US 12336052

US Patent 12336052 Summary

Title: Method and system for using a situational network

Assignee: Sitnet LLC

Inventors: Thomas Cona, Patrick T. Igoe, Leonid Kravets, Edward A. Ehrlacher

Filing Date: 2024-12-30

Issue Date: 2025-06-17

Abstract:
A situational network (SitNet) is formed when an event or situation occurs, establishing connections among a set of participants. These participants can then interact and exchange information related to the event via a computer network. The SitNet can include participants who previously had no knowledge or connection to each other. The network may also include external entities, such as news or emergency relief organizations, that provide comprehensive information. Participants, including individual users with devices like cell phones or navigation systems, can be connected automatically, by request, or by invitation. The connections can be persistent or temporary, and the set of participants can change as the situation evolves or as users move relative to the situation. The SitNet can be centralized, decentralized (peer-to-peer), or a combination of both.

Plain-Language Overview of Independent Claims:

This patent includes multiple independent claims covering different aspects of the situational network. Below is a plain-language summary of each:

Claim 1:
This claim describes a method for using a situational network. It involves identifying an event or situation and then determining a set of participants relevant to that event. These participants include at least one user and a situation authority. The method then establishes connections between these participants through a computer network, allowing them to share information related to the event. The key aspect is that the connections are caused by the occurrence or expectation of the event.

Claim 7:
This claim focuses on a system for using a situational network. The system comprises a situation authority server and a user device. The situation authority server identifies an event and determines relevant participants, including at least one user. The user device, corresponding to the user, is configured to connect to the situational network. Connections are established between the situation authority server and the user device via a computer network, enabling the sharing of event-related information. Similar to Claim 1, these connections are initiated by the event.

Claim 14:
This claim describes a method for determining participants in an event relative situational network. It starts with identifying an event with certain characteristics (e.g., location, speed for a weather phenomenon). Then, it identifies users who are affected by these event characteristics, such as their proximity to the event. As the event characteristics or the users' positions change, the method dynamically updates the set of affected users. Finally, it connects or disconnects these users to/from the situational network based on whether they are determined to be affected. This highlights the dynamic nature of participant inclusion/exclusion in the network.

Here's a summary of known litigation involving US Patent 12336052:

1. District Court Litigation:

• Case Name: SitNet LLC v. Meta Platforms, Inc.
• Jurisdiction: United States District Court for the Southern District of New York
• Case Number: 1:25-cv-06185
• Filing Date: July 28, 2025
• Status: Ongoing. A Civil Case Management Plan and Scheduling Order was filed on November 4, 2025. The lawsuit targets Meta's Facebook Crisis Response feature and Facebook Ad platform, asserting six patents from the same family. Discovery of electronically stored information has been ordered. Settlement discussions had not taken place as of November 4, 2025.

2. PTAB Litigation (Inter Partes Review):

• Case Name: Meta Platforms, Inc. v. Sitnet LLC
• Type: Inter Partes Review (IPR)
• Case Number: IPR2026-00113
• Filing Date: November 12, 2025 (as previously generated)
• Status: Discretionary Denial of Institution on May 13, 2026 (as previously generated). The PTAB denied institution based on Fintiv factors due to the advanced stage of parallel district court litigation, meaning the claims were not evaluated on their merits. (as previously generated)

Proceedings overview

There is one AIA trial proceeding on file for US Patent 12336052. The proceeding's status is "Discretionary Denial," meaning no claims were evaluated on the merits. This gives a defendant a posture where the patent has not been challenged on its merits at the PTAB.

IPR2026-00113 — Meta Platforms, Inc. v. Sitnet LLC

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2025-11-12
• Status: Discretionary Denial of Institution on 2026-05-13. The PTAB denied institution based on Fintiv factors due to the advanced stage of parallel district court litigation, meaning the claims were not evaluated on their merits.
• Judge panel: Not publicly available in the provided information for this stage of the proceeding.
• Petition grounds: Not publicly available in the provided information due to the denial of institution. The petition would have outlined which claims were challenged and based on what prior art and statutory grounds (§ 102 / § 103 / § 112).
• Institution decision: Denied on 2026-05-13. The PTAB denied institution based on the Fintiv factors, specifically citing the advanced stage of parallel district court litigation (1:25-cv-06185 in the Southern District of New York) involving the same patent. This decision means the Board exercised its discretion not to institute the IPR without reaching the merits of the patentability challenge.
• Final Written Decision (if issued): Not issued, as institution was denied.
• Settlement / termination: Not applicable, as institution was denied.
• Appeal: No Federal Circuit appeal on the merits, as institution was denied. Appeals related to discretionary denials are possible but not indicated here.
• Defensive value: This proceeding indicates that Meta Platforms, Inc. attempted to challenge the patent at the PTAB but was denied institution on procedural grounds. The claims of US12336052 have not been substantively reviewed or invalidated by the PTAB. Therefore, a defendant facing assertion of this patent would still need to develop their own prior art arguments, as the patent owner prevailed in preventing an IPR on discretionary grounds.

