US 11683401

I'll search for the specific patent number and any CAFC 2026 docket activity.

Let me try to obtain the granted claim text and check for any CAFC 2026 docket tied to this exact number.

Search scope and a date discrepancy I need to flag first

I searched for the literal string 11683401 / 11,683,401 (no auto-correction) across Google Patents, Justia, the PTAB/PTACTS mirror, Docket Alarm, CourtListener, the Federal Circuit opinion-orders index, govinfo, and Unified Patents' portal. I did not return records for similar numbers (e.g., the NH patent-roundup entries for US 11,681,293 / 11,680,996 / 11,682,822 / 11,679,320, or the "116834010" string shown on wiki.golden.com) except where explicitly flagged.

Date contradiction: your task header says "Current Date: April 26, 2026," while my operating context establishes today as 2026-09-28. As in the earlier-generated sections, I treat the later date as operative where it matters, and I note here that it does not change anything in this section — I found no '401-specific event in either window.

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Bibliographic summary — US 11,683,401 B2

Corroboration of the assignee/inventor fields: a New Hampshire patent-roundup listing patents assigned through June 25, 2023 states: "CENTRIPETAL NETWORKS, LLC, Portsmouth, New Hampshire has been assigned a patent (No. US 11683401 B2, initially filed Feb. 17, 2021) developed by five inventors David K. Ahn … Peter P. Geremia … Pierre Mallett, III … Sean Moore … and Robert T. Perry … for 'Correlating packets in communications networks.'" (Granite Geek / Targeted News Service, 2023-06-26). This confirms five inventors and the LLC as assignee at issue. Note one secondary source (patentleaderboard) lists only four inventors for the '401, omitting Mallett — I treat that as an error, since both the issuance listing and the Google Patents record show five.

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Abstract (verbatim, as it appears on the '401 record)

"A computing system may identify packets received by a network device from a host located in a first network and may generate log entries corresponding to the packets received by the network device. The computing system may identify packets transmitted by the network device to a host located in a second network and may generate log entries corresponding to the packets transmitted by the network device. Utilizing the log entries corresponding to the packets received by the network device and the log entries corresponding to the packets transmitted by the network device, the computing system may correlate the packets transmitted by the network device with the packets received by the network device."

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Independent claims — plain language

Important limitation first. This is the item the earlier sections repeatedly flagged as not obtained, and it is now only partially resolved. I retrieved claim text from the pre-grant publication US 2021/0203761 A1 (application 17/177,572 — i.e., the '401's own application) via Justia, but:

• the excerpt showed claims 11 through 24 and did not display claims 1–10;
• I could not confirm that the granted claims of US 11,683,401 B2 are identical to the published application's claims in number, scope, or numbering;
• I therefore describe the independent claims as reflected in the publication, and I flag that this is not a verified reading of the granted patent's claim set.

Independent claim at 11 — computer-readable media. Media storing instructions that: receive a rule that causes generation of log entries when packets satisfy predefined criteria; identify a first set of packets received by a first network entity from a first host in a first network; generate, based on the rule, first log entries for those packets; identify a second set of packets transmitted by a second network entity to a second host in a second network; generate second log entries; correlate the received-packet and transmitted-packet sets by comparing the two log entries on one or more of an ingress identifier, an egress identifier, network-layer information, transport-layer information, and application-layer information; determine, based on the correlating, that either or both hosts are associated with a malicious entity; and generate a notification including an indication of the malicious entity.

Independent claim at 16 — computer-readable media. Same skeleton but anchored on a single "device" rather than first/second entities: receive a rule keyed to predefined criteria (network-layer, transport-layer, and/or application-layer information); identify a first set of packets received by the device from a first host in a first network; generate first log entries based on the rule; identify a second set of packets transmitted by the device to a second host in a second network; generate second log entries based on the rule; and correlate the two sets by comparing the first and second log entries. Dependent claim 17 adds that the device performs network address translation before transmitting; claim 20 adds correlation by comparing times in the first and second log entries.

Independent claim at 21 — apparatus. One or more processors plus memory storing instructions that cause the apparatus to do the claim-16 sequence with first/second network entities, and then generate a notification that comprises an indication of the malicious entity. Dependent claim 22 adds NAT at the second network entity.

Additional dependent subject matter visible in the publication: generating, based on the correlating, new rules configured to identify packets associated with the malicious entity; provisioning computing devices with those rules; and causing those devices to drop packets transmitted by the first host. (This is the same "responsive-to-correlating rule generation + provisioning" nexus that the earlier PTAB section identified as the family's litigated § 103 battleground.)

What I could not verify: claims 1–10 of the publication (presumably a method claim set with its own independent claim); the granted claim count; and whether the granted '401 retains the ingress/egress-identifier recitation in its independent claims. Anyone relying on claim scope should pull the issued patent's claim column from Patent Center or the granted-PDF, not from this publication-derived summary.

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USPTO and CAFC 2026 docket check — result: nothing names the '401

No CAFC 2026 docket, and no 2026 USPTO proceeding, that I found names US 11,683,401. This is a negative finding from a finite search set, not a certified clearance.

What does exist in 2026 is appellate activity in the Centripetal portfolio, all of it on other patent numbers — I list these specifically so they are not mistaken for '401 activity:

• Centripetal Networks, LLC v. ITC / Keysight, No. 24-1416 (Fed. Cir. Apr. 23, 2026) — nonprecedential; concerns the '370 patent and the '917 patent, not the '401. Panel affirmed the ITC's no-violation determination (technical prong failure; waiver of the non-infringement challenge), and in the companion appeal affirmed unpatentability of claims 11 and 20 of the '917 patent over Sourcefire. Source: https://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-orders/24-1416.OPINION.4-23-2026_2681340.pdf
• Centripetal Networks, LLC v. Keysight Technologies, Inc. (Fed. Cir. Apr. 23, 2026) — affirmed-in-part/reversed-in-part as to US 10,193,917 ("Rule-Based Network-Threat Detection"), Sourcefire and Sourcefire + Macaulay, including reversal of the Board's non-obviousness holding on claims 4 and 14 and its construction of "packet flow entry." See IPWatchdog, Apr. 23, 2026.
• Cisco v. Centripetal — Fed. Cir. Apr. 29, 2026 — refused to revive Centripetal's Cisco case (Law360: "Cisco Keeps Win In Cybersecurity Patent Fight At Fed. Circ."). Concerns the Cisco-asserted patents, not the '401.
• Palo Alto Networks v. Centripetal, No. 23-2027 (Fed. Cir. Oct. 22, 2025) — vacated/remanded FWD on the '856 patent.
• A further 2026 appellate decision involving Keysight and the Law/Golnabi references and claims 6, 14, 22, 30, 33 — again an IPR on a different Centripetal patent, not the '401.

The earlier sections' family-level litigation finding holds: the '401 itself has never been the subject of an identified district-court assertion, ITC assertion, IPR, PGR, or CBM, and the "Family has litigation" flag on the Google Patents page reflects the family (and a Darts-ip family ID 54838454), not a case naming this patent. No IPR/PGR specifically on the '401 appeared in this pass either, consistent with the earlier PTAB section.

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Explicit uncertainties

1. Granted claim set of the '401 — not obtained. The plain-language claim overview above derives from the pre-grant publication US 2021/0203761 A1 and covers only the independent claims visible in the excerpt (11, 16, 21); claims 1–10 were not displayed, and I cannot confirm the granted claims match the publication.
2. Priority date — 2015-02-10 (Google Patents / '401 record; consistent with the '370's 02/10/2015 filing shown in the ADS/PTACTS continuation data) vs. 2015-02-09 (Unified Patents). Unresolved; reported literally.
3. '401 claim count — unknown. (The immediate parent '797 issued with 20 claims and a terminal disclaimer; I am not inferring the '401's count from that.)
4. CAFC/USPTO docketing — my "no 2026 '401 proceeding" conclusion rests on web-indexed sources (Justia, Docket Alarm, CourtListener, govinfo, the CAFC opinion index, Unified Patents), not on a direct PACER/Docket Navigator/Lex Machina or USPTO PTAB-API query. If a court-of-record answer is needed, run the patent number against the USPTO Patent Center "Proceedings" tab and the PTAB API filtered on 11,683,401.
5. Inventor count — five per the issuance listing and Google Patents; one secondary source shows four. I treat five as correct.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 11683401. Let me run several targeted searches.

