US 4337480

I'll search for the specific patent number as requested.

Let me check the specific patent record and the CAFC docket angle.

US Patent 4,337,480 — Verified Record

Searches run: Google Patents full text (authoritative source provided), plus cross-checks against USPTO.report, Justia, EPO citation records (EP 1353328, WO 87/03766, EP 0 288 889), and a CAFC/docket query.

Bibliographic data

Abstract (verbatim)

"A dynamic audio-video interconnection system for connecting together at least one television receiver and a plurality of peripheral units in home audio-visual installations. By means of a remote-control keyboard, the user transmits interconnection orders which are processed by a microprocessor in order to actuate electronic switches which effect the desired interconnection."

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

The patent has two independent claims, claim 1 and claim 3 (claims 2 and 4 depend on them respectively; claims 5–20 are all dependent, including claim 5 which depends on claims 1, 2, 3, or 4; claim 6 which depends on claim 5; etc.).

Claim 1 — System with the control stages doing the switching.
A home audio-video hub containing:

• a TV receiver joined by a multiconductor ("peripheral-television") connector;
• several peripheral units (VCR, satellite receiver, camera, game, etc.);
• one control stage per peripheral unit, each coupling its unit to the connector;
• one electronic switch per control stage, controlled by that stage, to route connections among peripherals and between peripherals and the TV;
• a remote control that generates commands requesting those interconnections;
• a receiver circuit inside the TV that picks up the commands and passes them on; and
• a microprocessor wired to that receiver and to every control stage, which reads the commands and drives the switches to make the requested connections.

In short: relay-box architecture where the TV merely forwards the user's remote-control commands and the microprocessor plus per-device control stages do all the routing.

Claim 3 — Same concept, framed around the microprocessor executing the commands for audio-video transfer.
Subtitled as "a dynamic audio-video interconnection system for selectively connecting together a television receiver to one or more of a plurality of peripheral units via a peripheral-television multipin connector and a microprocessor executing commands directing the selected interconnections." It requires:

• a plurality of control stages, one per peripheral unit, transferring information between its unit and the multipin connector;
• a remote control that generates both the interconnection commands and transmits the user orders;
• receiving/transmitting means in the TV forwarding those commands to the microprocessor; and
• a plurality of electronic switches, one per control stage, driven by the microprocessor per the received commands, so that audio-video information flows among the selected peripherals and between them and the TV.

The distinction from claim 1 is stylistic/positional: claim 1 recites the switches as "controlled by said associated control stage," whereas claim 3 recites them as "controlled by said microprocessor," and claim 3 emphasizes the transfer of audio-video information as the result rather than the generic "interconnections." (Both recite the TV-resident command receiver forwarding to the control chain.)

Notable dependent-claim concepts: ROM-per-control-stage storing user instructions for display on the TV (claims 2, 4); an addressing link to the ROMs (claim 8); a two-conductor remote-control link — one data conductor, one exchange conductor (claim 11); series vs. parallel interconnection of peripherals (claims 12, 13); plug-in card/casing architecture with connectors on the bottom wall (claims 15–17); and "image-within-image" primary/secondary image selection (claim 19).

CAFC / litigation note — uncertainty flagged

I found no Federal Circuit or district-court docket activity in 2026 for US 4,337,480. That is consistent with the record: the patent expired in 2000 and is marked "Expired – Lifetime," so it is not capable of being asserted in a current CAFC appeal. I could not locate any authority indicating otherwise, and I want to be explicit that a "CAFC 2026 docket" search returned nothing relevant for this number — the only literal "4337480" hit unrelated to the patent was an unrelated Florida LLC's FEI number. I have no verified information on any litigation history, and I would not infer any from the absence of results.

Citations: Google Patents US4337480A — https://patents.google.com/patent/US4337480/en ; uspto.report grant record — https://uspto.report/patent/grant/4337480 ; Justia — https://patents.justia.com/patent/4337480 ; EPO Global Patent Index citation (EP 1353328 A3) listing "US 4337480 A … BOURASSIN LUCIEN, et al."

I'll research litigation involving US patent 4337480 using multiple sources.

Let me search more targeted litigation databases.

Let me check litigation-specific databases directly.

Litigation Search Results — US Patent No. 4,337,480

Bottom line: I found no evidence of any litigation involving US Patent No. 4,337,480. Based on the searches I was able to run (targeted queries against litigation-related sources, docket/patent databases, and the patent's own citation, "Cited By," and family records), the patent does not appear to have been asserted in any patent infringement suit, and it does not appear in any record of a CAFC appeal or PACER docket.

What I checked and what it showed

Important caveats

1. Search-engine limitations. My queries were run through a web-search tool, and I was cut off before completing additional targeted checks of the Unified Patents litigation portal, CourtListener's RECAP archive, and PACER directly. It is possible, though unlikely, that a case exists that my searches did not surface.
2. No auto-corrections applied. I interpreted "4337480" literally as US Patent No. 4,337,480 (issued June 29, 1982; assignee Syndicat des Constructeurs d'Appareils Radio Récepteurs et Téléviseurs (SCART); inventors Bourassin et al.). I did not treat unrelated numbers (e.g., German application number DE 4337480, or the "4337480" appearing in a Lithuanian business-registry notice or a Florida LLC annual report) as referring to this patent.
3. Expiration strongly limits the litigation window. The patent's legal-status record shows "Expired – Lifetime," with an anticipated expiration of February 8, 2000 (20 years from the Feb. 8, 1980 filing date). Under 35 U.S.C. § 286, damages are recoverable only for infringement occurring within the six years before a complaint is filed. That means any viable infringement action on this patent would have had to be filed on or before roughly February 2000 to reach any infringement period. The patent has been expired — and thus unassertable — for over 25 years as of today (April 26, 2026).
4. Patent v. trademark. The searches surfaced a TTAB (trademark) opposition involving the "PILOT" mark and Honda Motor Co., but that is a trademark proceeding and is unrelated to US 4,337,480.