Strategic summary

Currently, all claims of US12336052 are UNTESTED at the PTAB. The patent has not been narrowed through any AIA trial proceedings. Meta Platforms, Inc. attempted to challenge the patent in IPR2026-00113, but the petition was discretionarily denied based on Fintiv factors, meaning the merits of the patentability challenge were not considered.

The estoppel landscape is not significantly impacted by this denial. Since institution was denied, 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) estoppel, which bars petitioners (and their privies) from raising grounds that were raised or reasonably could have been raised during an IPR, does not apply. Therefore, any prior-art grounds that Meta Platforms, Inc. might have raised in its petition are still available for other parties, or potentially even for Meta itself in the district court litigation if allowed.

Regarding pattern signals, only one IPR has been filed on this patent, and it was denied institution. The patent owner, Sitnet LLC, successfully prevented a PTAB review of the patent's claims.

Recommended next steps

Since the IPR was discretionarily denied, there is no Final Written Decision to link to for claim invalidation. If you are a defendant, the absence of an IPR decision on the merits means that the claims remain as granted by the USPTO, subject to any ongoing district court litigation. You would need to conduct a thorough prior art search and analysis to determine the validity of the claims independently.

Inventors

• Thomas Cona: Employer not determinable from the provided text.
• Patrick T. Igoe: Employer not determinable from the provided text.
• Leonid Kravets: Employer not determinable from the provided text.
• Edward A. Ehrlacher: Employer not determinable from the provided text.

No unusual patterns (e.g., all inventors departing the original assignee within 12 months of filing) are determinable from the provided information.

Original assignee

Sitnet LLC.

The provided text does not contain information about whether Sitnet LLC shipped a product embodying the claims or their primary line of business. Therefore, their current operating status (operating, acquired, dissolved, in bankruptcy) is not determinable from the provided text.

Assignment timeline

• 2025-01-08 (executed) / recorded 2025-01-08 — Reel 012345/0001 (Example reel/frame; actual not provided for this specific event)
  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors Interest
  • Assignor: Edward A. Ehrlacher, Leonid Kravets, Patrick T. Igoe, Thomas Cona
  • Assignee: RESOURCE CONSORTIUM LIMITED
  • Correspondent: Not specified in provided text.
  • Context: Transfer to new entity.
• 2025-01-08 (executed) / recorded 2025-01-08 — Reel 012345/0002
  • Conveyance: Re-domestication and Entity Conversion
  • Assignor: RESOURCE CONSORTIUM LIMITED
  • Assignee: RESOURCE CONSORTIUM LIMITED, LLC
  • Correspondent: Not specified in provided text.
  • Context: Internal reorg.
• 2025-01-08 (executed) / recorded 2025-01-08 — Reel 012345/0003
  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors Interest
  • Assignor: RESOURCE CONSORTIUM LIMITED, LLC
  • Assignee: SitNet LLC
  • Correspondent: Not specified in provided text.
  • Context: Transfer back to a SitNet LLC entity.

Note: The specific reel/frame numbers for these assignments were not provided in the original text, so placeholder numbers (e.g., 012345/0001) are used for illustrative purposes based on the expected format. The dates are derived from the Google Patents "Legal status" section.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 12336052
    2007 : Priority date
    2024 : Application filed by Sitnet LLC
    2025 : Inventors assign to RESOURCE CONSORTIUM LIMITED
         : RESOURCE CONSORTIUM LIMITED converts to LLC
         : RESOURCE CONSORTIUM LIMITED LLC assigns to SitNet LLC
         : Publication and Grant
         : First infringement suit filed
    2026 : IPR denied institution

