US 5323204

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

The initial searches returned unrelated results. Let me run more targeted queries.

US Patent 5,323,204 — Analyst Summary

Sources consulted: the full patent text you supplied (fetched from https://patents.google.com/patent/[US5323204](/patent/US5323204)/en), plus corroborating search hits (Google Patents citations, patentimages PDF of US5323204, Justia citation in US6823136, and EPO/LU register entries for the related family member EP0544804). I did not obtain a verbatim abstract or claim set from a primary source, and no CAFC 2026 docket activity was found — see caveats at the end.

Bibliographic Data (from the authoritative patent text)

Family note (important — do not conflate): A different, earlier Kodak family member is EP 0 544 804 B1 (PCT/US91/05893, filed 1991‑08‑22, priority US 572,600 of 1990‑08‑23, inventors Wheeler / O'Such / Wilson). That is the "extra system speed" parent, corresponding to US 5,049,916 (O'Such '916) cited throughout the '204 specification. US 5,323,204 is the later improvement adding display-size and focal-length-mode optimization.

Abstract

I did not retrieve the abstract verbatim, so I will not quote it. Faithful restatement based on the specification:

Exposure parameters (shutter speed, lens aperture, and, where appropriate, flash parameters) in a photographic camera are automatically optimized for a photographer-selected display size and/or focal length photographing mode (e.g., pseudo-panoramic or pseudo-telephoto), rather than for an assumed standard display size. A display size factor (DSF) — derived from the reproduction magnification ratio and viewing distance — is used to adjust the blur circle criteria and a focal length factor. These adjusted values feed an exposure control process that (a) determines baseline (typically ISO‑normal) exposure settings, (b) ascertains settings actually meeting scene requirements (camera shake, depth‑of‑field), (c) assesses available extra system speed, and (d) consumes that extra speed in a prioritized incremental manner. The selected display size/mode data is also recorded on the film (e.g., via an LED film encoder) for later readout by a photo-printer to set its reproduction magnification ratio.

Plain-Language Overview of the Independent Claims

Caveat: the verbatim claim set was not included in the material I retrieved (the supplied text contains the specification/definitions and figure list but is truncated before the claims). The following is an inference drawn from the specification's own framing of "our inventive process" and its explicitly enumerated "severable" features — treat it as high-confidence-but-not-verbatim.

The patent's specification describes inventions along these lines:

1. Extra-system-speed optimization, display-size-aware (main independent claim family). An apparatus/process that:

   • determines initial exposure parameter values giving a baseline exposure (typically ISO‑normal) of the scene;
   • ascertains corresponding values that actually meet the scene's requirements as modified by the selected display size and/or focal length photographing mode (using the ADJUSTED_BLUR_CIRCLE_CRITERIA and adjusted FOCAL_LENGTH_FACTOR);
   • assesses the amount of extra system speed available from the difference between initial and corresponding values; and
   • varies at least one exposure parameter (aperture, shutter speed, and where appropriate flash parameters) in a pre-defined prioritized incremental fashion to consume that extra speed and produce an image of quality at least equal to, preferably better than, the baseline exposure.

2. Display-size-factor-driven exposure adjustment. Determining a DISPLAY_SIZE_FACTOR from the user-selected display size and reproduction magnification ratio, then using it to adjust the blur-circle criterion and the focal-length factor that govern shutter speed and aperture selection — including for cameras not capable of scene-thickness measurement (e.g., zoned-autofocus cameras), where the maximum aperture per zone is multiplied by the inverse of the DSF and shutter speed by the DSF.

3. Flash-related independent claims (sub-features described as severable). Selecting, for full flash, a lens aperture giving depth-of-field substantially matching flash depth-of-illumination (via the DEPTH_NUMBER / GUIDE_NUMBER relationship), and then using any extra system speed to throttle the flash (energy-saving units), bounce it (if a bounce surface exists and BOUNCE_CUTOFF is met), or spread it.

4. Film-encoding / photo-finishing independent aspects. Recording the selected display size and/or focal length photographing mode (and optionally exposure settings and intentional over/under-exposure amounts) on the film adjacent the frame, so a photo-printer can set its reproduction magnification ratio and printing algorithm accordingly.

Uncertainty and Search Limitations — stated explicitly

• Abstract and claims: I could not retrieve verbatim text for either. The overview above is derived from the specification and should be verified against the printed claims (columns 10+) before being relied on.
• CAFC 2026 dockets: I found no Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit activity (2026 or otherwise) involving US 5,323,204. Given the patent's expired (fee-related) status with an anticipated expiration of 1992‑11‑03 + 20 years = 2012‑11‑03, it would have been unenforceable well before 2026, making live 2026 appellate litigation on this patent highly improbable. My CAFC search step was cut short, so I flag this as not affirmatively confirmed rather than confirmed absent.
• Search noise: Generic queries for "5323204" returned unrelated documents, including US 5,322,204 ("Electronic substrate multiple location conductor attachment technology," IBM) and US 5,323,130 / 5,323,131 (General Electric). These are different patents and were not merged into the summary. Note the reversed-digit neighbor 5,322,204 is a common source of confusion.
• Per your standing rule, all identifiers above are reproduced literally as they appear in the sources; none were auto-corrected.

I'll search for litigation involving US Patent 5,323,204. Let me run several targeted queries.

Initial results are not relevant. Let me try more targeted searches.

Let me search patent litigation databases directly and with different phrasings.

Litigation Search: US Patent No. 5,323,204

Bottom line: I found no known litigation involving US Patent No. 5,323,204.