Requested case listing

Because no litigation was found, there is no case to report:

If you need confirmation

To be certain, I'd recommend running direct queries against PACER (all district courts), CourtListener/RECAP, and the Unified Patents litigation portal using both "4,337,480" and "4337480," plus a company-name search for the assignee ("Syndicat des Constructeurs d'Appareils Radio Récepteurs et Téléviseurs" / "SCART"). I can attempt those specific lookups if you'd like me to continue, subject to the tool limits I encountered.

Summary: No known litigation involves US Patent No. 4,337,480. The absence of litigation is consistent with the patent's age — it expired in 2000 and its citation record shows it was used only as prior art, not as an asserted patent.

I'll verify the structured data against live sources before writing this up.

Let me run a couple more targeted checks to be thorough about the SCART patent specifically.

PTAB Proceedings Report — U.S. Patent No. 4,337,480

Patent: Dynamic audio-video interconnection system
Patent owner (original & current): Syndicat des Constructeurs d'Appareils Radio Récepteurs et Téléviseurs (SCART)
Inventors: Bourassin, Condat, Fortin, Leger, Soto, Solvinto
Priority: 1979-02-15 (FR 7903862) · Filed: 1980-02-08 · Granted: 1982-06-29
Term: Anticipated expiration 2000-02-08 (legal status: Expired – Lifetime)
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US4337480](/patent/US4337480)/en

---

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0. The USPTO Open Data Portal returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding naming US 4,337,480, and my independent searches surfaced none. There are no claims invalidated, none sustained, no settlements, no institution denials, and no Federal Circuit appeals of any PTAB final written decision — because no PTAB trial was ever possible against this patent. The bottom-line defensive posture is not "hardened by surviving IPRs"; it is that the patent has been expired since 2000-02-08, roughly twelve years before the first AIA trial was instituted (2012-09-16). A demand letter citing US 4,337,480 today is asserting a dead patent, and the absence of PTAB activity is a function of expiration, not of the claims' strength.

---

No proceedings to enumerate. Both format branches the assignment contemplates are unavailable here, so I state the null result and its evidentiary basis rather than inventing entries:

• Per-proceeding entries (Petitioner v. Patent Owner, type, filing date, status, panel, grounds, institution, FWD, settlement, appeal): none exist. I will not fabricate proceeding numbers, APJ names, or dispositions.
• Cross-proceeding claim map (canceled / sustained / untested): all 20 claims of US 4,337,480 remain as granted and UNTESTED at the PTAB. Their status is not "sustained" in any adjudicated sense — they were never challenged. They lapsed by operation of term.

Why no AIA proceeding could exist

---

Strategic summary

Claim status. All claims 1–20 are as-granted but expired. Nothing is canceled, nothing is adjudicated patentable, nothing is estoppel-barred. This distinction matters: a defendant should not describe these claims as "upheld." They were simply never tested, and the patent's 20-year term from the 1980-02-08 filing ran out on 2000-02-08 (per the Google Patents/ODP term record — consistent with a URAA 20-year-from-filing term that exceeds 17 years from the 1982-06-29 grant). Any infringement theory requires acts occurring on or before 2000-02-08, which is far outside the 35 U.S.C. § 286 six-year damages lookback and independently barred by laches.

Estoppel landscape. There is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel of any kind, because no petitioner ever filed. Symmetrically, there is no petitioner-side benefit either — nothing about this patent has been administratively pre-decided. Prior art against it remains fully available in any forum that could still hear a challenge over pre-2000 conduct, and no IPR-derived estoppel constrains anyone. Practically, the estoppel question is moot: the expiration date disposes of the case before validity is reached.

Pattern signals. No repeat petitioner (none exists), no patent-owner PTAB appeal history (none exists), no defensive aggregator involvement (Unified Patents and similar entities have no AIA filing against this number). The only recurring appearance of US 4,337,480 in the record is as prior art cited by third parties — most notably the "Bourassin" reference discussed in the Gemstar/SuperGuide line of cases and in the ITC reexamination record of Inv. No. 337-TA-830. That is the opposite of PTAB exposure: the patent is a citable reference against others, not a target of IPRs itself.

⚠️ Name-confusion warning. Several different patents are colloquially called "the '480 patent" — for example the authentication-software patent at issue in [Samsung Electronics Co.](/litigations/by-defendant/Samsung%20Electronics%20Co.) v. Ward Participations B.V. (PGR involving a '480 patent) and the DTS/Ward "480 Patent." Those proceedings are not against US 4,337,480 and must not be attributed to it. Verify the full patent number and issue date before relying on any "480 patent" hit.

---

Recommended next steps

1. If you are facing an assertion of US 4,337,480 today: the dispositive defense is expiration, not invalidity. Confirm the term record at https://patents.google.com/patent/US4337480/en (status: "Expired – Lifetime," anticipated expiration 2000-02-08) and demand the plaintiff identify pre-2000-02-08 accused acts. Twelve years of AIA-trial availability produced zero petitions against this number — a direct consequence of the patent being dead on arrival for IPR.

2. Do not build an IPR strategy. There is no live claim to cancel, and no AIA window has ever applied to this patent. An IPR petition would be a waste of the § 315(b) clock and filing fees.

3. If you are a patent owner or researcher tracking the SCART lineage: note that this patent's relevance is purely historical/prior-art. Its 1979 disclosure is a standard citation against later audio-video interconnection and bus-arbitration claims (see, e.g., its appearance in the citation lists of later RCA and Philips A/V-system patents per the Google Patents "Cited By" data).

4. No open milestones to track. There is no institution deadline, no oral hearing, and no statutory 1-year FWD date to monitor, because no trial is pending.

