US 12063402

Here is a concise summary of US patent 12063402 based on the provided authoritative text:

US Patent 12063402

• Title: Methods and apparatus to correlate census measurement data with panel data
• Assignee: Nielsen Co US LLC
• Inventor: F. Gavin McMillan
• Filing Date: 2024-03-08
• Issue Date: 2024-08-13
• Abstract: Methods, apparatus, and systems are disclosed to correlate census measurement data with panel data. An example system includes accessing means to access a message sent from a requesting device in response to accessing media that includes a tag causing the requesting device to send the message to a monitoring entity with an identification of a geographic location of the requesting device and media identifying information. The example system also includes identification means to determine locations of a plurality of panelist homes and compare the geographic location of the requesting device with the locations of the panelist homes. The example system also includes associating means to identify a user of the requesting device as a panelist residing at the first panelist home and associate the media identifying information with panelist data associated with the first one of the panelist homes.

Independent Claims Overview:
The full text of the patent claims was not provided in the prompt. Therefore, a plain-language overview of each independent claim cannot be accurately provided at this time.

Litigation Status (as of the provided patent text):
The patent family has litigation filed.

• A US case (1:25-cv-00408) was filed in the Delaware District Court.
• A PTAB case, IPR2026-00310, was filed and is currently pending.

US patent 12063402 is involved in the following known litigation:

1. US District Court for the District of Delaware Case

   • Plaintiff(s): Not explicitly stated in the provided information.
   • Defendant(s): Not explicitly stated in the provided information.
   • Jurisdiction: Delaware District Court
   • Case Number: 1:25-cv-00408
   • Filing Date: 2025 (inferred from case number)
   • Outcome or current status: Litigation (status not further specified beyond being filed).

2. PTAB Inter Partes Review (IPR) Case

   • Plaintiff(s)/Petitioner: Unified Patents
   • Defendant(s)/Patent Owner: Nielsen Co US LLC (current assignee of US12063402)
   • Jurisdiction: Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB)
   • Case Number: IPR2026-00310
   • Filing Date: 2026 (inferred from case number)
   • Outcome or current status: Pending

Proceedings overview

One Inter Partes Review (IPR) proceeding, IPR2026-00310, is on file and currently pending. This means the patent's claims have not yet been challenged to a final decision, and its validity remains to be fully litigated before the PTAB. This offers a defendant the opportunity to observe the outcome of this IPR or consider filing their own challenge if certain claims are not addressed.

IPR2026-00310 — VideoAmp Inc. v. Nielsen Co US LLC

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2026-03-17
• Status: Pending - The proceeding is active, and the PTAB has not yet issued a decision on institution.
• Judge panel: Information on the assigned judge panel is not publicly available at this stage of the proceeding.
• Petition grounds: Details regarding the specific claims challenged, prior art references, and statutory bases (§ 102 / § 103 / § 112) for the petition are not publicly available in the provided data.
• Institution decision: Not yet issued. The statutory deadline for the institution decision is generally six months from the petition filing date.
• Final Written Decision: Not applicable; an institution decision has not yet been issued.
• Settlement / termination: Not applicable; the proceeding is pending.
• Appeal: Not applicable; no Final Written Decision has been issued.
• Defensive value: This IPR is in its early stages. A defendant facing assertion of US12063402 would monitor this proceeding closely for the institution decision. If instituted, the claims under review would face a significant challenge. If denied, it might suggest the claims are robust against the art presented, but other art could still be viable.

Strategic summary

Patent US12063402 currently has one Inter Partes Review (IPR) pending, IPR2026-00310, filed by VideoAmp Inc. This IPR is in its initial phase, with the institution decision yet to be rendered. As such, all claims of US12063402 are presently UNTESTED through a PTAB final written decision. There are no invalidated or sustained claims from PTAB proceedings to report at this time.

Regarding the estoppel landscape, since no institution decision has been made, the full scope of any potential estoppel under § 315(e)(2) has not yet crystallized. If the IPR is instituted, the petitioner (VideoAmp Inc.) and its privies would be estopped from raising grounds they raised or reasonably could have raised against the instituted claims in future district court litigation or other USPTO proceedings, once a final written decision is issued. For a defendant currently being asserted against by this patent, prior-art grounds remain broadly available, especially for claims or art not addressed in the pending IPR.

There are no pattern signals to discern at this early stage, as only one IPR has been filed. The involvement of VideoAmp Inc. as the petitioner indicates a potential challenger in the media measurement space.

Recommended next steps

As the IPR2026-00310 proceeding is pending, the most critical upcoming milestone is the institution decision. The statutory deadline for the PTAB to issue a decision on whether to institute the IPR is generally six months from the filing date of 2026-03-17, which would be around 2026-09-17.

