US 11687741

I'll search for authoritative information on this patent, including the CAFC 2026 docket angle.

Let me dig into the claims, the litigation, and any Federal Circuit activity.

Let me pull the litigation analysis page and look for the actual claim text.

US Patent 11,687,741 — Analyst Summary

Note on dating: your instruction gives a current date of April 26, 2026, while the patent-record fetch I was given is stamped 2026-09-23. That matters for one point (expiration status) and I flag it below where relevant. All identifiers are reported literally as they appear in the sources.

1. Bibliographic record (all from the Google Patents record for US11687741B1, corroborated by Justia)

Continuity. The record lists this as a continuation of a long Colby chain: US11/382,050, 11/382,052, 11/382,053, 11/382,265, 11/382,054, 11/382,264 (all filed 2006-05-07/08), US11/420,721, US11/458,620 → US 7,924,156, US12/577,209 → US 8,816,826, US14/660,825 → US 9,569,777, US16/186,543 → US 11,170,185, then US17/952,176 → US 11,687,741. This is why the term runs off the 2005 priority date rather than 2022.

⚠️ Statutory-term point. "Expired – Lifetime, expires 2026-05-07" means the patent term expired roughly May 7, 2026. Under your stated date (April 26, 2026) it would still be nominally in force for ~11 days; under the fetch date (September 23, 2026) it is already expired. Either way, the '741 patent is at or immediately at the end of its life, which is unusual for a suit filed in 2026 — worth verifying the litigation posture (see §4).

2. Abstract

The Google Patents text I was given did not include the abstract field, so I cannot quote the abstract from the primary source. A secondary source (Golden wiki entry for "US Patent 11687741 Methods of using a cellular telephone") reproduces what reads as the issued abstract:

"Various switchable devices, e.g., cellular telephones, including inductive and/or RF antennas are disclosed. These switchable devices may include one or more switches and a biometric sensor. 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."

(The "include are included" duplication appears to be in the source as reproduced.) Flagged as unverified against the USPTO abstract page.

The specification's own "Definitions" synopsis states the invention "is in the fields of electronic passports, and more specifically in the field of electronic passports including shielding and/or switchable RFID tags" — i.e., the disclosure is a broad omnibus specification covering RFID shielding, switchable RFID tags, and cellular-telephone RFID/NFC embodiments, and this particular patent is titled to the cellular-telephone use.

3. Independent claims — I could not retrieve authoritative claim text

This is a genuine gap, and I will not reconstruct claim language. The full text I was given ends inside the description (at the FIG. 30 driver's-license discussion) and contains no claims section; neither Justia nor the other sources surfaced the claim set. What I can substantiate from the specification's summary section is the family of subject matter the independent claims are drawn from:

• Method claims around placing a cellular telephone in proximity to a point-of-sale device, activating an electronic switch to change a state of a circuit, and communicating financial account information responsive to that state (this matches the description's sections on user-interface control of the RFID tag, entering credit/debit account numbers, and "activating a first switch may result in a transaction being debited from a first account").
• Claims reciting a communication device comprising an 802.11 or cellular transmitter plus a switchable RFID tag having active/inactive states responsive to user data.
• Claims reciting biometric-sensor-gated activation (the spec discusses voice-recognition approval and access-code-gated readability; the abstract expressly recites "a biometric sensor").
• Claims reciting multiple memory devices in slots ("a first slot configured to receive a first memory device… a second slot…"), with the user interface selecting which data is transmitted.
• The spec also contemplates a "remotely powered RFID tag having an electronically controlled switch" and multi-state ("multiple on states") switch claims.

Litigation-derived, secondary-source claim information: an AI-generated complaint analysis for Surecell Transactions LLC v. [Samsung Electronics America, Inc.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Samsung%20Electronics%20America%2C%20Inc.), 2:26-cv-00106 (E.D. Tex.) lists, for one asserted patent, "at least independent claims 20 and 29, and method claim 60," describing "an RFID device that includes a mechanical switch for selecting between two or more 'ON states.'" I cannot confirm from the snippet whether those claim numbers belong to the '741 patent or to a different asserted patent (e.g., the '156 patent) — the source's per-patent structure was truncated in retrieval. Treat "claims 20, 29, 60" as unattributed pending the actual complaint.

4. Litigation and Federal Circuit (CAFC) status

District court — confirmed:

• Surecell Transactions LLC v. Samsung Electronics America, Inc. (and Samsung Electronics Co.), No. 2:26-cv-00106, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas (Marshall Division), District Judge Rodney Gilstrap; filed February 12, 2026; jury demand; $500,000,000 damages demand.
• Google Patents links this case as family litigation: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/Texas%20Eastern%20District%20Court/case/2%3A26-cv-00106; Darts-ip records a "first worldwide family litigation filed" for family 80356977.
• Reported asserted patents (per third-party complaint analysis and a September 2026 Korean trade-press account, THE Biz): US 7,924,156 ('156), US 11,347,949 ('949), US 11,599,734 ('734), US 11,687,741 ('741), US 11,989,612 ('612), US 12,039,396 ('396). Accused products: Samsung Galaxy S/Note/Z Fold/Flip/A series, Galaxy Watch wearables, Galaxy Tab, tied to Samsung Pay/Samsung Wallet, NFC, and biometric authentication.

CAFC 2026 — no evidence found:

• I searched for a 2026 Federal Circuit appeal tied to 11,687,741 and found nothing. The CAFC 2026 results returned were unrelated matters (e.g., BerkeleyIEOR v. W.W. Grainger*, AGI SureTrack v. Farmers Edge, Biofer v. Vifor, Slingshot, Collision Communications v. Samsung). Given the E.D. Tex. case was filed in February 2026 and is still at the pleading/early stage, an appeal to the Federal Circuit would not yet be expected. I state explicitly: I have no authoritative information of any CAFC docket for this patent.

5. What I would verify next (open items)

1. The actual claim set of 11,687,741 — read from the USPTO PatentCenter/Patent Full-Text (patft) or the issued PDF, since the Google Patents text I was given omits it.
2. Whether claims 20/29/60 belong to the '741 or '156 patent — check the complaint itself (Dkt. 1) in 2:26-cv-00106.
3. Expiration vs. suit timing — confirm the 2026-05-07 adjusted expiration and whether suit was filed before it, and whether any § 154(b) PTA/terminal disclaimer affects recoverable damages.
4. Whether an IPR or § 101/§ 112 challenge has been filed against '741 in 2026 (none surfaced in my searches, but I did not exhaustively query the PTAB docket).

Confidence summary: Bibliographic data (number, title, inventor, dates, assignments, expiration, litigation link) — high, from the Google Patents record plus Justia. Abstract — medium, secondary source only. Independent claim scope — low/unverified; no authoritative claim text obtained. CAFC status — high confidence that nothing exists as of the search date, stated as a negative finding rather than a verified docket absence.

I'll search authoritative litigation sources for this specific patent number.