---

Sourcing note. This report rests on the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO ODP: no AIA trials indexed) plus the authoritative full text at https://patents.google.com/patent/US4337480/en. My web searches surfaced no proceeding naming this patent; every "IPR/PGR" hit for a "480 patent" involved unrelated patents (DTS/Ward, Samsung v. Ward Participations). Where I could not confirm a fact — e.g., whether the "Bourassin" reference discussed in the SuperGuide/Gemstar and ITC records is precisely US 4,337,480 rather than another Bourassin document — I have flagged the uncertainty rather than asserted it.

I'll research the assignment record for US 4337480 using available sources.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US 4,337,480

Patent: Dynamic audio-video interconnection system
App. No.: US 06/119,994 · Filed: 1980-02-08 · Granted: 1982-06-29
Priority: FR 7903862, 1979-02-15 · Anticipated expiration: 2000-02-08 · Status: Expired – Lifetime

Sourcing caveat (read first). The USPTO Assignment Center (https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ and https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html) is an interactive query application that I could not drive directly. My finding below rests on (a) the Google Patents "Legal Events" mirror of the same USPTO assignment data, and (b) targeted searches that returned no assignment records. No assignment events appear in the legal-events record for US 4,337,480 — only Application filed (1980-02-08), Application granted / Publication (1982-06-29), and Anticipated expiration (2000-02-08). A direct Assignment Center query should be run to formally confirm a negative, but every available mirror is consistent with "no recorded post-issuance assignments."

---

Inventors

Six named inventors on the US grant:

Pattern note. The assignee was not an operating manufacturer but a French industry syndicate (trade association) — see below. Inventors on a consortium/standards-body filing are typically engineers seconded from member manufacturers (French and European TV makers), so a single "employer" is unlikely to be recoverable from the face of the patent. There is no evidence of any inventor departing or reassigning rights — no inventor-held assignment, no inventor-to-third-party conveyance, and no inventor listed as assignee appears anywhere in the record. This is the ordinary profile of a 1979 consortium filing, not a fire-sale precursor.

(The FR priority filing FR 7903862 / publication FR 2449379A1 carries the same inventorship; no divergence observed.)

---

Original assignee

Syndicat des Constructeurs d'Appareils Radio Récepteurs et Téléviseurs (SCART) — the French "Association of Radio and Television Receiver Manufacturers." Also rendered Syndicat des Constructeurs d'Appareils Radiorécepteurs et Téléviseurs (the accent/space variants are naming noise, not separate entities).

• Primary line of business. A French industry trade association / standards body — not a product company. It is the body that gave its name to the SCART / Péritel 21‑pin audio‑visual connector standard (CENELEC EN 50049‑1; IEC 933‑1). The consortium lobbied for, and benefited from, the French arrêté du 21 mars 1980 that made the connector mandatory on new TV sets sold in France.
• Did it ship a product embodying the claims? No. SCART as an association did not manufacture. The claimed interconnection system was embodied by member manufacturers' TV sets and peripherals, consistent with the patent's own framing (peripheral-television multipin connector, cassette modules, etc.). The commercial footprint existed at the member-company level, not at the assignee level.
• Current status. I cannot confirm the association's present corporate status with high confidence. What is documented: its flagship mandate expired in stages, with the French connector obligation repealed effective 2015. This is a European trade association, not a Delaware/Texas single-purpose LLC, and there is no bankruptcy, insolvency, or NPE-style disposition associated with it in any source reviewed.
• Google Patents "Current Assignee" field still lists SCART — i.e., Google's automated chain reconstruction also shows no change of owner from the original assignee.

---

Assignment timeline

No recorded assignments were surfaced for US 4,337,480. The Google Patents Legal Events record for this patent contains no ASSIGNMENT entries at all — the only events are the 1980 filing, the 1982 grant/publication, and the 2000 anticipated expiration. Searches against the assignee name and patent number returned no reel/frame records, no correspondent, and no recorded conveyance of any type (Assignment, Security Agreement, Merger, Change of Name, License, Release, or Correction).

Finding: the patent appears to have remained with the original assignee (SCART) for its entire term and expired in 2000 with no recorded post-issuance transfer.

Because I could not execute a live Assignment Center query, treat this as "no assignments located" rather than a certified negative. If you require a certifiable "no records" statement, run the search at:

• https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search by Patent Number 4337480)
• https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html

---

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 4337480
    1979 : Priority filing in France
    1980 : US application filed
    1982 : Patent granted to SCART
    2000 : Patent term expired
    2026 : No assignments of record

---

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Additional neutralizer: the patent's term expired 2000-02-08. Even if an unrecorded transfer had occurred, there is no live right to assert and thus no NPE economics attachable to this patent today.

---

Verdict

Insufficient data — the chain consists of the original assignment only (i.e., none).

Justification: no post-issuance assignment of any type appears in the USPTO-derived record for US 4,337,480 — the only recorded events are filing (1980-02-08), grant (1982-06-29), and expiration (2000-02-08), and Google's "Current Assignee" still resolves to the original assignee, SCART. With zero recorded transfers, none of the eight NPE signals can be marked present, and the patent term lapsed in 2000. I could not directly query the Assignment Center, so this is a "no records located across all accessible mirrors" finding rather than a certified negative; verify at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ by patent number 4337480 before relying on it.

I'll research US patent 4337480 and each of its cited references. Let me run several searches in parallel.

Let me search for the remaining cited references, including the foreign family citations and the non-patent literature.

Prior-Art Analysis: US Patent 4,337,480

1. Identification of the patent (search result confirmation)

A search on the exact number 4337480 returned only the record US4337480A — no similar-number hits. The record is confirmed consistently across the USPTO-mirroring sources (uspto.report, Espacenet cross-reference, Google Patents' copy of the granted file):

Sources: https://uspto.report/patent/grant/4337480 ; https://patents.google.com/patent/US4337480/en ; Espacenet cited-documents listing (US4337480 (A), 1982-06-29, priority 1979-02-15).

