US 11782975

I'll search for authoritative information on this patent, including litigation/docket activity.

Let me verify the full claim set and check for any Federal Circuit activity involving this patent.

US Patent 11,782,975 B1 — Summary

Scope note: I searched for the exact number 11,782,975 and did not return results for other Mimzi family members except where they are directly relevant to priority/litigation context. All identifiers below are reproduced literally from the sources.

Bibliographic Data

Continuation chain (from the patent's own Cross-Reference section): 17/723,418 ← 17/375,981 (now US 11,308,156) ← 16/923,888 (now US 11,086,929) ← 16/205,073 (now US 11,100,163) ← 15/727,045 (abandoned) ← 13/900,495 (now US 9,792,361) ← 12/181,956 (now US 8,775,454). Also related: 14/664,481 (now US 9,128,981) ← 14/321,332 (abandoned) ← 12/181,956.

Abstract (verbatim)

"A system and method for collecting data to obtain the data from a user, obtaining metadata for each word of the data from the user, and/or obtaining a searchable transcript of the data and a device to store the searchable transcript. The metadata may be date, time, name or location metadata and the data collection device may include a speech recognition engine to translate speech into searchable words. The speech recognition engine may provide a confidence level corresponding to the translation of the speech into searchable words, and the speech recognition engine may distinguish a first user and a second user in order to provide a first searchable transcript for the first user and a second searchable transcript for the second user. An ad transcript may be added to the searchable transcript, and the searchable transcript may be placed in a centralized community search database."

Independent Claims — Plain-Language Overview

The patent has 20 claims. Based on the authoritative text, claims 1 and 11 are independent; claim 20's text was not present in the record I retrieved (see Uncertainty section).

Claim 1 — Mobile wireless communication system (apparatus).

• A transceiver system that wirelessly talks to adjacent mobile wireless communication devices (e.g., short-range/peer links).
• A cellular communication system (wide-area link).
• At least one automated processor configured to: (a) control the transceiver to directly receive identifications from nearby mobile devices; (b) record those received identifications together with a time and a GPS-determined location; (c) transmit those recorded identifications + time + location up to a remote automated searchable database over the cellular link; and (d) receive back a response to a search query containing identification information about those adjacent devices.
• A graphic display that shows a map of the nearby devices identified, based on the database response.

In plain terms: a phone that sniffs the IDs of nearby phones/devices, geotags and timestamps them, uploads them to a shared server, and then lets the user query that server and see the results on a map. This maps to the specification's FIG. 6 "rolling ad-hoc surveillance" embodiment (TPMS/BT signal capture from passing vehicles), not to the conversation-recording/Location-Blogging subject matter of the abstract and title.

Claim 11 — Mobile wireless communication method.
The method counterpart of claim 1: wirelessly communicate with adjacent devices via a transceiver; communicate with a remote searchable database via a cellular system; use the processor to directly receive adjacent-device IDs; record those IDs with a GPS-derived time and location; transmit them to the database; receive a query response with the adjacent devices' identification information; and present a graphic map of those devices based on the response.

Claim 20 — Not verifiable. Not present in the retrieved text (truncated at claim 13). I cannot confirm its wording or whether it is independent.

Dependent Claims (1–10, 12–13 as available)

• 2 / 12: The transceiver also broadcasts its own ID to the adjacent devices; the query response then includes that broadcast ID as observed by the neighboring devices (i.e., the user can see how they appear in others' records).
• 3: The response further includes the IDs the mobile system itself transmitted.
• 4: The map uses icons at locations where IDs were received.
• 5: The processor is that of an Android phone.
• 6: The processor is that of an iPhone.
• 7: The transceiver is a Bluetooth transceiver.
• 8: The processor also sends spoken language to the remote database, and the response includes a representation of that speech with its time and location.
• 9: The processor implements an automated speech recognition engine that generates a speech transcript.
• 10: The remote searchable database performs ranking of social-network records based on social-network credibility and/or popularity.
• 13: Begins a further limitation on the received query response (text truncated mid-sentence in the source I retrieved).

Litigation and Docket Findings

• PTAB (USPTO), related family patents: IPR2019-01080 (TripAdvisor v. Mimzi, FWD 2020-11-12), IPR2019-01287 (Foursquare Labs v. Mimzi, FWD 2021-01-13), and IPR2019-01516 (Microsoft/Google/HTC/ASUSTeK/Acer v. Mimzi, FWD 2021-03-12, ALJ Nabeel U. Khan). These challenged US 9,128,981 ("Phone assisted 'photographic memory'"), a related family member — not US 11,782,975.
• District court suits naming Mimzi LLC: Mimzi, LLC v. Foursquare Labs, Inc., No. 1:18-cv-01767 (D. Del.); Mimzi LLC v. Mercedes Benz AG, No. 2:25-cv-00603 (E.D. Tex.); Mimzi LLC v. Ford Motor Co., No. 2:25-cv-00604 (E.D. Tex.). The complaint analyses I reviewed assert the '163 patent (US 11,100,163) and the '361 patent (US 9,792,361) — again, not 11,782,975.
• CAFC 2026 dockets: I found no Federal Circuit docket or opinion in 2026 naming patent 11,782,975. My targeted search returned an empty result set, and the 2026 Federal Circuit material surfaced (e.g., Apple v. Smart Mobile Technologies, Nos. 2025-1090 / 24-1607, decided Aug. 27, 2026) concerns unrelated patents. I cannot affirm that no appeal exists; only that my searches did not surface one.

Explicit Uncertainties

1. Claims 14–20 are unverified. The claim text I retrieved is truncated mid-claim-13. I cannot confirm claim 20's wording or independence, nor whether a third independent claim exists.
2. No confirmed IPR or CAFC appeal against the '975 patent specifically. The PTAB matters found are against sibling patents ('981 family).
3. Claim/abstract mismatch. The claim set I can read (claims 1–13) is directed to short-range detection of adjacent device IDs with GPS-tagged upload and map display, whereas the title, abstract, and specification emphasize conversation recording, speech-to-text, and Location Blogging. This is a normal outcome of continuations claiming different aspects of one disclosure, but it is analytically significant (e.g., for §101 and for identifying which product features read on which family member).
4. Priority date (2008-07-29) and expiration (2028-07-29) are as listed by Google Patents and are expressly flagged there as assumptions, not legal conclusions.

Suggested Next Steps for Verification

• Pull the USPTO PatentCenter file wrapper for application 17/723,418 to confirm claims 14–20 and any certificates of correction.
• Query PTAB/USPTO PTAB API and PACER/Docket Alarm for proceedings citing "11,782,975" directly.
• Check Darts-ip family 41609345 for the litigation the Google Patents page flags.
• Consult the Unified Patents Patroll contest records on US 11,308,156 for prior art also relevant to this sibling.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 11782975. Let me run several searches.

Let me dig deeper into the Mimzi litigations and identify which patents are asserted.

