US 5956736

I'll search for authoritative information on this patent number, including any 2026 CAFC/litigation activity.

Let me check specifically for any litigation, PTAB, or CAFC docket activity and confirm the family/expiration.

US Patent 5,956,736 — Analyst Summary

Full-text/Google Patents record (authoritative, fetched 2026-09-24): https://patents.google.com/patent/[US5956736](/patent/US5956736)/en

Bibliographic data

Abstract (verbatim)

"An object-oriented HTML based editor for creating Web documents to be published on the World Wide Web. Each HTML command is treated as a unique object having associated properties. A user using an input device, such as a mouse, clicks and drags representations of objects representing HTML commands from a palette window on an output display device. The objects are dropped into a representation of a collection of objects in a view window on the output display device. Each one of the objects in the collection of objects may be edited by way of a context sensitive object editor window to customize the Web document. An object is selected by an input device and dragged to the object editor window, where the properties associated with the object are displayed and may be directly manipulated."

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Claim 1 (system claim): A desktop publishing system built from two hardware elements:

• An output display device that shows two things: (1) a palette window split into a user-defined objects panel (a list of user-defined objects) and a predefined objects panel (a list of predefined objects), and (2) a view window that displays a page containing at least one object drawn from either of those two lists.
• An input device that selects an object from either list so it appears in the page in the view window.

Claim 5 (method claim): A computer-mediated method of generating and displaying a collection of objects representing a document, with three steps:

• (a) display a list of objects in a palette window — specifically (i) user-defined objects in a user-defined objects panel and (ii) predefined objects in a predefined objects panel;
• (b) receive input from an input device selecting an object from either list for the collection; and
• (c) display the resulting collection of objects as a page in a view window of the display device, including the selected object.

The remaining claims are dependent: claims 2–4 add mouse/keyboard input, an object-editor window showing the selected object's property list, and the like; claims 6–12 add mouse clicking/drag-and-drop, property modification through the object editor window (including selecting the object from the palette or from the page), and storing the modified object back into the user-defined objects panel. In short, the independent claims are directed to the palette-and-view-window UI model for assembling an object-based document — not to the server-side publishing aspects described in the specification (FIGS. 10–11), which are disclosed but not claimed.

Litigation / CAFC 2026 check

I ran targeted searches for US 5,956,736 (and "5,956,736") against litigation and Federal Circuit materials. I found no 2026 CAFC docket, appeal, IPR, or district-court action involving this patent number. The CAFC 2026 results surfaced were unrelated matters (e.g., Taction Technology v. Apple, Contour IP Holding v. GoPro, and the Tesla/Google/Intel IPR-institution petitions). This is consistent with the patent's expired status since 2016-09-27, which makes live assertion essentially impossible.

Uncertainty caveats:

• My searches were web-based, not a direct PACER/CAFC-CLERK or USPTO PatentCenter/PTAB API query. I cannot guarantee a complete docket sweep; I can only report that nothing for this number appeared.
• A related Apple family member, US 6,938,205 B1 ("Object oriented editor for creating world wide web documents"), appears to be a continuation of application Ser. No. 08/721,173 filed the same day (1996-09-27), with a differently worded abstract. I treat that as a related record, not as US 5,956,736 itself. I have moderate — not high — confidence in the exact family relationship because I did not open that patent's front page directly.
• One search hit indicated a possible associated PCT route (PCT/US97/19719) with prior art cited as "X" against claims (Crespo et al., "WebWriter"; Ladd et al., "Programming the Web"). That snippet was embedded in a composite document alongside an unrelated Frankel & Company PCT, so I flag it as unverified and would not cite it without pulling the original PCT search report.
• The assignment record's OCR renders one inventor as "MEICAL ROBERT" (a typo for Michael); the patent text itself lists "Michael Robert Hanson" and "John Lilly," which I use here.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 5956736.

Let me search more targeted litigation databases.

Let me search litigation-specific databases more directly.

Litigation Search Results for U.S. Patent No. 5,956,736

Patent identification (verified against source)

Before addressing litigation, here is the patent I searched for, interpreted literally:

Litigation findings

I found no evidence of any litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 5,956,736.

The searches I ran (Google Patents, Justia Patents, EPO/Espacenet citation records, and general web searches aimed at patent-litigation sources) returned only:

1. Patent-office and bibliographic records — the Google Patents page (https://patents.google.com/patent/US5956736A/en) and Justia Patents pages, all of which are citation/bibliographic data, not litigation.
2. Prior-art citation references — e.g., the '736 patent is cited as a reference against other patents/applications (such as EP 1,211,608 and EP 1,109,108). Being cited as prior art is not litigation and does not indicate the patent was ever asserted.
3. No case captions, docket numbers, complaints, or CAFC/PACER records naming this patent.

Important caveats and honesty about coverage

• I was unable to complete direct queries against PACER, the CAFC docket, or the Unified Patents litigation portal (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist); those specific sources did not return results for the exact number in my searches. So I cannot state with absolute certainty that no suit ever named this patent.
• What I can say with confidence is that none of the public litigation-monitoring sources I searched returned any case in which US 5,956,736 was asserted, and I am not aware from my training data of any such suit.
• The patent's term expired on 2016-09-27, so it could not have been the basis for an infringement action filed after that date (any suit would have had to be filed well before expiration to reach a live damages window). This is consistent with the absence of litigation records — this is an old Apple software/authoring-tool patent that appears to have gone unasserted in court.

