registered agent, or single-membership — the "Transactions LLC" suffix alone proves nothing, and I am not resting the finding on it.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT as to the enumerated lists; UNCLEAR as to RPX/Unified.
Neither Mynette Technologies, Inc. nor Surecell Transactions, LLC appears in the enumerated set (Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg entities). What I do have is adjacent: Surecell appears in the Unified Patents litigation portal as the plaintiff in Texas E.D. case 2:26-cv-00106, the "Ex Parte" party page classifies it as an operating company (an automated label, which I do not credit), and Korean trade press describes it flatly as "美 NPE." I could not open an RPX or Unified asserter-directory entry for Surecell, so I cannot make the "public NPE list" call either way.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR / NOT VERIFIABLE.
The correspondent field is the single most valuable datum here and it is exactly the field I could not retrieve. This patent family has three recordings in the ancestor line (2016-09-25, 2016-09-26) plus four in the '949 line (2022-02-22, 2022-02-25, 2026-01-15) plus the parallel recordings on US 11,599,734 / 11,687,741 / 11,989,612 / 12,039,396. If the same correspondent appears on the 2016 trust→Mynette pair and the 2026 Mynette→Surecell link, that is a textbook recurrence finding. I am recording this as an open verification item rather than guessing. I decline to name Gregory M. Howison: he surfaced only in an unrelated PTAB petition snippet.

4. Cascading transfers — PRESENT.
Two documented rapid chains: 2016-09-25 → 2016-09-26 (Colby → Colby Trust → Mynette, under 24 hours) and 2022-02-22 → 2022-02-25 (Colby → Colby Trust → Mynette, three days) on the '949 itself. Both link the same two principals by construction (Colby as settlor/assignor; Mynette as end holder). The 2016 pattern is recited verbatim in the Fed. Cl. claim-construction opinion, so it is court-corroborated rather than inferred.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — PRESENT (strongest single signal).
Assignment recorded 2026-01-15 (Mynette → Surecell Transactions, LLC); Surecell Transactions LLC v. [Samsung Electronics America, Inc.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Samsung%20Electronics%20America%2C%20Inc.), No. 2:26-cv-00106 (E.D. Tex., Marshall Div., Judge Rodney Gilstrap), filed 2026-02-12, demand $500,000,000, jury demand by plaintiff, asserting six patents including the '949. 28 days. The venue choice (Marshall Division, Gilstrap) and the six-patent shotgun plead are consistent with an assertion vehicle assembled for this filing, and the transfer is within the 6-month window you flagged.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT.
No Chapter 7/11 filing by Colby, the Colby Trust, Mynette, or Surecell surfaced. The 2026 conveyance is a private transaction, not a §363 sale.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT.
There is no operating company anywhere in the transferor chain. Colby is an individual inventor who is also a patent prosecutor; Mynette and Surecell are non-operating. Nothing here looks like Apple/Nokia-style privateering — the assertion is originating from the inventor-controlled side, not being farmed out by a practicing manufacturer. (Note the direction differs from classic privateering, but the effect on Samsung is the same.)

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT.
The chain terminates at an asserting plaintiff (Surecell), not at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. Inverse of neutralization.

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Verdict

NPE — high confidence.

Two independent strong signals plus corroboration: (a) the 2026-01-15 Mynette → Surecell Transactions, LLC assignment lands 28 days before the 2026-02-12 filing of Surecell v. Samsung, 2:26-cv-00106 (E.D. Tex.), with a $500M demand — a clean pre-litigation transfer-to-asserter (Signal 5); and (b) the Federal Circuit-adjacent record in Mynette Techs. v. United States, No. 16-1647, states that "litigation is Mynette's only business activity" and imposes sanctions plus a portfolio-wide covenant not to sue for counsel's undisclosed ownership stake — direct evidence of a non-operating licensing/assertion entity, reinforced by the twice-used Colby Trust conduit (Signal 1 and Signal 4). Signal 2 is not established against the enumerated NPE lists and Signal 3 is unverified, so the verdict rests on (a) and (b) rather than on any inference from entity naming.