I ran multiple targeted searches for this specific patent number across general web sources and patent-litigation-oriented material (including queries aimed at Unified Patents' litigation portal, RPX Insight, PACER-type docket aggregators, and CourtListener). Not one result matched this patent number. The hits that returned were about unrelated patents (e.g., a different "'532 patent" in Presens Precision Sensing GmbH v. Univ. of Md. Biotechnology Inst., U.S. Patent Nos. 7,295,532, 8,712,206, 10,120,153, 6,292,218, etc.), and none involved US 5,323,204.

Why no litigation is plausible here

The patent's own prosecution/status record is consistent with a patent that was never asserted:

This is a 1990s-era Kodak camera exposure-control patent that lapsed for failure to pay maintenance fees in 2012. It does not appear in the Kodak litigation campaigns that did generate docket activity (e.g., the 2010–2012 Kodak v. Apple/HTC digital-imaging cases, the ITC digital-photo-frame matters, or the Kodak bankruptcy patent-sale adversary proceedings) — those involved an entirely different set of digital-capture patents.

Caveats (important)

• I could not complete a genuinely exhaustive docket check. The specific docket aggregators you named (Unified Patents litigation portal, PACER) are not directly searchable through the tools I had available in this session, and my queries to those and to RPX Insight did not return a patent-specific match for 5,323,204. My last few intended queries were cut off by a search-step limit.
• A negative result is not proof of no litigation. District-court complaints, ITC investigations, and older (pre-PACER-ECF-era) suits may not be indexed in the sources reachable here. Given the 1994 grant date, any assertion would most plausibly have occurred in the 1994–2010 window, which is the period with the weakest public online coverage.

Recommended verification steps

To confirm definitively, I would check:

1. Unified Patents Litigation Portal — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist (search "5323204" / "5,323,204").
2. RPX Insight — https://insight.rpxcorp.com (patent-level "Litigation" tab for the patent).
3. USPTO Patent Center / Patent Assignment records for any recorded licenses or assignments indicating assertion (https://patentcenter.uspto.gov).
4. Lex Machina / Docket Navigator (subscription) for a true full-text district-court and ITC search.
5. Google Patents "Litigation" tab for US5323204 — Google sometimes surfaces related litigation links.

If you'd like, I can draft the exact search strings to run in those databases, or focus on a narrower window (e.g., any Kodak camera-patent assertions in the late 1990s) to see whether this patent was ever part of a portfolio assertion.

Summary answer to your request: Plaintiff(s): none identified. Defendant(s): none identified. Jurisdiction: none identified. Case number: none identified. Filing date: none identified. Outcome/status: No litigation is known to me for US Patent No. 5,323,204.

PTAB proceedings on US 5,323,204 ("Automatic optimization of photographic exposure parameters…")

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0 (zero). The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block derived from the USPTO Open Data Portal returns no AIA trial proceedings for US 5,323,204 — no instituted IPR, no PGR, no CBM, no denied-institution decision, and no settled/terminated proceeding. Independent web searching returned no PTAB petition, institution decision, Final Written Decision, or Federal Circuit appeal docketed against this patent; the only third-party hits for the number "5323204" were unrelated patents sharing the last four digits. Bottom line defensive posture: there is nothing to cite, and nothing to be estopped by — the patent was never tested at the Board. That is not the same as "hardened." It means the entire invalidity case, if one exists, is still fully available to you and unencumbered by § 315(e)(2) estoppel — but it also means the patent is not a live commercial threat in the first place, because its enforceable term has closed (see below).

Because the structured source is authoritative and negative, the per-proceeding sections below are recorded as "none" rather than omitted, so the record is unambiguous.

Per-proceeding detail

No proceeding — IPR: none

• Type: n/a — no Inter Partes Review petition ever filed or indexed.
• Filed: n/a. Note the structural reason: the AIA trial regime opened 2012-09-16, and the USPTO record lists anticipated expiration 2012-11-03 with legal status "Expired – Fee Related" (expired for failure to pay maintenance fees). Any IPR window on a live claim set was effectively a few weeks wide, and none was used.
• Status: n/a.
• Judge panel: n/a — no panel ever empanelled.
• Petition grounds: n/a.
• Institution decision: n/a.
• Final Written Decision: n/a. No claim of US 5,323,204 has ever been canceled or confirmed by the Board.
• Settlement / termination: n/a.
• Appeal: n/a — no FWD, therefore no CAFC appeal of an FWD.
• Defensive value: Because no claim has ever been adjudicated at the PTAB, none of the claims is a "dead" claim you can ignore, and none is a "blessed" claim you must treat as validated. Read the claims yourself.

No proceeding — PGR: none

• Type: n/a. Note the patent is a pre-AIA filing (1992-11-03), so PGR (available only for post-2013-03-16 priority applications) was never legally available.
• Status / panel / grounds / institution / FWD / settlement / appeal: n/a.

No proceeding — CBM: none

• Type: n/a. CBM was in any event limited to patents claiming a "financial product or service" — a photographic exposure-control patent would not have qualified, and no CBM petition was filed regardless.
• Status / panel / grounds / institution / FWD / settlement / appeal: n/a.

No proceeding — ex parte reexamination or interference indexed against the AIA trial docket

• Status: I found no ex parte reexamination certificate for US 5,323,204, and no interference record for it. I flag this as a lower-confidence negative — reexaminations are indexed separately from PTAB AIA trials, and I did not retrieve a definitive reexamination file-history record for this patent.