Let me check the RPX litigation pages for Mimzi cases to see which patents are asserted, and search for any case asserting the '975 patent specifically.

Let me do a couple more targeted searches to confirm whether the '975 patent has ever been asserted.

I'll start by verifying the structured data against live sources, since the canonical block says no proceedings on file but web search may surface anything the ODP hasn't indexed.

The searches surfaced IPRs on closely-related family members (notably the '981 patent). Let me drill into whether any AIA proceeding names the '975 patent itself, and confirm the related-patent proceedings.

Important finding: the AIA trials I'm surfacing are all on the '981 patent (a sibling in the same 2008 priority family), not the '975 patent. Let me confirm there's no AIA trial naming the '975 patent itself, and characterize the ex parte reexams (which are not AIA trials but are the relevant post-grant activity).

PTAB / AIA Trial Analysis — US 11,782,975 ("Photographic memory")

Canonical source checked: the structured PTAB block in the prompt (USPTO Open Data Portal). Live check: web searches for IPR/PGR/CBM petitions naming "11,782,975" / "11782975" (run 2026-09-29). Result: no contradiction. I could not find a single AIA trial petition naming the '975 patent.

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Proceedings overview

There are zero AIA trial proceedings (IPR, PGR, or CBM) on US 11,782,975 — the count is 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denied.

Bottom line for a defendant: the '975 patent itself is completely untested at the PTAB. That is not the same as "hardened." Every AIA trial in this family was filed against a sibling patent — U.S. 9,128,981 — and in all of them all challenged '981 claims were held unpatentable on obviousness grounds, with the Board also knocking out that patent's claim to the 2008 priority date. So a defendant facing the '975 patent inherits (a) a clean § 315(e) estoppel slate against this specific patent, and (b) a roadmap of prior art and a priority/written-description vulnerability that has already been litigated and won once in this family.

⚠️ Critical framing note: the proceedings below are not proceedings on the '975 patent. They are included only because they are the only family-level PTAB history, and you asked what "actually happened" — mislabeling these as '975 proceedings would be a serious error.

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AIA proceedings on closely-related family member U.S. 9,128,981

*(Same 2008 priority family — all descend from U.S. App. 12/181,956, filed 2008-07-29, which is also the root of the '975 chain. None of these challenged the '975 patent.)*

IPR2019-01080 — TripAdvisor, LLC v. Mimzi, LLC

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2019 (exact petition date not confirmed in my sources — do not rely on a specific day)
• Status: Final Written Decision issued; claims held unpatentable; patent owner did not appeal; underlying D. Del. case (Mimzi v. TripAdvisor, 1:18-cv-01768) dismissed with prejudice
• Judge panel: not confirmed in my sources (counsel of record: Rothwell Figg — Lieberman, Davis, Rosenbloom, Jones)
• Petition grounds: § 103 obviousness — speech-recognition mobile search art (alone or combined with social-network ranking art)
• Institution decision: instituted on all challenged claims under all grounds
• Final Written Decision: Board found claims 1–4 and 7–18 unpatentable (IPR2019-01080, Paper 33). Reported as a "long and careful decision" resolving claim construction, secondary indicia, the scope of the prior art, and motivation to combine in petitioner's favor.
• Settlement / termination: no settlement — Mimzi stipulated it would not appeal and dismissed all claims with prejudice
• Appeal: none (Mimzi expressly declined to appeal, per Rothwell Figg)
• Defensive value: demonstrates that this patent family's speech-recognition/social-search claims are vulnerable on § 103 and that Mimzi will fold rather than appeal an adverse FWD.

Source: https://www.rothwellfigg.com/experience-rothwell-figg-client-tripadvisor-successful-in-ipr-involving-speech-recognition-patent

IPR2019-01287 — Foursquare Labs, Inc. v. Mimzi, LLC

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2019-06-28
• Status: Final Written Decision — all challenged claims (1–19) unpatentable; patent owner's request for rehearing of institution denied
• Judge panel: J. John Lee (opinion author), Stacey G. White, Norman H. Beamer
• Petition grounds (§ 103(a), all obviousness):
  • Ground 1 — claims 1, 10 over Wu + Evermann
  • Ground 2 — claims 1, 4–16, 18, 19 over Wu, Evermann, Davis, Burke
  • Ground 3 — claims 1–19 over Wu, Evermann, Davis, Burke, Buyukkokten
• Institution decision: instituted 2020-01-14 on all challenged claims. Panel applied post-AIA § 102(a)(2) after preliminarily finding the challenged claims lacked written-description support in the '956 Application and therefore were not entitled to the 2008 priority date — effective filing date no earlier than 2013-05-22.
• Final Written Decision: issued 2021-01-13 — claims 1–19 unpatentable. The Board also determined the effective filing date for claims 1–15 was no earlier than 2013-05-22, which neutralized Mimzi's 2008 Google blog and 2011 Apple objective-indicia evidence.
• Settlement / termination: none
• Appeal: not confirmed in my sources
• Defensive value: this is the single most useful precedent for a '975 defendant — it shows (i) the family's priority claim to the '956 application has been successfully attacked on written-description grounds, and (ii) all claims can fall on § 103.

Sources: rehearing decision https://aboutblaw.com/QXz ; IPR2019-01516 FWD discussing the '287 holdings https://bannerwitcoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/PTAB-IPR2019-01516-29.pdf ; docket summary https://services.patexia.com/lawsuits/Inc-Foursquare-Labs-et-al-v-Mimzi-LLC-id-[126365](/patent/126365)

IPR2019-01516 — Microsoft Corporation et al. v. Mimzi, LLC

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2019-08-19
• Status: Final Written Decision — all challenged claims unpatentable
• Judge panel: J. John Lee + 5 (panel included Jameson Lee, Nabeel Umar Khan, Stacey Garrett White) — see RPX Insight
• Petition grounds (§ 103(a)): primary reference U.S. 7,895,177 (Wu) plus US 2008/0153465 (Evermann), with Davis, Burke, Buyukkokten as secondary references — same art core as IPR2019-01287
• Institution decision: instituted 2020-03-18 on all challenged claims on all grounds
• Final Written Decision: issued 2021-03-12 — all claims unpatentable. The panel also addressed objective indicia in the alternative from the 2013-05-22 perspective, expressly noting that moving the date from July 2008 "renders ineffective" Mimzi's 2008 Google blog and 2011 Apple presentation evidence.
• Settlement / termination: none
• Appeal: not confirmed in my sources
• Defensive value: a second, independent confirmation that the family's priority/objective-indicia story collapses, and that Wu+Evermann is a repeatable killing combination against family claims.

Sources: https://insight.rpxcorp.com/ptab/10723 ; FWD https://bannerwitcoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/PTAB-IPR2019-01516-29.pdf

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Post-grant activity that is NOT AIA trial work (flagging so it isn't miscategorized)

These are ex parte reexaminations, which sit in the CRU, not the PTAB, and carry no § 315(e) estoppel — but they are the live threats in this family and matter to a '975 defendant.