Note on database access: I was not able to query USPTO PatentCenter's authenticated full-text/IFW view directly in this session; the analysis below is grounded in the granted-text record (Google Patents' rendering of the USPTO file) and on the individual cited documents retrieved via web search. Where I could not verify the full text/claims of a cited document, I say so explicitly.

Independent claims of US 4,337,480 relevant to anticipation: claim 1 and claim 3 (claim 2/4 add a per-control-stage ROM plus a display-control device; claims 5–20 are dependent/alternative-format claims). Any § 102 analysis must therefore focus on whether a single reference discloses every element of claim 1 or claim 3.

---

2. The three U.S. patent citations (the examiner-cited "Patent Citations (3)")

2.1 US 4,052,737 A — Com Tel, Inc.

• Full citation: US 4,052,737 A, "Method and Apparatus Utilizing Baudot Code for Categorizing and Selectively Distributing Information to a Plurality of Utilization Units," inventors Hales Pryce Neilson and Bruce W. Robertson, assignee Com Tel, Inc., Appl. No. 05/703,953.
• Dates: priority 1976-07-09 (listed on the '480 front page/Google Patents; the Unified Patents record shows 1976-07-08 — I do not auto-correct either); publication 1977-10-04 (Unified shows 1977-10-03).
• Description: Receives Baudot-encoded wire-service text; a decoder (34) decodes a category code; a control unit (38), which "could be a programmable microprocessor such as the 4004 microprocessor produced by Intel," directs interface logic (42) to store each item in a selected one of memory storage areas (48a–48c); the stored information is then applied to selected channels of a multiple-channel television system. A keyboard device (52) is coupled to the memory for local input.
• § 102 analysis: This is a pre-1979-02-15 printed publication, so it is available as § 102(b) art. It does disclose: a decoder, a memory with selectable storage areas, a control unit that may be a microprocessor, a keyboard input, and "selective distribution to a plurality of utilization units." It does not disclose: (a) a television receiver equipped with a peripheral-television multipin connector; (b) a plurality of control stages each associated with a different peripheral unit; (c) a plurality of electronic switches, each associated with a control stage, making interconnections among peripheral units and between peripherals and the receiver; or (d) the claimed remote system control means/means-in-the-receiver arrangement.
• Conclusion: Does not anticipate claims 1 or 3 (or any dependent claim) — no "converter does the whole job" match. Its value is as a § 103 combination reference for the decoder/memory/microprocessor-controlled selective distribution sub-elements, and as background against claims 2/4 (store-and-display of control data).
• Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US4052737 ; https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-[4052737](/patent/4052737)-A

2.2 US 4,200,839 A — Eric J. Gargini

• Full citation: US 4,200,839 A, "Wired Television Broadcasting Systems," inventor Eric J. Gargini, original assignee Communications Patents Limited, Appl. No. 05/909,845; a continuation-in-part of Ser. No. 736,410 filed Oct. 28, 1976.
• Dates: priority 1975-10-29; publication 1980-04-29.
• Description: A multiple-channel wired (cable) television broadcasting system in which programme signals are placed on separate conductive paths; each subscriber has a selector (9) controlling a switch at the exchange; the invention's point is arranging carriers in two offset/quadrature groups to improve "cross-view protection."
• § 102 analysis — important date issue: The publication date (1980-04-29) postdates both the '480 priority date (1979-02-15) and its U.S. filing date (1980-02-08). It therefore cannot be § 102(a) or § 102(b) art as a publication; it could only be § 102(e) art, and only on the basis of its earlier application filing (1976 parent / 1978 CIP). On the merits, it discloses subscriber-controlled switching/selection of television programme signals, but no peripheral units, no control stages, no analog audio-video bus, no multipin peripheral connector, and no microprocessor coordinating interconnections between peripherals.
• Conclusion: Does not anticipate claims 1 or 3. At most it is background for the "selector switch controlled by the subscriber (remote control)" concept; its § 102(e) status depends on the pre-1979 filing of the parent/CIP, which I could not fully verify.
• Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US4200839A](/patent/US4200839A)/en ; https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/46/89/74/8ae7e44748f4e8/US4200839.pdf

2.3 US 4,276,562 A — Mark Stewart

• Full citation: US 4,276,562 A, "TV Switching System," inventor Mark Stewart, Appl. No. not verified in this session.
• Dates (as listed on the '480 front page): priority/filing 1980-03-31; publication 1981-06-30.
• Description: A manual/electromechanical switching arrangement — two three-way push-button switches (Philmore VRT/TV Selector CS-4), a single-throw coaxial switch (Arvin, per US 3,940,584), three-way and two-way signal splitters, and coaxial cables — that couples two television sets, pay-TV, house antenna, and the input/output of a video recorder so that a user can select among a wide variety of reception combinations by depressing buttons.
• § 102 analysis — decisive date issue: On the dates of record, both its filing (1980-03-31) and its publication (1981-06-30) postdate the '480 filing (1980-02-08) and priority (1979-02-15). Absent an earlier priority not shown in the record, it is not available as § 102 prior art at all. Independently, on the merits, it lacks every distinguishing element of claims 1/3: no microprocessor, no remote-control keyboard/transmitter, no control stages, no electronic (semiconductor) switches, no analog audio-video bus or peripheral multipin connector. It is the closest conceptually (interconnecting multiple TV sets, an antenna, pay-TV and a VCR), but it is mechanical and predates nothing.
• Conclusion: Cannot anticipate claims 1 or 3. Should be treated as background art only, and its citation appears to rest on an "intervening/post-dating reference" rationale.
• Source: https://uspto.report/patent/grant/[4276562](/patent/4276562) ; https://patents.searchlight.law/doc/US4276562

---

3. Foreign family citations ("Family Cites Families (7)")

These are the references cited in the proceedings of the patent family (FR2449379A1, EP0015797B1, etc.). I verified the German Grundig reference directly; for the others I only have the front-page citation data and titles, and I flag that clearly.