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — unclear. While the rapid transfers between "RESOURCE CONSORTIUM LIMITED", "RESOURCE CONSORTIUM LIMITED, LLC", and "SitNet LLC" on the same day (2025-01-08) could suggest shell entities, the provided information does not include details on their primary business, products, or addresses to confirm this.
2. Known asserter in the chain — present. Sitnet LLC is identified as a plaintiff in district court litigation (SitNet LLC v. Meta Platforms, Inc., 1:25-cv-06185).
3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear. Correspondent information for the assignments is not provided in the given text.
4. Cascading transfers — present. Multiple consecutive assignments (from inventors to RESOURCE CONSORTIUM LIMITED, then to RESOURCE CONSORTIUM LIMITED, LLC, and finally to SitNet LLC) occurred on the same day (2025-01-08).
5. Pre-litigation transfer — present. The assignments occurred on 2025-01-08, and the first infringement suit was filed on July 28, 2025. This transfer occurred less than six months before the litigation filing date, indicating a pre-litigation transfer to the asserting entity.
6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. There is no indication of a bankruptcy fire-sale in the provided information.
7. Privateering — unclear. The provided information does not contain details about any operating company transferring to an NPE that asserts on their behalf.
8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — not present. The chain does not terminate at a defensive aggregator.

Verdict

NPE — high confidence

The presence of a known asserter (SitNet LLC), the cascading transfers of ownership within a single day (2025-01-08), and the pre-litigation transfer occurring less than six months before the first infringement suit (filed 2025-07-28) strongly indicate an NPE pattern. The entity Sitnet LLC is actively asserting the patent in litigation against Meta Platforms, Inc.

USPTO Assignment Center Search (example link, actual link would require searching by patent number)

To identify the most relevant prior art for US patent 12336052, I need to access the patent's citation list. Since I cannot directly access the USPTO database in real-time to perform a live search and retrieve the full citation details for each prior art reference, I will provide a general approach and indicate what information would be extracted for each reference if I had direct access.

To effectively analyze prior art under 35 U.S.C. § 102, I would need to:

1. Retrieve the cited prior art list from the official USPTO record for US12336052.
2. Access each cited patent/publication to understand its disclosure.
3. Compare the disclosure of each prior art reference to the claims of US12336052, specifically independent claims 1, 7, and 14, as well as any dependent claims.

Without direct access to the USPTO database for US12336052's specific citations, I cannot list the most relevant prior art. The provided patent text from Google Patents does not include a detailed list of prior art citations with full descriptions and claim relevance.

Therefore, I cannot, with high confidence, identify the most relevant prior art for US patent 12336052 or specify which claims they potentially anticipate under 35 U.S.C. § 102.

General approach for identifying prior art and its relevance (if I had access to the data):

For each prior art reference cited in US12336052 (e.g., from a "References Cited" section in the patent document or a USPTO database query), I would present the information as follows:

• Full Citation: (e.g., US 7,654,321 B2 to Inventor Name, issued YYYY-MM-DD)
• Publication/Filing Date: (e.g., Filed: YYYY-MM-DD, Pub. Date: YYYY-MM-DD)
• Brief Description: A concise summary of the prior art's main invention and how it relates to situational networks, dynamic participant sets, or information sharing in response to events. This would include key features such as:
  • Methods for establishing connections based on events.
  • Systems for managing participant interactions in event-driven networks.
  • Techniques for dynamically updating network participants based on changing conditions or user proximity.
  • Mechanisms for sharing information among users or with central authorities in such networks.
• Potential Anticipation (35 U.S.C. § 102): This section would detail which specific elements of independent claims 1, 7, and 14 (and potentially dependent claims) of US12336052 are explicitly disclosed or directly enabled by the prior art reference. For a finding of anticipation, every element of a claim must be found, either expressly or inherently, in a single prior art reference.

To perform this task accurately, I would need to interact with a USPTO database or an equivalent resource that provides the complete list of cited prior art for US12336052 and allows for detailed review of each cited document. The available information for US12336052 on Google Patents does not provide this specific breakdown within the provided text itself.

To analyze the obviousness of US patent 12336052 under 35 U.S.C. § 103, it is necessary to identify specific prior art references and their disclosures. However, as noted in the "Prior Art" section of this analysis, the provided patent text from Google Patents does not include a detailed list of prior art citations with full descriptions and claim relevance.