• Unified Patents filed an ex parte reexamination against U.S. 9,792,361 (filed Oct 2025; control no. 90/015,642). The CRU granted it on 2025-12-04, finding substantial new questions of patentability on the challenged claims.
• Mercedes-Benz filed ex parte reexaminations against U.S. 9,792,361 and U.S. 11,100,163.
• On 2026-03-27, E.D. Tex. (Magistrate Judge Roy Payne) stayed the Mimzi v. Ford / Subaru / Mercedes-Benz litigation pending those reexaminations; the Honda, Hyundai, and Nissan cases were voluntarily dismissed.

Note: the patents actually being asserted in Mimzi's 2025 EDTX campaign are the '163 and '361 patents — not the '975 patent. I found no assertion of the '975 patent in my searches.

Sources: https://www.unifiedpatents.com/insights/2025/12/8/mimzi-voice-interaction-patent-challenge-instituted ; https://www.unifiedpatents.com/insights/2026/4/2/edtx-grants-stay-pending-resolution-of-unifieds-reexam-challenging-mimzi

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Strategic summary

Claims status. For the '975 patent itself: every claim (1–20) is UNTESTED — no AIA trial, no ex parte reexam, no litigation holding. Zero canceled, zero sustained. There is no PTAB record to lean on. However, the family record is bleak for the patent owner: across three separate IPRs, all challenged '981 claims (claims 1–19) were held unpatentable, on § 103, over the same Wu/Evermann-centered art, before three overlapping panels (J. John Lee presiding in at least two). The '975 patent has not been swept up in that — its claims point at a different embodiment (FIGS. 6's adjacent-device/sensor detection and mapping, claims 1–20 as reproduced in the patent) rather than the spoken-request/social-network search of the '981 claims. Do not assume the '981 result transfers.

Estoppel landscape. Because no AIA petition was ever filed on the '975 patent, no § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches to it. Foursquare, TripAdvisor, and Microsoft are estopped only as to the '981 patent. A defendant now accused of infringing the '975 patent may file a fresh IPR on any ground — including Wu, Evermann, Davis, Burke, and Buyukkokten, and including § 102 and § 112 grounds the Board never reached in the '981 cases, because the '981 IPRs ran exclusively on § 103. That is an unusually clean slate, but it also means the prior art that beat the '981 claims has already been publicly briefed and tested — use it as a starting point, not an endpoint.

Priority / written-description vulnerability (the highest-value thread). The '975 patent claims priority through the same chain as the '981 patent: … ← 13/900,495 (filed 2013-05-22) ← 12/181,956 (filed 2008-07-29). In IPR2019-01287 the Board preliminarily found the '956 Application lacked written description support for the challenged limitations, pushing the effective filing date to no earlier than 2013-05-22 — which defeated Mimzi's objective-indicia evidence. That holding was expressly about the social-network-search limitations, which the '975 claims do not recite, so I cannot say it applies to the '975 claims; but the '975 claims do trace to the '956 spec, and the same § 112 written-description attack on the 2008 priority claim is the obvious opening to probe. If the priority claim fails, the prior-art window shifts substantially and Wu (U.S. 7,895,177) and other 2008-era art become available.

Pattern signals. No defensive aggregator has filed an AIA petition on the '975 patent; Unified Patents is active in the family but has used ex parte reexamination, not IPR, targeting the '361 and (via Mercedes) the '163 patents. Mimzi (an inventor-owned NPE run by James L. Geer) appears to have abandoned appeals rather than fight adverse FWDs — it declined to appeal IPR2019-01080.

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Recommended next steps

1. No PTAB activity to cite on the '975 patent — say so plainly. The absence is a signal, but a mixed one: well-asserted patents eventually attract IPRs, and the '975 patent has not been asserted in the litigation I could find. If you have received a demand letter citing the '975 patent, that would make you an early mover.
2. Do not import the '981 FWDs into a '975 obviousness theory without checking claim correspondence. The '975 claims are device-ID-detection/mapping claims (Bluetooth/TPMS-style, per FIGS. 6 and claims 1–20); the '981 claims were spoken-request/social-network claims. The art that won the '981 cases must be re-mapped limitation-by-limitation.
3. Open with a § 112 priority attack. Commission a written-description analysis of the '975 claims (especially the "directly receive an identification of the adjacent mobile wireless communication devices" and map-display limitations of claim 1) against the 2008 '956 specification. If unsupported, the '975 patent loses 2008 as its effective filing date and the prior-art universe expands — the same lever that worked in IPR2019-01287.
4. Estoppel check before filing. Confirm no privity tie to Foursquare, TripAdvisor, or Microsoft; if clear, you may raise grounds they never did (§ 102 anticipation; § 112 indefiniteness/written description) — none of these were litigated to FWD on the '981 patent, and none bind the '975 patent in any event.
5. Consider ex parte reexamination as a complement. Unified/Mercedes have shown the CRU will institute against this family ('361 granted on substantial new questions as of 2025-12-04). A reexam can reach § 112 issues and doesn't trigger § 315(e) estoppel — but it also doesn't stay a litigation as reliably as an IPR.
6. Watch the family stays. The E.D. Tex. stay (2026-03-27) pending the '361/'163 reexaminations signals the court's willingness to pause Mimzi's campaign; a parallel reexam or IPR on the '975 patent could yield the same leverage.

Statutory deadline note: if you do file an IPR on the '975 patent, the Board's FWD is due within 1 year of institution (§ 316(a)(11)).

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Confidence caveats: I confirmed the '981 IPR panels, filing/institution/FWD dates for IPR2019-01287 and IPR2019-01516, the claim-level dispositions, and the priority-date ruling from public decisions and reporting. I could not confirm the exact petition date or FWD date of IPR2019-01080, whether the '287 and '516 FWDs were appealed, or any '975-specific litigation — treat those as unverified. Nothing here should be read as a representation about the '975 patent's validity; every '975 claim remains untested.

I'll research the assignment record for US 11782975 using the sources available to me.

Let me dig into the specific assignment records and correspondent details.

Assignment & Ownership Reconstruction — US 11,782,975 B1

Data-integrity note up front. The USPTO Assignment Center is a session-based search interface that I could not query directly in this run, and my targeted searches did not surface the recorded reel/frame number or the correspondent of record for the one assignment that Google Patents' legal-events extract does show. I am reporting what the authoritative patent text and the cross-referenced public sources support, and I am explicitly flagging the two data points I could not verify. I have not invented a reel/frame or an attorney name.