Bottom line

No known litigation involving U.S. Patent 5,956,736 (plaintiff, defendant, jurisdiction, case number, filing date, or outcome) could be identified. If you need a definitive negative, I would recommend confirming against PACER's full docket search, Docket Navigator, Lex Machina, or the Unified Patents portal directly, since my search did not fully exhaust those paywalled/proprietary databases.

Note: I did not auto-correct the patent number. The number searched and reported is exactly 5,956,736 / US5956736A as given, and I excluded results that referenced merely similar numbers.

I'll verify against live sources before writing up, since the structured block is the canonical list but may lag.

Let me run a couple more targeted checks (litigation/aggregator angle, and a direct PTAB docket check) to be thorough.

PTAB Proceedings Report — US 5,956,736

Patent: US 5,956,736 A — "Object-oriented editor for creating world wide web documents"
Inventors: Michael Robert Hanson; John Lilly | Original assignee: Apple Computer, Inc. | Current assignee: Apple Inc.
Filing date / priority date: 1996-09-27 | Grant date: 1999-09-21 | Statutory term end (anticipated): 2016-09-27
Legal status (Google Patents): Expired – Lifetime

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Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings on file. The USPTO Open Data Portal structured block returned no IPR, PGR, or CBM records for US 5,956,736, and independent web searches (PTAB decision/TSG databases via search, IPR keyword queries, aggregator dockets) surfaced no petitions, institution decisions, Final Written Decisions, or Federal Circuit appeals naming this patent. The absence of PTAB activity means every one of the 12 granted claims — including independent claims 1 and 5 — stands exactly as issued, untested and uncanceled; the patent was never narrowed, never reviewed, and (so far as public search shows) never litigated, and it expired for failure to reach the end of a full term on 2016-09-27. For a defendant, the PTAB story here is not "hardened patent," it is "untested but expired patent with no damages runway."

Bottom line posture: You cannot look to a prior IPR for canceled claims to anchor a § 315(e)(2) estoppel or an invalidity concession — there is none. But you also face no live exclusivity: this patent cannot be asserted against post-2016-09-27 conduct at all, and any residual damages theory is capped by the 35 U.S.C. § 286 six-year lookback measured from the complaint.

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Proceedings

None. There are no proceeding numbers to report, and I will not invent any.

For completeness on the record I searched for and found nothing in the following categories:

A negative search is weak evidence standing alone, so treat this as: no PTAB activity found, consistent with the ODP default of "no PTAB activity on file."

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Strategic summary

Claim status: 12 claims, all UNTESTED, all expired. Claims 1–4 (independent claim 1, a desktop publishing system with a palette window split into a user-defined objects panel and a predefined objects panel plus a view window) and claims 5–12 (independent claim 5, the method counterpart, with claims 6–12 adding mouse selection, property editing via an object editor window, re-selection from the page, and drag-and-drop) are all intact as granted. There is no IPR certificate narrowing anything, so a defendant has no PTAB-created invalidity finding to lean on. The flip side is that the entire claim set has been exposed to zero adversarial scrutiny — these are 1996-priority claims to an object-oriented WYSIWYG HTML editor, a field saturated with 1995–1996 prior art (the specification itself cites WebMagic, FrontPage, PageMill, and Netscape Navigator). If you ever need to invalidate, that art base is unpicked and, critically, no estoppel has been created by anyone.

Estoppel landscape: zero. Because no IPR/PGR was ever instituted, no petitioner-and-privies estoppel under § 315(e)(2) attaches to anyone. Every § 102/§ 103/§ 112 ground, every reference, and every combination remains fully available to a defendant — in the PTAB or in district court. There is no "reasonably could have raised" trap to map, and no prior petitioner to identify for privity analysis. Practically, though, note the 2016-09-27 expiry: IPR against an expired patent is technically permitted (the Board has instituted on expired patents, where claim amendment is off the table), but with no injunctive exposure the ROI on an IPR petition is poor unless you need a cancellation for a pre-expiration damages tail — e.g., a suit filed before 2022-09-27 reaching back six years under § 286.

Pattern signals: total silence, and that is the signal. No petitioner filed even one IPR. The AIA IPR regime opened on 2012-09-16, giving roughly a four-year window (to 2016-09-27) in which this patent could have been challenged — no one took it. Combined with no found litigation, the picture is a patent that was not commercially asserted during its enforceable life (plausibly because Apple's own product line and the rapid commoditization of HTML authoring tools made enforcement unattractive). There is no serial petitioner, no patent-owner PTAB appeal practice, and no defensive aggregator in the chain. One family note worth flagging: US 6,938,205 B1 ("Object oriented editor for creating world wide web documents") appears to be a same-family continuation with differently-scoped claims reciting simultaneous first/second object lists. If a demand letter arrives, confirm which patent number it actually cites — the family member claims are broader on their face and, like the '736 patent, are long expired.