Action items to close the record (all require the actual Assignment Center filings):

1. Pull reel/frame, execution date, and correspondent of record for the 2022-02-22, 2022-02-25 and 2026-01-15 recordings — the 2026 correspondent is the decisive recurrence test.
2. Cross-check the same correspondent against the recordings on US 11,599,734, US 11,687,741/11,687,741, US 11,989,612/11,989,612 and US 12,039,396 to see whether one lawyer recorded the entire six-patent assertion set.
3. Confirm Surecell's formation date, state, registered agent and membership; if it was formed within months of the 2026-01-15 recording, Signal 1 upgrades from present to conclusive.

Search/verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ and https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html — search patent number 11347949 (and application 17/522,697). Google Patents legal events: https://patents.google.com/patent/US11347949/en. Litigation docket reference: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/Texas%20Eastern%20District%20Court/case/2%3A26-cv-00106.

I'll search for the patent's citation data and prior art references.

Let me dig into the specific citation tables and claim text.

Let me try to access the citation tables directly.

Scope note and a hard limitation up front

I ran searches against Google Patents, Justia, and patent-office full-text/ISR sources. Two things you need to know before reading the analysis:

1. I could not retrieve the front‑page "References Cited" / "Patent Citations" table for US 11,347,949 B2. The authoritative Google Patents text supplied for this analysis is truncated mid‑FIG. 30 and stops before the claims, the abstract, and the front‑page citation lists. My external searches returned citation tables for other documents (e.g., the ISRs of WO 2019/108898 A1, WO 2016/154192 A1, WO 2016/015155 A1, PCT/US2018/063253, etc.) — not the citation table of the '949 patent. So I cannot honestly enumerate "each patent citation for 11347949" as it appears on the front page. Anything I present below is drawn from the description of the '949 patent itself (the "patent documents cited in the description") plus the priority/family table, which is the best verifiable proxy — not the prosecution citation list.
2. I did not query the USPTO Patent Public Search / PatentCenter API directly — my tool is a general web search. Where I say "USPTO," treat it as "USPTO‑derived public records surfaced via Google Patents / Justia."

Also flagging a contradiction with the previously generated section: that section noted the working date as April 26, 2026 while the source metadata showed a fetch date of 2026‑09‑23. The record I retrieved lists the patent as "Expired – Lifetime," anticipated expiration 2026‑05‑07 — which is inconsistent with the given "today" of 2026‑04‑26 (the patent would still be in force on 2026‑04‑26). I cannot reconcile the dates and report status as listed. Additionally, that section's caveat stands: I still do not have verbatim claim text for the '949 patent.

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1. What the record itself tells us about the prior-art field

From the Google Patents record (authoritative, supplied):

Statutory framework point (important for any §102 analysis): the '949 patent is a continuation claiming the 2005‑05‑06 / 2006‑02‑07 priority chain. If the claims are supported by that priority (no new matter), their effective filing date predates March 16, 2013, and the pre‑AIA version of 35 U.S.C. §102 governs — i.e., §102(a), (b), (e), and (g), not AIA §102(a)(1)/(a)(2). This matters because much of what superficially "looks like" the invention post‑dates 2005 and would be irrelevant. I state this as a framework, not as a legal conclusion; if any claim is not entitled to the 2005 priority, the analysis changes.

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2. Patent documents cited in the description of the '949 patent (the verifiable proxy)

The following are expressly referenced in the '949 specification text. They are overwhelmingly directed to RF shielding, holders/wallets, and foldable/clamshell identity and transaction cards — i.e., the shielding embodiments — not to the cellular/inductive‑antenna subject matter named in the '949 title.

Candid §102 bottom line for this set: on their face, none of these references anticipates the cellular‑device/inductive‑antenna claims implied by the '949 title. They are cited to support the shielding / identity‑document disclosure that the continuation carries forward from the 2005 priority family. Any §102 mapping to specific '949 claim numbers is not possible for me to make responsibly without the literal claim text, which is absent from the supplied record and which my searches did not surface. I will not assign claim numbers speculatively.