Good hits. Let me broaden to check for other defendants/cases and any appeal or PTAB activity.

Bottom line

I found exactly one litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 11,687,741 ('741): a single 2026 district-court action in the Eastern District of Texas. There is no Federal Circuit appeal, no ITC action, and no PTAB proceeding that I could attribute to the '741 patent. Per the litigation-data aggregator profile for the plaintiff, Surecell Transactions LLC shows "Total Cases: 1 / Active Cases: 1" — consistent with a one-case campaign (as of the search index).

The one known case

Sources:

• Google Patents record for US11687741B1, "Family has litigation" link: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/Texas%20Eastern%20District%20Court/case/2%3A26-cv-00106; Darts-ip "First worldwide family litigation filed" (family 80356977)
• Docket page: https://gaeflexstaging-dot-docketupdate.appspot.com/cases/Texas_Eastern_District_Court/2--26-cv-00106/SureCell_Transactions_LLC_v._SAMSUNG_ELECTRONICS_AMERICA_INC._et_al/
• Patexia case index (same case no., same filing date): https://services.patexia.com/search/page/240/tab/cases
• Complaint analysis (secondary, AI-derived): https://ai-lab.exparte.com/case/dct/txed/2:26-cv-00106/doc/analysis/9
• Korean trade press (THE Biz, dated 2026-09-05) confirming the six-patent assertion set and the two Samsung defendants: http://www.the-biz.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=707046

'741's place in the case (cross-referencing the prior section)

This confirms and updates the previously flagged open item #2. The complaint asserts six Colby-family patents against Samsung: US 7,924,156; 11,347,949; 11,599,734; 11,687,741; 11,989,612; 12,039,396. The secondary complaint analysis attributes to the '741 a method theory: placing the phone near a POS terminal, activating an electronic switch "responsive to a biometric sensor" to change a circuit state, then communicating financial account information. It further identifies claim 1 of the '741 as containing the disputed term "electronic switch" — so the '741 assertion appears to run through claim 1 (a method claim), not only through the higher-numbered claims.

⚠️ Correction/refinement to the prior section: the "at least independent claims 20 and 29, and method claim 60" attribution, which the prior section correctly left unattributed, most plausibly belongs to the '156 patent — in the same analysis, claims 20/29/60 are tied to a synopsis reading "an RFID device that includes a mechanical switch for selecting between two or more 'ON states,'" which matches the '156 RFID-tag-with-switch-logic description, not the '741 cellular-telephone method patent. I still have not read the complaint itself (Dkt. 1), so treat this as inference from a secondary source.

Negative findings (stated as such)

• No CAFC appeal involving '741 was located. A February 2026 E.D. Tex. filing would not yet be appealable, so this is expected rather than meaningful.
• No PTAB petition (IPR/PGR) against the '741 patent surfaced. Samsung is an active petitioner generally, but nothing tied to '741 (or to the SureCell litigation) appeared. I did not exhaustively query the PTAB docket, so this is a negative search finding, not a verified absence.
• No second district-court case, no ITC Section 337 action, and no foreign counterpart suit naming '741 appeared. The Darts-ip entry is labeled "first worldwide family litigation filed," and the plaintiff's aggregator profile shows a single case.

⚠️ Date discrepancy to flag

Your current-date instruction is April 26, 2026, but two retrieved items are dated after that date: the THE Biz article is stamped 2026-09-05, and the patent-record fetch header is 2026-09-23. The case itself (filed 2026-02-12) predates April 26, 2026, so the litigation facts above are internally consistent — but the "current status" line is pulled from sources that appear to post-date your stated "today." Also note the '741 patent's record shows an adjusted expiration of 2026-05-07 (status "Expired – Lifetime"), i.e., the asserted patent's term ends within weeks of your stated date. That is a significant damages/post-expiration-royalty consideration for a case of this size, and it is worth verifying against USPTO PatentCenter rather than relying on the Google Patents legal-status field.

Confidence: Case identity (parties, court, case number, filing date, judge, $500M demand, jury demand) — high, corroborated across three independent indexes plus a trade-press account. Status/outcome (pending, early stage) — medium-high; no docket entry indicates any substantive ruling, and one source notes the docket is incomplete. Per-patent claim mapping for '741 — medium, from a single secondary complaint analysis I could not verify against the pleadings. Absence of other litigation/PTAB/CAFC matters — moderate confidence in the negative finding; PACER and the full PTAB docket were not directly queried.

I'll research the PTAB proceeding on file and any related activity before drafting.

Let me search more specifically for the proceeding and the patent owner.

Let me look for the specific petition and any companion PTAB filings against the asserted family.

PTAB / AIA Trial Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 11,687,741 ("Methods of using a cellular telephone")

Scope note: The proceedings list below is taken verbatim from the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block supplied in this prompt (USPTO Open Data Portal). I treat that block as canonical and have not added proceeding numbers. I searched for claim-level outcomes, panels, institution decisions, FWDs, settlements, and Federal Circuit appeals; the public record available to me at the search date contains none of those for this patent, because the single proceeding is one day old. Where I could not obtain something, I say so rather than filling the gap.

⚠️ Contradiction flagged against the earlier-generated section. The previously generated summary states the operative "current date" as 2026-04-26 and the ingest fetch stamp as 2026-09-23. The canonical PTAB block shows IPR2026-00509 was filed 2026-09-22 — i.e., after the earlier-stated current date. Under a 2026-04-26 as-of date this proceeding would not yet exist; under the 2026-09-23 fetch date it does, and is one day old. I proceed on the fetch date (2026-09-23), and I flag that any downstream document assuming an April 2026 "no PTAB activity" posture is now stale.

Proceedings overview

Total: 1 AIA trial proceeding on US 11,687,741 — breakdown: 1 active/pending (pre-institution), 0 claims invalidated, 0 claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution denied. The patent has never been tested at the Board; there is no FWD, no institution decision, and no claim has been canceled or confirmed. The defensive posture for a defendant today is therefore "live but entirely unresolved" — Samsung filed on 2026-09-22 and the Board has taken no action, so no IPR-based estoppel, no cancellation leverage, and no invalidity finding exists yet. The one structural fact that materially changes the risk calculus is not the IPR at all: per the Google Patents record, the '741 patent is "Expired – Lifetime," adjusted expiration 2026-05-07, which means no injunctive exposure and a closed (or nearly closed) damages window — yet the Board can and does institute on expired patents.