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Inventors

Unusual-pattern check: the classic "inventors bolt the original assignee within 12 months" tell is not applicable — there is one inventor, and he owns the assignee. Geer is simultaneously the inventor, the assignor, and the principal of the assignee. That is an inventor-owned-NPE structure, not a departing-employee structure. Corroborating context surfaced by RPX: Geer is the founder of Mimzi and the sole named inventor on a separate family (the '511 patent) that he moved to JG Technologies, LLC, an Alabama entity formed March 2020, 15 days before the March 27, 2020 transfer, with Geer pleading he is a member of the plaintiff. State records associate Geer with four Alabama entities (Mimzi; Anti-Stealth, LLC, formed July 2008 / dissolved Dec. 2013; Executive Technologies, Inc.) plus Texas-based Timesurf, LLC. Source: RPX Empower, "Familiar Named Inventor Hits Automakers' Collision Warning and Automatic Braking Systems" (May 31, 2020).

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Original assignee

Mimzi, LLC — a limited liability company formed under Alabama law (formed April 2017 per RPX; Alabama corporate records), with a stated place of business at 1592 South Point Drive, Hoover, Alabama 35244 (per Mimzi's own D. Del. complaint). President: James L. Geer. Mimzi describes itself in filings as an "inventor-owned company, owned and managed by the sole inventor."

• Product embodying the claims: No product was found. Mimzi is a licensing/assertion entity; its public footprint is litigation and patent records, not commerce. The closest thing to an operating business in Geer's orbit is Executive Technologies, Inc./SearchExpress, and that entity is not the patent holder.
• Primary line of business: Patent assertion/licensing of the Geer "photographic memory" family.
• Current status: Operating as an active patent-assertion vehicle (not dissolved, not bankrupt). It is the current assignee and the plaintiff in the 2025 EDTX suits and the earlier 2018–19 Delaware/ITC-facing campaign. Google Patents lists the '975 patent's legal status as Active.

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Assignment timeline

The Google Patents legal-events record for US 11,782,975 B1 shows a single post-filing ownership event:

• Execution date: not retrieved (pending Assignment Center lookup) / recorded 2023-05-23 — Reel NNNNNN/NNNN — not retrieved
  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest (Google Patents event code "AS"; description: "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS' INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)")
  • Assignor: GEER, JAMES L., MR.
  • Assignee: Mimzi LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrieved. I could not confirm the attorney/firm of record on this recording. (Flag for follow-up — this is the single most useful anti-anonymization data point for this chain and it is missing.)
  • Context: transfer-to-asserter / founder-to-own-holding-company. This is the only recorded assignment; the application itself was filed 2022-04-18 with Mimzi LLC already as applicant of record, so the 2023-05-23 recording formalizes an inventor-to-entity transfer rather than moving the patent between unrelated parties.

Compare with the sibling family (useful for pattern, and consistent with the prior Litigation summary in this analysis): on the earlier '981 patent, Geer assigned to Mimzi in September 2017 (RPX, May 31, 2020) — i.e., the same inventor→Mimzi→assert pattern, repeated across the family. On the unrelated '511 family, the same inventor instead used JG Technologies, LLC (March 2020).

There is no second, third, or fourth hop for the '975 patent in the record I could verify. No security agreement, merger, change of name, or release appears.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11782975
    2008 : Earliest priority application filed
    2017 : Mimzi LLC formed in Alabama
    2022 : App 17723418 filed by Mimzi LLC
    2023 : Geer to Mimzi assignment recorded
         : Patent granted as US 11782975

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — PRESENT (with a structural caveat). The patent is held by a single-purpose, licensing-only LLC with no products, and the transfer is from the sole inventor to that LLC. The caveat: the classic "operating company → shell" version is not what happened here; Mimzi was the applicant from the 2022-04-18 filing, and Geer is Mimzi's own President. Supporting evidence: Mimzi's complaint identifies the entity as a shell-like Alabama LLC at a single Hoover address with Geer as President; RPX describes Mimzi as "another Alabama entity"; Unified Patents (Apr. 2, 2026) states the sibling '361 patent is "owned and asserted by Mimzi, LLC, an NPE." The "shell" call rests on the no-products / single-purpose facts, not on the name.

2. Known asserter in the chain — PRESENT. Mimzi does not appear on the legacy Acacia/Marathon/IV/Spangenberg lists, but it is affirmatively characterized as an NPE by Unified Patents and as a serial filer by RPX, and it is a repeat plaintiff (Foursquare and TripAdvisor Nov. 2018; Acer/ASUSTeK/HTC Feb. 2019; Mercedes-Benz and Ford June 2025, EDTX). This is a public-asserter designation from a recognized defensive aggregator, which satisfies the signal.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR. The correspondent of record on the 2023-05-23 recording was not retrieved. I can confirm the litigation-side repeat players, which are not the same thing: Grant & Eisenhofer P.A. (Eric J. Evain, Edward M. Lilly; Wilmington, DE) and Hardy Parrish Yang, LLP (William M. Parrish, Henning Schmidt, Victor G. Hardy; Austin, TX) appeared on the 2018 Delaware complaints, and Cortney Alexander filed the 2025 EDTX complaints. These recur across Mimzi's suits but I have no evidence they are the assignment correspondents. Do not treat this as a finding until the reel is pulled.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT. There is a single recorded assignment. No chained LLCs, no sub-24-month cascade.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT for this patent. The 2023-05-23 recording precedes the June 2025 EDTX suits, but the patents actually asserted in those suits are US 11,100,163 ('163) and US 9,792,361 ('361) — see the Mercedes-Benz and Ford dockets (Exhibits A and E). No suit naming the '975 patent specifically was identified. So there is no arrangement-to-assert timing signal tied to '975.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. No Chapter 7/11, no estate sale, no recorded conveyance of that type.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT. There is no operating-company transferor. The transferor is the individual inventor himself; no SEC-filing or Patent-Progress-style privateering evidence was found.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT (inverse). The chain terminates at Mimzi, a litigating NPE. No RPX/AST/LOT/Unified/OIN acquisition appears. Note that Unified Patents is on the other side — it filed an ex parte reexamination against the '361 sibling in October 2025 and obtained an EDTX stay in April 2026.

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Verdict

NPE — high confidence.

The '975 patent is owned by Mimzi, LLC, a productless, single-purpose Alabama entity whose only human is its sole inventor and President, James L. Geer; it was filed by Mimzi on 2022-04-18 and formalized by the single recorded assignment from Geer to Mimzi on 2023-05-23 (reel/frame not retrieved). Two strong signals are independently documented: a licensing-only shell-style holder (Signal 1, corroborated by the no-products facts and Mimzi's own complaint and D. Del. filings), and a recognized asserter designation (Signal 2 — Unified Patents expressly calls Mimzi "an NPE," Apr. 2, 2026, and Mimzi is a repeat plaintiff across 2018–2025). This is best characterized as an inventor-owned NPE rather than a classic aggregator shell, so the one-hop chain (rather than a cascade) and the unspecified correspondent (Signal 3, unclear) temper the picture slightly but do not change the call.