Strategic summary

Claim status. There is no PTAB-derived claim status to report: no claim of US 5,323,204 has been CANCELED, and no claim has been SUSTAINED by the Board. Every claim is, in PTAB terms, untested. That said, the claim set is largely moot as an assertion vehicle: the patent's anticipated expiration is recorded as 2012-11-03 (20 years from the 1992-11-03 filing), and its status is "Expired – Fee Related," meaning it lapsed for non-payment of maintenance fees as well. A patent whose term has closed cannot support prospective injunctive relief and, at most, supports a backward-looking damages theory limited to the period before expiration — which for this patent is at least roughly thirteen to fourteen years in the past as of 2026-10-01, well outside the § 286 six-year damages look-back. Practically, there is no live infringement theory to defend against.

Estoppel landscape. With zero AIA proceedings, 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) estoppel does not exist against anyone — no petitioner, no real party in interest, no privy. There is no estoppel boundary at all: every prior-art ground under §§ 102 and 103 is fully available to any defendant, including art that a hypothetical petitioner "could reasonably have raised." The corollary is that the patent owner also gets no benefit of a Board affirmance of validity; there is no § 315(e)(1) or collateral-estoppel shield from a surviving FWD, because there is no FWD. If you were nonetheless served with a demand citing US 5,323,204, your invalidity case in district court is unencumbered, and your threshold response should be a term/expiration objection rather than a validity fight.

Pattern signals. No petitioner has filed even one IPR against this patent, let alone multiple — so there is no serial-petitioner pattern, no defensive aggregator (Unified Patents, RPX, AST, etc.) in the chain, and no evidence of patent-owner appellate aggression (there is no FWD to appeal, and no CAFC docket exists for it). The "Expired – Fee Related" status is the opposite signal from a well-asserted patent: this was a Kodak implementation patent that Kodak let lapse, not an asset a monetization entity picked up and litigated. For family context, the specification repeatedly builds on commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 5,049,916 to O'Such et al. (issued 1991-09-17), which is the earlier exposure-optimization patent in this line; the '916 patent predates the AIA trial regime entirely and would have expired even earlier, so neither patent in the pair is a realistic PTAB target today. I did not independently verify the full prosecution/litigation history of the '916 patent and do not assert one.

Recommended next steps

1. Treat the absence of PTAB activity as a substantive fact, not a gap. The structured ODP block returned no AIA trial proceedings, and web searching produced no petition or decision. The correct statement in any defendant-side memorandum is: "No AIA trial proceeding has ever been filed against US 5,323,204; the patent is recorded as Expired – Fee Related with anticipated expiration 2012-11-03."
2. If you actually received an assertion, attack standing-to-assert before validity. Ask for (a) the maintenance-fee payment record and the exact lapse date, and (b) the damages-period calculation under 35 U.S.C. § 286 (six-year look-back from the complaint). On the face of the record, a 2012 expiration forecloses a recoverable damages period.
3. If, contrary to the record above, you want a PTAB-track option: note that expired patents are not categorically immune from IPR — the Board has instituted petitions against expired claims in other matters on the theory that the statute reaches "a patent" without an unexpired-term requirement. I am not confident enough in a specific citable PTAB or Federal Circuit holding on that point to quote one here, so verify it before relying on it. As a matter of economics, however, a fee-lapsed patent expiring in 2012 gives a petitioner essentially no commercial motivation to file.
4. Verify the negatives through the primary systems before filing anything. I was working from the structured ODP block plus open web search. For a court-ready record, pull (i) PTAB E2E / the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board docket for the patent number, (ii) the USPTO Patent Center file wrapper for any ex parte reexamination certificate, and (iii) CourtListener / the Federal Circuit docket for any appeal naming US 5,323,204. If all three are clean, state it affirmatively and move on.
5. Re-run this check if the patent number in your demand letter is not exactly 5,323,204. Similar late-1980s/early-1990s Kodak exposure-control patents (for example, the '916 patent referenced throughout this specification) are close confusables, and a mismatch is the likeliest source of a "there must be an IPR somewhere" instinct.

I'll research this patent's ownership chain across the sources you specified.

US 5323204 — Ownership & Assignment Reconstruction

Patent: US 5,323,204 A — Automatic optimization of photographic exposure parameters for non-standard display sizes and/or different focal length photographing modes through determination and utilization of extra system speed
App. No.: 07/971,026 · Filed: 1992-11-03 · Granted: 1994-06-21 · Anticipated expiration: 2012-11-03
Source of record used here: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5323204/en (Legal Events + reassignment block), cross-read against Eastman Kodak bankruptcy/SEC filings.

Data-availability caveat (read first). I was not able to retrieve the live USPTO Assignment Center record page for this patent number (https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ / https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html) — the search tooling available to me did not return the Assignment Center results view. Consequently no reel/frame numbers are reported below, because I could not verify any, and fabricating them is not an option. The assignment facts stated here rest on the Google Patents "Legal Events / Reassignment" block reproduced in the authoritative patent text, which is itself a mirror of USPTO assignment data. Verify reel/frame directly at the Assignment Center link in the Verdict section.

Inventors

Unusual patterns: None detected. Both inventors assigned to Kodak within nine days of the 1992-11-03 filing date. There is no evidence of inventor departure within 12 months of filing, no co-inventor split, and no re-assignment to a third party — the classic precursor to a portfolio fire-sale is absent. The only notable career fact is that Keelan is a long-published Kodak image-quality scientist, i.e., a career R&D employee, not a serial patent-transfer participant. I have no reliable source in this session for either inventor's post-Kodak employment dates, so I decline to assert them.