IPR2026-00509 — [[Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Samsung%20Electronics%20Co.%2C%20Ltd.) et al.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Samsung%20Electronics%20Co.%2C%20Ltd.%20et%20al.) v. Surecell Transactions LLC

• Type: Inter Partes Review (35 U.S.C. §§ 311–319)
• Filed: 2026-09-22
• Status: Pending (verbatim from the structured data). Plain-English gloss: this is a pre-institution petition. The docket's "last modified" date equals the filing date (2026-09-22), which is consistent with nothing having happened yet — no Notice of Accord Filing Date appears as a later event, no Patent Owner Preliminary Response, no institution decision. That reading is an inference from the identical filed/last-modified dates, not from a retrieved docket document.
• Judge panel: Not public / not assigned. The Board does not constitute a panel until (and unless) institution. No APJ names obtainable.
• Petition grounds: Not retrieved. I could not obtain the challenged claim numbers, the asserted references, or the statutory bases (§ 102 / § 103 / § 112). I will not reconstruct them. Contextual inference only, clearly labeled: under § 311(b) the grounds must be limited to §§ 102/103 "only on a ground that could be raised under section 102 or 103 and only on the basis of prior art consisting of patents or printed publications" — so no § 101 or § 112 attack is available in this forum. Given the '741 patent's 2005 priority date and the omnibus Colby specification, the threshold question for any petitioner is the effective filing date (whether the method claims actually get 2005 priority), because that determines the prior-art window.
• Institution decision: Not issued. The statutory clock under § 314(b) runs from the petition date (and/or the POPR), so a decision is expected on the order of ~2027-03-22 (six months from filing; potentially extended under current Office practice). Patent Owner's preliminary response is ordinarily due three months from notice (§ 42.107(b)), i.e., on the order of ~2026-12-22.
• Final Written Decision: None. No trial has been instituted, so no claim-level verdict exists. There is nothing to quote and no disposition to link.
• Settlement / termination: None. No joint motion to terminate, no § 317(a) termination, no § 317(b) settlement-document filing surfaced.
• Appeal: None. A Federal Circuit appeal is legally impossible at this stage — there is no appealable Board decision. This is consistent with (and reinforces) the earlier-generated finding of no CAFC docket for the '741 patent.
• Defensive value: Low as a defensive asset right now, high as optionality. Nothing in IPR2026-00509 currently bars an infringement theory against the '741 patent — no estoppel under § 315(e)(2) attaches until institution (and, for "reasonably could have raised" grounds, until FWD), and no claim has been canceled. What it buys a co-defendant is a parallel track and a likely stay argument: Samsung is a serial IPR petitioner with a documented practice of filing broad Sotera-type stipulations (its stipulations in IPR2025-00933/-00934/-00988/-01069 were litigated in the Wilus action), which materially improves the chances of a district-court stay. Conversely, for Patent Owner Surecell, the IPR is a live existential risk across its whole asserted portfolio while its patents are aging out.

Strategic summary

Claim status: everything is UNTESTED. No claim of the '741 patent is canceled, and none has been confirmed. The file contains exactly one datapoint — a petition filed 2026-09-22 with no Board action. Anyone who tells you a claim of this patent "survived an IPR" or "was invalidated" is speaking from a different patent; the earlier-generated section's caveat applies with full force, namely that the "claims 20 and 29, and method claim 60" figures circulating in third-party complaint analysis are unattributed and may not even belong to '741. Note that '741 is asserted in Surecell Transactions LLC v. Samsung Electronics America, Inc., No. 2:26-cv-00106 (E.D. Tex., Gilstrap, J., filed 2026-02-12), and third-party complaint analysis describes the '741 theory as method claims covering "placing the phone near a POS terminal… activating an electronic switch… responsive to a biometric sensor." Treat that as a description of the infringement theory, not a verified claim set — I still have not obtained the actual '741 claims from an authoritative source.

Estoppel landscape. With no institution, § 315(e)(2) estoppel has not attached to Samsung (or its real parties in interest; the structured data's "Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. et al." implies at least a second petitioner, most plausibly Samsung Electronics America, Inc.). If the Board institutes and reaches an FWD, Samsung and its privies will be barred from asserting in the district court any ground raised, or that reasonably could have been raised, in the IPR — which under Ingenico Inc. v. IOENGINE, LLC, 136 F.4th 1354 (Fed. Cir. 2025) (cited in the Wilus briefing) does not exclude system-art/product-art theories built on documents not relied on in the IPR. For a different defendant facing the '741 patent today, the practical consequence is the opposite of comfort: because no IPR has been instituted, no estoppel runs to you at all, and the full §§ 102/103 prior-art universe on patents and printed publications remains available. Filing a second, parallel IPR on the same patent is a real option but invites General Plastic-style follow-on and § 314(a) discretionary-denial risk, especially for an expired patent.

Pattern signals. (i) The patent owner trajectory is a classic single-inventor monetization chain: Colby → Mynette Technologies, Inc. (2023-02-03) → Surecell Transactions, LLC (2026-01-15), with suit filed 2026-02-12 — i.e., the IPR response came roughly seven months after the complaint, comfortably inside the § 315(b) one-year bar measured from service. (ii) Samsung is asserting a six-patent cluster against those same Galaxy/Samsung Pay products ('156, '949, '734, '741, '612, '396), so IPR2026-00509 is almost certainly one node in a coordinated multi-patent Samsung Defensive program; I did not confirm companion IPR numbers on the sibling patents from the canonical data, which lists only this proceeding for this patent, and I decline to speculate numbers. (iii) No defensive aggregator (e.g., Unified Patents) appears in the chain for '741; the petitioner of record is Samsung, which matters because Unified Patents hosts the litigation link the Google Patents record cites, but that is a link, not a filer. (iv) The discretionary-denial environment is unusually favorable to patent owners right now: the Office has recently designated decisions finding "settled expectations" grounds for denying institution in Dabico Airport Solutions Inc. v. AXA Power ApS, IPR2025-00408, Paper 21 (PTAB June 18, 2025) (designated Jan. 9, 2026), and denying institution against long-in-force patents in Intel Corp. v. Proxense, LLC, IPR2025-00327/-00328/-00329, Paper 12 (PTAB June 26, 2025). A 2005-priority patent asserted only after expiration on 2026-05-07 is a plausible candidate for exactly that argument — a real risk to Samsung's petition.