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Recommended next steps

1. If you received a demand citing 5,956,736: check the date of the allegedly infringing conduct. The patent's anticipated expiration was 2016-09-27 (confirmed on the Google Patents record as "Anticipated expiration"). Any theory targeting post-expiration conduct is dead on arrival, and any pre-expiration theory is constrained by the § 286 six-year damages lookback to the complaint's filing date. Ask for the claim chart and the accused-date range before doing anything else.
2. Do not rely on a PTAB outcome — there isn't one. There is no FWD to cite and no disposition to quote. Any statement that "claims 1–5 were canceled" would be false for this patent; all 12 claims stand. Conversely, no one is estopped, so your invalidity positions are wide open.
3. If you need prophylactic invalidity work, the productive paths are ex parte reexamination or a district-court § 282 defense using 1995–1996 HTML-authoring prior art — not an IPR petition. Before spending, verify with the USPTO Patent Center that no ex parte reexamination or reissue of 5,956,736 is on file (I did not find one, but I only searched PTAB-facing sources and did not confirm the full content of the patent's file wrapper).
4. Watch the family, not this patent. Screen the demand for US 6,938,205 B1 and any other continuations; treat the '736 patent's expiry date as a ceiling on the family's leverage.
5. If you want to confirm the negative yourself, the authoritative sources are:
   • USPTO PTAB E2E / PTAB Decisions: https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptabweb/ (search by patent number 5956736)
   • USPTO Patent Center for the file wrapper: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov/
   • Google Patents record (source of the expired status and 2016-09-27 anticipated expiration): https://patents.google.com/patent/US5956736/en
   • CourtListener docket search (for any Federal Circuit or district activity): https://www.courtlistener.com/

Caveats on my confidence: I have high confidence that no IPR/PGR/CBM proceeding exists for 5,956,736 — the ODP block is empty and multiple independent searches returned nothing. I have moderate confidence that the patent was never litigated; absence of search results is not proof, and pre-2010 district court dockets are not uniformly indexed. I have not independently verified the expiry date against the USPTO maintenance-fee record — I am relying on the Google Patents "Anticipated expiration 2016-09-27" data field plus the commonplace 20-year term for a 1996-09-27-filed application, and the "Expired – Lifetime" status tag is consistent with that.

I'll verify the assignment record before writing. Let me search for the actual USPTO Assignment Center entries.

Let me try to pull the recorded assignment details directly from assignment-indexing mirrors.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US 5956736 A

"Object-oriented editor for creating world wide web documents"
Application 08/719,710 · Filed 1996-09-27 · Granted 1999-09-21 · Anticipated expiration 2016-09-27 · Status: Expired – Lifetime

Data-integrity note up front: The authoritative record supplied for this analysis (Google Patents legal-events tab for US5956736A) lists assignment events with execution/recording dates but does not expose USPTO reel/frame numbers or the correspondent of record. My attempts to retrieve the reel/frame from Assignment Center mirrors and third-party assignment indexes in this session returned no matching record. I therefore do not fabricate reel/frame numbers or correspondent names — the fields are marked "not surfaced" below. Verify directly at the Assignment Center search page: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (and the mirror https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html).

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Inventors

Departure-pattern note: The rubric flags the case where all inventors leave the original assignee within 12 months of filing, which can precede a fire-sale. That pattern is not confirmed here — I could not establish verified departure dates for either inventor from the sources available in this session. John Lilly is publicly associated with a career path that later took him outside Apple (including to Mozilla Corp.), but I cannot date that transition with high confidence, so no finding is entered. There is no evidence in the file of a portfolio fire-sale (see below), and the inventors' post-filing mobility is therefore immaterial to the ownership conclusion.

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Original assignee

• Entity on the issued patent: Apple Computer, Inc. (assignment recorded 1997-01-31 for the inventors' original assignment of interest). Google Patents lists both original assignee Apple Computer Inc and current assignee Apple Inc.
• Primary line of business: Personal computers and consumer electronics; at the 1996 filing date, Apple was a PC/workstation vendor with a bundled software and developer-tools business.
• Product embodying the claims: Unclear. The specification describes an authoring environment "termed Project Builder" — a prototype-based object system with properties/handlers, a script language, drag-and-drop palette, page-viewer window, and context-sensitive object editor. I could not confirm from the sources available that Apple commercially shipped a product practicing the claims of US5956736. Treat "ships a product embodying the claims" as unverified, not established either way.
• Current status: Operating. No bankruptcy ever. The 2007-05-29 record is a change of name only (Apple Computer, Inc., a California corporation → Apple Inc.), consistent with the well-known 2007 rename. No dissolution, no Chapter 7/11.
• Related-ownership context (not an assignment of this patent): The 220 forward citations include US 6,651,108 (Next Software, Inc., priority 1995-08-14) — "Method and apparatus for generating object-oriented world wide web pages." That is a separate patent and a separate chain; it is noted only because Apple's 1997 acquisition of NeXT consolidated adjacent object-oriented web-authoring IP in the same corporate family. No recorded assignment of US5956736 to or from NeXT exists in the file.

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Assignment timeline

Two recorded events, ten years apart. Both are non-adversarial and neither involves a third party.

• 1997-01-31 (executed; recording date shown as 1997-01-31) — Reel not surfaced

  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest ("ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)")
  • Assignor: John Lilly; Michael Robert Hanson (recorded as "HANSON, MEICHAL ROBERT")
  • Assignee: Apple Computer, Inc. (California corporation)
  • Correspondent: Not exposed by the source available in this session — no name recorded; no recurrence finding can be made.
  • Context: Original inventor-to-employer assignment — a routine condition of employment, executed ~4 months after the 1996-09-27 filing, before grant (1999-09-21). This is the only genuine transfer in the chain.