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3. Same‑family documents (not prior art; listed so they are not confused with it)

The priority table shows the '949 is a link in a chain. Under the same‑family doctrine these are the inventor's own earlier/later disclosures, not §102 art against the '949:

• US 7,719,425 B2 — from 11/350,309 (2006‑02‑07)
• US 7,924,156 B2 — from 11/458,620 (2006‑07‑19)
• US 8,816,826 B2 — from 12/577,209 (2009‑10‑12)
• US 9,569,777 B2 — from 14/660,825 (2015‑03‑17)
• US 11,170,185 B2 — from 16/186,543 (2018‑11‑11)
• US 2015/0294126 A1 — "Mechanically Programmable RFID" (a sibling in the same 2005‑05‑06 family; the search hit patents.google.com/patent/US20150294126 lists US11347949B2 in its family table)
• Later continuations claiming priority to the '949 (per the record): US 11,599,734 B2 (from 17/697,923), US 11,689,612 B1 (from 17/728,412), US 11,687,741 B1 (from 17/952,176), US 12,039,396 B2 (from 18/422,929). These post‑date the '949 and are not prior art.

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4. False positives — DO NOT attribute these to the '949 patent

My citation‑table searches returned documents from other patents' search reports. None of the following is a citation of, or cited by, US 11,347,949 on the basis of anything I actually retrieved. Treat them as noise unless verified on the '949 front page:

• US 9,331,489 B2 (CyboEnergy, solar mini‑inverters) — a different "489," surfaced via a Unified Patents PATROLL contest page unrelated to the '949.
• US 8,861,166 B2 (Illinois Tool Works); US 4,901,194 A (Steinman); US 2016/0051713 A1 (Robert) — these appear in the ISR of WO 2019/108898 A1 / PCT/US2018/063253, not in the '949.
• US 2015/226621 A1, US 2020/236479 A1, US 2014/257051 A1 — from the ISR of WO 2022/094089 A1 / PCT/US2021/057064, a different case.
• US 7,395,479 (Teradyne) and the "’479" in the Richards/Zhou IPR — as the prior section correctly warned, not this patent.
• US 8,274,494, US 11,292,349, US 7,679,637, WO 2017/027872, CN 101951281A, CA 2093938A1, US 2005/0294126 — appear only in family/citation tables that happen to list the '949 as a member; their subject matter is unrelated.

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5. What I would need to complete this task authoritatively

To give you a genuine, claim‑mapped §102 chart, I need:

1. The literal claim set of US 11,347,949 B2 (USPTO Patent Public Search / PatentCenter, or the granted‑patent PDF). The supplied full text is truncated before the claims; without them, no honest anticipation mapping is possible.
2. The front‑page "References Cited" (U.S. Patent Documents / Foreign Patent Documents / Other Publications) from the '949 itself — ideally from the granted PDF, which I could not retrieve here. Since this is a continuation, that list likely overlaps the parent's, but I will not assume it.
3. The prosecution file history (any §102/§103 rejections and the references applied), to distinguish examiner‑cited art from applicant‑cited background art.

Verification status: bibliographic data (number, title, inventor, application 17/522,697, filing 2021‑11‑09, grant 2022‑05‑31, assignee chain Mynette → Colby Trust → Surecell Transactions LLC) is high‑confidence. The description‑cited references above are high‑confidence as citations within the spec but their dates are unverified this session and their §102 effect is conditional on claim text I do not have. I have deliberately not manufactured a citation list or a claim‑number chart.

I'll search for the actual claim text and for pre-2005 cellular/RFID art before building the § 103 analysis.

Let me pull the claim text and the Samsung petition grounds.

Let me verify the pre-2005 art landscape (the critical window for this patent's priority date).

Obviousness Analysis — US 11,347,949 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Patent: US 11,347,949 B2, "Cellular device including inductive antenna" (Colby; Mynette Technologies → Surecell Transactions, LLC)
Analysis date used: 2026-04-26 (see date flag in §1)

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1. Scope, sourcing, and threshold caveats

1.1 What I do and do not have

Three constraints carry over from the previously generated sections of this project and shape everything below:

1. No verbatim claim text. The authoritative Google Patents text supplied is truncated mid-FIG. 30 — before the abstract, before the claims, and before the front-page citation lists. My searches did not surface the literal claim set either. Every claim-element characterization below is either (a) drawn from the specification's "various embodiments" passages, or (b) drawn from a secondary-source complaint analysis of the co-pending E.D. Tex. action, and is labeled as such. I have not assigned speculative claim numbers.
2. Partial new datum (flag for the earlier sections). This session's searches surfaced an abstract for a Mynette-family "switchable devices including inductive antennas" patent on Justia's assignee page: "Various switchable devices including inductive antennas are disclosed. These switchable devices may include one or more RFID tags and one or more switches. Some of these one or more switches are optionally wireless and/or manual. In various embodiments, the switchable devices include are included within cellular phones, security devices, identity devices, financial devices, remote controls, and the like. The switchable devices are optionally configured to perform financial transactions." This is probably the '949 abstract (the "inductive antenna" phrasing tracks the '949 title), but Justia's assignee page lists several sibling patents, so I cannot confirm attribution. The earlier summary's statement that no abstract was retrievable is therefore partially but not reliably cured.
3. Date discrepancy — unresolved and now material again. This task states the current date is April 26, 2026. Earlier-generated sections reported the source metadata fetch date as 2026-09-23, and the PTAB section of this project relied on IPR2026-00507 having been filed 2026-09-22. If April 26, 2026 is operative, that IPR could not yet exist. I flag this rather than reconcile it. It does not affect the § 103 analysis below, which turns on 2004–2005 art, but it does affect any calendaring of § 315(b) deadlines.

1.2 Two structural points that dominate the whole analysis

(a) The priority date determines whether the obviousness case even has ammunition. Google Patents assumes a prior-art date of 2005-05-06 and lists the priority chain as running from US 11/350,309, filed 2006-02-07. The '949 itself was filed 2021-11-09 as a continuation. Because it was filed before March 16, 2013, the pre-AIA version of § 102 and § 103 governs (assuming no claim is found to be unsupported by the 2005/2006 disclosure).

(b) If the '949's cellular/inductive-antenna claims are entitled to the 2005 priority, virtually the entire modern NFC-mobile-payment art corpus is not prior art. This is the single most important point in this memo, and it cuts against the patent owner's opponents as much as for them. Specifically:

Practical consequence: a § 103 case against the '949 must be built almost entirely on 1998–2005 pre-NFC-standardization art on (i) mobile phones with embedded transponders, (ii) contactless smartcards in or for cell phones, (iii) mobile-telephone financial transactions, and (iv) phones that operate as passive/inductively-fed transponders. The good news, developed below, is that this pre-2005 art is unusually rich and unusually close.

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2. Claim scaffold used for the analysis

Because I lack the literal claims, I built the element scaffold below from (i) the '949 specification's "various embodiments" language, (ii) the complaint analysis's description of the asserted '949 and '741 theories, and (iii) the '949 abstract (probable). Treat it as a working hypothesis, not as claim construction.

The spec's own text also states the switch "is optical, thermal, magnetic, mechanical, wireless, and/or electronic" and may be "turned on or off by a circuit external to Switchable RFID Device." That breadth is what makes E5 attackable — and it is also what makes the term vulnerable under § 112, a separate issue from § 103.

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3. Candidate prior art set and its § 102 status

The prior-art section of this project concluded — correctly — that the references cited in the '949 specification are predominantly RF-shielding, wallet/case, and foldable-card art (US 2004/0117514; US 2005/0011776; US 2004/0256469; US 2004/0237360; US 4,744,497; US 2004/0169087; US 2004/0089724; US 5,700,037; US 2005/0205665; US 2002/0117243), and that the front-page citation table was not retrievable. Those references are relevant to the shielding claims, not to the cellular/inductive-antenna claims. This session added a materially better set:

Explicitly excluded as same-family / non-art: US 7,719,425; US 7,924,156; US 8,816,826; US 9,569,777; US 11,170,185; US 11,599,734; US 11,687,741; US 11,989,612; US 12,039,396; and US 2015/0294126. These are Colby's own disclosures across the § 120 chain and are disqualified under § 102(b)'s "by another" requirement, under § 102(e) (same inventor / common ownership), and under § 103(c) for § 102(e)/(f)/(g) art. Do not build a ground on them.

Explicitly excluded as false positives (per the earlier prior-art section, still valid): US 7,395,479 (Teradyne), US 9,331,489 (CyboEnergy), US 8,861,166, US 4,901,194, US 2016/0051713, US 2015/226621, US 2020/236479, US 2014/257051, US 8,274,494, US 11,292,349, US 7,679,637, WO 2017/027872, CN 101951281A, CA 2093938A1.