Recommended next steps

1. Pull the actual petition now. The docket is on PTAB E2E — https://ptab.uspto.gov/ (and the Patent Trial Case Tracking System at https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/). Retrieve Paper 2 (Petition), Paper 1 (Petition cover / mandatory notices), and the Exhibit list to fix: challenged claim numbers, asserted references, and grounds. Everything downstream — stay briefing, invalidity-contentions reduction, stipulation scope — depends on those three items. I could not retrieve them; do not paper over that gap.
2. If you are a co-defendant being asserted on '741: do not assume Samsung's petition shields you. Until institution, there is no estoppel and no stay entitlement. Decide early whether to (a) file a Sotera-plus stipulation and ride Samsung's petition, (b) file your own petition inside your § 315(b) window (calendar one year from service of the complaint in 2:26-cv-00106), or (c) litigate validity in Texas. For a patent expiring 2026-05-07, weigh whether the residual past-damages exposure justifies IPR spend at all.
3. Calendar the trial-stage milestones for IPR2026-00509 (dates below are statutory projections from the 2026-09-22 filing date, not docket entries):
   • ~2026-12-22 — Patent Owner Preliminary Response due.
   • ~2027-03-22 — § 314(b) institution decision deadline (six months from filing; Office practice can push this).
   • If instituted: ~2028-03-22 — Final Written Decision due within 12 months of institution (§ 316(a)(11)), extendable up to 18 months for good cause. Oral hearing typically ~2–3 months before FWD.
4. Build the "settled expectations / discretionary denial" defense-in-reverse: if you are the patent owner, this is your strongest non-merits argument, grounded in Dabico and Proxense. If you are a defendant, expect it and prepare a Revvo-compliant explanation for any claim-construction divergence between the IPR and the district court (Revvo Techs., Inc. v. Cerebrum Sensor Techs., Inc., IPR2025-00632, Paper 20 (PTAB Nov. 3, 2025) (precedential)).
5. Monitor for a second petition and for Director Review. A single petition on a six-patent assertion is unusual; watch for follow-on filings and for any § 314(a) referral to the Director, which is now a routine step in discretionary-denial practice.
6. Do not state a PTAB outcome for this patent in any brief, demand letter, or opinion. As of 2026-09-23 there is no FWD, no cancellation, no confirmation, no settlement, and no appeal. Any representation to the contrary is unsupported by the canonical record in this prompt.

Confidence: Filing date, status, petitioner, and inventor for IPR2026-00509 — high (canonical structured data). Existence of only one proceeding on this patent — high (same source; the instruction is to treat it as ground truth). Absence of institution decision, FWD, settlement, and CAFC appeal — high, stated as a negative finding consistent with a one-day-old petition. Grounds, challenged claims, panel, and any merits outcome — not obtained; explicitly unknown.

I'll research the assignment record and NPE-pattern evidence for US 11,687,741.

Analyst note on the primary source (read first)

I could not open USPTO Assignment Center records directly in this session (the Assignment Center / Assignment Search endpoints return no indexable page for a patent-number query, and my lookups for the reel/frame and correspondent fields returned unrelated reel/frame documents). Google Patents' "reassignment" legal-events table for US11687741 does display assignment events with dates and parties, but it does not expose reel/frame or correspondent in the fetched record. Accordingly:

• The parties and dates below are grounded in the Google Patents legal-events table for US11687741 plus corroborating court records.
• The reel/frame numbers and correspondent-of-record are marked [not retrieved]. I am not reconstructing them. Verification must be done at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number 11687741) or https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html before the reel/frame citations in this section can be relied on.

This materially limits signal #3 (repeat correspondent) and part of signal #4, and I say so explicitly below rather than inferring.

⚠️ Contradiction with the prior section, now partially resolved. The earlier summary left "claims 20, 29, 60" unattributed to '741 vs. '156. The retrieved complaint analysis (below) describes the patent with "a mechanical switch for selecting between two or more 'ON states'" — that language maps to the '156 specification ("the switch includes multiple on states"), not to the '741 biometric/POS method disclosures. The same analysis separately gives '741's sibling patents distinct claim sets ('734: claims 1/15/23; '612: claims 1–5). I therefore now read claims 20/29/60 as most likely belonging to US 7,924,156, not '741 — but the complaint text was truncated in retrieval, so this remains a probable, not verified, correction.

Inventors

Unusual-pattern assessment. The classic red flag ("all inventors depart the original assignee within 12 months of filing") cannot apply: this is a single-inventor family — Colby is the sole named inventor on the '425, '156, '458, '777, and the '741 line. The pattern here is the inverse and is itself notable: the inventor never assigned to an operating company at all. He filed as an individual, then formed his own holding company (Mynette Technologies, Inc., of which he is "an officer, director[,] and shareholder") and assigned the portfolio to it. The U.S. Court of Federal Claims documented that the Mynette entity was created around the portfolio, not the reverse.

Co-owner of the asserting entity (not an inventor): Robert Yorio, identified in the same opinion as an owner of Mynette and a board member, and counsel of record in Mynette Technologies, Inc. v. United States, No. 1:16-cv-01647 (Fed. Cl.). The court sanctioned Yorio for failing to disclose his ownership interest and board position while negotiating a protective order in that case.

Original assignee

Original assignee on the face of the issued patent: the inventor himself. Google Patents lists "Original Assignee: Individual" for US11687741. There is no operating-company assignee anywhere in this chain. Highlights:

• No product embodying the claims was ever shipped by any assignee. Mynette's business is enforcement, not manufacture — the Fed. Cl. record (as quoted in the 2024 sanctions opinion, https://cases.justia.com/federal/district-courts/federal-claims/cofce/1:2016cv01647/[33829/187](https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/search/patent/reelFrameDetail?reelFrame=33829-0187)/0.pdf) states that "litigation is Mynette's only business activity," and that Mynette's principals had a "history of using unconventional corporate structures to hold, assert, and monetize their IP."
• Mynette Technologies, Inc. — first post-issue owner of '741. Listed address in the family was Menlo Park, CA (US 9,569,777 front page). Primary line of business: patent holding and assertion. Current status: operating as an active litigant/patent holder as of 2024 (docket activity in 1:16-cv-01647 through June 2024); no evidence of dissolution or bankruptcy found. Unified Patents lists "Parent Company: Mynette Technologies Inc" for the family and flags the family "Likely Sold" (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-20070109101-A1).
• The specification does describe a cellular telephone with a switchable RFID tag and NFC payment features, but those are disclosure embodiments, not a shipped product by any assignee in this chain.

Assignment timeline

Post-issuance recorded events for US 11,687,741, per the Google Patents reassignment table for US11687741 (reel/frame and correspondent [not retrieved] — see note above):

• 2023-02-03 (executed date [not retrieved]) / recorded 2023-02-03 — Reel [not retrieved]/[not retrieved]

  • Conveyance: Assignment ("Assignment of Interest — see document for details")
  • Assignor: COLBY, STEVEN MICHAEL (individual)
  • Assignee: Mynette Technologies, Inc.
  • Correspondent: [not retrieved] — cannot be assessed for recurrence; this is the single most important missing field for signal #3.
  • Context: Transfer from the solo inventor-prosecutor to his own patent-holding company, ~7½ months after the 2023-06-27 issue date's application was filed (app. 17/952,176, filed 2022-09-23).

• 2026-01-15 (executed date [not retrieved]) / recorded 2026-01-15 — Reel [not retrieved]/[not retrieved]

  • Conveyance: Assignment ("Assignment of Assignor's Interest")
  • Assignor: Mynette Technologies, Inc.
  • Assignee: SURECELL TRANSACTIONS, LLC
  • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
  • Context: Transfer to an asserter, 28 days before the first infringement suit naming this patent (complaint filed 2026-02-12 in E.D. Tex.). This is the key pre-litigation transfer in the chain.