Let me dig deeper into the specific patent and its family litigation.

Let me check the Unified Patents litigation portal directly and search for any case asserting the '401 patent.

Bottom line

Based on my searches, I could not identify any court case in which US Patent No. 11,683,401 ("the '401 patent") was itself asserted, adjudicated, or challenged. What exists is substantial litigation involving the patent family to which the '401 belongs — all of it Centripetal Networks' campaign against Cisco, Keysight, and Palo Alto Networks. The "Family has litigation" flag you'll see on the Google Patents page (and the litigation documents attached to the '401 on the Unified Patents portal) reflect that family-level association, not proof that the '401 itself was ever asserted.

I want to be transparent: I hit my tool-call limit before I could run the exact Unified Patents litigation-portal query for the '401, so the absence of a confirmed '401 assertion is a negative finding from a finite set of searches, not a certified clear-the-docket result.

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The patent at issue

• US 11,683,401 B2, "Correlating packets in communications networks"
• Assignee: Centripetal Networks, LLC (originally Centripetal Networks, Inc.), Portsmouth/Reston, NH/VA
• Application 17/177,572, filed Feb. 17, 2021; issued June 20, 2023; priority date Feb. 10, 2015
• Inventors: David K. Ahn, Peter P. Geremia, Pierre Mallett III, Sean Moore, Robert T. Perry
• It is a continuation in a chain: 14/618,967 (now US 9,264,370) → 14/714,207 (US 9,560,176) → 15/413,947 (US 10,530,903) → 16/554,293 → 16/854,094 → 17/177,572 (the '401).
• Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US11683401/en

The two family members that carry the family's litigation history are US 9,264,370 ("the '370 patent") and US 9,560,176 ("the '176 patent") — both titled "Correlating packets in communications networks" and sharing the '401's specification.

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Litigation in the '401 patent family (not the '401 itself)

1. Centripetal Networks, Inc. v. Cisco Systems, Inc.

• Court: U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Norfolk Division
• Case No.: 2:18-cv-00094 (EWH-LRL) (also cited as 2:18-cv-0094)
• Filed: February 2018
• Patents asserted: US 9,686,193 ('193) and US 9,203,806 ('806); the '176 patent (a '401 family member) was also briefed/adjudicated in the case (see Dkt. 766, supplemental findings re the '176 patent)
• Outcome/status: Oct. 2020 bench ruling of willful infringement and ~$1.9 billion award; reversed by the Federal Circuit on the recusal issue (Judge Morgan's wife held Cisco stock); on remand Judge Hanes found non-infringement; Fed. Cir. affirmed April 29, 2026; Centripetal filed a second cert petition to the Supreme Court (Sept. 2026).
• Sources: Law360 "Cisco Keeps Win In Cybersecurity Patent Fight At Fed. Circ." (April 29, 2026); IPWatchdog "Latest Centripetal SCOTUS Petition…" (Sept. 23, 2026); courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.vaed.383474

2. Centripetal Networks, Inc. v. Keysight Technologies, Inc. and Ixia

• Court: E.D. Va., Norfolk Division
• Case No.: 2:17-cv-00383 (HCM-LRL)
• Filed: 2017
• Patents asserted: US 9,137,205; 9,264,370 ('370); 9,413,722; 9,565,213; 9,917,856; 9,560,077
• Status: appears resolved by a confidential binding term sheet between Centripetal and Keysight/Ixia dated Oct. 9, 2018 (license/settlement)
• Source: Expert report cited at ptacts.uspto.gov

3. Centripetal Networks, LLC v. Palo Alto Networks, Inc.

• Court: E.D. Va., Norfolk Division
• Case No.: 2:21-cv-00137 (EWH-LRL)
• Filed: 2021
• Status: litigated through damages/§101/claim-construction motions; Palo Alto also filed IPRs against related Centripetal patents (e.g., IPR2021-01150, IPR2022-00182 on the '856 patent)
• Source: docketalarm.com, courtlistener.com (Fed. Cir. 2024 opinion, No. 23-2027)

4. Centripetal Networks, Inc. v. Keysight Technologies, Inc. (second, broader suit)

• Court: E.D. Va.
• Case No.: 2:22-cv-00002 (EWH)
• Filed: January 1, 2022
• Patents: multiple Centripetal patents; Keysight challenged eight patents at the PTAB (most/all claims invalidated; appeals continued into 2026)
• Status: ongoing appeals as of 2026
• Source: Keysight SEC Form 10-K "Commitments and Contingencies" (filed 2025–2026)

5. Certain Computer Network Security Equipment and Systems (ITC Section 337)

• Forum: U.S. International Trade Commission
• Complaint filed April 19, 2022 (supplement April 29, 2022; Notice of Investigation published May 24, 2022 — Fed. Reg.)
• Complainant: Centripetal Networks, Inc. (Reston, VA); Respondent: Keysight Technologies, Inc. (Santa Rosa, CA)
• Patents asserted: US 9,264,370 ('370); US 10,193,917 ('917); US 10,284,526 ('526) — the '370 is a '401 family member; the '401 was not asserted (it had not yet issued in April 2022)
• Outcome: ITC Notice of Determination Dec. 5, 2023 — no Section 337 violation; Fed. Cir. affirmed April 23, 2026 (Centripetal Networks, LLC v. ITC, No. 24-1416)
• Source: federalregister.gov notice (2022-11079)
• Caveat: I could not confirm the specific Investigation No. (I believe it is 337-TA-1315, but the notice text I retrieved did not restate it), so please verify.

6. Non-U.S. proceedings (for completeness, same family/campaign)

• German nullity actions filed Feb. 2022 re three Centripetal German patents (validity largely defeated);
• UPC complaint filed Aug. 21, 2024 alleging Keysight products sold in DE/FR/IT/NL infringe a European Centripetal patent; Dec. 2025 UPC written determination of no infringement; EPO revoked the patent Nov. 2025; appeals pending (EPO hearing Nov. 2026).
• Sources: Keysight SEC 10-K; Unified Patents patent page.

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Evidence I found tying the '401 to litigation — and its limits

• The Unified Patents portal page for US-11683401-B2 (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-11683401-B2) displays exhibits "as cited in Complaint of Centripetal Networks, Inc. dated Apr. 19, 2022" — i.e., the ITC/Keysight complaint exhibits (e.g., "Infringement Chart for US 9,264,370," "Certified Assignments for US 10,284,526," Keysight ThreatARMOR/Vision datasheets).
• Interpretation: These are the exhibits for the family patents actually asserted ('370, '917, '526). Unified Patents appears to map the entire litigation document set to every patent in the family, which is why the '401 page shows them. This is strong evidence of a family-level association but not evidence that claim language of the '401 was charted or asserted.
• Google Patents' "Family has litigation" entry links a Darts-ip family ID (54838454) — again family-level.

No IPR specifically on the '401 surfaced in my searches. The Centripetal patents I saw challenged at the PTAB by Keysight/Palo Alto/Cisco were the '856, '343, '009, '917, '526, '176, '193, '806, '148, etc. — not the '401.

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Caveats and recommended verification

1. Negative result, not a clearance. The '401 issued June 20, 2023, so it could only have been asserted in cases filed (or amended) after that date. My searches did not surface any such assertion, but I could not exhaustively query PACER, Docket Navigator, Lex Machina, or the Unified Patents litigation case list due to tool limits.
2. The Unified Patents association is ambiguous (family-level vs. case-level). To confirm definitively, check the "Litigation" tab on Unified Patents' '401 page and cross-check each listed case's asserted-patent list against the complaint.
3. Date note: my search results include items dated up to late September 2026, which post-date the "current date" in your instruction; I have reported events by their stated dates.
4. I did not auto-correct any patent or case identifiers; all numbers above are reproduced as found in the sources.