• 2007-05-29 (recorded) — Reel not surfaced

  • Conveyance: Change of Name (not an assignment of title)
  • Assignor: Apple Computer, Inc., a Corp. of California
  • Assignee: Apple Inc.
  • Correspondent: Not exposed by the source available in this session.
  • Context: Internal corporate rename — Apple Computer, Inc. → Apple Inc. No change of beneficial ownership; the same operating entity remains owner of record.

• 2016-09-27 — Anticipated expiration; patent lapsed by term. No post-issuance transfer, no security interest, no license, no release, no correction appears in the record.

No further records exist. Beyond the original assignment and the pure change-of-name, this patent never moved. Every downstream NPE test in the template therefore resolves negative.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 5956736
    1996 : Filed by Apple Computer Inc
    1997 : Inventors assign to Apple Computer Inc
    1999 : Patent issued
    2007 : Change of name to Apple Inc
    2016 : Term expired

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. No assignment to any LLC bearing "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures." The only two recorded events are the 1997-01-31 inventor assignment and the 2007-05-29 change of name; the assignee at all times is the Apple operating entity itself. No registered-agent address, no single-purpose LLC.

2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. Current and prior assignees are Apple Computer, Inc. / Apple Inc. only. No match against Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, or any Spangenberg entity, and no appearance in RPX/Unified asserter directories surfaced in this session.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Unclear / not established. The correspondent of record is not exposed by the source available, so the recurrence test cannot be run in either direction. This is a data gap, not a negative finding, but it is immaterial here: with only two links — one a pure change of name — there is no chained-LLC pattern for a repeat correspondent to hold together.

4. Cascading transfers — Not present. Two events spanning ten years (1997 → 2007), with the second being a name change only. Zero consecutive LLC-to-LLC hops, and nothing inside any 24-month window.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present. No infringement suit naming US5956736 was identified in this session, and no assignment post-dating issue exists at all. There is no transfer within 6 months of any suit because there is no suit.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. Apple Computer, Inc. / Apple Inc. never filed Chapter 7 or 11. No sale in proceedings, no reorganized-debtor assignee.

7. Privateering — Not present. No transfer from an operating company to an NPE, no SEC 10-K/8-K disclosure of a monetization vehicle, no Patent Progress / EFF coverage tying this patent to a proxy-assertion campaign.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. It remains with the original operating company; the patent expired in place on 2016-09-27.

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Verdict

Insufficient data (in the sense that the record contains no post-issuance transfer beyond a change of name — the "only the original assignment" branch of this category).

Justification: The entire record consists of the 1997-01-31 inventor-to-Apple Computer, Inc. assignment and the 2007-05-29 change-of-name to Apple Inc. — a rename conveying no beneficial title. There is no transfer to a licensing entity, no third-party assignee at any point, and no assertion litigation involving this patent identified in this session. The evidence affirmatively shows no NPE pattern; the taxonomy's other boxes do not fit because Apple is neither asserting the patent against competitors nor a defensive aggregator — it simply retained the patent until its 2016-09-27 term expiry. Reel/frame and correspondent fields could not be retrieved in this session and should be confirmed at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ before this chain is cited in any filing.

I'll search for the prior art cited against US 5,956,736. Let me run several targeted searches.

I found a promising lead — an international search report citing references. Let me dig into the actual "References Cited" (backward citations) on the face of US 5,956,736.

Let me get the actual front-page "References Cited" and the citation links for this patent.

Analytical note on scope — please read first

Two things must be separated before answering, because they are different datasets:

• Backward citations ("References Cited" / prior art cited against the patent) — this is what your question asks for and is what a § 102 analysis requires.
• Forward citations ("Cited By") — patents/applications that later cite US 5,956,736 as prior art. Being cited by someone else does not make a document prior art against '736.

The authoritative full text you supplied contains the "Cited By (220)" list but does not contain a "References Cited" (backward-citation) section, and its prose cites no prior-art documents by number. My follow-up searches (Google Patents, FreePatentsOnline, EPO/Espacenet, USPTO-facing pages) surfaced only forward-citation data and third-party search reports where '736 is cited against other patents, before I reached the tool-call limit.

So I cannot honestly give you "each patent citation for 5956736" as a verified list. I will not fabricate one. Below is (A) what I verified, (B) the one concrete backward-citation lead I found with its caveat, (C) the relevant candidate prior art, and (D) a claim-by-claim § 102 framework you can apply once the true list is pulled from the official record.

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A. Verified bibliographic anchor (from the authoritative text)

Critical date for § 102: pre-AIA statute governs (filed 1996-09-27). The § 102(b) critical date is 1995-09-27; the § 102(a)/(e) window runs to the 1996-09-27 filing date. Anything published before 1995-09-27 is § 102(b) art.

Related family member (found in search): US 6,938,205 B1, same title/assignee, stated in the retrieved record to be "a continuation of application Ser. No. 08/721,173, filed Sep. 27, 1996" — a sibling case with the same disclosure (source: https://patents.justia.com/patent/[6938205](/patent/6938205) and Patsnap record for US6938205B1). Flag: the same source also shows the '205 claim set reworded around "predefined HTML object … as a template," which differs from the '736 claims you supplied — a potential inconsistency worth verifying against the official copy.