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4. Grounds of rejection

Each ground states (a) the combination, (b) the element mapping, (c) the motivation to combine, and (d) reasonable expectation of success. Motivations are stated in the register MPEP § 2143 and KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) require — articulated reasoning with a rational underpinning, not hindsight.

Ground 1 — Nokia '981 in view of Vatanen '890 (and/or Heinonen '806)

Combination: US 6,771,981 (changeable device cover with embedded RF transponder; payment system) + US 6,169,890 (mobile telephone system and method for carrying out financial transactions) or US 6,078,806 (method for using applications in a mobile station; system for effecting payments).

Mapping:

Motivation to combine (explicit, evidence-anchored):

1. Same field of endeavor and same problem. Both '981 and '890/'806 address the same recognized problem: consumers must carry a separate item (keyfob, card, transponder) to make an electronic payment, and '981 states the object is to eliminate that separate item by integrating the transponder into the device the consumer already carries — the phone. '890/'806 address the complementary half — how the network performs the financial transaction. Combining them is the combination of two halves of one known system.
2. KSR "predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions." Putting a payment-authorizing network method ('890) behind an interrogation-responsive transponder embedded in a phone ('981) uses each reference for exactly the function it was designed for, with the predictable result that the phone can complete a contactless financial transaction.
3. '981 itself supplies the "why now." It expressly identifies the existing-market need (transponder-in-phone payments) and teaches the physical implementation. There is no new engineering problem created by the combination.
4. Industry momentum as objective evidence of the motivation's reasonableness: the 2004 NTT DoCoMo/Sony FeliCa mobile-wallet deployment (per Samsung's own IPR exhibit, describing FeliCa "coupled with Osaifu-Keitai") establishes that the industry was already converging on this combination before the critical date — i.e., the combination was not merely obvious in theory, it was the recognized commercial trajectory.
5. Reasonable expectation of success: both references were issued patents in commercial deployment; the transponder-cover of '981 was actually built and sold by Nokia; the payment system of '890/'806 was a working GSM-based system. Nothing about the combination required new physics.

Expected patent-owner rebuttal: '981's transponder is in the cover and its state change is mechanical/structural, not an "electronic switch" state of a circuit; and '890/'806 are network-side, not device-side. That argument narrows "electronic switch" — which is precisely the construction fight already flagged in the E.D. Tex. case, and which the spec's own statement that the switch may be "electronic, wireless, and/or mechanical" undercuts.

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Ground 2 — Zatloukal '984 in view of Nokia '981 and Vatanen '890

Combination: US 8,127,984 + US 6,771,981 + US 6,169,890.

Why this is the strongest "E5/E6" ground. The Zatloukal file history (as retrieved) contains the examiner's statement of reasons for allowance describing claims to a "transmitter/transceiver configured to output/transmit voice calls in a first state and RFID transponder signals in a second state wherein the transceiver/transmitter switches states, and outputs the RFID transponder signal/data in the RFID reader compatible format." That is, in plain terms: a phone that switches between a voice-call state and an RFID-transponder state, where the RFID communication is conditioned on the state. That maps directly onto E5+E6, and does so in an apparatus claim to a phone — the same statutory category as the asserted '949 Claim 1.

Add '981 for the transponder-in-phone payment context (E3, E4) and '890 for the financial-transaction back end (E4).

Motivation to combine:

1. The examiner in the Zatloukal case itself used exactly this combination-of-concepts logic, reasoning about whether the referenced art taught voice plus RFID reader versus voice plus RFID tag/transponder. That is contemporaneous evidence that a POSITA in this art was actively thinking about state-switched voice/RFID mobile devices as of the early-to-mid 2000s.
2. Explicit design incentive in '981: the transponder must not be continuously available, or the consumer's phone becomes a device that can be interrogated (and thus charged/identified) without the consumer's knowledge. Gating the transponder on a state is the obvious answer, and it is the very rationale '981 embodies structurally.
3. KSR "known technique to improve similar devices in the same way." State-switching an RF front end (voice vs. data, or RF vs. RFID) was a known technique in mobile handset design; applying it to a transponder-equipped phone is a predictable application.
4. Reasonable expectation of success: no new components; a state machine and a transceiver mode are within ordinary handset design skill.