If you need a definitive, court-of-record answer, the fastest path is: (a) Unified Patents litigation case list filtered to US-11683401-B2; (b) PACER/RECAP search in E.D. Va. for Centripetal after June 2023; and (c) the USPTO PTAB API for any IPR/PGR naming 11,683,401 as the challenged patent.

I'll start by verifying the canonical structured list (none) and then hunt the web for any AIA trial proceedings tied to this patent and its family.

The '903 patent (same family) clearly saw PTAB action. Now I need to pin down whether the '401 itself was challenged. Let me search deeper.

No IPR on the '401 yet in these results — only its parent '903. Let me query the litigation-tracking databases directly.

US 11,683,401 — AIA Trial Proceedings Report

Canonical source: USPTO ODP structured block, "PTAB proceedings on file" — empty (no AIA trial proceedings indexed for this patent as of ingest).
Independent verification: targeted web searches on the patent number and owner surfaced no IPR, PGR, or CBM naming U.S. Patent No. 11,683,401. What follows distinguishes (a) the zero proceedings on the '401 itself from (b) the substantial PTAB record on its ancestors, which is the practically useful information for a defendant.

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Proceedings overview

Proceedings on US 11,683,401: 0 total — 0 active, 0 claims invalidated, 0 claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution denied. The '401 issued 2023-06-20 as a continuation of the "Correlating Packets" chain and has never been challenged at the PTAB; it is, in PTAB terms, an untested patent — which cuts against the defendant in one narrow sense (no cancelled claims to point to) and for the defendant in a broader one (no petitioner has yet had to burn a § 315(e)(2)-estopped ground on it, and the family's tested prior-art combinations are on the public record).

Related proceedings in the '401 family (and one portfolio sibling) — NOT proceedings on the '401

All of the following concern other patent numbers. None of them cancels, narrows, or estops anything as to the '401's own claims. Treat them as intelligence, not as a validity shield.

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IPR2021-01150 — Palo Alto Networks, Inc. v. Centripetal Networks, Inc.

• Subject patent: U.S. Patent No. 10,530,903 — the '401's immediate ancestor (same title, "Correlating Packets in Communications Networks," same specification). Not the '401.
• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2021-07-20 (Petition, Paper 2 — as identified in the Centripetal v. Palo Alto Networks claim-construction record, EDVA No. 2:21-cv-00137, Ex. 2 to the Kastens Declaration)
• Status: Final Written Decision issued 2023-02-16 (Paper 37) — Centripetal prevailed; all challenged claims (1–18) survived. FWD later vacated and remanded by the Federal Circuit.
• Judge panel: Not confirmed in the sources retrieved; three-APJ panel, names not verified — do not attribute.
• Petition grounds: Obviousness, § 103, over U.S. Patent App. Pub. 2014/0280778 ("Paxton") + U.S. Pat. 8,413,238 ("Sutton") + U.S. Pat. 8,219,675 ("Ivershen"). Claims 1–18 challenged.
• Institution decision: Instituted. (Centripetal separately argued on rehearing that the majority "impermissibly instituted on a ground not present in the petition.")
• Final Written Decision: The Board held PAN failed to prove the final limitation of claim 1 — "transmitting an indication of the first host responsive to the correlating" — was taught by the proposed combination. As the Board put it, it was left "with a correlation from Paxton with no specific actions taken post-correlation, and a transmission from Sutton unrelated to any correlation, but without the necessary bridge." No challenged claim was cancelled.
• Settlement / termination: None — decided on the merits.
• Appeal: Yes. Palo Alto Networks, Inc. v. Centripetal Networks, LLC, No. 23-1636 (Fed. Cir. 2024-12-16) (Stoll, Dyk, Stark, JJ.) (precedential) — vacated and remanded. The Court held the Board failed to make a clear finding on motivation to combine, failed to explain its "necessary bridge" formulation, and erred by "attack[ing] the disclosures of the two references individually" where "Paxton and Sutton must be read together, not in isolation." See IPWatchdog coverage; A&O Shearman analysis.
• Defensive value: The most important fact for a '401 defendant is that no FWD currently stands on the '903, so no § 315(e)(2) estoppel has attached even in the family; and the Paxton/Sutton/Ivershen combination has now been rejected twice by the Office on the "responsive to correlating" point — useful for a § 325(d) argument, but not a substitute for new art.

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IPR2021-01521 — Palo Alto Networks, Inc. v. Centripetal Networks, Inc.

• Subject patent: U.S. Patent No. 9,560,176 — grandparent of the '903 and thus an ancestor of the '401 (same "Correlating Packets" chain). Not the '401.
• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2021 (exact day not confirmed in the sources retrieved)
• Status: Institution denied — challenger unsuccessful.
• Petition grounds: Obviousness over a Paxton-based combination (the same family of art later run in IPR2021-01150).
• Institution decision: Denied. Decision Denying Institution at 17–18: "As described by Petitioner, the combination before us does not explain why or how Paxton's correlation would be the basis for any particular rule that may be created by Sutton." (Decision cited as Paper 23; full date not confirmed in the sources retrieved.)
• Final Written Decision: None — never instituted.
• Defensive value: Confirms the Office has now rejected the Paxton/Sutton theory against the correlating claims at both the institution stage ('176) and the merits stage ('903). A defendant recycling that art against the '401 should expect a § 325(d) / General Plastic fight.

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IPR2018-01654 and IPR2018-01655 — Cisco Systems, Inc. v. Centripetal Networks, Inc.

• Subject patent: U.S. Patent No. 9,560,176. Not the '401.
• Type: Inter Partes Review (two petitions)
• Filed: 2018-09-17 (both petitions — Centripetal's Supplemental Proposed Findings of Fact ¶ 1, EDVA No. 2:18-cv-00094, Dkt. 766)
• Status: Both ended without invalidating the '176 — Centripetal's filings characterize the three IPRs against the '176 (Cisco's two plus PAN's IPR2021-01521) as "the three unsuccessful IPRs challenging the '176 Patent."
• Petition grounds: Obviousness, § 103, including on the "responsive to correlating" limitation.
• Institution / FWD: ⚠️ Not established from the sources retrieved. The public record I could reach confirms the petitions were filed and that they did not result in cancellation, but I could not confirm whether either was instituted and lost on the merits or denied at institution. Do not represent either way.
• Defensive value: A three-strikes record against the '176 (Cisco ×2, PAN ×1) on the same "responsive to correlating" limitation. It also produced the IPR-record statements Centripetal later had to live with — the Cisco EDVA non-infringement ruling turned on Centripetal's IPR positions being treated as claim-scope "clarifications," and that ruling was affirmed by the Federal Circuit in April 2025 (see IPWatchdog, 2026-09-23).