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B. Backward-citation lead (the only concrete one located)

A PCT international search report for application PCT/US 97/19719 was returned, listing "Documents Considered to be Relevant," including:

• X — CRESPO A ET AL, "WebWriter: A browser-based editor for constructing Web applications," Computer Networks and ISDN Systems (the WWW-5 proceedings volume)
• X — LADD D A ET AL, "Programming the Web…"
• Y — EP 0 669 587 A (AT&T Corp.), 1995-08-30 — cited to abstract; col. 2 l. 55–col. 3 l. 18; col. 18 l. 34–col. 21 l. 13
• cited to JP 03 204259 A (Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp.), 1991-09-05, abstract

Source: ptacts.uspto.gov petition document download (.../download-documents?artifactId=lKDrylT9pt-_N2sVnyPdEZowuG4UXy0q5xfCI2dezgdbBXDydKEPTzE).

Caveat — do not over-rely on this: I could not confirm that PCT/US 97/19719 is the PCT counterpart/priority vehicle for US 08/719,710. The application numbers do not match (a US application vs. a PCT), and the ISR's claim numbering (reaching "3," "4," etc. with X/Y categories) is not shown against the '736 claim set. Treat this as a strong candidate, not a verified face-of-patent citation.

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C. Candidate prior art relevant to '736 (with confidence labels)

These are the documents that, in my searches, appear in the same art space and are the realistic § 102/§ 103 candidates. None is confirmed as being on the face of '736.

Admitted prior art inside '736 itself (usable as § 102(b)/§ 103 background without a separate reference): the Background expressly admits WYSIWYG HTML editors WebMagic (Silicon Graphics), FrontPage (Vermeer), Adobe PageMill (Adobe Systems), MacWrite (Claris), SimpleText (Apple), the Netscape Navigator browser, and the CGI-bin script approach. These are admissions about the state of the art as of 1996 and can be combined with a printed publication to attack claims. (All cited at the Background section of the '736 text you supplied.)

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D. § 102 framework — element mapping for the '736 claims

Until the official "References Cited" list is pulled, here is what each claim requires, so any candidate can be tested for anticipation (a single reference must disclose every element):

Claim 1 (system, independent):

1. output display device displaying a palette window with TWO panels — a user-defined objects panel AND a predefined objects panel (this dual-panel requirement is the feature most likely to defeat anticipation, since single-library palettes are common in the art);
2. a view window displaying a page containing ≥1 object drawn from either list;
3. an input device selecting the object from either list for display in the page.

Claim 4 — adds an object editor window displaying a list of properties of the selected object (the "context-sensitive object editor" concept).

Claim 5 (method, independent) — mirrors Claim 1 as method steps: display list in palette (user-defined panel + predefined panel), receive selection input, display the collection in a view-window page.

Claims 2, 3, 6 — input device = mouse / keyboard; Claim 6 specifies mouse "clicking" on the object.

Claim 7 — select object → display property value in object editor window → receive modified value.

Claim 8 vs. 10 — the two alternative sourcing paths for the object being edited: from the palette (claim 8) vs. from the page in the view window (claim 10).

Claims 9, 11 — storing the modified object back into the user-defined panel (9); propagating the modified value into the displayed page (11).

Claim 12 — the drag-and-drop limitation: mouse drags the object from the palette list and drops it into the page in the view window.

Anticipation test: the reference that most threatens '736 is one disclosing, in a single teaching, (i) a two-panel palette (predefined library plus user-defined library), (ii) a separate view window holding the page, and (iii) drag-and-drop from palette to page. WebWriter (Crespo) plus a NetObjects-FUSION-style user guide is the closest combination I can see, but that pairing is an obviousness (§ 103) argument, not clean § 102 anticipation, absent evidence that one reference shows the full dual-panel drag-and-drop model.

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Bottom line

• I could not produce the verified backward-citation list for US 5,956,736, because neither the authoritative text you supplied nor my searches exposed the face-of-patent "References Cited" section; the authoritative text only carries the 220-item forward-citation list. I will not invent citations to fill the gap.
• The single concrete backward lead is the PCT/US 97/19719 international search report, citing Crespo "WebWriter," Ladd "Programming the Web," EP 0 669 587 A (AT&T, 1995-08-30), and JP 03 204259 A — with the caveat that I could not verify that PCT is '736's counterpart.
• The most substantive candidate references are NetObjects FUSION 3.0 User Guide and the object-oriented web-page-generation patent US 6,651,108 (Next Software, priority 1995-08-14), plus the WYSIWYG editors expressly admitted as prior art in '736's own Background.
• To finalize the § 102 analysis, the definitive list must be read from the '736 front page / Image File Wrapper (USPTO PatentCenter or Patent Public Search, https://patents.google.com/patent/[US5956736A](/patent/US5956736A)/en "Patent Citations," or https://www.freepatentsonline.com/5956736.html "References Cited"), which my session did not manage to retrieve.

Would you like me to attempt one more targeted retrieval of the front-page "References Cited" block specifically?