Original assignee

Eastman Kodak Company — a New Jersey corporation headquartered in Rochester, NY (corporate form and state of incorporation confirmed in Kodak's own recorded IP Security Agreement language: "Eastman Kodak Company, a New Jersey corporation," filed in the Chapter 11 case, Doc. 1813).

• Primary line of business: photographic film, film cameras, photofinishing/retail imaging systems (the "capture + print" business that this patent sits squarely inside).
• Product embodiment: Probable but not verified to claim level. The claimed subject matter — determining exposure settings from a user-selected display size/focal-length photographing mode and "printing, on said film and in a vicinity of said frame, data indicative of the pre-defined display characteristic" (claim 47, final element; see also claims 21–22, 45–51) — maps to Kodak's practice of encoding pseudo-panoramic / print-format data on 35 mm film for the photo-printer, and to its APS-era film/finishing workflow. The specification itself frames the modes as "the possible advent of non-standard focal length photographing modes, i.e. pseudo-panoramic and/or pseudo-telephoto photography." I cannot point to a specific shipping Kodak model that practiced these claims, so treat this as contextual, not as a verified product-embodiment finding.
• Current status: Filed Chapter 11 on 2012-01-19 (Bankruptcy Court S.D.N.Y., Case No. 12-10202 (ALG)); emerged September 2013 as a commercial-imaging company. As of the patent's 2012-11-03 expiration, Kodak still held the patent (see below).

Assignment timeline

The record contains exactly one conveyance, and it is the original inventor-to-corporate assignment. There are no recorded post-issuance assignments — no re-assignment, no security agreement, no release, no change of name — visible in the Google Patents Legal Events feed for this patent number.

• 1992-11-03 (executed, inferred from filing) / recorded 1992-11-12 — Reel NNNNNN/NNNN — not retrievable in this session
  • Conveyance: Assignment (recorded as "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST")
  • Assignor: Richard B. Wheeler; Brian W. Keelan
  • Assignee: Eastman Kodak Company
  • Correspondent: Unknown / not retrievable. I could not reach the Assignment Center record, so no correspondent of record (attorney, firm, address) can be reported. Flagged as unresolved — this is precisely the field that would need manual pull-down for a repeat-correspondent test.
  • Context: Ordinary inventor employment assignment into the original corporate assignee — internal, routine, pre-issuance.

Post-issuance record events (not conveyances):

• 1994-06-21 — patent granted.
• 2012-11-03 — anticipated expiration; status now "Expired - Fee Related." The patent expired by its own statutory term (greater of 17 years from grant = 2011-06-21, or 20 years from filing = 2012-11-03), on its own, before any Kodak patent sale.

Why the two candidate "next hops" do not apply here:

1. Kodak → Intellectual Ventures Fund 83 LLC / RPX consortium (Dec 2012). Kodak agreed on 2012-12-18/19 to sell ~1,100 digital imaging patents to IV Fund 83 LLC, with RPX Corp. and 12 licensees (Apple, Google, RIM, Samsung, Adobe, HTC, Facebook, Fujifilm, Huawei, Amazon, Shutterfly, Microsoft) paying ~$525M. US 5,323,204 is a film-camera exposure-control patent that had already expired 2012-11-03, six weeks before that sale, and was outside the "digital imaging" (digital still/video camera) schedule. No evidence it was an "Assigned Patent." https://techcrunch.com/2012/12/19/kodak-to-sell-digital-imaging-patent-portfolio-for-525m/
2. Kodak collateral / security-interest recordings. Kodak's other patents do show recorded security interests — Citicorp North America as DIP agent (IP Security Agreement, Jan 2012 credit facility; also recorded as REEL/FRAME 028201/0420), Wilmington Trust (030122/0235), Bank of America / JPMorgan / Barclays (031162/0117, 031158/0001, 031159/0001) and later 2021 Bank of America records (056733/0681, 056734/0001, 056734/0233, 056984/0001). Those are visible in the Google Patents Legal Events of other Kodak patents (e.g. US 5,960,245; US 7,088,383) — but not for US 5,323,204. The absence is explained by timing: the patent expired in 2012 and was not collateral in the 2013 and 2021 facilities. I note this as a reasonable inference, not a certainty, since Google Patents does not surface every security-interest record.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 5323204
    1992 : Filed 03 Nov by Wheeler and Keelan
         : Inventors assign to Eastman Kodak
    1994 : Patent issued 21 Jun
    2012 : Kodak files Chapter 11 in January
         : Patent term expires 03 Nov
         : Kodak sells imaging patents in December

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. The only assignee in the chain is Eastman Kodak Company, a New Jersey corporation with a Rochester NY headquarters and a named operating business. There is no "IP / Holdings / Ventures / Licensing" transferee, no registered-agent-service address, and no single-member LLC anywhere in the record. No reel/frame supports an inkling of this signal because no such record exists.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. The chain terminates at Eastman Kodak. None of Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation, or Spangenberg entities appears as an assignee or assignor of this patent.
   Near-miss worth recording, but it is not this patent: Intellectual Ventures Fund 83 LLC was the successful bidder in Kodak's bankruptcy patent sale (Dec 2012) — but for the digital imaging schedule only, and US 5,323,204 had expired the prior month. Separately, Kodak retained the patent-licensing representative ATLC, Ltd. from 1998 to negotiate digital-still-camera patent licenses on Kodak's behalf — an operating-company monetization arrangement, not an assignment of this patent.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear (cannot be tested). With a chain of length one, there is no recurrence to detect, and the single correspondent of record could not be retrieved from the Assignment Center in this session. Recorded here as an unresolved data gap, not as a negative finding.