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IPR2022-00182 — Palo Alto Networks, Inc. v. Centripetal Networks, Inc. (consolidated with Cisco's and Keysight's joinder petitions)

• Subject patent: U.S. Patent No. 9,917,856 ("Rule-Based Network-Threat Detection for Encrypted Communications") — a different Centripetal family from the '401. Included only as pattern evidence.
• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2021-11 (petition); Cisco Systems, Inc. and Keysight Technologies, Inc. filed "substantively identical" petitions and § 315(c) joinder motions after institution.
• Status: FWD 2023-05-23 holding claims 1, 24, and 25 unpatentable as obvious; vacated and remanded by the Federal Circuit on 2025-10-22 for failure to adequately consider Centripetal's evidence of copying. Cancellation of those claims is therefore not final.
• Judge panel (original): APJs Brian McNamara, Aaron Moore, Steven Amundson. APJs McNamara and Amundson withdrew after Centripetal moved for recusal/vacatur based on APJ McNamara's ownership of up to $15,000 in Cisco stock; APJ Moore remained. Two new APJs were assigned 2023-01-19.
• Petition grounds: § 103 over U.S. Pat. 9,680,795 ("Buruganahalli"), alternatively Buruganahalli in view of U.S. Pat. 5,878,231 ("Baehr").
• Institution decision: Instituted 2022-05-25.
• Recusal litigation: Centripetal's motion to recuse and vacate the institution decision was denied (Paper 55, 2023-02-03), with the Board calling the motion "highly inappropriate" and threatening sanctions. Centripetal's mandamus petition was denied by the Federal Circuit (In re Centripetal Networks, LLC, 2023-05-16, Wallach, J.), and the Federal Circuit later affirmed the denial of the recusal motion (Moore, Hughes, Cunningham, JJ.).
• Appeal: CAFC No. 23-2027, opinion 2025-10-22, PDF — no reversible error in the recusal analysis, but FWD vacated and remanded on the copying issue.
• Defensive value: Not about the '401. Its value is pattern: PAN spearheads, Cisco and Keysight join as copycat filers under § 315(c), and Centripetal fights every institutional and appellate issue (mandamus + appeal). Note also the precedential 23-1636 framing of motivation-to-combine, which cuts for challengers on remand.

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Ex parte reexamination 90/019,561 — Palo Alto Networks, Inc. (requester) v. Centripetal Networks, LLC

• Subject patent: U.S. Patent No. 10,931,797 — also in the '401's "Correlating Packets" family (same title). Not an AIA trial proceeding, and not the '401.
• Filed: 2024-07-01 (reexamination request; Group Art Unit 3992, CRU Examiner Eric B. Kiss).
• Status: Pending/administered at the Central Reexamination Unit as of the record retrieved; Centripetal filed a § 1.183 petition seeking termination under 35 U.S.C. § 325(d), arguing the request "raises substantially the same prior art and arguments that were previously presented to and rejected by the Office" (Ivershen-Briggs and Paxton-Sutton combinations) and raises no SNQ.
• Defensive value: Shows Centripetal's family patents are being attacked outside the AIA-trial track (reexam avoids § 315(b) time bars and § 315(e) estoppel). A '401 defendant should consider whether an ex parte reexam or § 112/§ 101 attack is the better vehicle.

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Strategic summary

Claim status. No claim of US 11,683,401 is canceled, and none has been sustained — the patent has simply never been before the Board. Do not let anyone tell you "claims 1–5 are gone": that disposition belongs to the '474/'856 line, not this patent. What has been tested is the family's core disputed limitation — generating rules/indications "responsive to the correlating" — which the Board twice held the Paxton/Sutton/Ivershen art did not teach (IPR2021-01150 FWD 2023-02-16; IPR2021-01521 institution denial), and which three Cisco/PAN petitions against the '176 failed to knock out. Caveat emphatically: the '903 FWD is now vacated and remanded (Fed. Cir. 23-1636), so the "responsive to correlating" holding is not presently a final, binding Office determination, and the Federal Circuit's precedential motivation-to-combine guidance makes a better-pled Paxton/Sutton theory materially more viable on remand. Whether the '401's claims even contain that limitation is something I could not verify from the materials provided (the '401 claim text was not in the source I was given).

Estoppel landscape. Because there is no IPR on the '401, no § 315(e)(2) estoppel runs against any party as to the '401's claims. Statutory estoppel is patent-specific: the IPR2021-01150 estoppel, to the extent it ever attaches, binds PAN and its privies only as to the '903; IPR2018-01654/-01655 estop Cisco only as to the '176; IPR2022-00182 estops PAN/Cisco/Keysight only as to the '856. Practical consequences for a '401 defendant: (1) the prior-art combinations that were actually run — Paxton + Sutton + Ivershen, Buruganahalli ± Baehr, Law/Golnabi — remain available in district court or the ITC, subject only to discretionary § 325(d)/General Plastic pushback at the PTAB; (2) because the '903 FWD was vacated, even the '903's own petitioners are arguably released from estoppel pending the remand outcome; and (3) the highest-value attack vectors — § 101 and § 112 written description/enablement — are categorically unavailable in IPR and must be run in court/ITC. That is not academic here: an ITC ALJ found materially indistinguishable claims of a parent "Correlation Patent" unpatentable under § 101 in Certain Computer Network Security Equipment, Inv. No. 337-TA-1314 (ALJ, 2023-08-08), and PAN's EDVA § 101 motion relied on it heavily (EDVA Dkt. 456).

Pattern signals. Palo Alto Networks has been the serial petitioner across Centripetal's portfolio (IPR2021-01149, -01150, -01151, -01152, -01153, -01154, -01155, -01156, -01157 and IPR2022-00182, per the retained-expert and case records; PGR2021-00108 denied 2022-02-22; plus the 2024 ex parte reexam on the '797). Cisco and Keysight filed "substantively identical" follow-on petitions to join the '856 IPR — a copycat-filing pattern the Board tolerated. I found no evidence of a defensive aggregator (e.g., Unified Patents) as a petitioner in any of these proceedings; Unified maintains a portal page for the '401 but appears as a monitor, not a filer. Centripetal is an unusually aggressive PTAB/CAFC litigant: a denied mandamus petition, multiple appeals (23-1636, 23-2027, and the consolidated '856 appeal), and two SCOTUS cert petitions on the Cisco case. It is also still prosecuting the family — the '401 has issued continuations (e.g., U.S. 11,956,338, from application 18/199,490; and 2025/0039284, from application 18/588,655) — so expect fresh claims to keep appearing.

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Recommended next steps

1. Do not build a validity theory on "the Board already killed this family." It didn't kill the '401. Pull the '401's actual claim set via Google Patents or Patent Center and map the asserted claims against the '903's claim 1 to see whether the "responsive to correlating" limitation tested in IPR2021-01150 is even present. If it is, the family's IPR record is powerful § 325(d) / obviousness ammunition. If it is not, the record is largely irrelevant.
2. Consider the § 101 / § 112 route first. IPR cannot reach eligibility or written description, and the family already has an ITC ALJ § 101 finding against parent claims. This is where the '401's exposed flank most likely sits.
3. If you file an IPR, budget for a § 325(d) and General Plastic fight. Any petition built on Paxton, Sutton, Ivershen, Buruganahalli, or Baehr walks straight into the Board's prior treatment of that art. The § 315(b) clock is the gating item — one year from service of a complaint on the '401.
4. Monitor two live threads. (a) The remanded '903 IPR (Fed. Cir. 23-1636) — whatever the Board writes on remand about Paxton/Sutton will be directly transferable to any '401 petition pleading that combination; and (b) ex parte reexam 90/019,561 on the sibling '797, which may produce CRU findings usable against the '401's shared specification.
5. Watch the appeals. The '856 FWD (claims 1, 24, 25) is vacated and on remand, and Centripetal's cert petition on claim-construction/notice is pending as of 2026-09-23. Claim-cancellation outcomes in this portfolio are still moving.

Verification note / limits. The proceedings on the '401 itself are none per the canonical ODP block, and my independent searches produced no contradicting petition. For the related proceedings above, I confirmed proceeding numbers only where a primary or court document stated them; I did not confirm (i) the APJ names on IPR2021-01150, (ii) whether Cisco's IPR2018-01654/-01655 were instituted or denied, or (iii) the exact filing/disposition dates for IPR2021-01521. Those items are flagged in-line and should be confirmed against PTAB Center before being relied on in a filing.

I'll research this patent's ownership record before assembling the analysis. Let me run several searches in parallel.

Let me dig for the specific assignment reel/frame data and the correspondent of record.

Ownership Analysis — US 11,683,401 B2 ("Correlating packets in communications networks")

Bottom line up front: This is a straight-line, single-owner portfolio. The patent has never left the Centripetal orbit. There are only two recorded legal events: the inventor→company assignment and a corporate change of name (Delaware corporation → Delaware LLC). No NPE, no shell LLC, no fire-sale.

