Invalidity dossier
US 5384777
Adaptive medium access control scheme for wireless LAN
Current assignee: Wistron Corp
Added 9/23/2026, 7:06:40 PM
Active provider: DeepSeek · deepseek-flash
Patent summary
Title, assignee, inventors, filing/issue dates, abstract, and a plain-language overview of the claims.
Patent Overview — US 5,384,777 A ("Adaptive medium access control scheme for wireless LAN")
Bibliographic data (from supplied text). Application US08/049,052; filed 1993-04-19; priority date 1993-04-19; granted/publication date 1995-01-24. Inventors: Hamid Ahmadi, David F. Bantz, Frederic J. Bauchot, Arvind Krishna, Richard O. La Maire, Kadathur S. Natarajan. Original assignee: International Business Machines Corp. Current assignee listed (disclaimed as possibly inaccurate): Wistron Corp. Status: Expired – Lifetime; anticipated expiration 2013-04-19. Classifications include H04W74/02 (hybrid access) and H04W84/12 (WLAN).
Purpose. The invention relates to data communications using Local Area Networks and is directed to a Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol for wireless access in a LAN. It addresses the intra-cell multiaccess problem: coordinating shared wireless channel bandwidth among mobile stations in a cell in a fair, flexible, demand-driven manner while achieving high throughput, and supporting both bursty data traffic and synchronous services such as voice and video. Remote stations communicate with a base station by radio, with the base station connectable to a wired LAN backbone.
Plain-language scope. The MAC protocol combines a reservation scheme for user data traffic with a random-access (contention) technique for control and signalling traffic. A fixed frame structure has three periods with respective headers: the A period, an outbound channel used exclusively for data transfer from base station to remote stations; the B period, an inbound channel for contention-free data transfer from remote stations to the base station; and the C period, a control channel used for reservation requests and data from remote stations to the base station in random-access contention mode. Allocation of data slots in the A and B periods is performed by the base station. The description notes dynamic control of contention-slot counts according to network load in a cited prior patent, and incorporates U.S. Pat. No. 5,123,029 by reference.
Not established by the supplied excerpt. The excerpt is partial: it omits the full claims, detailed embodiments, figures, and the remainder of the description (including the truncated C-period sentence). It therefore does not establish exact claim scope, specific slot-allocation algorithms, or parameters; nor does it establish litigation, ownership-chain accuracy, validity, or prior-art effect. Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5384777/en
Generated 10/1/2026, 9:42:20 PM
Cases on file (0)
Specific litigation cases in our database that name US patent 5384777. The free-form analysis below may also discuss cases beyond this list.
No cases on file mention this patent. Upload a CSV or add a case manually in Admin → Manage litigation cases.
Litigation summary
Past and pending lawsuits — plaintiffs, defendants, jurisdictions, outcomes, and notable rulings.
Proceedings on file (0)
All PTAB activity →AIA trial proceedings (IPR / PGR / CBM) filed at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board against this patent. Sourced from the USPTO Open Data Portal and refreshed every six hours; each proceeding number deep-links to the PTAB E2E docket.
No PTAB proceedings on file. This patent has not been challenged via IPR, PGR, or CBM. The absence is itself a signal — well-asserted patents eventually attract IPRs. The LLM analysis below may surface filings the ODP feed hasn’t indexed yet.
PTAB challenges
AIA trial proceedings at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board — IPR, PGR, and CBM. Petitioners, judge panels, claim-level invalidation outcomes from Final Written Decisions, and Federal Circuit appeals. The single most important defensive datapoint after litigation history.
Assignment history
Inventors, original assignee, and the chain of ownership recorded with the USPTO — including the correspondent attorney who recorded each assignment, since shell-LLC chains often share one repeat-player attorney even when the entity names look unrelated. Surfaces NPE / patent-troll patterns: shell-entity transfers, known asserters in the chain, repeat correspondent fingerprints, pre-litigation assignments, and bankruptcy fire-sales.
Prior art
Earlier patents, publications, and products that may anticipate or render the claims unpatentable.
Obviousness
Combinations of prior art that suggest the claimed invention would have been obvious under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
Extensions
Patent term adjustments, term extensions, continuations, divisionals, family members, and expiration dates.
Derivative works
Defensive disclosure: derivative variations of each claim designed to render future incremental improvements obvious or non-novel.