4. Cascading transfers — not present. One recorded conveyance in 34 years (1992 → expiration 2012). No chained LLC hops, no shared-principal clustering, no sub-24-month sequences.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. There is no infringement suit naming this patent (the patent expired 2012-11-03 and no assertion campaign on it is documented), and therefore no assignment sitting inside the six-month pre-suit window.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — adjacent fact, but not present for this patent. The original assignee did file Chapter 7/11-style bankruptcy: Kodak commenced Chapter 11 on 2012-01-19 and sold ~1,100 patents in December 2012 for $525M. However, this patent expired 2012-11-03, before that sale, and is a film-camera exposure-control patent outside the sold digital-imaging schedule. So the estate was a fire-sale venue; this asset was not sold in it. No reel/frame evidences a bankruptcy transfer of US 5,323,204.

7. Privateering — not present. No transfer from Kodak to an NPE asserting on Kodak's behalf appears. Kodak's own ~1998–2012 ATLC licensing-representation arrangement was Kodak monetizing its own patents directly; it was litigated in the bankruptcy as a lien dispute (Bankr. D. Del./S.D.N.Y. Doc. 1813), not a privateering assignment.

8. Defensive aggregator — not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. RPX appears in the Kodak story only as a co-organizer of the digital imaging consortium purchase — not as an assignee of this patent.

Verdict

Insufficient data — with the affirmative finding that this is a clean file, not a hidden chain.

Justification: The record discloses exactly one conveyance — the 1992-11-12 recording of an "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST" from inventors Wheeler and Keelan to Eastman Kodak Company — with no post-issuance assignment, security interest, or release thereafter, and the patent's "Expired - Fee Related" status alongside its 2012-11-03 anticipated expiration confirms Kodak held it to the end of term. No NPE signal is present: no shell-entity transferee, no known asserter, no cascading LLC transfers, no pre-suit transfer, no defensive aggregator. The one adjacent bankruptcy fact — Kodak's 2012 Chapter 11 and the $525M December 2012 patent sale to IV Fund 83 LLC/RPX — does not touch this patent, which had already expired and sat outside the digital-imaging schedule. Reel/frame and correspondent fields could not be verified in this session and must be pulled manually.

Verify here: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search by patent number 5323204) — or the mirrored index at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html
Patent record: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5323204/en
Bankruptcy sale order: https://veritaglobal.net/documents/[1210202](/patent/1210202)/1210202130111000000000009.pdf (Case No. 12-10202 (ALG), S.D.N.Y.)

I'll search for the USPTO record and the cited prior-art references for US 5,323,204.

Prior-Art Analysis — US Patent No. 5,323,204

Source discipline note: I was cut off by a search-step limit mid-analysis, and — importantly — I was not able to retrieve the printed "(56) References Cited" list from the front page of US 5,323,204. The authoritative full text supplied in this session contains the specification and figure list but is truncated before the claims and does not include the front-page citation block. Everything below is therefore split into (A) references affirmatively cited inside the '204 specification itself (high confidence, grounded in the authoritative text), and (B) references surfaced by search that are almost certainly pertinent but whose presence on the '204 front page I could not confirm. I flag each accordingly rather than presenting them as one undifferentiated list.

1. USPTO record verification for 5323204

The identifier resolves literally to US 5,323,204 A:

Confusable neighbors — do not merge. Searches for the digit string "5323204" repeatedly surface near-miss documents that are different patents: US 5,320,024 (Wagner et al., 1994‑06‑14, appearing in the WO 2004/045935 search report) and US 5,322,204 (IBM, electronic substrate conductor attachment — already flagged in the previously generated summary). Neither is US 5,323,204 and neither is prior art to it.

2. Group A — References affirmatively cited in the '204 specification

These are named inside the authoritative text you supplied. They are the references I can attribute with confidence, because the specification itself identifies them.

A1. US 5,049,916 — the "O'Such '916 patent"

• Full citation: U.S. Pat. No. 5,049,916, Automatic optimization of photographic exposure parameters through determination and utilization of extra system speed, to O'Such et al., issued Sep. 17, 1991, commonly assigned to Eastman Kodak Company (the present assignee).
• Dates: Issued 1991‑09‑17. (Family: EP 0 544 804 B1 / PCT/US91/05893, filed 1991‑08‑22, priority US 572,600 of 1990‑08‑23, inventors Wheeler / O'Such / Wilson — per the previously generated family note.)
• Description: Discloses the core "extra system speed" exposure-control scheme that the '204 specification adopts as its baseline: determine ISO‑normal baseline exposure settings; ascertain settings actually meeting scene requirements (camera shake, depth‑of‑field); assess available extra system speed from the difference; consume it in a prioritized incremental manner. The '204 specification repeatedly describes the '916 system as the starting point on which it improves by adding display-size and focal-length-mode awareness.
• §102 status: §102(b) — the issue date (1991‑09‑17) is more than one year before the '204 filing date (1992‑11‑03), so it is a statutory bar reference.
• Claims potentially anticipated: bears most directly on the "extra system speed determination and prioritized consumption" independent-claim family (baseline exposure → scene-requirement exposure → extra-speed assessment → prioritized variation of exposure/flash parameters). Caveat: because the '204 specification frames the DSF/display-size adjustment as the point of departure from '916, '916 would fully anticipate only claim(s) that do not recite a display-size or focal-length-mode limitation. Where the claim recites the DSF, '916 is §103 art, not §102 art.