Verification caveat (please read): The exact reel/frame numbers and the recorded "correspondent" field for the two events below could not be independently verified in the sources available to me. I will not invent reel/frame values. The events and dates below come from Google Patents' legal-events feed for US 11,683,401 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US11683401/en) and are corroborated by court/PTAB filings. Confirm the reel/frame and correspondent fields by loading the patent number at the USPTO Assignment Center: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ or https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html (search by patent number 11683401).

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Inventors

Employer at filing: All five are listed on the Application Data Sheet as applicant Centripetal Networks, Inc., Portsmouth, NH, with inventor correspondence directed c/o Centripetal Networks, Inc. (the ADS for the sibling Centripetal family shows inventor mailing address "c/o Centripetal Networks, Inc., 99 Bow Street, Suite 300W, Portsmouth, NH 03801"; customer number 22907). This is a small, recurring founding engineering/legal team that appears across the Centripetal portfolio — not a group assembled for a one-off patent.

Unusual-pattern check: Not present. There is no evidence any named inventor departed Centripetal within 12 months of filing, and no evidence of a post-filing sell-off. The same names recur across many Centripetal filings, which is the opposite of the pre-fire-sale "inventors scatter, portfolio gets sold" pattern.

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Original assignee

Centripetal Networks, Inc. (Delaware corporation; HQ Portsmouth, NH, later Reston, VA).

• Primary line of business: Network security / cybersecurity — threat-intelligence-driven packet filtering. Ships RuleGATE gateway products and the CleanINTERNET managed security service. In an ITC § 337 filing, Centripetal documented ~80 employees across Reston, VA and Portsmouth, NH, dedicated R&D/engineering facilities, and domestic-industry products that "practice" the asserted patents.
• Product embodying the claims: Yes. Centripetal's own ITC domestic-industry submission maps RuleGATE/CleanINTERNET against the '370 and '917 family claims; a district-court finding stated "Centripetal's RuleGate product practices the '193 Patent." This patent sits in the '176/'903 family (priority chain: 14/618,967 → now US 9,264,370 → 14/714,207 → now US 9,560,176 → 15/413,947 → now US 10,530,903 → 16/554,293 → 16/854,094 → 17/177,572 → the '401).
• Status: Operating. Privately held — a Federal Circuit certificate of interest (Oct. 27, 2023) states Centripetal Networks, LLC "has no parent corporation and no publicly held corporation owns 10% or more of its stock." It converted from a Delaware corporation to a Delaware LLC on Dec. 30, 2022 (same entity by operation of law; no ownership change). Actively litigating (see below). Not dissolved, not in bankruptcy.

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Assignment timeline

Two recorded events. No chain of intermediate LLCs.

• Execution date unknown / recorded 2021-02-17 — Reel/Frame not verified

  • Conveyance: Assignment (reassignment in Google Patents legal events)
  • Assignor: Ahn, David K.; Moore, Sean; Mallett, Pierre III; Geremia, Peter P.; Perry, Robert T. (the five inventors)
  • Assignee: Centripetal Networks, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not verified from the assignment record. The prosecution/POA correspondent of record for this Centripetal family is Banner & Witcoff, Ltd., 1100 13th Street NW, Suite 1200, Washington, DC 20005 (Power of Attorney signed by Kirk A. Sigmon, Reg. No. 1100 13th St NW; also Bradley C. Wright, Reg. 38,061; Scott M. Kelly, Reg. 65,121; John R. Hutchins, Reg. 43,686). Recurrence flag: Banner & Witcoff is the same firm on the sibling family filings, on Centripetal's IPR papers, and on the Federal Circuit appeal — but this is ordinary same-owner prosecution counsel, not the "one lawyer running many unrelated shell LLCs" tell. One firm, one client, one continuous portfolio.
  • Context: Founder/employee → operating-company assignment (standard invention assignment at or about the continuation filing).

• Executed 2022-12-30 (corporate conversion) / recorded 2023-02-07 — Reel/Frame not verified

  • Conveyance: Change of Name
  • Assignor: Centripetal Networks, Inc.
  • Assignee: Centripetal Networks, LLC
  • Correspondent: Banner & Witcoff, Ltd. (per the related PTAB filing in IPR2022-00182, signed by Scott M. Kelly / Bradley C. Wright / John R. Hutchins of Banner & Witcoff, 1100 13th St NW, Suite 1200, Washington, DC 20005). The Jan. 19, 2023 PTAB notice states: "Patent Owner will be filing a recordation of the name change for the patent at the USPTO shortly."
  • Context: Internal reorganization only. Delaware certificate of conversion/formation filed 2022-12-30; conversion states "all rights, privileges and powers … shall remain vested" in the LLC. Same address (1875 Explorer Street, Suite 900, Reston, VA 20190), same counsel, same entity.

No other assignments recorded. No security agreements, no liens, no releases, no licensing-conveyance records, no third-party transfers.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11683401
    2015 : Original application filed
         : Inventors assign to Centripetal Networks Inc
    2018 : Centripetal sues Cisco and Keysight
    2021 : Continuation application 17-177-572 filed
         : Inventor assignment event recorded
    2023 : Patent US 11683401 issued
         : Change of name to Centripetal Networks LLC

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. The only transfer is inventor→operating company, and the "new" assignee (Centripetal Networks, LLC) is the same entity by operation of law (Delaware conversion, 2022-12-30; PTAB IPR2022-00182 notice). Same Reston, VA address before and after.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. Neither Centripetal Networks, Inc. nor Centripetal Networks, LLC appears on the classic NPE lists named in the brief (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Round Rock, etc.). Centripetal is a product company asserting against large vendors.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — not present as an NPE tell (documented for completeness). A single firm, Banner & Witcoff, Ltd., is the recurring correspondent across both recorded events and the broader Centripetal family (prosecution POA, IPR papers, Federal Circuit). Recurrence is real, but it is one operating client with continuous general-purpose IP counsel — the opposite of the shell-LLC pattern where the entity names churn and the lawyer is the only constant.

4. Cascading transfers — not present. Two events over ~8 years, one of which is a name change. No chain of LLCs, no shared registered-agent addresses, no <24-month serial transfers.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. The patent issued 2023-06-20; the major Centripetal suits predate it (Cisco filed Feb. 13, 2018; Keysight/Ixia filed 2017). No assignee change was staged within 6 months before any suit against this patent.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. No Chapter 7/11 for either assignee; Centripetal remains an active, funded operating company.

7. Privateering — not present. Centripetal does not assert on behalf of a larger operating company; it asserts its own portfolio against competitors (Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, Keysight/Ixia). It is itself the operating innovator, not the front.

8. Defensive aggregator — not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN.

Litigation context (not a signal, but relevant): Centripetal's enforcement is aggressive and high-stakes — Centripetal v. Cisco Sys., No. 2:18-cv-00094 (E.D. Va.) produced a ~$2.6–3.2B willfulness verdict that was later vacated by the Federal Circuit on judicial-recusal grounds (Cisco stock owned by the trial judge's spouse), and in April 2026 the Federal Circuit declined to revive the case. Centripetal also sued Keysight/Ixia (2:17-cv-00383) and Palo Alto Networks (2:21-cv-00137), and has taken multiple cert petitions to the Supreme Court. Note this enforcement targets the earlier family members ('176, '193, '806, '856, '370, '903); I found no direct evidence the '401 itself was asserted before issuance.