A defendant should:

• Monitor IPR2026-00310: Closely track the PTAB E2E public docket for IPR2026-00310 to ascertain the institution decision. This decision will reveal which claims, if any, have been deemed likely unpatentable and will proceed to trial.
• Analyze the Petition: If the petition becomes publicly available (often after institution), review the specific claims challenged, the prior art asserted, and the legal arguments to understand the potential weaknesses of the patent.
• Consider a parallel IPR: If the pending IPR does not challenge all relevant claims or uses different prior art, a defendant might consider filing their own IPR. However, care must be taken to avoid any potential estoppel by privity with VideoAmp Inc. and to leverage art/arguments that weren't (or couldn't reasonably have been) raised in IPR2026-00310.
• Assess claim relevance: Determine if the claims being asserted against your product or service are among those challenged in IPR2026-00310. If so, a favorable institution decision could significantly alter the negotiation landscape.

Inventors

• F. Gavin McMillan (Nielsen Co US LLC)

Original assignee

Nielsen Co US LLC. Nielsen is a global leader in audience measurement, data, and analytics, providing insights into consumer behavior and media consumption. They ship products and services embodying audience measurement claims. Nielsen Co US LLC is an operating company.

Assignment timeline

• 2024-03-11 (executed) / recorded 2024-03-11 — Reel 007205/0249
  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: MCMILLAN, F. Gavin
  • Assignee: THE NIELSEN COMPANY (US), LLC
  • Correspondent: DANIEL E. MULLIN, SUGHRUE MION, PLLC, 201824706500, 275000, 20261314540, 275000, 2125 K STREET, NW, SUITE 800, WASHINGTON, DC 20000. This correspondent appears multiple times in this chain.
  • Context: Internal reorg (assignment from inventor to assignee)

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 12063402
    2013 : Priority date
    2024 : Filed by Nielsen Co US LLC
    2024 : Issued
    2024 : Assigned to The Nielsen Company (US), LLC

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present
2. Known asserter in the chain — not present
3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — present. DANIEL E. MULLIN of SUGHRUE MION, PLLC is listed as the correspondent on the assignment from F. Gavin McMillan to THE NIELSEN COMPANY (US), LLC (Reel 007205/0249). This is the only assignment on record for this patent.
4. Cascading transfers — not present
5. Pre-litigation transfer — unclear. No litigation is documented for this specific patent in the provided text.
6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present
7. Privateering — not present
8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — not present

Verdict

Insufficient data. The only recorded assignment is from the inventor to the original assignee, which is a standard practice and does not indicate any NPE activity. There are no other assignments to suggest a change in ownership or a pattern of assertion.

USPTO Assignment Center search: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/

To identify the most relevant prior art for US patent 12063402, I will perform a search on the USPTO Patent Public Search database. Since I cannot directly access or interact with external search databases to execute a live search, I will outline the steps and the kind of information I would gather from such a search.

Search Strategy for Prior Art:

1. Access USPTO Patent Public Search: I would navigate to the USPTO's Patent Public Search website (e.g., https://ppubs.uspto.gov/pubwebapp/static/pages/landing.html or https://www.uspto.gov/patents/search).
2. Specific Patent Number Search: I would use the "Patent or Publication number" field (or equivalent advanced search syntax) to specifically search for patent number 12063402. It's crucial to enter the number exactly as 12063402 to avoid finding similar but unrelated patents.
3. Retrieve Citation Data: Once the patent document for US12063402 is found, I would look for the "Cited By" or "References Cited" section. This section lists all prior art references that the patent examiner and/or the applicant considered relevant during prosecution.

Information to Extract for Each Prior Art Reference:

For each cited patent or publication, I would extract the following:

• Full Citation: This typically includes the patent number, issue date, inventor(s), and title (e.g., US X,XXX,XXX, Month Day, Year, Inventor Name, "Title"). For non-patent literature, it would include author, title, publication, date, etc.
• Publication/Filing Date: The relevant date for 35 U.S.C. § 102 analysis (e.g., the filing date for US patents or the publication date for non-patent literature).
• Brief Description: A concise summary of the prior art's subject matter, focusing on aspects that appear relevant to the claims of US12063402. This would often be extracted from the abstract or a quick review of the specification.
• Potentially Anticipating Claim(s) under 35 U.S.C. § 102: This requires a detailed comparison of the elements of each independent claim of US12063402 with the disclosures of the prior art. Since the claims for US12063402 were not provided in the prompt, and I cannot access them via live search, I cannot perform this claim-by-claim analysis.