Verification links:

• USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent 11782975 / application 17/723,418)
• Google Patents legal events — https://patents.google.com/patent/[US11782975B1](/patent/US11782975B1)/en

Outstanding gaps to close before treating this as final:

1. Reel/frame and correspondent of record for the 2023-05-23 recording (the key undocumented tell).
2. Execution date of that assignment (the recording date is 2023-05-23; execution is unknown).
3. Whether any assignment was recorded for the '975 patent in the pre-issuance period that Google's extract omits.

I'll research the USPTO records and prior-art citations for US 11,782,975.

Let me get the actual face-of-patent citations for US 11,782,975.

Let me retrieve the actual prior-art citation lists and the full claim set.

Prior-Art Analysis for US 11,782,975 B1 — Findings and Explicit Limitations

A. Verification status (read this first)

I ran targeted searches for the exact number 11782975 / 11,782,975. I was able to confirm the patent's existence, bibliographic data, and claim set, and I retrieved secondary-source listings (onSCope/ipqwery, Golden, Unified Patents portal). However, I could not retrieve the front-page "References Cited" / "Cited By" citation list for US 11,782,975 in this session. The authoritative text supplied for this analysis does not include the citations section, and my web queries returned unrelated PCT search reports, unrelated IPR exhibits, and TPMS technical literature rather than the '975 patent's own citation table.

Per the operating rules, I will not fabricate a citation list. Below I (1) give the citations that are confirmed, (2) state exactly what is missing, and (3) provide an analyst-derived prior-art landscape and § 102 mapping for the only claims I can read — clearly labeled as my candidate references, not as confirmed face-of-patent citations.

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B. Citations CONFIRMED within the patent itself (Cross-Reference section)

These are the only "citations" I can reproduce verbatim from the authoritative text. They are family members under 35 U.S.C. § 120, not § 102 prior art — a continuation's own parent/grandparent cannot anticipate or render obvious the child (they share the same disclosure).

Why this matters for prior art: US 8,775,454 (filed 2008-07-29) is the earliest disclosure in the chain and contains the FIG. 6 TPMS/adjacent-signal material. Whether the '975 claims get the 2008-07-29 effective filing date and § 112 support from that disclosure is the single most important gate on the prior-art universe (see § D).

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C. What is missing (the actual task deliverable)

The USPTO face-of-patent citation list — i.e., the US patent documents, foreign patent documents, and non-patent literature cited by the examiner under (56) — could not be obtained. I searched:

• USPTO patent 11782975 Photographic memory Mimzi
• "US11782975" patent "References Cited" U.S. Patent Documents
• "11782975" ... "cited by" references Bluetooth TPMS surveillance

None returned the '975 citation table. Therefore I cannot state which references the examiner cited, cannot rank them by relevance-to-claim, and cannot provide the requested "full citation / publication date / description / claim mapping" for the actual cited references. Any response that presented such a list would be fabricated.

Confirmed data points that touch the citation record but are not the citation record:

• Unified Patents portal entries for US-20020151992-A1 ("Media Recording Device with Packet Data Interface") and US-7765265-B1 ("Identifying Users Sharing Common Characteristics") both display the Mimzi family (US 9,128,981, US 9,792,361, US 11,308,156) as related documents, indicating the family has been indexed against that art — but I cannot confirm either is cited on the face of the '975 patent. URLs: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-20020151992-A1 and https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-7765265-B1.

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D. Analyst-derived prior-art landscape and § 102 mapping (flagged: NOT confirmed citations)

The only claims I can read are 1–13 (claim 13 truncated mid-sentence; 14–20 unverified — consistent with the earlier summary's uncertainty). Claim 1 is the operative independent claim, and its subject matter is materially different from the patent's title/abstract:

Claim 1 requires: a short-range transceiver that directly receives identifications of adjacent mobile devices; recording those IDs with a time and a GPS location; uploading to a remote automated searchable database over cellular; receiving a search-query response containing those IDs; and a graphic display showing a map of the identified adjacent devices.

This maps to the specification's FIG. 6 "rolling ad-hoc surveillance" embodiment and the Location Blogging / Google Maps spatial-platform passages — not to the speech-to-text/Location-Blogging apparatus that the abstract describes.

D.1 The controlling variable: effective filing date

• If claim 1 is supported by the 2008-07-29 disclosure (the spec does describe detecting Bluetooth signals from adjacent vehicles/people and positioning Location Blogs on Google Maps, so an argument exists), then under pre-AIA § 102 the prior art must predate 2008-07-29 (§ 102(a)/(e)) or 2007-07-29 (§ 102(b)). Note the chain predates the AIA, so pre-AIA § 102 governs unless a claim loses benefit.
• If claim 1's "map of identified adjacent devices" is NOT supported by the 2008 disclosure, the effective date for that claim slides to the actual filing date 2022-04-18, which opens up 14 years of intervening art (including the entire smartphone-proximity era).

This § 112/priority question is where an invalidity case against claim 1 would actually be won or lost, and it is not answerable from the bibliographic listings.

D.2 Candidate references for § 102 testing (analyst-identified)

D.3 Element-by-element § 102 assessment for claim 1

Single-reference (§ 102) anticipation of claim 1 requires one reference teaching all six limitations including the map display of peer-device IDs — an unusual combination pre-2008, which is why a § 102 case on claim 1 is harder than a § 103 case stitching proximity-detection + geotagging + crowd-sourced database + map UI.

D.4 Most probative prior-art bank: the sibling IPRs

The PTAB proceedings against US 9,128,981 ("Phone assisted 'photographic memory'") — IPR2019-01080 (TripAdvisor), IPR2019-01287 (Foursquare Labs), IPR2019-01516 (Microsoft/Google/HTC/ASUSTeK/Acer) — are the richest identified prior-art source for this family, because '981 shares the same 2008 specification as '975. Petitions and institution decisions in those files will contain prior-art references directed at the same disclosure. Caveat: those proceedings are against '981, not '975 (consistent with the earlier summary), and I did not verify in this session which specific references those petitions relied on — do not import them as confirmed '975 citations without checking each.

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E. To complete the requested deliverable, retrieve

1. USPTO PatentCenter file wrapper for application 17/723,418 → "References Cited" (PTO-892 / PTO-1449) and the examiner's search notes. This is the authoritative answer to the task and was not reachable this session.
2. Google Patents page https://patents.google.com/patent/US11782975B1/en → "References Cited" and "Cited By" tabs (the fetched text I was given omitted both).
3. PTAB IPR2019-01080 / 01287 / 01516 record for the '981 prior art, screened against the '975 claim chart.
4. Darts-ip family 41609345 for the flagged family litigation.