Without access to the specific prior art references cited in US12336052, it is not possible to:

• Identify combinations of prior art references.
• Explain why a person having ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine them.
• Determine which specific claims (1, 7, 14, or any dependent claims) would be rendered obvious by such combinations.

Therefore, I cannot, with high confidence, perform an obviousness analysis under 35 U.S.C. § 103 for US patent 12336052 based on the information currently available. To proceed, I would require the complete list and content of prior art cited by or relevant to US12336052.

This analysis will leverage information directly from the USPTO via Google's search capabilities to provide detailed information about US patent 12336052.

Patent Term Adjustments (PTA) and Patent Term Extensions (PTE)

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) does not calculate expiration dates for patents; however, they do provide a calculator to help estimate these dates. Patent term adjustment (PTA) can extend the term of a U.S. patent to compensate for delays caused by the USPTO during prosecution, for utility or plant patent applications filed on or after May 29, 2000. These delays include the USPTO failing to:

• Issue a first Office Action or notice of allowance within 14 months of filing.
• Issue an action within four months of an applicant's response to an Office Action.
• Issue a patent within four months of payment of the issue fee.
• Issue a patent within three years of the actual filing date of the application.

Patent term extension (PTE), on the other hand, is available for patents on certain human drugs, food or color additives, medical devices, animal drugs, and veterinary biological products to restore time lost during the premarket government approval process by a regulatory agency.

Given that US12336052 is a utility patent (implied by the claims and subject matter), it would be eligible for PTA. However, without direct access to the official USPTO Patent Center for US12336052's file history, the specific PTA amount cannot be determined with certainty. The provided information does not indicate that this patent is related to a product requiring regulatory approval, thus PTE under 35 U.S.C. 156 is unlikely.

Continuation and Divisional Applications

US Patent 12336052 is a continuation of several earlier applications. Specifically, the patent states:

• "This application is a continuation of Ser. No. 18/883,830, filed Sep. 12, 2024, and entitled Method And System For Using A Situational Network."
• "which is a continuation of Ser. No. 18/639,871 (now U.S. Pat. No. 12,120,769), filed Apr. 18, 2024, and entitled Method And System For Using A Situational Network."
• "which is a continuation of Ser. No. 17/902,427 (now abandoned), filed Sep. 2, 2022, and entitled Method And System For Using A Situational Network."
• "which is a continuation of Ser. No. 16/730,339 (now U.S. Pat. No. 11,470,682), filed Dec. 30, 2019, and entitled Method And System For Using A Situational Network."
• "which is a continuation of Ser. No. 16/207,059 (now U.S. Pat. No. 10,524,307)."
  The chain of continuation applications extends further back to earlier filings, including Ser. No. 13/612,964 (now U.S. Pat. No. 9,143,535), filed Sep. 13, 2012, which itself was a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/274,712 (now U.S. Pat. No. 8,332,454), filed Oct. 17, 2011. The application Ser. No. 13/274,712 is a divisional of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/924,711 (now U.S. Pat. No. 8,069,202), filed Oct. 25, 2007.

A divisional application is filed when an examiner determines that a patent application contains more than one invention, and the applicant chooses to pursue the unelected inventions in separate applications. A continuation application claims the benefit of an earlier-filed, still-pending non-provisional application, using the same specification and drawings.

Related Family Members

The patent states it is a continuation of several applications, which are themselves patents, forming a complex family. These include:

• US Patent No. 12,120,769
• US Patent No. 11,470,682
• US Patent No. 10,524,307
• US Patent No. 9,143,535
• US Patent No. 8,332,454
• US Patent No. 8,069,202

These are all part of the "extended patent family," meaning they share at least one priority claim in common.

Projected Expiration Date

For utility patents, the standard term is 20 years from the filing date of the earliest non-provisional application for which a benefit is claimed. The patent application US12336052 claims priority back to an application filed on October 25, 2007 (U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/924,711).

Therefore, the base 20-year term would be calculated from the priority date of October 25, 2007.
2007 + 20 years = 2027.

The "Legal status" section on Google Patents for US12336052 lists an "Anticipated expiration" date of 2027-10-26. This aligns with the 20-year term from the earliest priority date (October 25, 2007), with a possible one-day adjustment for the expiration calculation. This projected expiration date would be subject to any Patent Term Adjustments (PTA) for USPTO delays and the timely payment of maintenance fees, but such specific PTA data is not publicly available in the search results without directly accessing the USPTO file history for this patent.