I'll research prior art relevant to US 5,956,736. Note that the "Cited By" list on the Google Patents page is forward citation (documents citing '736), not prior art — but a few entries have pre-1996 priority dates and are therefore genuinely prior art. Let me verify and search for additional art.

Excellent — the searches surfaced highly material art. Let me pin down the two journal references (WebWriter/Crespo and Ladd) and check the '736 prosecution/family.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 5,956,736 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Patent: US 5,956,736 B1 (US5956736A) — "Object-oriented editor for creating world wide web documents"
Appl. No.: 08/719,710 · Filed/Granted: 1996-09-27 / 1999-09-21 · Inventors: Hanson; Lilly · Assignee: Apple Computer, Inc. (→ Apple Inc.)
Effective filing/priority date: 1996-09-27 (no earlier priority claimed)
Status: Expired – lifetime (anticipated 2016-09-27)
Claims analyzed: 12 (independent claims 1 and 5; dependent claims 2–4, 6–12)

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0. Methodological note — using the "Prior Art" material on the page

The Google Patents page for this patent (https://patents.google.com/patent/US5956736A/en) does not contain a backward "References Cited" (prior-art) list. What it contains is:

• a "Prior art keywords" field (objects, list, html, user, window) — topical metadata, not references;
• a "Cited By (220)" table — these are forward citations (documents that cite '736), which are not prior art against '736; and
• a "Family Cites Families" table.

This is a critical distinction: a document that cites '736 is by definition aware of it and therefore (absent a pre-filing priority it can claim) post-dates it. Scanning the "Cited By" list, essentially every entry has a 1997-or-later priority date and therefore legally cannot be § 102 prior art against a 1996-09-27 filing. The one exception on that list is US 6,651,108 B2 (Popp et al., Next Software, Inc.), priority 1995-08-14, which does pre-date '736 and is genuine prior art. That reference turns out to be the single most material piece of art I found.

Because the page's own listing is dominated by non-prior-art forward citations, I supplemented it with (a) the art the '736 specification itself admits is prior art, and (b) prior art surfaced in the search results below. I flag provenance and dates for every reference so the reader can audit the § 102 posture of each.

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1. Background: what the claims actually cover (and what they do not)

This is the single most important point for the § 103 analysis. The '736 specification describes a rich system — an object system, an object framework, a script language, prototype-based inheritance, saving a web page as an object rather than a file, server-side outputHTML handlers, HTTP publishing, dynamic timestamp objects, CGI replacement. The patent's real contribution lives there.

But the claims do not cover that. The 12 claims are directed almost entirely to the client-side editing GUI:

Notably absent from the claims: the script language; the outputHTML/postHTTP handlers; object-based (vs. file-based) storage; the server/client publishing method; dynamic page generation. Every one of those is disclosed only in the written description.

Consequence for § 103: the claims monopolize a palette-plus-canvas direct-manipulation editor with a property inspector — an architecture that was, by September 1996, squarely in the prior art and largely conventional. The narrower, arguably novel subject matter was left unclaimed. This materially strengthens an obviousness attack on the claims as issued.

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2. Level of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA)

As of September 1996, a POSITA would have had a bachelor's degree in computer science/electrical engineering (or equivalent experience) plus roughly 1–3 years of experience in GUI application development and object-oriented programming, and working familiarity with:

• HTML authoring and the HTTP/CGI server model;
• OO concepts (classes/prototypes, instance variables, inheritance, message handlers) as embodied in Smalltalk, C++, Objective-C, or HyperCard;
• direct-manipulation GUI conventions — palettes/toolboxes, drag-and-drop, property inspectors — as standardized by the Apple Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines, MacApp, and Windows Visual Basic.

A POSITA at this level would have found each claimed element individually known, and their combination a routine design choice. (For an analogous articulation of the POSITA standard for web-authoring patents of this era, see the PTAB petition materials at ptacts.uspto.gov, e.g. the "bachelor's degree in software engineering" formulation in IPR petitions concerning web-page-generation patents.)

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3. The prior art of record (with § 102 posture)

Provenance caveat on P3/P4/P5/P6: these four appear together in an international search report shown as a PTAB exhibit (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/1458421/...), captioned "Int'l Application No PCT/US 97/19719." That application number is a 1997 PCT filing, and the '736 family as listed on Google Patents is US-only, so I cannot confirm that this ISR belongs to '736. I therefore rely on P3–P6 as independent prior art in their own right (all four published before 1996-09-27), not as the '736 file history. Flagged as an open item.

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4. Claim-chart — primary reference mapping

Every element of every claim is disclosed somewhere in the art above; the case turns entirely on combining P1 with P3/P7.

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5. Proposed § 103 grounds

Ground 1 — P1 (Popp/Next, US 6,651,108) in view of P7 (WebMagic and the WYSIWYG/tag editors admitted in '736's own background)

Covers claims 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 12 (and, with Ground 2, claims 7–11).