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Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

The chain contains exactly two events — a founder/employee assignment to Centripetal Networks, Inc. and a pure change-of-name conversion to Centripetal Networks, LLC (Delaware, executed 2022-12-30, recorded 2023-02-07) — with no third-party NPE ever entering the chain. Centripetal is a genuine product company: it ships RuleGATE/CleanINET and documented ~80 U.S. employees and domestic-industry practice of this very patent family, and it asserts against direct competitors (Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, Keysight). Zero of the eight NPE signals are present; the only recurring correspondent, Banner & Witcoff, Ltd. (Wright, Kelly, Sigmon, Hutchins), is the same-owner prosecution firm rather than a shell-runner.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number 11683401) — confirm the reel/frame for the 2021-02-17 inventor assignment and the 2023-02-07 change of name, which I could not independently verify.

I'll search for the specific patent number and its cited prior art.

Let me dig deeper into the specific reference lists for this patent.

Method note and a hard limitation you need to see first

I searched for the identifier "11683401" literally (no auto-correction) across Google Patents, the PTAB/PTACTS docket mirror, Unified Patents, Justia/FPO, and CourtListener docket material. Two things came out of that:

1. I could not retrieve the front page ("References Cited") of US 11,683,401 B2 itself. My requests for the '401 patent PDF and its (56) block either returned the wrong document or exhausted my search steps. The Google Patents rendering of '401 that you supplied earlier also truncates before the claims and does not include a (56) list. So I cannot quote '401's own citation list verbatim.
2. Several literal "11683401" hits are unrelated records, exactly as flagged in the prior section (a Hong Kong company registration, an Argentine tax docket, an SEC accession fragment). I excluded those.

Rather than fabricate a (56) list, I am giving you the direct-parent citation list — US 10,931,797 B2 (application 16/854,094), which I did retrieve via the PTAB exhibit set (Ex. 1046 in IPR2021‑01148, …/Exhibit-1046-US10931797_Ahn.pdf). Because '401 is a straight continuation of '797 filed roughly ten months later on an unchanged specification, with no new independent claims of substance, the (56) content is materially the same. Treat everything below as "'797's cited art, as a proxy for '401's," not as a verbatim reading of '401's front page. Flagging this as an unresolved gap, not papering over it.

Also carrying forward the contradiction from the earlier section: priority date is shown as 2015‑02‑10 on Google Patents/the '401 record but 2015‑02‑09 on Unified Patents. Unresolved.

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A. What I confirmed about US 11,683,401 B2 in this pass

• Pre-grant publication US 2021/0203761 A1, published July 1, 2021, applicant Centripetal Networks, Inc., Portsmouth, NH. Inventor cities: Ahn – Winston-Salem, NC; Geremia – Portsmouth, NH; Mallett III – Herndon, VA; Moore – Hollis, NH; Perry – Ashburn, VA.
• CPC: H04L 69/22; H04L 43/026; H04L 43/04; H04L 43/12; H04L 45/745; H04L 61/2567; H04L 43/087; H04L 43/106; H04L 43/16; H04L 47/2483; H04L 47/32; H04L 63/0263.
• Continuation chain re-confirmed: 14/618,967 → 14/714,207 ('176) → 15/413,947 ('903) → 16/554,293 ('573) → 16/854,094 ('797) → 17/177,572 ('401).
• Later family members confirmed: US 11,956,338 B2 and US 2025/0039284 A1, plus EP 3 257 202 B1 / AU 2015382393 B2 / US 2017/0359449 A1.

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B. Patent citations (as carried on the immediate parent, US 10,931,797 B2)

U.S. patents — all listed under (56), "References Cited." Dates are the printed grant dates.

U.S. patent application publications (subset I recovered):
US 2001/0039579 A1 (Trcka et al.); US 2001/0039624 A1 (Kellum); US 2002/0016858 A1 (Sawada et al.); US 2002/0038339 A1 (Xu); US 2002/0049899 A1 (Kenworthy); US 2002/0083345 A1 (Halliday et al.); US 2002/0112188 A1 (Syvanne); US 2002/0152209 A1 (Merugu et al.).

Foreign patent documents: AU 2005328336 B2 (9/2011); AU 2006230171 B2 (6/2012) — both Centripetal-family foreign counterparts.

The parent '903's longer (56) list adds, among others: US 6,226,372 B1 (Beebe et al.), 6,279,113 B1 (Vaidya), 6,317,837 B1 (Kenworthy), 6,484,261 B1 (Wiggen), 6,611,875 B1 (Chopra et al.), 6,662,235 B1 (Callis et al.), 6,826,694 B1 (Dutta et al.), 7,089,581 B1 (Nagai et al.), 7,095,716 B1 (Ke et al.), 7,107,613 B1 (Chen et al.), 7,143,438 B1 (Goss et al.), 7,152,240 B1 (Green et al.), 7,185,368 B1 (Copeland III), 7,215,657 B1 (Ferguson et al.), 7,225,269 B2 (Walmsdale), 7,227,842 B1 (Ji et al.), 7,237,262 B2 (Rayes et al.), 7,263,099 B1 (Woo et al.), 7,266,288 B1 (Hill et al.), 7,299,353 B2 (Le Pennec et al.). I recovered this list only partially; the balance of the ~80-entry list was cut off in the exhibit.

Note on the "Patent Art (381)" figure at Unified Patents: the portal lists 381 similar references for '401. Those are an algorithmic similarity set, not the examiner's/patent's own citation list. Don't conflate them with the (56) block. Examples surfaced there include CA 2600236 A1, US 8,510,821 B1, US 7,966,654 B2, US 2012/0113987 A1, US 2004/0177139 A1, US 2008/0086435 A1, US 2001/0039579 A1, US 8,037,517 B2, US 2015/0372977 A1, US 6,484,261 B1, US 2003/0212900 A1, US 9,544,135 B2, US 8,422,391 B2, US 2004/0151155 A1, US 8,726,379 B1, US 8,307,029 B2, US 2017/0272469 A1, US 2002/0198981 A1, US 2014/0082730 A1, US 2004/0181690 A1, US 7,814,158 B2, US 2002/0083345 A1, US 2012/0143650 A1, US 6,317,837 B1.

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C. The art actually used against this family (more probative than the face citations)

The (56) entries above are almost entirely background/obviousness scaffolding cited by applicant or examiner. The references that were actually litigated are the ones that matter:

• Paxton and Sutton — the combination at issue in Palo Alto Networks, Inc. v. Centripetal Networks, LLC, No. 23‑1636 (Fed. Cir. Dec. 16, 2024), an appeal from the IPR of US 10,530,903 (a sibling of '401). The Federal Circuit vacated and remanded because the Board failed to clearly articulate a motivation to combine, citing In re NuVasive, 842 F.3d 1376, 1382, and Vicor Corp. v. SynQor, 869 F.3d 1309, 1324.
• Paxton, Vanlint, McDonald, Furley — the references discussed at trial relating to the '370 patent (family root 14/618,967) in Centripetal v. Cisco (E.D. Va.).
• The PTAB record shows Cisco's IPRs against the '176 (IPR2018‑01654 and ‑01655) and Palo Alto's IPR (IPR2021‑01521) all turned on the "responsive to correlating" limitation — the Board found the prior art generated rules responsive to detecting malicious activity, not responsive to correlating packets.

Caveat: I identified these by the short names used in the Board/CAFC/CourtListener record. I did not verify their publication numbers in this session, so I am not assigning them US numbers.

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D. § 102 anticipation mapping — and why it is provisional

I have to be straight with you: a § 102 anticipation analysis is not responsibly doable on the material I currently hold, for three reasons:

1. '401's claim set is still unavailable to me (same gap flagged in the prior section). Anticipation is claim-by-claim and element-by-element. I can't map references to "claim 1 of '401" when I can't read claim 1 of '401.
2. The face citations are overwhelmingly applicant-supplied background art, which the record uses in § 103 obviousness combinations, not as standalone § 102 references. For example, the family's own IPRs paired Paxton + Sutton; no single reference was pressed as anticipatory.
3. The genuinely closest structural references in the list — the flow/session-correlation art (Rajan, US 8,271,645 B2; Brandwine, US 8,510,821 B1; Krendal, US 9,172,627 B2 for NAT session mapping) — each appear to lack at least one element. On the family's representative claim 1 ('176), the elements are: (a) identify received packets; (b) log them; (c) identify transmitted packets; (d) log them; (e) correlate based on the two logs; and (f) responsive to correlating, generate a rule and provision a packet-filtering device. Element (f)'s "responsive to correlating" nexus is precisely what defeated every IPR in this family.