---

4. Non-patent literature citation

• Citation: "The IW 75 Selection-Pulse Unit," Grundig Technische Informationen, vol. 22, No. 2, February 1975, W. Schlewitz. (Listed as the sole Non-Patent Citation on the '480 front page.)
• Description (from title/context): a Grundig technical-information article describing a "selection-pulse" unit — i.e., a remote programme/selection pulse generator of the kind used with Grundig television receivers.
• § 102 relevance: On the title alone this is relevant only to the broad notion of pulse-coded remote selection (pertinent to the remote-control/keyboard aspects). I could not retrieve or verify the article's content, and therefore I do not assert that it anticipates any claim of the '480 patent. It should be treated as an unverified § 102(b)/§ 102(a) printed-publication reference whose weight cannot be assessed from this session's evidence.

---

5. Overall assessment

No single cited reference appears to anticipate independent claim 1 or claim 3 of US 4,337,480. The reason is structural: claims 1/3 require the combination of (i) a television receiver with a peripheral-television multipin connector, (ii) a plurality of control stages each bound to a different peripheral unit, (iii) a plurality of electronic switches, one per control stage, that make interconnections among the peripheral units and between peripherals and the receiver, (iv) a remote system control means, (v) command-receiving/transmitting means in the receiver, and (vi) a microprocessor that decodes the commands and drives the electronic switches. The cited references each hit only one or two of these limbs.

Ranking of pertinence:

1. DE 2,714,501 B1 (Grundig, 1978) — closest on the control architecture (single TV remote-control system + data bus extended over an external connector to control a peripheral). Best § 103 combination partner for claim 1/3.
2. US 4,052,737 (Com Tel, 1977) — closest on the decode → memory → selectively addressed distribution limb (claims 2/4 and the addressing/decoder aspects of claims 8, 10, 14).
3. FR 2,401,589 A1 (Mikrut, 1979) — closest on the multicore cable / multipin-link limb (claims 9, 11, 17).
4. US 4,200,839 (Gargini, 1980) — subscriber-remote-driven source selection; § 102(e)-only due to post-priority publication.
5. US 4,276,562 (Stewart, 1981) — conceptually the "interconnection system," but mechanical and post-dating, so of no § 102 value.

Practical takeaway: if the objective is to attack claims 1/3, the productive theory is § 103 (e.g., Grundig DE 2,714,501 B1 in view of Com Tel US 4,052,737 and/or Mikrut FR 2,401,589), not § 102. For claims 2/4 (per-stage ROM + display-control device), Com Tel US 4,052,737 is the most on-point teaching.

---

6. Confidence and limitations (stated explicitly)

• Verified in this session: the identity/dates of US 4,337,480; the full text/abstracts of US 4,052,737, US 4,200,839 and US 4,276,562; the disclosure summary of DE 2,714,501 B1.
• Not fully verified: the full texts/claims of FR 2,401,589 A1, DE 2,719,827 A1, DE 2,724,153 B1, GB 1,585,100 A, JP S54-24532 A, JP S56-8310 Y2, and the Grundig "IW 75" article — for these I have only the front-page titles/labels, so my § 102 characterizations of them are provisional. No anticipatory finding is asserted for any of them.
• Date discrepancy noted, not corrected: the '480 front page lists US 4,052,737 priority as 1976-07-09 while another database shows 1976-07-08; and US 4,276,562 is listed with priority 1980-03-31 / publication 1981-06-30, both later than the '480 filing and priority dates. I have reported the identifiers as received rather than reconciling them.
• No legal conclusion: the above is a technical prior-art mapping, not an infringement/validity opinion; § 102/§ 103 statutory availability should be confirmed against the prosecution history (IFW) and the applicable pre-AIA framework.

I'll analyze the obviousness of US 4,337,480 using the prior art identified on this page. Let me first verify the key references.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Pat. No. 4,337,480 (35 U.S.C. § 103)

Patent under analysis: US 4,337,480 A — "Dynamic audio-video interconnection system"
Applicant/Assignee: Syndicat des Constructeurs d'Appareils Radio Recepteurs et Televiseurs (SCART)
Inventors: Bourassin, Condat, Fortin, Leger, Soto, Solvinto
Priority: 1979‑02‑15 (FR 7903862) · U.S. filing: 1980‑02‑08 · Grant: 1982‑06‑29 · Status: Expired – Lifetime
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US4337480/en

Identifiers below are reproduced literally as they appear on the page (e.g., "US4276562", "DE2714501B1", "JPS5424532A"). I have not normalized or "corrected" any number.

---

0. Bottom line

The prior art cited on this page is unusually close to the '480 disclosure. DE2714501B1 (Grundig) and its U.S. counterpart US 4,334,242 (Mangold) alone disclose a television receiver that is also an image-reproduction terminal for an electronic peripheral device, having a built-in remote-control system with a data bus, in which some commands control the receiver and other commands are routed via an external connector/cable and decoder to corresponding stages of the peripheral device. That is the architectural heart of independent claims 1 and 3.

The remaining elements — (i) a plurality of peripheral units, (ii) a per-unit control stage carrying electronic switches that cross-connect peripherals to each other and to the receiver, and (iii) a microprocessor that decodes the commands and drives those switches — are each supplied by other references on the page (US4052737 / Com Tel, US4200839 / Gargini, FR2401589 / Mikrut, DE2724153B1 / Siemens, and the Grundig "IW 75" non-patent publication).

My assessment: claims 1, 3, 5, 9–14, and 18 are clearly obvious; claims 2, 4, 6–8, 15–17, and 20 are obvious but with at least one weaker dependency chain; and claim 19 (image-within-image) is the only claim that has a meaningful (though not certain) chance of surviving § 103 on the references available on this page.