Upstream chain (resolved from court records, for context — these recorded assignments are on the earlier family applications, not on the '741 patent itself):

• 2016-09-25 — Colby → Steven M. Colby Trust (entire right, title and interest in the '156 and '425 patents and the '825/'907 applications). Reel/frame [not retrieved]; documented in the '825 application image file wrapper as described in https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/4527821/mynette-technologies-inc-v-united-states/.
• 2016-09-26 — Steven M. Colby Trust → Mynette Technologies, Inc. (same assets). Two assignments in two consecutive days to route ownership through a personal trust and into the holding company before the December 2016 complaint against the United States.

No defensive-aggregator or securitization records were found for this patent by any searched source.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11687741
    2005 : Colby priority filing
    2016 : Colby to Colby Trust
         : Trust to Mynette Technologies
         : Mynette sues United States
    2022 : App 17/952176 filed by Colby
    2023 : Patent issued 2023-06-27
         : Assigned to Mynette Technologies
    2026 : Assigned to Surecell Transactions
         : Surecell sues Samsung
         : Adjusted term expires

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — PRESENT (qualified).
   Evidence: the '741 moves from a natural person (Colby) to Mynette Technologies, Inc. on 2023-02-03, then to SURECELL TRANSACTIONS, LLC on 2026-01-15. Mynette's litigation-only character is established by a court finding, not by naming: "litigation is Mynette's only business activity" (Fed. Cl., 1:16-cv-01647, sanctions opinion). Surecell is an LLC with a single active case and no product. Qualification: the classic version of this signal (operating company → licensing LLC) does not strictly apply because there was never an operating assignee; and I could not verify Surecell's state of formation, registered agent, or address, so the "registered-agent service address / single-member LLC" tell is unverified. Reel/frame also not retrieved.

2. Known asserter in the chain — PRESENT. Mynette Technologies, Inc. is a repeat patent plaintiff — it asserted US 7,924,156, 7,719,425, 9,524,458 and 9,569,777 against the United States in the Court of Federal Claims (asserted claims listed at https://cases.justia.com/federal/district-courts/federal-claims/cofce/1:2016cv01647/[33829/187](https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/search/patent/reelFrameDetail?reelFrame=33829-0187)/0.pdf), and is listed as the family's "Parent Company" by Unified Patents. Surecell is characterized as an NPE in contemporaneous Korean trade coverage (THE Biz, 2026-09-05: "美 NPE, 삼성페이 인증 및 결제 시스템 특허침해 주장"). Caveat I will not paper over: neither Mynette nor Surecell appears on the enumerated list you supplied (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN/Mosaid-Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, DGC, Spangenberg entities), and I found no link to any of them. This is a finding about a documented repeat plaintiff, not a match to a known NPE roster. Note also a conflicting datum: the ex-parte AI classifier labels Surecell as "Type: Operating Company" (https://ai-lab.exparte.com/party/surecell-transactions-llc), an automated label I give near-zero weight against the single-case profile and the $500M demand.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR / NOT ESTABLISHED. I could not retrieve the correspondent of record for either the 2023-02-03 or the 2026-01-15 recording, so I cannot state that the same attorney or firm appears on multiple links. Related but distinct observation, flagged so it is not mistaken for this signal: Robert Yorio is a repeat actor across this family — counsel of record for Colby and Mynette in the Fed. Cl. case, and an owner and board member of Mynette whose non-disclosure of that interest drew sanctions. Yorio's involvement is documented as litigation counsel plus entity principal, which is a different role from "assignment-recordation correspondent." I am not asserting he filed the recordings.

4. Cascading transfers — PARTIALLY PRESENT (weak for '741; stronger for the family). For the '741 itself, only one intermediate hop (Mynette → Surecell) within the relevant window. For the family, the 2016 sequence Colby → Colby Trust (2016-09-25) → Mynette (2016-09-26) is a two-link, two-day cascade through a trust and into a holding company. I found no shared-correspondent or shared-address corroboration (see #3). Not a multi-LLC chain in <24 months for this patent.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — PRESENT (strong). Assignment to SURECELL TRANSACTIONS, LLC recorded 2026-01-15; complaint 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., Marshall Div., Judge Gilstrap) filed 2026-02-12 — 28 days later, with a $500,000,000 damages demand and a jury demand. This fits the "chain arranged to enable assertion" pattern (clean standing record plus venue in Marshall). Aggravating detail: the patent's adjusted expiration is 2026-05-07, so the transfer, the suit, and the end of term all fall within roughly a four-month window.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. No bankruptcy, receivership, or §363 sale involving Colby, Mynette, or Surecell was found in any searched source.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT. Privateering requires an operating company transferring to an NPE to assert on its behalf against competitors. Here the transferor (Mynette) is itself the NPE and was never an operating company; there is no credible operating-company principal. No SEC 10-K/8-K disclosure of such an arrangement exists, unsurprising given the entities involved.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT. The chain terminates at Surecell Transactions, LLC, an active plaintiff, not at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. The patent has not been neutralized. (Unified Patents' "Likely Sold" tag on the family is a sale prediction from its data model, not an acquisition by Unified.)

Verdict

NPE — high confidence.

Two independent strong signals drive this: (1) the 2026-01-15 assignment of '741 from Mynette Technologies, Inc. to SURECELL TRANSACTIONS, LLC, followed 28 days later by the 2026-02-12 filing of SureCell Transactions LLC v. Samsung Electronics America, Inc., No. 2:26-cv-00106, with a $500M demand; and (2) the only business activity of the upstream assignee being litigation, as found by the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Mynette Technologies, Inc. v. United States, No. 1:16-cv-01647 (a case in which Mynette and its principals were sanctioned and ultimately bound by a covenant not to sue). No assignee in the entire chain ever made or sold a product embodying the claims; no defensive aggregator, securitization, or bankruptcy appears anywhere.

Confidence limitation, stated plainly: the reel/frame numbers and correspondents of record were not retrievable in this session, so the repeat-correspondent signal could not be tested. Because reel/frame is the identifying data the Assignment Center exposes, the two dated transfers above should be re-verified at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (patent number 11687741) before being cited in any filing or diligence memo. Corresponding Google Patents record: https://patents.google.com/patent/US11687741/en; litigation cross-reference: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/Texas%20Eastern%20District%20Court/case/2%3A26-cv-00106.

I'll search for the USPTO record and the citation lists for this specific patent number.

Let me pull the Justia page and the Google Patents citation tables directly.

Let me try to surface the actual "References Cited" table for this patent.

Scope and method note (building on the prior section)

I searched for the literal string 11687741 and filtered out everything that was not this patent. The number string is collision-prone: my searches returned PubChem CID 11687741 (a chemical compound), a Dutch laboratory sample number "11687741," and unrelated Chinese investor-relations pages. Those are the same digits but not the patent, so I excluded them. I also kept the date discrepancy already flagged in the prior section (task date 2026-04-26 vs. the patent-record fetch stamped 2026-09-23).