Limitations:

Without direct access to the USPTO database at this moment to retrieve the specific citations for US12063402, I cannot provide the detailed list of prior art and their analysis. The patent text provided only lists "Prior art keywords" and "Prior art date," but not the specific patent or non-patent literature citations. The "Prior art keywords" are "media," "location," "mobile phone," "reference area," and "data," and the "Prior art date" is 2013-04-24. These are general indicators, not specific citations.

Therefore, I cannot identify the most relevant prior art for US patent 12063402 or perform a claim-by-claim anticipation analysis without access to the full claims and the "References Cited" section from the actual patent document in the USPTO database.

Obviousness Analysis under 35 U.S.C. § 103

To assess obviousness, we need to consider whether the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art (POSITA) before the effective filing date of the claimed invention (April 24, 2013, based on the priority date). This involves determining the scope and content of the prior art, ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claimed invention, and evaluating any motivation a POSITA would have had to combine references to arrive at the claimed invention.

The patent abstract and description indicate the invention is generally directed to "methods and apparatus to correlate census measurement data with panel data" by including device location information in beacons sent from client devices accessing tagged media and comparing that location information to known panelist locations.

The provided patent text explicitly identifies one prior art reference in the description:

• Blumenau, U.S. Pat. No. 6,108,637, entitled "Content Display Monitor": This patent is cited as disclosing "Methods, apparatus and systems for tagging media in the manner described above" (i.e., inserting or embedding a tag within the source code of media, causing a browser to send a beacon to an audience measurement entity when the media is rendered).

Without the full text of the claims of US12063402, a definitive obviousness analysis against specific claim language is not possible. However, based on the abstract and detailed description, we can identify potential areas of obviousness when considering a POSITA in the field of audience measurement around the priority date.

The Level of Ordinary Skill in the Art (POSITA): A POSITA in this field would likely have a bachelor's degree in computer science, electrical engineering, or a related field, and several years of experience in developing or maintaining systems for media consumption tracking, web analytics, or audience measurement. They would be familiar with web technologies (HTML, JavaScript, HTTP protocols), database management, and basic geospatial data processing.

Potential Combination: Blumenau (U.S. Pat. No. 6,108,637) in view of common general knowledge and technological advancements in location-aware devices.

Motivation to Combine:
A POSITA in the audience measurement field, aware of the teachings of Blumenau and the growing prevalence of mobile devices with location capabilities (such as GPS), would have been motivated to enhance the accuracy and utility of census data by incorporating location information.

• Problem to be solved: The patent explicitly states the problem that traditional server-level impression data "does not enable distinguishing media impressions from panelists and non-panelists or exposure to cached media" and that IP addresses are unreliable for unique device/user identification. There is a desire to "link demographics and/or other user information to the census data" to understand media reach and effectiveness.
• Blumenau's contribution: Blumenau teaches the fundamental concept of tagging media with executable instructions (like JavaScript) that, when executed by a browser, cause a "beacon" to be sent to an audience measurement entity, thereby collecting "census like data" from "panelists and non-panelists alike." This established the mechanism for collecting broad impression data.
• Common general knowledge and technological advancements: By the priority date of April 24, 2013, mobile devices (smartphones, tablets) equipped with GPS and other location-determining technologies (e.g., cellular tower triangulation, Wi-Fi positioning) were widespread. Many applications and web browsers on these devices had the capability to access and transmit location data, often with user permission (e.g., via a "location application programming interface (API)"). It was well-known in the industry that location data could provide valuable context to user activity.
• Motivation to integrate location data into beacons: A POSITA would readily understand that including precise device location information in the beacons transmitted as per Blumenau's teachings would directly address the identified problem of linking census data to demographic information, especially for panelists. If the location of a device sending a beacon could be correlated with a known "reference location" of a registered panelist (e.g., their home), then that impression could be definitively attributed to the panelist and their associated demographic data. This would provide richer insights into media consumption that "server logs do not typically uniquely identify the requesting device and/or the user making the request."
• Predictable results: Integrating readily available location data from a client device into an existing beacon mechanism (as taught by Blumenau) would have been a predictable step to improve the granularity and associability of audience measurement data. The result, associating impressions with panelists based on geographic proximity, is a logical extension of existing audience measurement goals.
• Simple implementation: The patent describes the location identifier being included in the beacon (e.g., as an HTTP GET or POST message). The pseudo-code in FIG. 10 shows retrieving location information via a "location application programming interface (API)" if available, and then defining the beacon to include this information. This approach would have been considered a straightforward application of existing technologies by a POSITA.

Therefore, a combination of Blumenau (U.S. Pat. No. 6,108,637) with the common general knowledge and readily available mobile device location technologies would likely render the core concept of correlating census data with panel data based on device location obvious to a POSITA. The motivation would be to enhance the value and precision of audience measurement data by overcoming limitations of existing census and panel-based systems.