A2. US 5,003,329 — Itabashi film writer

• Full citation: U.S. Pat. No. 5,003,329, issued to T. Itabashi on Mar. 26, 1991 (LED‑based optical film writer).
• Dates: Issued 1991‑03‑26 → §102(b) (more than one year before 1992‑11‑03).
• Description: The specification cites this as an example of an LED‑based optical film writer that can serve as film encoder 288, while expressly noting that the display-size data produced thereby would need to be written outside the image frame.
• Claims potentially anticipated: the film-encoding / photo-finishing claim family (recording data on the film adjacent each frame for later readout by a photo-printer to set reproduction magnification ratio). Itabashi would anticipate at most the generic "encode data on film" sub-combination; the '204 claim's recitation of display size and/or reproduction magnification ratio data appears to be the distinguishing limitation.

A3. Co-pending US application Ser. No. 07/457,081

• Full citation: U.S. patent application Ser. No. 07/457,081, Flash Systems Incorporating Indirect Reflecting Surface Detector, filed Dec. 26, 1989, assigned to the present assignee, incorporated by reference.
• Dates: Filed 1989‑12‑26.
• Description: Cited as the source of the ceiling‑detecting bounce-flash subsystem (vertical rangefinding system 230) used in the bounce/spread flash portions of the process.
• §102 status: Because it is a co‑pending, commonly owned application, it is not §102(b) art as such. To the extent it matured into a patent, it would be §102(e) art (US application filed before the '204 filing date) — subject to the "by another" requirement, which is complicated here by the common inventorship/ownership overlap in the Kodak "extra system speed" family.
• Claims potentially anticipated: the bounce/spread flash sub-features (bounce when a ceiling exists and BOUNCE_CUTOFF is met; otherwise spread direct flash).

A4. Non-patent literature cited in the '204 specification

All of the following are §102(b) printed publications (each predates 1992‑11‑03 by more than one year):

⚠️ The last two entries are truncated in the authoritative supplied text ("see pages 160‑161 of L." and "as well as D. M."). I am not supplying a guessed author or title. These must be read off the printed patent's specification (col. 1–2) or the patentimages PDF.

3. Group B — Closely related Kodak family art surfaced by search (pertinency unconfirmed for the '204 front page)

A Google Patents citation listing (appearing on the page for JPS6025772B2) surfaced three Eastman Kodak patents that are the immediate siblings of the O'Such '916 patent — same 1990‑08‑23 filing date, same common assignment, all granted within eight months before the '204 was filed:

Why these matter. US 5,130,739 carries a title that is identical to the cited O'Such '916 patent and is the closest textual match to the '204's own title. US 5,124,740 is the likely source of the DEPTH_NUMBER / GUIDE_NUMBER derivation reproduced in the '204 specification (the depth-of-field/depth-of-illumination matching technique), and US 5,099,268 corresponds to the fill-flash aperture-selection technique.

§102 caveats specific to this group:

1. Their issue dates fall within one year of 1992‑11‑03, so they are not §102(b) art; they are §102(e) art (US applications filed 1990‑08‑23, well before the '204's filing) and possibly §102(a) if publicly available before the '204 inventors' invention date.
2. §102(e) requires the reference to be "by another." Given the shared Kodak authorship/inventorship across this family (Wheeler appears on the parent EP 0544804), the "by another" requirement is genuinely contestable and would need to be checked inventor-by-inventor.
3. I could not confirm these appear on the face of US 5,323,204. They came from a citation listing on a different patent's Google Patents page. Treat them as "highly probable cited/related art," not as verified (56) entries.

4. Summary §102 mapping (claim-family level)

Because the verbatim claim set was not in the retrieved material (a limitation already flagged in the previously generated summary), I am mapping to claim families described by the specification's own framing, not to specific claim numbers. I am not assigning verified claim numbers, and none should be relied on without reading the printed claims (columns 10+).

Bottom line on anticipation: No single reference I located discloses the full combination that appears to distinguish the '204 — namely, using a display-size factor derived from the selected display size/reproduction magnification ratio to adjust both the blur-circle criterion and the focal-length factor before running the extra-system-speed optimization. The sibling Kodak family is best characterized as strong §103 art with §102 potential against narrower claims.

5. What I could not verify (explicit)

1. The face-of-patent "(56) References Cited" list for US 5,323,204 was not retrieved. Group A is reconstructed from the specification body; Group B is inferred from a related patent's citation listing. These are not the same thing, and I have not conflated them.
2. The verbatim claim set was not retrieved (consistent with the earlier generated section). All claim mapping is at the claim-family level.
3. My searches were cut off by the step limit, so this is not an exhaustive citation sweep.
4. No new litigation information was found; this is consistent with the previously generated litigation summary (no known litigation; expired for fee reasons in 2012).

Recommended verification steps to complete this task properly:

• Pull the front page of US5323204 from the patentimages PDF (Google Patents → "Download PDF") or USPTO Patent Center (https://patentcenter.uspto.gov, application 07/971,026) to read the literal (56) U.S. Patent Documents, Foreign Patent Documents, and Other Publications lists.
• Read the printed claims (col. 10 et seq.) to replace "claim families" with literal claim numbers.
• Check US 5,130,739, US 5,124,740, US 5,099,268 against the '204's (56) list and against the '204's claims for §102(e) "by another" inventorship issues.
• Resolve the two truncated specification citations ("L. ___" pp. 160‑161; "D. M. ___").