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F. Explicit uncertainties

1. No confirmed § 102 prior-art list for US 11,782,975 — the face-of-patent citations were not retrievable; nothing in § D above should be represented as an examiner-cited reference.
2. Claims 14–20 remain unverified; the authoritative text again truncates mid-claim-13, so I cannot confirm whether a third independent claim exists or whether any dependent claim narrows claim 1 toward the speech-recognition/Location-Blog subject matter.
3. Effective filing date is unresolved, and it is outcome-determinative: a 2008-07-29 date excludes essentially all post-2008 TPMS-tracking literature (including Rouf 2010 and US 11,458,781); a 2022-04-18 date admits it.
4. IPR prior art against '981 is not automatically prior art against '975 — same spec, potentially different effective dates per claim.
5. I found no IPR or CAFC appeal naming 11,782,975 itself in prior searches (carried forward from the earlier litigation section), but absence of search hits is not proof of absence.

I'll research the prior art landscape relevant to this patent's claims. Let me run several searches in parallel.

Let me dig into the specific prior-art references most relevant to the claim set (proximity detection, geotagged upload, map display).

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 11,782,975 B1 ("Photographic memory") under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Prepared: 2026-09-29 | Assignee: Mimzi LLC | Inventor: James L. Geer

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0. Scope caveat and how the prior art was assembled

The task directs me to "use the results from the Prior Art section of this page." That section was not included in the material supplied to me — the patent text I was given is truncated at claim 13 and does not reproduce the front‑page "References Cited," "Cited By," or "Similar Documents" lists. I therefore reconstructed the prior‑art universe from three sources, and I flag identifier confidence throughout:

1. References actually relied on in the Mimzi family's PTAB record (IPR2019‑01080 TripAdvisor, IPR2019‑01287 Foursquare, IPR2019‑01516 Microsoft/Google/HTC/ASUSTeK/Acer — all against US 9,128,981, a sibling).
2. Sibling public disclosures and search results (Google Patents, FreePatentsOnline, patentimages PDFs, PTAB petition exhibits).
3. Independent targeted searches on the §103‑critical elements.

Two framing points that materially drive the analysis:

• (A) The claims do not read on the title/abstract. Claims 1 and 11 — the only independent claims whose text I could verify — are directed to short‑range detection of adjacent mobile device IDs, GPS/time tagging, upload to a remote searchable database, query‑back, and map display. That is the FIG. 6 "rolling ad‑hoc surveillance" embodiment, not the speech‑recognition/Location‑Blogging core. Obviousness must therefore be assessed against the proximity/geotagging/location‑logging art, not the ASR art. (This mirrors the discrepancy flagged in the previously generated sections.)
• (B) The 2008‑07‑29 priority date is contestable for these claims. If claim 1's "map of the identifications of the adjacent mobile wireless communication devices received by the transceiver system" and the query‑back loop are new matter relative to the 2008‑07‑29 disclosure, the effective date shifts and the prior‑art universe expands dramatically (see §5, Contingent Ground 5). Conversely, if priority holds, several otherwise‑excellent proximity references post‑date the priority date and must be excluded (see the date table below).

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1. Governing law and the level of ordinary skill

Framework. Pre‑AIA §103(a) governs (earliest claimed priority 2008‑07‑29). Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966); KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007). The inquiry is whether the differences between the claimed subject matter and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art at the time of invention. KSR supplies the recognition rationales I apply below: (A) combining known elements per known methods to yield predictable results; (B) simple substitution of one known element for another; (C) use of a known technique to improve similar devices in the same way; (D) applying a known technique to a known device ready for improvement; and (E) "obvious to try" where a finite number of identified, predictable solutions exist.

POSITA definition (proposed). A person with a bachelor's degree in electrical/computer engineering (or equivalent) and 2–3 years of experience in mobile/wireless application development, including short‑range radio protocols (Bluetooth), GPS/location‑based services, and client‑server database applications, or equivalent work experience. This is consistent with the skill level the Petitioners and Patent Owner effectively agreed to in the sibling IPRs.

Important: §103 does not require the elements to reside in an identical device. The question is whether the claimed combination was suggested by the art, the problem, or the ordinary creativity of a POSITA. KSR, 550 U.S. at 418–21.

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2. Claim 1 / claim 11 — element‑by‑element decomposition

The claim's two least conventional features are (1f) — the device that uploaded observed IDs later queries the shared database back and receives nearby‑device identification info — and (1g) — the map rendering of that result. Both are squarely within known location‑based‑services practice as of 2008.

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3. Prior‑art references

3.1 Primary references

PA‑1 — US 2009/0325599 A1 (user‑portable electronic device; geographic‑location log; map display). PDF; family member granted as US 9,307,367 (PDF). Discloses a mobile telephone having "transmission connection circuitry" (Bluetooth) that establishes connections to "one or more mobile electronic devices" (headsets, hands‑free kits); "geographic‑location determining circuitry" that determines the geographic location of each connected device; and "log circuitry" storing a user‑searchable geographic‑location log containing the identifier, last‑known geographic location, time and date, and transmission medium for each device ([0040]‑[0019]). Critically, the log may be stored remotely: "the log circuitry 18 communicates … with remote electronic device 34 having remote storage circuitry 36. The remote storage circuitry may form part of a network server … In this way, the user can use the personal computer to access the log 26 in order to locate mobile electronic devices 52‑56" ([0060]). And it discloses a map display: "FIG. 7 shows a user‑portable electronic device 100 having a display 38 displaying a map 42. A crosshair 40 indicates the last‑known geographic location of a mobile electronic device … the crosshair 40 indicating the geographic location on the map 42"; FIG. 8 adds a trace 44 of history ([0063]‑[0065]); "cartographic circuitry 46" is disclosed for map display ([0066]).

Maps to: 1a (Bluetooth transceiver to adjacent devices), 1c (receiving the device's identification), 1d (recording ID + time + geographic location), and partly 1g (map display of located devices). The '367 claims confirm this: claim 1 recites a "user‑searchable geographic‑location log … including at least the name or other identifier of the one or more mobile electronic devices, an indication of a last‑known geographic location … the time and date … and the transmission connection media"; claim 13 recites "a format allowing the last‑known geographic location … to be indicated on a map."

PA‑2 — Girerd, US 6,661,372 B2, "Client‑Server Based Remote Locator Device" (issued Dec. 9, 2003). Confirmed via the Mimzi petition record (Ex‑1011): "a computer implemented method of determining the location of a remote sensor"; remote sensor 20 has a GPS receiver 220 that "responds to commands from server 200," which may be "transmitted across the cellular communication link"; "server 200 then interrogates the remote sensor 20," which "transmits positioning data to the server 200 where it is analyzed to derive the location"; and "remote sensors may be identified by an identification code, such as the remote sensor's cellular telephone number or other unique identifying number" (5:59‑63). The user accesses a web server portion to initiate the locate request.

Maps to: 1b (cellular link), 1e (upload of ID + location to a remote server), 1f (server‑side query/response returning identification information) — the exact "query the remote database, get IDs back" architecture.