Critical honesty flag up front: the authoritative full text I was given for US 11,687,741 ends inside the description (FIG. 30) and contains no claims and no front-page "(56) References Cited" list. That matters twice here: (a) I cannot give a genuine claim-by-claim § 102 analysis without the claim language, and (b) I could only partially retrieve the citation table. I state below exactly what is verified vs. what is not.

1. What I could and could not retrieve

The front-page citation list lives on page 1–3 of the issued PDF ((56) References Cited) and in the PatentCenter/Patent Public Search XML. I could not pull either directly, and I will not reconstruct it.

2. References cited within the specification (verified — build your § 102 screen here first)

These are "patent documents cited in the description" and are directly readable in the text I was given. Each is discussed in the disclosure as the base on which a Colby embodiment is overlaid.

Two analytic observations that matter more than the table:

1. The specification builds on these references rather than distinguishing them. Language like "One embodiment of the invention includes the credit card (16) and case … as illustrated in U.S. patent application Pub. 2004/0117514" (§ discussing FIGS. 10A–10B) reads as the applicant claiming the delta (adding an RFID tag to one part and shielding to the other). That "delta" framing is exactly the posture that invites a § 103 obviousness attack, and it is where an invalidity contention will live. The prior section's § 102/§ 103 open items should be read together with this.
2. The pre-2004-05-06 items ('497, '037, 2002/0117243) are the only clean § 102(b) candidates from the description. Everything from 2004 onward is inside the one-year grace window relative to the 2005-05-06 priority date and is only § 102(a)/(e) art.

3. Continuity documents (verified — but read the caveat)

From the Google Patents record, '741 is the youngest continuation in the chain: 11/382,050 → 11/382,052 → 11/382,053 → 11/382,265 → 11/382,054 → 11/382,264 → 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) → 17/952,176 (US 11,687,741). The six 2006-filed applications published as US 2007/0200679, 2007/0200680, 2007/0200681, 2007/0200684, 2007/0200682 and 2007/0200683 A1, and US 2006/0267737 A1.

Caveat you should not skip: these are the same inventor's own chain. Under pre-AIA § 102(e), a published application is only prior art if it is "by another"; under AIA § 102(b)(2)(C), same-inventor / common-ownership disclosures are excepted. So these family members are generally not § 102 prior art against '741. They matter for (i) priority entitlement, (ii) written-description/enablement support, and (iii) obviousness-type double patenting — which, given the long chain and the 2026-05-07 adjusted expiration noted in the prior section, is a live issue the invalidity/validity analysis should address. The '741 record's "Priority claimed from …" list also shows the family is both the priority source and the primary prior-art neighborhood.

4. The one front-page citation I did retrieve — treat as unverified

A Justia page fragment for this patent surfaced a table row reading:

7,042,332 | May 9, 2006 | Takamura et al.

Corroborating signal: an EPO search-report annex also lists "US 7042332 B2 | 20060509," consistent on both number and date.

• Full citation (as retrieved): US 7,042,332 B2, Takamura et al., issued 2006-05-09.
• Confidence: the number/date/inventor string is medium (it came from a search-result fragment rather than the patent's own front page). I do not know the title or subject matter with confidence and I am not going to guess it.
• § 102 relevance: if it is on the face of '741, it was presumably cited in the 2022–2023 prosecution, which means the examiner likely applied it under § 102(a)(1)/(a)(2) as a 2006 publication — i.e., after the 2005-05-06 priority date. That is internally inconsistent with an effective 2005 priority and reinforces the point that priority entitlement is the gateway issue (see §6).

5. § 102 framework — the decision that governs everything else

Because '741 was filed 2022-09-23 but claims 2005-05-06, the applicable § 102 regime is determined by whether every claim is supported by the 2005 priority document:

• If all claims are entitled to 2005-05-06 → pre-AIA § 102 governs. Prior art windows: § 102(b) for anything printed/published more than one year before 2005-05-06 (i.e., before 2004-05-06); § 102(a)/(e) for earlier art generally, with § 102(e) requiring "by another."
• If any claim has an effective filing date on/after 2013-03-16 (e.g., the claims to cellular-telephone/biometric subject matter added in the 2022 application, which the title and the abstract's "biometric sensor" language suggest) → AIA § 102 governs for that claim, and the 2005–2023 span of family publications becomes a much richer prior-art field, with § 102(b)(2)(C) common-ownership exceptions doing the defensive work.

This is the single highest-value question in the whole exercise, and it is answerable only from the claims plus the priority documents — neither of which I obtained.

6. Direct answer on "which claims it potentially anticipates"

I cannot responsibly name claim numbers. The claim set was not retrievable (the prior section reached the same conclusion independently — this is a confirmation, not a contradiction). Naming claims here would be fabrication. What I can do, and what is defensible, is map each reference to the claim families the prior section already identified from the specification:

Note also that the prior section identified claims 20, 29 and 60 (and the "mechanical switch selecting between two or more ON states" subject matter) from a litigation-derived secondary source, but explicitly unattributed as between '741 and the '156 patent. Until Dkt. 1 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.) is read, any claim-level § 102 chart for '741 rests on an unverified assumption.

7. Open items (carried forward and narrowed)

1. Pull the front page of the issued PDF / PatentCenter XML for US 11,687,741 — this is the only authoritative source for the complete "(56) References Cited" list and any NPL. My retrieval of that list failed.
2. Confirm or discard US 7,042,332 (Takamura et al., 2006-05-09) as a face citation, and get its title/subject matter — I could not characterize it.
3. Get the claim set — prerequisite to any real § 102 analysis (already listed in the prior section; now doubly critical).
4. Resolve the pre-AIA vs. AIA question by checking whether any claim's effective filing date is on/after 2013-03-16. This determines whether the 2006–2022 family art is even in the prior-art field.
5. Check for obviousness-type double patenting across the '156 / '826 / '777 / '185 / '741 chain — the same-inventor rule knocks these out as § 102 art but not as OTDP, and the 2026-05-07 adjusted expiration makes the terminal-disclaimer history worth reading.

Confidence summary: Specification-internal citations (§2) — high, read directly from the patent text. Continuity documents (§3) — high, from the Google Patents record. The Takamura citation (§4) — medium on number/date, zero on substance. Front-page citation list as a whole — not obtained. Claim-level § 102 mapping — not possible on the current record, and I have flagged rather than filled that gap.

I'll start by trying to close the biggest gap flagged in the prior section — the actual claim text — and by pulling the prior-art references this patent's own "Prior Art" section surfaces.

Let me try to pull the actual claim language and the cited references (the "Prior Art" citations) for the '741 patent.

Obviousness Analysis — US 11,687,741 B1 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Task date: April 26, 2026. Patent: US 11,687,741 B1 ("Methods of using a cellular telephone"), app. 17/952,176, filed 2022-09-23, issued 2023-06-27, earliest claimed priority 2005-05-06, current assignee Surecell Transactions LLC.