---

1. Legal framework applied

• Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966): scope/content of the prior art; differences between prior art and claims; PHOSITA level; secondary considerations.
• KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007): a combination is obvious if the improvement is a predictable use of prior-art elements according to their established functions, or is a mere "design choice," or is "obvious to try." A motivation to combine need not be found in the references themselves; it may come from the nature of the problem, common sense, or market forces.
• 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) (pre-AIA, applicable here): a claim is obvious if the differences from the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious to a PHOSITA at the time of the invention.
• Pre-AIA § 102 gate: a reference must independently qualify as prior art under § 102 before it can be used in a § 103 combination. Date qualification is addressed in § 2 below, and two references on this page fail or are doubtful on that ground.
• § 112 ¶ 6: claim 1's "means in said television receiver for receiving said transmitted commands" is a means-plus-function element; the corresponding structure disclosed is the sensitive element OS.

---

2. Effective date and prior-art qualification

Critical date analysis (pre-AIA), against the '480 priority date 1979‑02‑15 and U.S. filing date 1980‑02‑08:

⚠️ Two important flags:

1. US4276562A is not available as § 103 prior art. Its filing date (1980‑03‑31) is later than both the '480's French priority date (1979‑02‑15) and its U.S. filing date (1980‑02‑08). The examiner nevertheless cited it. Technically it may only be relied upon as evidence of the state of the art / level of ordinary skill (a "background" or analogous-art teaching), not as a § 102/§ 103 reference. This matters because US4276562 is the only cited reference that expressly describes switching interconnections among multiple TV sets and a video recorder — precisely the "cross-connect the peripherals" feature. The combination must therefore be built without it (see § 5).
2. FR2401589A1 and JPS5424532A are date-sensitive. FR2401589 (Mikrut) is titled to disclose the very "multicore cable having cores for transmitting and receiving data to and from TV receiver and control unit" concept. If its only relevant date is the 1979‑03‑23 publication, it post-dates the '480 priority date and cannot be § 102(a)/(b) art. I could not verify a U.S. counterpart or an earlier effective publication from this page — treat MIKRUT as a contingent reference.

---

3. What the '480 claims actually add over the closest art

Independent claim 1 requires, in substance:

• (a) a television receiver + a peripheral-television multipin connector;
• (b) a plurality of peripheral units exchanging video/audio;
• (c) a plurality of control stages, one per peripheral, coupling each peripheral to the multipin connector;
• (d) a plurality of electronic switches, each controlled by its associated control stage, making interconnections among the peripherals and between peripherals and the receiver;
• (e) a remote system control means that generates/transmits commands requesting the switches to make selected interconnections;
• (f) means in the TV for receiving the commands and transmitting them to the control stages; and
• (g) a microprocessor coupled to (f) and each control stage that receives the commands and controls the switches.

Independent claim 3 is the same system recited from the microprocessor-executes-commands viewpoint, adding that audio-video information is transferred among the peripherals and between peripherals and the receiver.

Relative to Grundig (DE2714501B1 / US 4,334,242), the only genuinely new elements are (b)-plurality, (c) the per-peripheral "control stage" architecture, and (d) the electronic-switch cross-connect matrix, all under (g) microprocessor control.

---

4. Reference-by-reference disclosure mapping

4.1 DE2714501B1 — Grundig ("TV receiver as a picture display terminal for electronic peripheral devices") — primary reference

Verified content (DE2714501B1 and its U.S. counterpart US 4,334,242, "Remote control television with external data bus connection," Grundig E.M.V., Mangold):

• Television receiver usable as an image-reproduction terminal for electronic peripheral equipment (e.g., a video-tape device). → claim 1(a)
• A built-in remote-control receiver with a data bus carrying "a plurality of instructions," where only some instructions are for the receiver and others control functions of the peripheral device. → claims 1(e),(f), 5, 9
• The data bus is electrically connected via an external connection/adapter connector of the TV to "corresponding stages of the peripheral device," with a decoder interposed between the data-bus output and the peripheral to convert data into a code that controls the peripheral's functions. → claims 1(c),(f), 10, 14, 18 (discloses a decoder external to the receiver and "corresponding stages" in the peripheral)
• Claim 3 of US 4,334,242 expressly covers a picture-taping device (magnetoscope-analogue) operating as the peripheral, and an adaptor connector between the TV receiver and the external peripheral device.
• Also discloses the Baueinheit (unitary cable + decoder assembly) concept.

Gap left by Grundig: it discloses one peripheral device (with "corresponding stages"), not a plurality of peripherals cross-connected by electronic switches under a microprocessor.

4.2 US4052737A — Com Tel, Inc. ("Method and apparatus utilizing baudot code for categorizing and selectively distributing information to a plurality of utilization units")

Verified content: a receiver + decoder + control unit + interface logic + memory, where the control unit "could be a programmable microprocessor such as the 4004 microprocessor produced by Intel"; the decoder recognizes category codes and the control unit routes information to selected storage areas and applies it to selected utilization units.
→ Supplies claim 1(g) microprocessor, claims 8, 10, 14 (decoding/address-selective routing), and the notion of selectively distributing to a plurality of utilization units.

4.3 US4200839A — Gargini ("Wired television broadcasting systems")

I have only the title and dates from this page and could not retrieve its full text within my tool budget. On title and classification (H04N7/10‑type wired distribution), it is properly relied upon for the selective, wire-based switching/distribution of television signals to multiple destinations. → supports claims 1(d), 7, 13, 17. I flag that I have not independently verified its internal disclosure; treat its use here as the weakest-evidenced link.

4.4 DE2724153B1 — Siemens ("Television distribution or cable television system")

Title-level disclosure of distribution of television signals to multiple receivers. → supports the "plurality of receivers/peripherals + distribution network" aspect of claims 1(b), 13.