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Ground 3 — Fox '624 in view of Nokia '981 (and Vatanen '890)

Combination: US 5,943,624 (contactless smartcard for use in a cellular telephone) + US 6,771,981.

Fox teaches the core physical integration — a contactless smartcard for use in a cellular telephone — and predates everything else in the set (1999). '981 supplies the embedded-transponder-in-device physical form factor and the payment system.

Motivation: the two references attack the identical problem (a phone that is also a contactless payment/identification instrument) from the two available physical implementations (a card inserted into / used with the phone, versus a transponder embedded in the phone or its cover). A POSITA seeking the benefit of both — the smartcard's financial-institution acceptance and the cover-transponder's non-removability — would combine them, and doing so yields the predictable result that the phone itself performs the contactless financial function without a separate item. This is the "obvious to try" / finite number of identified, predictable solutions situation from KSR Part II.

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Ground 4 — "Ritter" in view of Nokia '981 (and Seppinen 2004/0069852 for mobile-device RFID functionality)

Combination: the Ritter international published application (as characterized in the PTAB record) + US 6,771,981 + US 2004/0069852.

As described in the PTAB materials surfaced this session, Ritter discloses a mobile device with an inductive interface and communication controller that (i) can be inductively fed by an external device, (ii) can read and be read in inductively-coupled operation, and (iii) is expressly usable "as an electronic key with a physical access monitoring device." If that characterization is accurate and the reference predates 2005-05-06:

Add '981 for the financial-payment application (E4), and 2004/0069852 for the proposition that RFID functionality in a mobile device was known (as the examiner in the Zatloukal file history used it).

Motivation:

1. Express teaching, not inference. Ritter itself discloses an access-control/electronic-key use; extending a mobile device that already acts as a contactless key into a mobile device that acts as a contactless financial credential is the substitution of one recognized use of the same inductive interface for another, with the same hardware and the same reader infrastructure.
2. The user's own spec frames it the same way. The '949 specification lists "access devices," "security devices," and "financial cards" as interchangeable applications of the same switchable RFID device, and describes the "key" use with lock activation. That is the patentee's own statement that these applications are a matter of design choice — an admission usable against them under KSR and MPEP § 2144.04.
3. Reasonable expectation of success: identical hardware, identical inductive coupling physics, established reader protocols.

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Ground 5 — Grove/Biometric ground: US 7,865,448 + Nokia '981 + Zatloukal '984 (for the '741-style biometric limitation)

If, as the complaint analysis reports, the asserted family claims include "activating the electronic switch… responsive to a biometric sensor" (identified for the '741), the strongest ground is US 7,865,448 (filed 2004-10-19, i.e., pre-dating the 2005-05-06 invention date and therefore § 102(e) art) in view of '981 and Zatloukal.

US 7,865,448 claims methods of initiating a cellular telephone for performing transactions, including receiving biometric information read from a person initiating the call, confirming it against a stored biometric record, receiving an encryption key and an electromagnetic identification code from the phone, and wirelessly transmitting account-transaction-mechanism information back to the phone. It is, functionally, a phone-transaction system gated by biometric authentication.

Motivation: '981/'890 establish the contactless-payment-in-phone apparatus; '448 establishes that gating a phone financial transaction on biometric verification of the user was a known and desirable security measure in the same art and for the same reason (preventing unauthorized use of another's payment credentials). Combining them uses each reference for its established function and yields the predictable result of a biometric-gated contactless payment phone. KSR: identified, predictable solution to a known security problem; the security motivation is express.

Caveat: I verified the filing date (2004-10-19) and the claim content as reported by RPX Insight. I did not verify the '949's or the '741's actual recitation of a biometric limitation. If no '949 claim recites biometrics, this ground is irrelevant to the '949 and belongs to the sibling.

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Ground 6 — Multi-account / multi-slot embodiments (E8, E10), if claimed

If any '949 claim recites user-selectable transmission of first data or second data (e.g., two memory devices / two account identifiers), the combination is Vatanen '890 / Heinonen '806 (multiple applications and accounts within one mobile station, with a user interface selecting among them) in view of '981 and the phone-as-payment-device art above. The motivation is express in '806, which is directed to using applications in a mobile station — the notion that one phone presents different payment/application identities depending on user selection.