What I can say with grounding: the references most likely to be argued as § 102 art against a claim of '401 would be (1) Rajan et al., US 8,271,645 B2 (flow/transaction correlation), (2) Brandwine et al., US 8,510,821 B1 (flow-record generation across a traffic point), and (3) Krendal et al., US 9,172,627 B2 (NAT session-address mapping, bearing on the '401 specification's NAT embodiment). I have not verified any of them as anticipatory, and I would not represent them as such without the '401 claim text in hand and a full element-by-element read.

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E. Confidence and open items

• High confidence: the '797 (56) reference list content above, the continuation chain, the '401 bibliographic data, and the fact that the litigated art is Paxton/Sutton (plus Vanlint/McDonald/Furley for the '370).
• Moderate confidence: that '401's (56) list is materially identical to '797's — probable for a straight continuation with no new matter, but not verified.
• Explicitly unresolved:
• (a) '401's verbatim (56) block — not obtained;
• (b) '401's claims — still not obtained, so the § 102 mapping in §D is structural/provisional only;
• (c) the 2015‑02‑09 vs 2015‑02‑10 priority discrepancy — unresolved;
• (d) publication numbers for Paxton/Sutton/Vanlint/McDonald/Furley — not verified in this session.

If you can supply the '401 patent PDF front page and claim set, I can convert §B–§D into a proper claim-chart-style § 102 analysis rather than the reference inventory above.

I'll ground this analysis with searches — first for the actual claim set of '401, then for the prior-art references already tied to this family's IPRs.

Now let me pin down the actual independent claims of '401 and the remaining prior-art references (Wicherski, McDonald) used against this family.

Let me nail down the remaining references and try harder for '401's own claim text.

Obviousness Analysis — US 11,683,401 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

0. Two flags before anything else

Flag 1 — date contradiction (must be resolved by you). The task header states "Current Date: April 26, 2026," while my operating context establishes today as 2026‑09‑24. That matters here because one of the most probative items I retrieved — the CRU Examiner's Reexam Non‑Final Action in control 90/019,561, dated Feb 10, 2026 — is before September 24, 2026 but after April 26, 2026. I have treated the September 24, 2026 date as controlling (it is the date my tools actually returned), and I therefore treat the Feb. 10, 2026 action as issued and citable. If the operative date is really April 26, 2026, my reliance on that Office action is anachronistic and must be discarded.

Flag 2 — I still do not have the verbatim claims of US 11,683,401. This was flagged in the earlier-generated summary and it remains true after additional searching. Google Patents' rendering of '401 breaks off mid-description and contains no claim listing; OnScope and Unified Patents reproduce only bibliographic data and the abstract; the searches returned claim text for the siblings (US 9,560,176, US 10,530,903, US 10,931,797) but not for '401 itself. A §103 analysis is a limitation‑by‑limitation exercise, and I cannot perform it against text I have not read. I therefore do the analysis at the level I can honestly support: the family claim architecture, cross‑checked against the actual prior‑art records generated in proceedings against near‑identical siblings. Where I map an element, I say which sibling claim I am borrowing it from.

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1. What the "Prior Art" section of the page actually contains

The US 11,683,401 Google Patents record's own "Prior Art" content is limited to:

• Prior art keywords: packets; host; network; log entries; layer information.
• Prior art date: 2015‑02‑10.

I note two things about this. First, these keywords are the platform's own extraction of the claim core, and they corroborate the family characterization: the invention is about log entries keyed to packets, correlated across a host/network boundary, using layer information (the specification's network‑/transport‑/application‑layer fields). That is the scope a POSITA would read, and it is broad. Second, the page supplies no cited‑reference list — no "References Cited" table appeared in the fetched text. So the art I use below is not drawn from that list; it is drawn from the actual Office and court records in this family, which is the better source anyway because it shows what has already been tested against these claims.

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2. The prior-art reference set

All of the following predate the 2015‑02‑10 earliest priority date (with the caveat recorded in the earlier section that Unified Patents displays 2015‑02‑09 — irrelevant to any reference here).

Procedural context that shapes the analysis (and is itself evidence): PAN's PGR2021‑00108 against sibling '797 was instituted and lost — the Board found the Paxton + Sutton combination does not disclose "generating rules responsive to correlating packets" or "any other relationship in which the rules would be generated responsive to and based on the correlation." PAN's IPR2021‑01150 against '903 went to a final written decision of no obviousness, which the Federal Circuit vacated and remanded because the Board (a) failed to make an express motivation‑to‑combine finding and (b) analyzed Paxton and Sutton individually rather than in combination. PAN then filed reexam 90/019,561 on '797 (July 1, 2024), and the Feb. 10, 2026 Non‑Final Action appears to have adopted a McDonald + Wicherski theory.

That appellate posture is the single most important framing point: the Federal Circuit did not hold the claims non‑obvious. It held the Board's reasoning inadequate. The remand instructions tell a challenger exactly what a § 103 case must do — and the Office's 2026 action suggests one challenger has now done it.

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3. Legal standard applied

• Graham v. John Deere, 383 U.S. 1 (1966): scope and content of prior art; differences; PHOSITA level; secondary considerations. KSR Int'l v. Teleflex, 550 U.S. 398 (2007): the test is what the combined teachings suggest; predictable use of prior elements; "obvious to try."
• AIA applies. '401 was filed 2021 and claims a 2015 priority date (post‑March 16, 2013 in either case), so § 102(a)(1)/(a)(2) arts and § 103's "subject matter as a whole" govern.
• The motivation to combine must be expressly articulated. In re NuVasive, 842 F.3d 1376, 1382 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (Board "must articulate a reason why a POSITA would combine"); Vicor v. SynQor, 869 F.3d 1309, 1324 (if no motivation, say so expressly). These are verbatim the cases the Federal Circuit applied against the Board in this very family in Dec. 2024.
• No individual‑reference analysis. In re Keller / MCM Portfolio: the question is the combined teachings, not whether one reference teaches everything.

Assumed PHOSITA: a network‑security engineer with a bachelor's in CS/EE plus ~2–3 years in packet‑switching/security, familiar with NAT, proxies, tunnels, flow logging (NetFlow/syslog), hash‑based matching, and IDS/IPS alerting. Nothing in the specification suggests a higher level of skill is required; the disclosure is implementation‑level and relies on conventional vocabulary throughout.

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4. Claim‑scope assumptions (stated, because they drive everything)

I analyze against the family's independent‑claim concepts, using the two sibling claims that are verbatim in the record:

(A) '176‑type claim — identify packets received by a network device from a host in a first network → log entries → identify packets transmitted by the device to a host in a second network → log entries → correlate the two sets based on the log entries → responsive to correlating, generate rules to identify packets received from the first host and provision a packet‑filtering device with them.

(B) '903‑type claim — same skeleton, plus: the network device comprises a proxy; log entries carry receipt timestamps and transmission timestamps; determine differences between them; correlate "based on the differences and by comparing the first data and the second data"; and responsive to correlating, generate and transmit an indication of the first host.

If '401's claims are narrower than either — e.g., they add a specific timestamp‑threshold or a specific encapsulation‑matching rule not recited in (A) or (B) — grounds below must be re‑mapped. If they are narrower in a way that adds a proxy limitation, see §5, Ground 4, where I explain why that is the family's hardest limitation to reach with this reference set.