0. What I could and could not verify (read this first)

The prior section of this analysis flagged the claim text as a "genuine gap." After additional retrieval I have partially closed it, but still do not have authoritative claim language. That constrains everything below, so I state the evidentiary basis up front:

⚠️ Contradiction to flag against the prior section. The earlier section recorded "at least independent claims 20 and 29, and method claim 60" (unattributed) from a truncated snippet. The newer retrieval instead shows asserted-claim lists of "1, 15, and 23" and "1‑17 and 19‑20" without per-patent attribution. These cannot both be right for the '741. I treat all claim numbers for '741 as unverified.

Because I cannot quote a claim, the analysis below is expressed as conditional grounds keyed to the claim scope the record indicates (method of using a cellular telephone; an electronic switch; biometric sensor-responsive activation; communication of financial account information to a POS/NFC reader). If the issued claims differ materially, the reference mapping must be re-run.

1. Threshold issue that dominates the § 103 analysis: the effective filing date

This is not a footnote — it decides which universe of art is available.

Scenario A — claims entitled to the 2005-05-06 priority date. Prior art window closes ~May 2006 (subject to § 102(b)(1) grace-period subtleties). The '741's own family (2007–2021 publications and the '156/'826/'777/'185/'949/'734/'612/'396 patents) are not prior art, being either same-priority or the inventor's own within-family work.

Scenario B — claims NOT entitled to 2005-05-06 (e.g., the cellular-telephone/biometric-sensor subject matter was added by new matter in the 2020–2022 continuations, without § 112 support in the 2005–2006 applications). Effective date becomes 2022-09-23. Consequences:

• Colby's own published applications from 2007 onward become § 102(a)(1) printed publications (they are far outside the § 102(b)(1) grace period), and the § 102(b)(2)(C) common-ownership exception does not reach § 102(a)(1) art.
• The entire commercial NFC-payment ecosystem (Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, Google Wallet) becomes available.
• This is by far the strongest obviousness posture, and it should be the first thing a challenger tests.

Two structural red flags for Scenario B, both visible in the record already generated: (i) the '741 specification as fetched omits any "biometric" disclosure in the portions I have, while the abstract (per the secondary source) recites a biometric sensor; and (ii) sibling US 11,989,612 ("Cellular telephone including biometric sensor," filed 2022-04-25) is a separate 2022 filing in the same chain, which is consistent with biometric-sensor subject matter being a late addition. I cannot confirm either without the 2006 specifications.

I therefore present grounds under both scenarios.

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

Given a 2005–2006 priority date: a POSITA would have (a) a bachelor's in EE/CS or equivalent, (b) 2–3 years in RFID/contactless systems and mobile telephony, and (c) working familiarity with ISO/IEC 14443/15693, ISO 18000, passive backscatter tag design, and mobile handset integration. Under a 2022 date, add routine familiarity with NFC secure elements and mobile-payment application stacks (e.g., EMVCo tokenization, Host Card Emulation).

3. Reference inventory (grouped by claim element)

Group A — Mobile handset with RFID transponder for financial "stored value"

• US 8,127,984 (Zatloukal et al.) — application 10/560,262; a changeable cover for a mobile station containing an RFID transponder. Its file history records the examiner's statement that the art taught 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." The examiner also cited US 2004/0069852 (Seppinen et al.), US 2004/0171373 (Suda et al.) and US 2007/0030124 (Lee) as teaching "switching an antenna between an RFID interrogator/reader and phone by sharing an antenna." (https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/[PTAB](/ptab)/IPR2024-01362/Apple_Inc/docs/08-30-2024-Petitioner/Exhibit-1008-US_Patent_No_8,127,984_File_History.pdf)
• US 9,405,947 — same family/prosecution lineage; file history discusses a changeable cover that shares memory with the mobile station and expressly states that "'Digital Money' or other equivalents such as digital coupons and the like can be loaded into the phone for use in an exchange using the RFID transponder equipped cover." (https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2024-01362/Apple_Inc/docs/08-30-2024-Petitioner/Exhibit-1009-US_Patent_No_9,405,947_File_History.pdf)
• Zalewski — cited against the '947 claims; discloses a phone/RFID-transponder cover with shared memory and "digital money."

Group B — Biometric activation of a portable communication device

• Ensign Holdings patent family (e.g., US 7,796,011 / related) — "A biometric sensor may be coupled to a portable communications device, such as a cellular telephone … A biometric marker may be derived … The portable communications device may be activated responsive to deriving the biometric marker. The activation may include transmitting the measurements … to a receiver …" (https://patents.justia.com/assignee/ensign-holdings)
• Mobile identity verification with fingerprint reader in a cellular telephone battery pack — "a user enters biometric information into a portable device (such as a cellular telephone) when trying to enter a transaction … Using wireless communication, the portable device sends a biometric signal to an independent verification server." (ASSA ABLOY v. CPC Patent Technologies, IPR2022-01045, Ex. 1012)
• US 2004/0248616 (Pecen et al.), US 2004/0069048 (Liu), US 2004/0171373 (Suda) — handset-side security/authorization art.

Group C — Switchable / gated RFID tags and switches

• The '741 specification's own summary describes "a remotely powered RFID tag having an electronically controlled switch" with ON/OFF states stored in memory and switch logic comparing a received key to a stored key; and a switch "disposed such that it is surrounded by the antenna."
• US 7,924,156 / US 8,816,826 / US 9,569,777 (Colby, same family) — "Electronically switchable RFID tags," "Passive radio frequency data logger" (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7924156; https://patents.google.com/patent/[US8816826B2](/patent/US8816826B2)).

Group D — Reader/POS side

• US 7,719,425 (Colby; cited in the '741 spec as "further details of Identity Document 2800").
• Generic ISO 14443 / EMV contactless reader art and the '741 spec's own multiple-reader passport-slot systems (FIGS. 20–21).

Group E — Containers/shielding (peripheral to the cellular-telephone claims)

The '741 spec cites 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 app. 11/350,309 (filed 2006-02-07).

Group F — Colby's own later publications (relevant only in Scenario B)

US 2015/0294126 ("Mechanically Programmable RFID"), US 2017/0243194 ("RFID Financial Device"), US 2021/0110229 A1 ("RFID Financial Device Including Rotatory Switch," filed 2020-10-20), US 2007/0200679–'684 (2007 family publications), US 2022/0067312 ("Cellular Device Including Inductive Antenna").

Note especially that US 2021/0110229 A1 already recites: "switchable RFID devices include cellular phones, security devices, identity devices, financial devices, remote controls … switches are configured to enter data into a switchable RFID device, for example to select a financial account." That single document, if it is § 102(a)(1) art, covers most of the '741's asserted method.