I'll note up front that the prompt directs me to "use the results from the Prior Art section of this page," but no such dedicated Prior Art section was actually supplied in the material given to me — the full patent text provided is truncated before the "References Cited" / claims portions. Let me try to recover the cited prior art so the § 103 analysis is grounded in real references rather than guesswork.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 5,323,204 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Source caveat (repeated for the record): the prompt directs me to "use the results from the Prior Art section of this page," but no such section was supplied — the material provided is the truncated full text (specification + figure list, no "References Cited" list and no claim set). Rather than fabricate a prior-art list, I have grounded the references below in (a) the references the '204 specification itself cites and characterizes, and (b) the corroborating family/prior-art documents recovered by search. Where I infer claim scope, I say so. All patent numbers are reproduced literally.

1. Preliminary: the record I am working from

The '204 patent is one of a family of Kodak applications all filed 1992‑11‑03, including:

Because the claims were not supplied, I analyze the invention at the level of the limitations the specification itself frames as the invention and its "severable" portions.

2. Presumed claim scope

Based on the specification, the independent claims appear to cover:

1. Core method/apparatus: determine initial ("baseline") exposure parameters → ascertain corresponding parameters that meet scene requirements as adjusted by a display‑size factor (DSF) → assess extra system speed → consume it in a prioritized incremental manner.
2. DSF limitation: derive DSF from reproduction magnification ratio and viewing distance; use it to adjust the blur‑circle criterion and the focal‑length factor.
3. Film‑encoding limitation: record display‑size/focal‑length‑mode data near the frame for the photo‑printer.
4. Autofocus‑zone limitation: multiply the zone's maximum aperture by the inverse DSF and the shutter speed by the DSF (program shift), preserving hyperfocal distance and zone overlap.
5. Flash limitations: select aperture to match depth‑of‑field to depth‑of‑illumination via the DEPTH_NUMBER/GUIDE_NUMBER relationship; use extra speed to throttle/bounce/spread.

3. Level of ordinary skill

A PHOSITA here is a camera‑design engineer with a working knowledge of photographic exposure (ISO/ANSI metering, the K‑factor metering equation), depth‑of‑field/circle‑of‑confusion theory, flash guide‑number photometry, and the pseudo‑panoramic/pseudo‑telephoto ("tele/pan") format art — all of which were mature by 1992.

4. The controlling legal framework

Under Graham v. John Deere and KSR v. Teleflex, the question is whether the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art would have been obvious to a PHOSITA, considering (i) scope/content of the prior art, (ii) differences, (iii) skill level, and (iv) secondary considerations. Critically, the § 103 inquiry must begin from a complete analysis of the patentee's own admissions — and here the specification is unusually candid about what was already known.

5. Key admissions in the '204 specification that narrow the gap

These are self‑inflicted and are the strongest tools in any obviousness challenge:

• The blur‑circle/magnification relationship was known. The spec states flatly: "as the reproduction magnification ratio increases… to maintain the same size blur circle and hence image sharpness on the print, the blur circle criteria for the negative must decrease accordingly." And it concedes the O'Such '916 system used "a fixed number… as the blur circle criteria… regardless of the actual display size."
• The problem was known and articulated. The spec frames the entire invention as fixing an identified deficiency of a known system: "a specific need now exists for an exposure control system that… properly compensates these settings for changes in the resulting display size of that image and/or in the focal length photographing mode."
• The "extra system speed" engine, the prioritization scheme, DEPTH_NUMBER, and the flash throttle/bounce/spread hierarchy are all O'Such '916 subject matter. The spec repeatedly says the '204 "modif[ies] the optimization process described in the O'Such '916 patent."
• Viewing distance as a perceptual factor. The spec admits the art already understood that perceived blur depends on viewing distance; its only asserted advance is the functional form (logarithmic, Vd = 3.64 + 11.34·log D).

Under KSR, where the patentee identifies a known problem in a known device and applies a known technique to solve it, the result is very often obvious.

6. Grounds of rejection

Ground 1 — Claims directed to DSF‑adjusted blur circle / focal‑length factor: obvious over O'Such '916 in view of Harvey '340 and the admitted DOF theory (and Taniguchi '275)

• O'Such '916 teaches every element of the core loop (baseline exposure, corresponding exposure, extra system speed, prioritized incremental consumption) except display‑size/focal‑length‑mode adjustment; it expressly uses a fixed blur‑circle criterion.
• Harvey '340 and '111 (both Kodak tele/pan) teach that a camera can be switched into a pseudo‑telephoto/pseudo‑panoramic reproduction mode and that the exposure settings (notably shutter speed) should be changed in dependence on the selected pseudo format — i.e., the very concept that a non‑standard reproduction mode requires a different exposure than the standard mode.
• Taniguchi '275 adds the express recognition that image quality degrades at high reproduction magnification ratios and that magnification should be managed.
• The known art of DOF/circle‑of‑confusion (admitted in the spec) supplies the mechanism: scale the permissible circle of confusion by the magnification ratio.

Motivation to combine: All references are in the same field (photographic exposure control), two share the same assignee (Kodak), and O'Such '916's stated purpose — maximizing image quality — is the identical objective Harvey '340 and Taniguchi '275 pursue for pseudo formats. KSR rationale: "use of a known technique (magnification‑scaled blur circle) to improve a similar device (the '916 exposure engine) in the same way, yielding predictable results."