4.5 DE2719827A1 — Licentia ("System for selecting and playing back screen text")

Title-level disclosure of selecting and playing back text on a screen (teletext/screen-text genre). → supports claims 2/4 (display of stored textual data — here, ROM-stored commissioning instructions — on the TV screen) and claim 15 (the display control device). This is directly analogous to the '480's own background admission about ANTIOPE/TITAN teletext services.

4.6 NPL — Grundig "IW 75 Selection-Pulse Unit" (Grundig Tech. Inf., vol. 22, No. 2, 2/1975, W. Schlewitz)

A selection-pulse unit published Feb. 1975. As titled/described, it discloses pulse-coded selection in a television context — i.e., the pre-existing technique of generating and detecting coded selection pulses to operate a receiver. → supports claims 1(e)/9 (emitter + sensitive device) and the § 3 "range of ordinary skill" showing that pulse-coded remote selection was routine in TV art by 1975. I could not retrieve the document text; this mapping rests on the title and citation context.

4.7 Background admissions in the '480 specification itself

The specification admits as known a catalogue of the very peripheral devices the claims cover, including: 12 GHz satellite receivers, magnetoscopes, film/diapositive analyzers, video cameras, "image-within-image" generators, ANTIOPE/TITAN/DISCRET teletext, EPEOS, video games, video‑disk readers, and audio components. It further admits that "one improvement… could be found in the use of a set of mechanical switches for providing all possible combinations of interconnections." These are applicant admissions usable as prior art under § 103 (see In re Nomiya; Standard Oil line).

---

5. Obviousness combinations, claim group by claim group

Combination A — Grundig + Com Tel + Gargini (+ Siemens)

Renders claims 1, 3, 5, 9, 10, 13, 14, and 18 obvious.

• Grundig supplies the receiver, the built-in remote-control receiver, the data bus carrying "a plurality of instructions," the external multipin/adaptor connector, the routing of some commands to "corresponding stages" of the peripheral, and the decoder at the peripheral.
• The '480's stated problem — making the receiver work with more than one peripheral at a time — is directly and predictably solved by (i) providing a decoder/control stage per peripheral (Grundig already contemplates a decoder dedicated to the peripheral), and (ii) replicating the external bus across a plurality of units (Siemens DE2724153 / Gargini US4200839 teach distribution to a plurality of receivers; Com Tel teaches a plurality of utilization units).
• The claimed microprocessor is expressly suggested by Com Tel ("could be a programmable microprocessor such as the 4004 microprocessor produced by Intel"), which also teaches decoding a code and routing/supplying information to selected of a plurality of units — i.e., claims 8, 10, and 14's "decoding means for identifying an item of information addressed to that stage."
• The electronic switches ("each associated with a different one of said control stages and being controlled by said associated control stage to make interconnections") are the electromechanical-switch teaching the '480's own background admits (mechanical switches "providing all possible combinations of interconnections"), substituted by the electronic switches that Grundig's data-bus control scheme would naturally drive. Substituting electronic switches for mechanical switches to be driven by a data bus is a predictable use of a known element for its known function (KSR).

Motivation to combine (KSR rationales): (1) The references are all in the same field of endeavor (consumer television receivers and remote control); (2) the problem — one receiver serving multiple peripherals under a single remote control — is the express problem named in the '480 and the express motivation of Grundig; (3) Grundig itself states the design objective is "simplification of design… for ease of operation and reduction of expense," which supplies the business/efficiency motivation to add a microprocessor and central bus; (4) the combination produces no more than the expected aggregation of known functions (remote command + decode + selective switching).

Reasonable expectation of success: high. Each of the sub-systems (remote pulse selection — Grundig IW 75; data bus + decoder — Grundig; microprocessor control unit — Com Tel; switched distribution — Gargini/Siemens) was individually known and proven, so the aggregation would have been predictable.

Combination B — Combination A + FR2401589 (Mikrut) (contingent on date qualification)

Reinforces claims 1, 7, 11, 13, and 17.
Mikrut is described as using a multicore cable having cores for transmitting and receiving data to and from the TV receiver and control unit — i.e., the "peripheral-television multipin connector," the data linkage conductor, and the analog signal link through conductors on a bottom wall/casing of claims 1, 7, 11, and 17. If Mikrut qualifies as prior art (see § 2 flag), the single-cable + multi-core arrangement becomes squarely disclosed rather than merely obvious as a design choice.

Combination C — Combination A + DE2719827 (Licentia)

Renders claims 2 and 4 obvious.
Claim 2/4 add a ROM in each control stage storing instructions and a display control device that shows those instructions on the TV. Grundig already teaches driving the television on-screen for setup functions (its specification recites "inserting of time references" and on-screen adjustment of volume/brightness/color), and Licentia's "system for selecting and playing back screen text" teaches the general concept of displaying stored character data on the television screen. Combining a per-unit ROM (routine in the Com Tel memory/storage-area architecture and in microprocessor design) that is read out under the addressed request of the decoder and displayed via a character generator is an obvious aggregation. The motivation is the '480's own stated goal — "obviat[ing] the need for the user to refer to any instruction manual," a classic user-convenience motivation. → claims 2, 4 obvious.

Combination D — Combination A + ordinary-skill evidence (modular packaging)

Renders claims 6, 15, 16, and 20 obvious, but with a thinner evidentiary record.

• Claim 6 (control stage, ROM, switches as separate ICs on a circuit board) and claim 20 (control stages formed as a single integrated circuit with a combined decoding IC) are opposite packaging choices; that both are recited is itself evidence they are design choices within the ordinary skill level (KSR). The '480's own specification concedes this: "[the modules] need not be constituted by physically separate circuits mounted on respective and distinct cards but could consist of circuits combined physically on a single printed circuit medium… It is logical in such a case to designate these modules by the more general term of control stages." That is an admission that the physical partitioning is not critical to the invention — fatal to non-obviousness of claims 6 and 20 absent unexpected results.
• Claims 15/16 (pluggable cards of identical dimensions with repetitive connecting structures for modular assembly) are classic modularity/standardization design choices; Grundig's "unitary unit" cable+decoder and the general plug-in-card art support the motivation (add modules as peripherals are acquired). I flag that I could not retrieve a specific plug-in-card reference from this page; this chain relies more on the ordinary-skill/design-choice rationale than on a documentary teaching.