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5. KSR factors and secondary considerations

KSR Part I (predictable results from known elements): Each ground above combines a mobile handset, a near-field/inductive interface, an application-level state control, and a financial-transaction data set — all known, all combined for their established functions with no new physical principle. The claimed subject matter as a whole is the aggregation.

KSR Part II (finite, predictable solutions): Integrating a contactless credential into a phone in 2005 had a small, well-defined set of physical options — the phone's cover (Nokia '981), the SIM (US 2005/0216344 A1), a removable card/plug-in (US 5,943,624), or the handset body (Seppinen 2004/0069852). A POSITA would have had a reasonable expectation of success with each.

KSR Part III (design incentives/market forces): '981 and '806 document the market need — eliminating a separately carried payment/transponder item. The 2004 NTT DoCoMo/FeliCa deployment and the 2006–2007 Nokia/MasterCard, Motorola/Discover, and Kyocera/MasterCard pilots (as described in a Samsung IPR exhibit) demonstrate that the market was already delivering the combination. Careful: the 2006–2007 pilots are not prior art against a 2005 date; they are usable only as evidence of industry direction, and a patent owner will object to any use of them as § 102 art. Keep them out of the grounds.

Secondary considerations — the patent owner's likely (and weak) case:

The only genuinely strong non-obviousness arguments available to the patent owner are priority-based, not merits-based: (i) that the cellular/inductive-antenna claims are entitled to 2005-05-06, which (as § 1.2 shows) strips out the entire 2006+ NFC corpus; and (ii) that the specific combination, with the specific "electronic switch" construction, was not taught in a single reference. Argument (i) is a disqualification argument that helps the patent owner exclude most modern art; it does not help against the 1999–2004 grounds above, which is precisely why those grounds matter.

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6. Principal weaknesses in the obviousness case — read this before relying on it

Legal/procedural:

1. I do not have the claims. Every element mapping above is provisional. A rejection cannot be drafted from this memo; it must be drafted against the literal claim text from USPTO Patent Public Search / PatentCenter (or the granted PDF).
2. Priority is the whole ballgame. If the '949's cellular claims are supported by the 2005-05-06 disclosure, then (a) pre-AIA § 103 applies, (b) the § 102(b) critical date is on the order of 2004-05-06, and (c) a substantial part of the seemingly strongest art (the August 2004 Nokia '981 issue date; the July 2004 FeliCa launch; US 2004/0069852's April 2004 publication) falls outside § 102(b) and must be asserted under § 102(a) or § 102(e). Those provisions require the art to predate the applicant's date of invention — which the patent owner may attempt to antedate under Rule 131 with evidence of conception and diligence. All the § 102(a)/(e) art must therefore be tied to filing dates, not publication dates, and the earlier of the two must be documented.
3. § 102(e) "by another" and § 103(c) traps. Some of the best art sits close to the Colby family in time and technology. Confirm none of the candidates is (i) the same inventive entity, (ii) commonly owned at the time the '949 was made, or (iii) disqualified § 102(f)/(g) art. The Nokia-lineage references (6,077,806 / 6,771,981 / 7,155,199) were identified from the '981 reference list; verify each one's true inventor and assignee — the reference list at '981 mixes assignees (Nokia, Gilbarco, TI, Eberhardt, Vatanen) and one page-OCR artifact conflates the '199 disclosure with the '806 lineage.
4. § 103(c) (pre-AIA) applies because the '949 is pre-AIA: commonly owned § 102(e)/(f)/(g) art cannot be used in a § 103 rejection. The Colby Trust ↔ Mynette ↔ Surecell chain is relevant here, as is any identity or contracting relationship between Colby and any reference author.

Evidentiary:

1. "Ritter" is unverified. I could not retrieve its number, its date, or its text; I have only a PTAB characterisation filtered through an expert declaration. Do not cite it without pulling the document.
2. US 2005/0216344 A1 and US 2005/0278222 A1 are, on their faces, published after the critical date. Whether they qualify under § 102(e) depends entirely on their US filing dates, which I did not verify. Same for the Zatloukal national-stage application 10/560,262 — the application number format suggests a § 371 national stage, so the PCT filing date, not the US filing date, controls § 102(e) (pre-AIA § 102(e) expressly reaches international applications designating the US and published in English).
3. The NTT DoCoMo/FeliCa 2004 deployment is currently supported only by Samsung's characterization in an unrelated IPR petition exhibit. Public-use art requires corroborated documentary evidence of what was sold and when. Obtain it independently.

