Invalidity dossier
US 5715403
Added 9/23/2026, 5:38:45 PM
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Patent summary
Title, assignee, inventors, filing/issue dates, abstract, and a plain-language overview of the claims.
Patent Overview — US5715403A
Title: "System for controlling the distribution and use of digital works having attached usage rights where the usage rights are defined by a usage rights grammar."
Patent number: US5715403A. Application number: US08/344,041. Inventor: Mark J. Stefik. Original assignee: Xerox Corp; current assignee listed as Contentguard Holdings Inc. Priority/filing date: 1994-11-23. Publication (grant) date: 1998-02-03. Legal status: Expired – Lifetime; anticipated expiration 2015-02-03. The source also lists reassignments (Xerox Corporation, then Contentguard Holdings, Inc.) and foreign family members (e.g., JP29984095A, EP95308417A, DE69535199.0T).
Purpose (per the excerpt): The patent relates "to the field of distribution and usage rights enforcement for digitally encoded works." It addresses how to "prevent the unauthorized and unaccounted distribution or usage of electronically published materials" that can be perfectly reproduced, including over networks such as the Internet and the anticipated National Information Infrastructure. The excerpt notes that unaccounted distribution causes unpaid royalties, and that prior key/demo schemes "do not hinder copying of the software once the key is initially purchased," while Griswold-style approaches require the licensed product to contain software invoking a license check monitor at predetermined intervals.
Plain-language scope: Based on the title and the supplied text, the claimed subject matter concerns a system in which usage rights are attached to digital works and those rights are defined by a usage rights grammar, enabling repositories to control distribution and use of the works. The excerpt's prior-art keywords are "repository," "digital work," "digital," "work," "rights," and classifications include G06F21/10 (DRM) and G06Q20/40.
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US5715403](/patent/US5715403)/en
What the excerpt does not establish: It does not include the claims, full specification, or the grammar's details; it does not establish independent verification of assignee, inventory of litigation, validity, or prior-art conclusions. Any ownership transfer, litigation, or legal-status information is only as stated on the supplied page and is expressly not treated as researched or confirmed here.
Generated 10/1/2026, 9:43:26 PM
Cases on file (0)
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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.