• P1 supplies the object model — the mapping of every HTML element to an object class, the storage of element properties in instance variables, the per-object methods to manipulate the HTML element, and a UI used to define the HTML elements of a Web page. That is the "each HTML command is a unique object with associated properties" and "object editor" heart of claims 1, 4, 5.
• P7 supplies the direct-manipulation GUI — a WYSIWYG editor with floating palettes of formatting objects and drag-and-drop placement that auto-generates HTML markup. That is the "palette window," "view window," and the mouse select/drag/drop of claims 1–2, 6, 12.
• Motivation (KSR): Both references address the same acknowledged problem — that creating web pages "requires a knowledge of HTML … a barrier for non-programmers" (P3) and requires "an understanding of HTML and careful attention to syntax" (P1's sibling and '736's own background). The '736 patent's stated purpose ("removes the need to understand HTML syntax while allowing the user to easily discern the format") is literally the intersection of P1 and P7. A POSITA would combine an object model of HTML elements with the industry-standard drag-and-drop palette paradigm to obtain exactly that benefit — a predictable result from combining two known elements to serve a known purpose.

Ground 2 — P1 in view of P8 (HyperCard / Visual-Basic-style toolboxes) for the two-panel palette

Specifically addresses the "user defined objects panel" + "predefined objects panel" limitation (cl. 1, 5, 9).

• The "predefined objects panel" is the classic tool palette of a predefined widget/tag set — WebMagic's tear-off format palettes (P7), the HTML-tag pull-down menus of tag-based editors ('736's admitted prior art), or the HyperCard/Visual Basic toolbox (P8).
• The "user defined objects panel" is the equally classic user-library / "custom controls" pane: a developer's saved, reusable, user-modified components. P1 expressly supports creating objects and duplicating them; P8's HyperCard expressly supports copying/saving user-created objects for reuse.
• Providing two lists — library-supplied and user-defined — side by side is not an inventive leap; it is the ordinary organization of any reuse-oriented authoring tool, and it is precisely what the '736 specification itself describes (dragging a modified predefined object into the user panel and renaming it). A POSITA would have been motivated to do this by the self-evident goal of software reuse, which P1 identifies as a central benefit of the object model.

Ground 3 — P3 (WebWriter) in view of P1 (Popp)

Covers claims 1, 2, 5, 6, 12, and supplies the "direct manipulation editor" limitation independently of P7.

• P3 teaches a direct-manipulation web page editor in which users build a page from components ("as in HyperCard, users create a Web application as a stack of pages"). An international search report listed P3 as an "X" (i.e., alone anticipating) reference against claims 1 and 2 of a closely related claim set (see §6).
• Where P3's manipulation may be less explicitly "palette-with-two-panels," P1/P8 supply the two-panel palette and the object property model.
• Motivation: both P3 and P1 aim to let non-programmers build web applications; combining P3's direct-manipulation editor front end with P1's object/property model is a combination of known, functionally compatible techniques with a reasonable expectation of success.

Ground 4 — P4 (Ladd/Ramming, MAWL) and/or P3 in view of P1

Relevant to the specification's "script language / output handler" features — but note these are NOT claimed.

• P4 discloses an application-oriented language and compiler for programming hypermedia services, and P3 discloses pages with output regions "filled in at runtime by a script." Together they anticipate the '736 specification's dynamic-object/handler concept (e.g., the timestamp example).
• Because claims 1–12 do not recite any script, handler, dynamic output, or server-publishing limitation, these references are not strictly necessary to invalidate the claims; they are included because they neutralize any argument that the claims should be read to import the specification's dynamic/object-storage features. Under the well-established rule that claims, not the specification, define the invention, the unclaimed dynamic features cannot rescue the claims.

Ground 5 — P7 alone (or P7 in view of P8)

For the broadest claims surfaced by a plain reading: WebMagic (P7) — a WYSIWYG editor with floating format palettes and drag-and-drop content that auto-generates HTML, plus the tag editors' predefined HTML-tag menus ('736 admitted prior art) — discloses the palette/view/select-and-place architecture of claim 1. Adding the object property inspector of P1/P8 supplies claims 4 and 7. I would treat Ground 5 as a secondary/backup position because I have not verified the two-panel palette structure in a single one of these references.

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6. Motivation to combine — articulated under KSR / Graham factors

1. Same field, same problem, same solution. All of P1–P4, P7, P8 address authoring documents/web applications without requiring HTML expertise. Where references "are in the same field of endeavor" and address the same deficiency, the case for combination is strong.
2. Predictable, familiar combination. Palette windows, drag-and-drop, property inspectors, and reuse libraries were decades-old GUI conventions by 1996. Combining an object model of HTML elements (P1) with a direct-manipulation palette (P7/P3) yields nothing more than the expected result — "a combination of familiar prior-art elements according to known methods to yield predictable results" (KSR v. Teleflex, 550 U.S. 398, 416 (2007)).
3. Explicit teaching/motivation in the references themselves. P3 states the non-programmer barrier and proposes the editor as the solution; P2 documents NeXT publicly marketing exactly this object-oriented, drag-and-drop web-authoring capability; the '736 background itself frames the entire field as moving toward WYSIWYG + direct manipulation.
4. Market/design pressure (objective evidence of incentive). The 1995 market race (WebMagic shipping Jan 1995; FrontPage Oct 1995; PageMill Dec 1995; NeXT WebObjects announced Aug 1995; Netscape LiveWire Sept 1995) establishes a strong, contemporaneous incentive to ship a drag-and-drop, palette-driven object editor — the very thing claimed.
5. Analogous art / "better way" reasoning. Even a reference outside the strict web field (e.g., HyperCard, a general-purpose object authoring tool, P8) is reasonably pertinent, because it is directed to the same problem (letting non-programmers assemble objects via a UI) and would be consulted by a POSITA.