Strategic:

1. The parallel IPR is a one-day-old petition and has no estoppel effect. Per the earlier section, IPR2026-00507 was filed 2026-09-22, and under § 315(e)(2) estoppel runs only from a final written decision. Nothing in this analysis is bound or foreclosed by it, and nothing in this analysis should be represented as an PTAB finding.
2. Do not conflate this analysis with the Samsung other-patent IPRs. The Sklovsky/Dua ground, the Jain ground, and the Labrou/Dominguez/Arthur/Young grounds surfaced in this session are from Samsung petitions against different patents (a '493 patent, a '756 patent, a '770 patent, a '790 patent, a '087 patent, and '765-patent invalidity contentions). None of those references is prior art to the '949 if the 2005 priority holds, and treating them as though they were is the single most likely error a reader of those search results could make.

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7. What I would need to complete an enforceable § 103 analysis

1. Literal claim set of US 11,347,949 B2 (PatentCenter / Patent Public Search), plus the abstract, for attribution of the Justia abstract noted in § 1.1.
2. The '949's own front-page "References Cited," and — more importantly — the prosecution history of application 17/522,697 and of 16/186,543 (US 11,170,185), the immediate parent, to learn (a) whether the examiner ever applied § 102/§ 103 art and (b) whether any priority rejection occurred. If an examiner ever found the cellular claims unsupported by the 2005/2006 disclosure, the entire art landscape changes and the 2006+ NFC corpus becomes fair game. This is the highest-value single document to obtain.
3. Filing dates (not publication dates) for each candidate in § 3, and for the corresponding PCT applications where relevant.
4. The actual Samsung IPR2026-00507 petition (PTAB E2E, proceeding IPR2026-00507) — its grounds and art set will tell you immediately what a sophisticated, well-resourced challenger selected as the best art against these claims, and whether it selected 2004-era art or (as would be a priority-position error) modern NFC art.
5. The complaint's Appendix A claim charts in Surecell Transactions LLC v. [Samsung Electronics America, Inc.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Samsung%20Electronics%20America%2C%20Inc.), No. 2:26-cv-00106 (E.D. Tex.) — the secondary-source analysis expressly notes these were not included in the documents it reviewed, so I still do not have the patent owner's own element-by-element reading of the claims. The patent owner's own claim chart is ordinarily the best single source for the claim text and for the broadest reasonable reading of "electronic switch."

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8. Bottom line

The claims appear obvious over 1999–2004 mobile-telephone-with-transponder art, contingent on three things I could not verify.

• Strongest single ground: US 6,771,981 (Nokia; changeable cover with embedded interrogation-responsive RF transponder for a payment system) in view of US 6,169,890 or US 6,078,806 (mobile-telephone financial transactions). This covers E1–E4, E6, E9 and much of E5.
• Strongest ground for the "electronic switch" limitation (E5/E6) — the term the E.D. Tex. case identifies as the central construction dispute: US 8,127,984 (Zatloukal; phone transceiver that switches between a voice-call state and an RFID-transponder state, outputting reader-compatible transponder data), in view of the '981/'890 combination. A phone that switches states and whose RFID transmission follows the state is, on its face, the recited structure.
• Strongest ground for a biometric-gated version (E7, if claimed): US 7,865,448 (filed 2004-10-19; cellular telephone transaction initiation with biometric verification and an electromagnetic identification code).
• Motivation to combine is well supported across all grounds by the same reference-level problem statement (eliminating the separately carried transponder/card), by KSR's market-demand and predictable-use rationales, and by the express pre-critical-date commercial convergence on phone-based contactless payment.
• The decisive vulnerability is priority, not merits. If the cellular/inductive-antenna claims are entitled to 2005-05-06, the modern NFC art is unusable and the case must be run on the 1999–2004 references above; if any claim is denied that priority, the case becomes far easier. I would resolve that question — via the prosecution history and any priority challenge in the pending IPR — before investing in any claim chart.