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5. Grounds of rejection

Ground 1 — Paxton + Sutton (+ Ivershen)

Mapping. Paxton: two sensors straddling a NAT boundary (network device between a first network and a second network); a first record (inside) and a second record (outside) for each packet; matching records to identify the true source — this is "log entries corresponding to packets received" and "log entries corresponding to packets transmitted," correlated based on the log entries. Paxton additionally matches on time, which pre‑empts any argument that the paired records lack a temporal axis. Ivershen supplies the additional NAT‑boundary capture‑and‑maliciousness‑determination teaching. Sutton supplies the terminal step: notifying an administrator of potential malicious activity — i.e., generating and transmitting an indication of the host.

Motivation (articulated, as the Fed. Cir. demanded). Paxton itself states the security benefit of its output: identifying infected nodes and "attributing malicious activity sensed at the edge of a network back to its original source." A POSITA reading Paxton in 2015 would not stop at producing the attribution; attribution has no value unless it is acted on. Sutton is a same‑field (network security monitoring), same‑problem (activity originating from within a protected network), complementary‑output reference: it consumes exactly the kind of host identity Paxton produces. The combination is a pipeline, not an architectural merger — Paxton's correlation engine feeds Sutton's notification module, and neither reference's principle of operation is changed. That defeats the "bodily incorporation" and "changed principle of operation" defenses that Centripetal has successfully run at the Board.

KSR rationales available: (i) combination of familiar elements (NAT‑boundary logging + IDS alerting) according to known methods, yielding predictable results; (ii) known technique (admin notification) applied to the known problem of obscuring malicious origin via NAT; (iii) design incentive — attribution exists to drive response; (iv) if nothing else, obvious to try.

Anticipated rebuttal & answer. Centripetal will argue — and has argued, successfully at the Board on '797 — that Paxton+Sutton do not disclose generating rules responsive to the correlating, because Sutton's notification is a reporting function and its darknet logic is unrelated to correlation. That argument is well taken against Ground 1 standing alone. This is precisely why Grounds 3 and 4 exist. The only thing the Board ever found missing from Paxton+Sutton is the rule‑generation‑responsive‑to‑correlation nexus — and Wicherski supplies it.

Grounds 2–4 — Adding Wicherski (and McDonald) for the "responsive to" step

Wicherski is directed at the identical technical problem the '401 specification poses: NAT obscures which internal machine is the source of malicious traffic, and blocking on the NAT's public IP punishes innocent co‑tenants. Wicherski's answer is real‑time matching of incoming IP packets to a host, which "allows an IDS to selectively block TCP traffic originating from a particular machine behind a NAT." That is: host identification produced by matching packets → a filtering action keyed to that host → enforcement at a boundary device. The Office's Feb. 10, 2026 action reads this as "generating … rules configured to identify packets received from the first host; and provisioning a packet‑filtering device with the one or more rules."

Motivation. Combine Paxton's (or McDonald's) correlation engine with Wicherski's selective‑blocking teaching to address the problem identified in McDonald — "network abuse (e.g., spam or hacking)" — and, in the Wicherski direction, because the whole reason to solve NAT‑obscured attribution is to be able to act on it selectively rather than crudely. Expected success is high: both references produce a host identifier from packet inspection, and the claim's "responsive to" relationship is met by an indirect causal chain (correlate → identify host → generate host‑keyed rule → provision). KSR does not require the reference to articulate the causal chain in the claim's words.

Anticipated rebuttal & answer. Centripetal's position (as developed in its § 325(d) petition and via Dr. Goodrich in district court) has two prongs:

1. "Wicherski's blocking is based on malicious‑activity determination, not on correlation." Answer: under KSR and MCM Portfolio, what matters is the combined teaching. Once Paxton's/McDonald's correlation step supplies the identification, Wicherski's blocking step is performed because of that correlation, whatever Wicherski's own trigger was. This is the exact error the Federal Circuit identified — analyzing references in isolation.
2. "Wicherski's boot‑time/TCP‑timestamp mechanism is incompatible with Paxton's payload hashing." Answer: selective incorporation, not bodily incorporation (and see In re Keller). The proponent should expressly disclaim any need to graft Wicherski's boot‑time timing mechanism into Paxton — only its real‑time packet‑to‑host matching and selective‑blocking teaching is relied on.

Ground 6 — The proxy limitation is the weak point

If '401's claims recite (as '903's claim 1 does) that "the network device comprises a proxy," then Paxton (a NAT boundary), Ivershen (a NAT firewall), and Wicherski (a NAT) do not, on their faces, teach a proxy. The specification itself treats web/DNS/SIP proxies as entirely conventional, which supports the argument that proxy‑based request regeneration is old and well known — but a concession in the specification is not a prior‑art reference, and I did not retrieve a verified proxy‑specific reference in the searches performed. Do not build a ground on a proxy reference I have not identified. This is the family's most defensible limitation and the place where a § 103 case most likely fails.

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6. An alternative and potentially stronger avenue: the priority date

This is worth flagging because it is independent of the motivation‑to‑combine fight. '401's claims are entitled to the 2015‑02‑10 date only to the extent they are supported under § 112 by the 14/618,967 disclosure. The continuation chain is long (six members, 2015→2021), and each successive member narrowed the claims; siblings carry terminal disclaimers, and the family has already been the subject of a Vivint‑style "roadmap" complaint about claim churn. If any '401 claim element — for example, particular timestamp‑threshold logic, a particular proxy‑request‑correspondence formulation, or a correlation‑score formulation — was not described in the 2015 specification, that claim's effective filing date moves to 2021‑02‑17, and the prior‑art field expands enormously (including the intermediate publications US 2016/0234083, US 2017/0359449, US 2020/0252486, and any intervening art from 2015–2021). I have not performed that § 112 analysis and am not asserting it succeeds. I flag it only because it is the one path that could neutralize the Federal Circuit's remand rather than litigate inside it.

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7. Secondary considerations

• Commercial success / copying: the Cisco litigation produced a willful‑infringement finding, but for US 9,686,193 and US 9,203,806 — not '401. There is no established nexus between those verdicts and '401's claims. Expect a nexus challenge.
• Failure of others: PAN's three successive losses/abandonments (PGR lost on '797; district‑court obviousness abandoned; reexam filed) is litigation behavior, not technical failure of others, and is weak evidence of non‑obviousness. It carries more weight as a § 325(d)/abuse‑of‑process argument than as a Graham factor.
• Industry recognition / licensing: not retrieved.

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8. Limits, and what would change the conclusion

Confidence in the art's substance: moderate‑to‑high (Paxton and Sutton are quoted verbatim from the Federal Circuit opinion and petition record; Wicherski and McDonald from the 2026 Office action).

Explicitly unresolved:

1. '401's claim text and claim count — not obtained. Everything in §4 is assumption.
2. McDonald and Briggs — identities/numbers not verified; I have deliberately left them unnamed rather than guess.
3. Wicherski's bibliographic form — the p. 647 citation suggests a printed publication (§ 102(a)(1)), but a "Wickersky" U.S. patent (6,192,967 B1, 2/2001) appears in a different reference list I encountered. Those are different § 102 categories and the difference matters procedurally.
4. Whether the Feb. 10, 2026 action is truly outstanding — it is a non‑final action, i.e., rebuttable. It is evidence of what an examiner finds, not a final adjudication.
5. Whether Ground 1's "responsive to correlating" gap is now closed on the specific claim set of '401 — depends on (1).

Bottom line. On the record generated in this family, the strongest § 103 position against a '176‑style claim of '401 is McDonald (or Paxton) + Wicherski, and against a '903‑style claim is Paxton + Sutton + Wicherski, with Ivershen as a secondary NAT‑correlation teaching. The decisive question is not whether the references contain the pieces — the Office has already found that they do — but whether the motivation to combine is articulated in the combined‑teachings form the Federal Circuit demanded in December 2024. A ground that (a) maps every element, (b) states a motivation grounded in the references' own expressed problems and benefits, (c) expressly disclaims bodily incorporation, and (d) refuses to analyze references individually is the ground that survives. The proxy limitation, if present in '401's claims, remains the weakest point and the one most likely to defeat a § 103 challenge with the present reference set.