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7. Anticipation-adjacent observation

P1 (Popp/Next) is close to a single-reference anticipation of much of claim 1. Its express disclosure that "HTML elements are mapped to objects … classes of objects are defined for each HTML element … the properties of each element are stored in instance variables … each object class can include methods to manipulate the HTML element," combined with "a user interface (UI) is used to define the HTML elements of a Web page," reads directly on claims 1 and 5's core concept. The gap is that P1's excerpt (as retrieved) does not expressly show the two-panel palette or the object editor window; those are supplied by P7/P8. That is why I frame the strongest grounds as combinations rather than anticipation.

There is also a notable historical irony and novelty question worth raising for a validity challenge: P1 was filed by NeXT Software on 1995-08-14 — more than a year before Apple filed '736 (1996-09-27), and Apple's own background describes the same problem P1 solved. I could not retrieve the '736 file history in this session (the search returns ended early), so I cannot confirm whether P1 was before the '736 examiner; if P1 was not cited, that non-citation is a strong lever for a § 103 (or even § 102(e)) challenge. This is flagged as an unverified but high-value inquiry.

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8. Secondary considerations (objective indicia)

I found no evidence of secondary considerations that would rebut a prima-facie case: no evidence of unexpected results, no evidence of long-felt but unmet need attributable to the claimed GUI combination (the need was recognized and being met by P1–P3 in 1995), no evidence of industry praise or licensing directed to the claims, and no evidence of copying. The patent expired 2016-09-27 and, per the previous section of this analysis, was never asserted in litigation, so there is no damages/non-obviousness record to weigh.

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9. Contradictions / inconsistencies to flag for the record

1. Prior-art section vs. what the page actually contains. The task directs me to use "the results from the Prior Art section." As noted in §0, the page's only reference listing is forward citation data ("Cited By (220)"). Only US 6,651,108 (P1) in that list qualifies as prior art against a 1996-09-27 filing; the rest post-date the patent. I have therefore built the analysis on genuinely pre-filing art (P1–P8). If a different "Prior Art" dataset was intended, it was not supplied in the materials I received.
2. The prior litigation summary is consistent with, but not identical to, this search. That section reported no litigation involving '736. My searches did surface '736 appearing in PTAB/IPR and district-court exhibits — but only as a cited prior-art reference (e.g., against the Software AG/infoSpinner '335 patent in IPR2015-01734, and in the NeXT/WebObjects exhibit set). Being cited as prior art is not litigation of '736, so there is no contradiction — but it is worth noting that '736 itself serves as prior art against others, which reinforces the obviousness picture above.
3. Possible continuation in the family not mentioned earlier. Search results show US 6,938,205 ("Object oriented editor for creating world wide web documents") carrying the same abstract and specification text as '736 (Justia: https://patents.justia.com/patent/[6938205](/patent/6938205)). This appears to be a continuation/divisional of the '736 disclosure. I could not verify the parent/child relationship in this session, and any obviousness conclusion about '736 likely extends to the related claims — but this is flagged as unverified.
4. Internal labeling inconsistency in the '736 specification. The description refers to the HTML code listing as both FIG. 1 and FIG. 2 ("the pair of tags on lines 1 and 9 of FIG. 1" vs. "FIG. 2 illustrates an HTML formatted document 200"), and the drawing key similarly assigns FIG. 1 to the "computer architecture" (as in the actual FIG. 1) while the prose uses FIG. 1 for the HTML listing. This is an OCR/specification labeling inconsistency that could bear on written-description support if the claims were construed against the figures. Minor, but noted.
5. Provenance caveat on P3–P6 (see §3): they appear in an ISR captioned to PCT/US 97/19719, which I cannot tie to '736. They are relied on independently as publications.

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10. Bottom line

A prima-facie case of obviousness under § 103 is strong as to all 12 claims, and the case is made cleaner by the fact that the claims are drawn narrowly to a conventional editing GUI while the patent's genuinely differentiating subject matter (script-based dynamic objects, object-based storage, server-side HTML output) was left unclaimed:

• Primary ground: US 6,651,108 (Popp/Next, filed 1995-08-14 — § 102(e) prior art) in view of the WYSIWYG/palette direct-manipulation editors (WebMagic and the tag-based editors named as prior art in '736's own background), optionally with HyperCard/VB-style toolboxes for the two-panel palette (claims 1–6, 12).
• Secondary grounds: Popp + WebWriter (Crespo/Bier, May 1996) and Popp + Ladd/Ramming (MAWL, Dec 1995) cover the editing and dynamic-page aspects, with WebWriter cited as an "X" reference against comparable claims 1–2.
• Motivation is supplied by the references' shared purpose (authoring without HTML expertise), the predictability of combining familiar GUI elements, and the intense 1995–96 market race — squarely satisfying KSR.

Confidence and limits: I am confident in the reference identifications and dates above and in the claim-to-art mapping. I am not able to confirm the '736 prosecution history (i.e., which references the examiner actually considered), cannot confirm the PCT/US97/19719 ISR belongs to this family, and cannot verify the US 6,938,205 family relationship — all flagged above. This is an analytical memo, not a legal opinion or a validity determination.