The remaining asserted novelty — the logarithmic viewing‑distance function — is the weakest point for the patentee: fitting an empirical curve (viewing distance vs. print diagonal) from ordinary perceptual data is routine experimentation/optimization, and the spec itself frames equation (19) as derived "from empirical, sensory measurements." That is precisely the "design choice" and "obvious‑to‑try" territory of KSR.

Ground 2 — Film‑encoding claims: obvious over O'Such '916 in view of Harvey '340 in further view of Itabashi '329

• Harvey '340 already teaches encoding the film at exposure time with indicia representative of the selected pseudo field of view so the printer can enlarge the corresponding portion.
• Itabashi '329 (cited by the '204 itself) discloses an LED‑based optical film writer.

Motivation: Combining a known encoder that writes format‑selection data with a known LED film writer to record display‑size/mode data near the frame is the substitution of one known writing modality for another to achieve the same predictable result. KSR rationales (1) and (2) apply directly.

Ground 3 — Autofocus‑zone claims (the EP 0 596 327 / JPH06202188A sibling language): obvious over O'Such '916 in view of conventional zone‑focus camera design

The autofocus sibling's claim 1 requires: determine an initial aperture for the zones; determine a new aperture value such that hyperfocal distance stays substantially constant between the selected and standard display characteristics, preserving depth‑of‑field overlap between adjacent zones; determine a new shutter speed to give baseline exposure; capture; and print display data on the film. The camera's zone‑aperture‑for‑overlap design is conventional (zone‑focus cameras were designed by choosing a maximum aperture that overlaps zones), and the DSF inverse‑multiplication is a straightforward algebraic application of the magnification‑scaled blur circle to the known zone‑overlap criterion.

KSR rationale: applying a known technique (preserving a fixed hyperfocal distance) to a known device (a multi‑zone autofocus camera) to yield a predictable program shift.

Ground 4 — Full‑flash DEPTH_NUMBER/GUIDE_NUMBER claims: anticipated, or at minimum obvious, over O'Such '916 and US 5,130,739

The specification itself says the depth‑number concept and the throttle/bounce/spread hierarchy are severable and were disclosed in the earlier Kodak work (US 5,130,739 / EP 0 634 686 A1, same inventors). If those claims recite only the depth‑number‑matching and throttle/bounce/spread features, they are squarely disclosed by that art and obvious (if not anticipated) over it.

7. Motivation to combine — consolidated KSR rationales

1. Same field, common assignee. O'Such '916, Harvey '340/'111, Taniguchi '275, and Itabashi '329 are all in still‑photography exposure/format control; several are Kodak documents, which strengthens the inference that a PHOSITA would look to them together.
2. Identical problem, articulated in the patent itself. The spec expressly identifies the gap in O'Such '916 (standard‑display assumption) and the need to fix it — an express incentive.
3. Predictable results. Adjusting the circle of confusion and the focal‑length factor by a magnification/viewing‑distance factor, and adjusting aperture/shutter accordingly, are routine applications of classical DOF theory.
4. "Obvious to try." Fitting the empirical viewing‑distance curve and choosing a DSF look‑up table are ordinary optimization choices with a finite, predictable set of solutions.
5. Design incentives / market forces. The spec itself cites the "increasing desire" to produce prints across a wide range of display sizes as the market driver — a classic demand‑side motivation.

8. Secondary considerations

• No evidence of unexpected results. To the extent the patentee would argue the logarithmic viewing‑distance function is non‑obvious, the specification offers no comparative data showing a surprising quality improvement over an alternative (e.g., a linear viewing‑distance assumption). Assertion alone does not rebut a prima facie case.
• No industry praise or long‑felt‑need nexus is evidenced in the supplied record.
• No litigation (per the earlier Litigation Summary) means no adjudicated validity findings or secondary‑consideration evidence to weigh.

9. Additional vulnerability worth flagging (not § 103, but related)

The same‑day filings (US 5,250,979; the EP 0 596 327/0 596 347/0 596 416 siblings) present overlapping subject matter by a common assignee. If the inventive entities differ, these siblings can be § 102(e) prior art; and if they are commonly owned, the more natural attack is obviousness‑type double patenting over the sibling claims. A challenger should analyze the '204 in light of this family rather than in isolation.

10. Bottom line and confidence

• Strong obviousness case for the DSF/blur‑circle/focal‑length‑factor claims based on O'Such '916 + Harvey '340/'111 + admissible DOF theory (Taniguchi '275), given the patent's own admissions that (i) the blur‑circle criterion must scale with magnification and (ii) the problem to be solved was already identified.
• Strong obviousness case for the film‑encoding claims (+ Itabashi '329) and the autofocus‑zone claims (conventional zone‑focus design).
• Weakest link in the rejection: the specific logarithmic viewing‑distance relationship (equation 19). A patentee could argue non‑obviousness here, but the specification's admission that it was derived from ordinary empirical sensory measurement substantially undercuts that position, and the absence of comparative data invites a KSR "obvious to try / design choice" finding.

Confidence caveat: This analysis is limited by the absence of the verbatim claim set and the missing "References Cited" face of the patent. The conclusions are stated at the level of the disclosed and "severable" features; before relying on any of it, the actual claims (columns 10+) and the printed list of references should be obtained, and each independent claim charted element‑by‑element against O'Such '916 as the primary reference. If you can supply the claim text (or the front‑page references), I will convert this into a formal claim‑by‑claim § 103 chart with a column for each limitation.