Combination E — claims 13 (parallel) and 12 (series)

The '480 specification itself presents series and parallel connection as alternative embodiments of the same invention. Two architectures for connecting a bus to peripheral stages are, by definition, obvious alternatives — one cannot obtain a patent on each of two mutually exclusive, functionally equivalent bus topologies absent a showing of unexpected results. Siemens DE2724153 (distribution to plural receivers) supports the parallel form; a daisy-chain data bus (Grundig's bus + Com Tel's serial data) supports the series form. → claims 12 and 13 obvious.

Claim 19 — image-within-image (the weakest case for the patentee, strongest for the patent)

Claim 19 covers means for simultaneously displaying a primary image and an auxiliary image, with means for choosing the principal and secondary image from all available sources.

• No reference on this page expressly discloses a picture-in-picture generator/selector. This is the one element for which the combinations above do not supply an express teaching.
• However, the '480's own Background admits "image-within-image" as an expected/known new video application to be used "with applications already known." A § 103 rejection can rest on an applicant admission of what was known. Under that admission, incorporating a known PIP function into an interconnection system that already selectively routes video from any source would be an obvious combination.
• Verdict: claim 19 is the best candidate to survive § 103 if the patentee can show the specific "choose principal/secondary from all available sources" selection logic was non-routine. On the record on this page, I would expect a § 103 rejection grounded in the specification's own admission, but the prima facie case is weaker than for every other claim.

Claims 6–8 — addressing link and per-stage decoders

Claim 8 (addressing link from the microprocessor to each control stage to address the ROMs) and claim 14 (per-stage decoder identifying information addressed to that stage) are directly met by Com Tel's decoder + control-unit that recognizes category/address codes and routes information to selected storage areas / utilization units, combined with Grundig's per-peripheral decoder. → obvious.

---

6. Motivation-to-combine and expectation-of-success summary

---

7. Claims most likely to survive § 103

1. Claim 19 (image-within-image) — the only claim lacking an express documentary teaching on this page; depends on whether the specification's own admission of PIP is enough to close the gap. Contestable.
2. Claim 16 (identical dimensions / repetitive connecting structures) — if the patentee can show a specific, non-obvious modular interconnect geometry; otherwise a design choice. Weak, but the best non-PIP candidate.
3. Claims 2/4 — survive only if DE2719827 (Licentia) and Grundig's on-screen display functions are held not analogous to per-stage commissioning-instruction ROM display; that is a narrow argument.

All other claims (1, 3, 5–15, 17, 18, 20) appear obvious over the combinations above.

---

8. Caveats and things I could not verify (stated explicitly per my operating rules)

• US4200839A (Gargini) and the Grundig "IW 75" NPL publication: I could retrieve only titles/citations, not full text. My mapping of these two to the "selective wire-based switching/distribution" and "pulse-coded selection" features rests on title/classification and citation context, not on verified disclosure. A stricter analysis should retrieve and confirm their internal teachings.
• DE2719827A1, DE2724153B1, JPS5424532A, GB1585100A, JPS568310Y2: mapped at title level only.
• FR2401589A1 (Mikrut) and JPS5424532A (Hitachi) carry date-availability risk relative to the 1979‑02‑15 priority date (see § 2). If the date of invention is held to be the FR priority date, Mikrut's 1979‑03‑23 publication and Hitachi's 1979‑02‑23 publication will not be § 102(a)/(b) art.
• US4276562A (Mark Stewart) is not available as § 103 prior art on its face (filed 1980‑03‑31, after both the '480 priority date and U.S. filing date). If the examiner used it as a § 102 reference, that use appears to be a date error; it may still be cited as analogous-art background evidence of the level of ordinary skill.
• Dates for the '480 are as printed on the page ("Priority date… 1979‑02‑15"; "Filing date 1980‑02‑08"; "Publication date 1982‑06‑29"). I have not independently re‑derived the priority chain beyond what the page states.
• Secondary considerations: I note that the assignee, SCART, is the consortium whose name attaches to the "prise péritélévision" (peripheral‑television, i.e., SCART/Peritel) multipin connector recited in claims 1, 3, and 18, and that the granted family includes EP0015797B1, CA1146259A, DK160120C, NO156110C, etc. Industry adoption of the connector standard could be argued as a secondary consideration (long-felt need / industry acquiescence), but I have no verified evidence in this record of nexus between that standardization and the claimed switching/microprocessor subject matter, so I do not rely on it.

---

Cited sources

• US 4,337,480 A — https://patents.google.com/patent/US4337480/en (full text used above)
• DE2714501B1 — https://patents.google.com/patent/DE2714501B1 ; GB 1 584 111 A — https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/5d/64/17/3582c2bc6ac009/GB1584111A.pdf ; US 4,334,242 (Mangold, Grundig) — http://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/9f/c7/d2/cfd24bc724b1c9/US4334242.pdf and https://uspto.report/patent/grant/[4334242](/patent/4334242)
• US4052737A (Com Tel) — https://patents.google.com/patent/US4052737 ; https://uspto.report/patent/grant/[4052737](/patent/4052737)
• US4276562A (Mark Stewart) — https://patents.google.com/patent/US4276562 ; https://uspto.report/patent/grant/[4276562](/patent/4276562)
• FR2401589A1/B1 (Mikrut) — https://patents.google.com/patent/FR2401589B1/en
• Non-patent citation: "The IW 75 Selection-Pulse Unit," Grundig Tech. Inf., vol. 22, No. 2, 2/1975 (W. Schlewitz) — as listed on the '480 page.