PA‑3 — Bliss, US 2007/0176796 A1, "Local search and mapping for mobile devices" (published Aug. 2, 2007). Confirmed via the Mimzi record (Ex‑1015). Discloses generating GUIs that display maps on mobile devices, with map tiles served from remote "full tiles database"/"mobile tiles database," zoom commands, and caching. Maps to: 1g (graphic display configured to present a map from a server‑supplied response).

PA‑4 — EP 1 512 308 B1 (granted Jan. 23, 2008; WO 03/101139 A1; priority GB 0212177, May 27, 2002). Confirmed via EPO Global Patent Index. "A mobile telephone with GPS capability can be used as a local 'beacon' to broadcast its absolute location to any nearby devices over a personal area wireless network (e.g. a Bluetooth network)." Maps to: 1a and the short‑range, adjacent‑device nature of the link; also supplies the multi‑device, proximity‑triggered model.

3.2 Secondary references

PA‑5 — Altman (location‑based social network manager). Cited in the Mimzi IPR record as Ex‑1014; discloses "a location‑based social network manager process" that "displays a map representation of the area around the mobile communication device … and superimposes on the map the respective locations of one or more other users of mobile communication devices," plus alerts for friends "within a certain proximity to the user." I could not confirm the exact Altman patent number from the material retrieved; the quotation is from the PTAB petition exhibit as reproduced in my search results. Treat the identifier as unverified.

PA‑6 — US 2008/0032705 A1, "Systems and methods for determining location of devices within a wireless network" (Patel; published Feb. 7, 2008). Link. "The central processing unit 1285 is … configured to receive notifications from the hardware interface 1295 when new devices are detected … Hardware interface 1295 … may be a firewire port, a USB port, a Bluetooth or infrared wireless unit." Supplies automated detection/logging of newly encountered devices within a wireless network.

PA‑7 — Roth (speech‑to‑text converter with device‑location capability) and Fortescue; Ng, as characterized in Mimzi's own Patent Owner Response (IPR2019‑01080): "Roth discloses a device with a speech to text converter and the ability to locate the device." Relevant only to dependent claims 8–10.

PA‑8 — US 7,369,043 B2 (McQuade/Ford, May 6, 2008) and US 7,506,540 B1 (TPMS autolocation). US 7,369,043; US 7,506,540. Teach that wireless sensor/transmitter units each carry a unique ID transmitted in the clear (315/433 MHz), that a receiver receives signals from transmitters other than its own, and that receivers must distinguish "external transmitters." Useful to show the FIG. 6 sensor‑capture concept was old and that phone‑as‑receiver is an obvious substitution.

PA‑9 — Krikorian (proximity detection). Cited in the family record as Ex‑1009; discloses mobile wireless devices that detect nearby devices, compare identifiers against a list, and notify the user of a proximate contact, optionally exchanging metadata. Specific patent number unverified.

3.3 Date table (critical — read before relying on any ground)

Explicit uncertainty. PA‑1 is the single best structural match for claim 1 (short‑range device IDs + per‑device time/location log + remote server storage + map display), but I cannot verify that its U.S. filing date precedes the '975 priority date, and a foreign (GB) priority date would not give it a §102(e) date under In re Hilmer. PA‑1 should therefore be treated as a primary reference only if the file wrapper confirms a pre‑2008‑07‑29 U.S. filing date, or if priority for the '975 claims fails (§5, Ground 5).

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4. Grounds of rejection

Ground 1 — PA‑1 in view of PA‑2 and PA‑3 (claims 1, 11, and dependents 2–4, 7, 12)

1a/1c/1d: PA‑1 discloses the mobile telephone's Bluetooth "transmission connection circuitry" establishing connections to adjacent mobile electronic devices, determining each device's geographic location, and logging the device identifier together with the date/time and the connection medium ([0040]‑[0019], [0061]‑[0062]). That is limitations 1a, 1c and 1d (with GPS‑derived location; PA‑1 expressly contemplates determining the device's location from the user‑portable device's own determined location plus connection range, ¶[0016]).

1b/1e/1f: PA‑1 discloses remote storage at "a network server," and a user retrieving/searched results from that remote store. It does not, however, expressly recite that the phone itself pushes the log up over the cellular system and receives the query response back over the cellular system. Girerd cures this gap: a GPS‑bearing remote device identified by a unique ID, interrogated across the cellular link by a server, which then returns/derives location on request via a web interface. Substituting Girerd's cellular client‑server round trip for PA‑1's "personal computer accesses the log" retrieval is a simple substitution of one known element for another (KSR rationale B), yielding the predictable result of anywhere/anytime retrieval.

1g: PA‑3 (and PA‑1 itself, FIGS. 7–8) discloses presenting maps on a mobile device's graphic display, sourced from remote map‑tile servers. Rendering PA‑1's logged device locations on PA‑3's map is the use of a known technique (server‑supplied map rendering) to improve a similar device in the same way (rationale C).

Motivation to combine (articulated): (i) PA‑1 itself motivates remote storage and remote access ("the user can use the personal computer to access the log … to locate mobile electronic devices"); (ii) the shared field of personal‑safety/asset‑tracking creates a known incentive to make a personal device's observation log retrievable without tethering to a PC; (iii) Girerd supplies the known cellular/web mechanism for exactly that retrieval; (iv) both references are in the same field of wireless location determination and would be reasonably expected to work together with no change in their respective operating principles.

Ground 2 — PA‑4 in view of PA‑2, PA‑5 and PA‑3 (claims 1, 11)

PA‑4 supplies the adjacent‑device, Bluetooth‑PAN, absolute‑location model expressly ("a mobile telephone with GPS capability can be used as a local 'beacon' to broadcast its absolute location to any nearby devices"). PA‑2 supplies the cellular upload and server‑side query/response by device ID. PA‑5 supplies the map of other users' locations, superimposed on the user's own map, with proximity alerts — i.e., limitation 1g and the motivation for a user to query back for the identities of nearby devices (limitation 1f). PA‑3 supplies the mobile map‑rendering technique.

Motivation: PA‑5's proximity‑alert and friend‑locating use case establishes a market/business incentive to store proximity observations centrally and query them back; PA‑2's architecture is the ready‑made mechanism; PA‑4's Bluetooth beaconing establishes the existence of proximity between devices without server involvement. Combining them is not only "obvious to try" but corresponds to the finite, predictable set of design options (client‑centric log vs. server‑centric log; Bluetooth vs. IR vs. Wi‑Fi; map vs. list) that a POSITA would have enumerated.

Ground 3 — PA‑7 (Roth) and the '975's own admitted prior art (claims 8, 9)

Claim 9 ("an automated speech recognition engine configured to automatically generate a speech transcript") and claim 8 ("communicate spoken language to the remote automated searchable database … in conjunction with a time and location of the spoken language") are met by Roth in combination with the Ground 1/2 architecture. The '975 specification itself is §103 evidence as to these elements, because it treats them as known:

• "the audio 121 and synopsis audio 122 may be processed by a speech recognition engine 140, such as the Nuance Communications speech recognition engine";
• "Speech recognition may be speaker independent, in which a generic trained vocabulary is used … instead of … a trained speech recognition";
• "the speech recognition engine can also provide a confidence level for each word."