4. The § 103 grounds

GROUND 1 (Scenario A, 2005 priority): Zatloukal '984 / '947 / Zalewski + Ensign biometric-activation art

Combination: a mobile station having an RFID transponder used to exchange stored value ("electronic money") with a reader, in which the transponder is placed in an active transmission state by a user action, + a biometric sensor coupled to a cellular telephone that activates the device upon deriving a biometric marker.

Why every limitation is met (on the claim scope the complaint attributes to '741):

• "Placing a cellular telephone in proximity to a point-of-sale device" → Zatloukal/Zalewski: the RFID-transponder-equipped handset is brought into the reader field to exchange digital money.
• "Activating an electronic switch to change a state of a circuit" → Zatloukal's own file history: the transceiver "switches states" between a voice-call state and an RFID-transponder state; the '947 file history describes memory shared between the cover's transponder and the handset, which is a circuit-state change.
• "Responsive to a biometric sensor" → Ensign: the portable communications device (expressly "such as a cellular telephone") is activated responsive to deriving the biometric marker; the ASSA ABLOY exhibit art puts the fingerprint sensor physically in the phone's battery pack and uses it to authorize a wireless transaction.
• "Communicating financial account information" → Zatloukal/Zalewski "Digital Money"/stored value exchanged with the reader; the '984 art's transponder is a financial-value carrier.

Motivation to combine (KSR, 550 U.S. 398 (2007)): Both references address the same problem and the same field — protecting stored-value/wireless transactions on a handset. Combining them is the predictable use of a known technique (biometric gate) to improve a similar device (RFID-enabled phone) in the same way. KSR at 417 ("if a technique has been used to improve one device, and a person of ordinary skill … would recognize that it would improve similar devices in the same way, using the technique is obvious"). Additional articulated motivations: (1) preventing unauthorized reading of a wallet phone — the very problem the '741 specification itself recites ("A problem with using RFID tags to store security, confidential and/or personal information is that an RFID reader can read any RFID tags that pass within its range"); (2) reducing fraudulent transactions by binding value transfer to the owner's biometric; (3) a finite, predictable set of known user-authentication modalities (PIN, password, fingerprint) — KSR "obvious to try."

GROUND 2 (Scenario A): Seppinen '852 / Nokia-type handset-RFID art + fingerprint-verification-server art

Seppinen (US 2004/0069852, class 235/451) is mobile-station/RFID art already applied by the Office against Zatloukal. Combined with the fingerprint-in-battery-pack mobile verification art (ASSA ABLOY exhibit), every element of a "method of using a cellular telephone to conduct a financial transaction after biometric authentication" is met. Motivation: commercial demand for hands-free payment and reducing chargeback/fraud losses; both references are analogous art (handset design and portable biometric verification).

GROUND 3 (Scenario A): Colby's own switchable-RFID family + a handset — with a § 102(b)(2)(C) caveat

Within the 2005-priority family, US 9,569,777 / US 8,816,826 / US 7,924,156 disclose the "electronically switchable RFID tag" with stored state and switch logic. A challenger cannot use these as § 102(a)(2) art if the § 102(b)(2)(C) common-ownership exception applies (all originally Colby/Individual → Mynette). However, these documents are highly probative of the ordinary skill level and the inventor's own acknowledged state of the art, and they become full § 102(a)(1) prior art under Scenario B. They also undercut any argument that "a switch in an RFID tag" was non-obvious.

GROUND 4 (Scenario B, 2022 date) — the decisive ground

If the cellular-telephone/biometric claims are not entitled to 2005-05-06, then:

• US 2021/0110229 A1 (Colby, published 2021-04-15) — same inventor, same specification lineage — discloses a switchable RFID device in a cellular phone, with switches used "to select a financial account." Alone or with US 2022/0067312, this is § 102(a)(1)/(a)(2) art and renders the claims obvious (and arguably anticipates).
• To that, add any of the ubiquitous 2014–2016 NFC-payment disclosures (Apple Pay / Samsung Pay / EMVCo tokenization literature, and the handset fingerprint-gated payment stacks). Under a 2022 POSITA, gating NFC payment transmission on a fingerprint sensor was not merely obvious but industry-standard — the accused Samsung devices embody precisely that.
• Motivation: the same motivation the specification recites (preventing unauthorized reads) plus the added security of biometric confirmation; expectation of success was essentially certain because Apple/Samsung had shipped exactly this by 2015–2016.

5. Secondary considerations / rebuttal exposure

• No unexpected results apparent. The '741 specification frames the benefit as security (preventing unauthorized RFID reads against an open wallet), which is the predictable consequence of gating a tag/transponder with a switch and a biometric — not an unexpected result.
• No long-felt need / failure of others. NFC-payment-with-biometrics was commercialized by multiple independent actors (DoCoMo/FeliCa, then Apple, then Samsung) before the 2022 filings.
• Priority/§ 112, not § 102, is the strongest defense to a Scenario-B ground: Patent Owner will argue the 2006 applications provide § 112 support for cellular-telephone and biometric subject matter. Whatever "conditional claims 20/29/60" turn out to be (see § 2 caveat), establishment of priority is the gating factual question.
• Real-party and estoppel angle (context only): the '741 has a statutory-termination/adjusted-expiration date of 2026-05-07 on the record I was given; under today's date (2026-04-26) it is still nominally in force for about 11 days. Any invalidity ground must therefore be developed fast or framed for a stay/appeal posture.

6. Bottom line

1. On the record available, the strongest § 103 ground is Scenario B (priority failure): Colby's own US 2021/0110229 A1 (and the rest of the 2007–2022 family publications) as § 102(a)(1) art, combined with the universally known fingerprint-gated NFC payment stack. Motivation is the specification's own stated problem; expectations were certain.
2. On a 2005 priority date, Ground 1 governs: US 8,127,984 (Zatloukal)/US 9,405,947 — a handset whose transceiver switches between voice and RFID transponder states and exchanges "Digital Money" — in view of biometric-activation-of-a-cellular-telephone art (Ensign Holdings; fingerprint-in-battery-pack mobile verification). Each limitation maps, and KSR supplies the motivation (same field, same problem, predictable use of a known technique).
3. Confidence: the § 103 framework and reference groupings — medium-high. The claim-by-claim mapping — low, because the issued claim text was never obtained; the "electronic switch," "biometric sensor," and "point of sale" limitations are drawn from a secondary-source complaint analysis, not from the patent itself. Treat every element mapping above as provisional pending the actual claims (USPTO PatentCenter / issued PDF) and the complaint (Dkt. 1) in 2:26-cv-00106.
4. Do not rely on: the earlier section's "claims 20, 29, 60" attribution — it is contradicted by later retrieval and remains unattributed.

Open items to close before filing anything: (a) actual '741 claims; (b) written-description support in the 2005–2006 applications for cellular-telephone + biometric subject matter; (c) the true § 102(b)(2)(C) ownership chain and dates; (d) whether US 8,127,984 / US 9,405,947 are § 102(b) art or only § 102(a)(2) art subject to the common-ownership exception.