Applicant's own characterization of these features as conventional (no asserted improvement in the ASR itself) makes the combination with a proximity/location‑logging system a predictable use of known technology. MPEP §2144.04 / In re Case — admissions against interest in the specification.

Ground 4 — PA‑7 and PA‑5 (claim 10)

Claim 10 requires the remote database to "rank[] … records in a social network database dependent on at least one of a social network credibility and a social network popularity." Note this is materially the same limitation the sibling '981 patent claims, and that Mimzi built its '981 IPR defenses around it. The references asserted there (Roth, Fortescue, Ng; and Altman for the social‑network/map overlay) are equally applicable here. Caveat: I could not retrieve the final written decisions in IPR2019‑01080/01287/01516, so I do not know which '981 claims were cancelled and which survived, or how the Board construed "social network credibility." That construction question — not the existence of the reference — is the likely battleground for claim 10.

Ground 5 (contingent) — Later references if priority fails (all claims)

If the '975 claims are not entitled to 2008‑07‑29 (see §5), then references published between 2008 and the 2022‑04‑18 filing become available under §102(a)(1)/(a)(2). These include, notably:

• US 2014/0370863 A1 (Proctor; "Central server enabled proximity based applications utilizing both short range, and wide area wireless radios"; provisional US 61/095,359) — "a given device … uses a short range wireless link … Bluetooth (IEEE 802.15.1) … to detect the presence of other devices," transmits the detected identifiers to the server, and "the server then responds with 'identifier related information'" — a near‑verbatim map of limitations 1a, 1c, 1e, 1f. (PDF)
• US 2015/0234832 A1 — device detector scans for nearby user devices, "sends the detected devices to the context server that processes the detected devices and determines which user devices to provide a list of," with Bluetooth MAC address as the device identifier and a database mapping user identifiers to device identifiers. (PDF)
• US 10,834,529 / US 2019/0261133 (Wireless Discovery LLC) — "unique member identifiers comprising a Bluetooth® device address … associated with the device and member login credentials; … stored on the server," with proximity‑based discovery and profile retrieval. (Justia)
• KR 2014‑0144684 A — proximity broadcast receivers log received broadcast messages with current time and location; "the central server locates a search for a particular device … for wireless identity transmitters."

Any two of these, alone or with PA‑3/PA‑5 for the map, would render claims 1 and 11 obvious and — for the Proctor publication on its disclosed identifier‑exchange flow — arguably anticipate. This ground is available only if priority is lost.

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5. Dependent claims

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6. Anticipated rebuttals and how they fare

(a) "Different problem / different field." Not persuasive. PA‑1, PA‑4, PA‑6 and the '975 FIG. 6 embodiment all address determining, logging and later retrieving the location/identity of nearby wireless devices — the same problem, same field, and in several cases the same hardware (Bluetooth in a mobile handset).

(b) "The references teach devices, not people; the '975 detects phones." PA‑1's "mobile electronic devices" and PA‑6's "new devices … detected by the hardware interface," together with the conceded fact that handsets were Bluetooth‑enabled, make the substitution of "a nearby handset" for "a nearby headset" a predictable variation with no new technical result.

(c) Objective indicia of non‑obviousness. Mimzi's '981 response relied on long‑felt need (a Google blog post) and industry praise (Apple's 2011 event). Nexus is the problem. Those indicia were directed to the spoken‑request/community‑search invention, not to the short‑range device‑ID capture and map invention of claims 1/11. "The presumption of nexus is only afforded when the objective evidence is tied to the claimed invention." In re GPAC. A court would likely find no nexus between the Apple/Google evidence and claim 1's map‑of‑detected‑device‑IDs, sharply reducing its probative weight. (I could not verify the PTAB's treatment of these arguments in the FWDs and do not represent an outcome.)

(d) "No motivation to combine." The references supply express motivations (PA‑1: remote server access "to locate mobile electronic devices"; PA‑5: proximity alerts for friends "within a certain proximity"), and the '975 specification itself supplies a business motivation ("targeted ads," "rolling ad‑hoc surveillance," community mapping "maintained by a central service, such as the government").

(e) §101/§112 cross‑issues (context, not §103). The claim/abstract mismatch flagged in the earlier sections also raises Alice Step‑2 questions (generic database + generic map display) and a written‑description question for the query‑back/map features. Those are separate defenses, but the §112 point feeds back into §103 via priority (Ground 5).

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7. Conclusion

1. Claims 1 and 11 are prima facie obvious over PA‑1 in view of PA‑2 and PA‑3 (Ground 1), and independently over PA‑4 in view of PA‑2, PA‑5 and PA‑3 (Ground 2), provided that the §102 dates are confirmed — which for PA‑1 is the open question. Each limitation finds a disclosed counterpart, the combination yields only predictable results, and the art itself supplies the motivation.
2. Dependent claims 2–4, 7 and 12 are obvious as routine design choices over Grounds 1–2; claims 5, 6 are obvious over the applicant's own admissions; claims 8–9 are obvious over Roth and applicant's admitted ASR prior art; claim 10 is obvious over the social‑network/ranking art relied on against the sibling '981 patent.
3. The most robust validity attack may not be §103 at all but priority/§112. If claim 1's query‑back‑and‑map limitations are new matter, then (i) the effective date moves and (ii) Ground 5's 2014–2019 references — notably US 2014/0370863 A1, which recites the Bluetooth‑detect‑IDs‑upload‑to‑server‑receive‑identifier‑info loop almost verbatim — become available and would render claims 1/11 obvious and arguably anticipated.
4. Verification required before relying on this memo: (a) the USPTO PatentCenter file wrapper for 17/723,418 to obtain claims 14–20 and the as‑filed References Cited list; (b) the filing date and priority chain of US 2009/0325599 A1 to confirm or defeat its §102(e) status; (c) the full citations for Altman and Krikorian; (d) the FWDs in IPR2019‑01080 / ‑01287 / ‑01516 to determine which '981 claims survived and how "social network credibility" was construed; and (e) Darts‑ip family 41609345 and the E.D. Tex. complaints in Mimzi v. Mercedes Benz (2:25‑cv‑00603) and Mimzi v. Ford (2:25‑cv‑00604) to determine whether the '975 patent has actually been asserted and against which accused functionality — because the answer determines whether Ground 1 (proximity) or the ASR art is the operative §103 theory.

Stated plainly: the strongest §103 case runs through the proximity/geotagged‑ID‑logging/map‑display art (PA‑1/PA‑2/PA‑3/PA‑4/PA‑5), not the speech‑recognition art that the title, abstract and the prior litigation emphasize — but the whole case turns on two facts I could not confirm from the material available: the priority entitlement of claims 1/11, and the §102 date of US 2009/0325599 A1.