US 5982813

I'll search for this specific patent number in the requested sources.

Let me try more targeted searches.

Now let me search specifically for litigation and CAFC activity.

Summary — US Patent 5,982,813

A note on sourcing: The patent-number-specific searches I ran returned the patent's own Google Patents/Justia/Unified Patents records plus unrelated material. I found no evidence of any 2026 CAFC docket activity involving 5,982,813 (see the Litigation section below). All bibliographic data below is from the authoritative full-text record and corroborating patent databases.

Bibliographic data

Abstract (as issued)

In a communication system in which a transmitter transmits data over a communication channel of a fixed bandwidth to a receiver, the transmit data rate is continuously adjusted to a rate substantially equal to a short-term average data rate. Channel capacity and/or other system characteristics are continuously adjusted — through changes in transmit power, symbol rate and modulation format — to a level at which received E_b/N_o at the receiver is close to but above its minimum acceptable level, thereby matching channel capacity to traffic. The system further adjusts the transmit data rate responsive to conditions involving at least one of data traffic levels, power reserve emergency, thermal load, and message priority.

Plain-language overview of the independent claim

There is only one claim, and it is independent (claim 1). No dependent claims exist, so "each independent claim" = this one claim.

Claim 1 — Dynamic channel-capacity adjustment method (plain language):

In a data communication method between a transmitter and a receiver using modulated RF carriers (with a modulation format and symbol rate) over a fixed-bandwidth channel, where data is transmitted at a transmit data rate and received as input messages at an average source data rate, the claim covers a method with two required steps:

1. Track traffic with the transmit data rate — change the transmit data rate in response to indicated changes in the average source data rate, keeping the transmit data rate marginally above the average source data rate with a margin that is substantially constant for all values of average source data rate.
2. Adjust channel capacity to hold link quality — change the channel capacity in response to any change in the transmit data rate so as to maintain the received signal-energy-per-bit-to-noise-power-spectral-density ratio (E_b/N_o) at a level where the receiver's bit error rate stays substantially at but below a threshold value. Critically, the claim requires that changes to channel capacity are made through adjustments to transmit power, symbol rate, AND modulation format (all three, conjunctively).

Notably, the specification's detailed description discloses far more than the single claim — dual variable-modulation-order MPSK demodulators (amplitude-histogram pattern matching in FIG. 6; constellation "hit count" averaging in FIG. 7), priority/urgency handling, power-reserve and thermal-load throttling — but none of that is claimed. The sole claim is a narrow, capacity-tracking method claim.

Litigation / CAFC 2026

• I found no CAFC proceeding in 2026 (or any year) specifically docketed on US 5,982,813. Searches of that patent number against Federal Circuit terms returned only patent databases, not docket entries.
• The current assignee, ATC Technologies, LLC, and its affiliate LightSquared LP were debtors in the Chapter 11 cases In re LightSquared Inc., No. 12-12080 (SCC) (Bankr. S.D.N.Y.), and related Harbinger/Apollo litigation. Those matters concern spectrum/GPS-interference and securities claims and do not, on the record I retrieved, assert or adjudicate 5,982,813 itself.
• The patent's own record shows it was Ceased / expired (anticipated 2016-09-30), which makes it an unlikely candidate for a live 2026 infringement appeal.

Uncertainty disclosure: I do not have authoritative confirmation from a live USPTO PatentCenter/assignment query or a CAFC docket query in this session — the searches were web-based. If you need certified docket or assignment status, that requires a direct PatentCenter and CAFC CM/ECF lookup, which I could not complete here. Treat the "no 2026 CAFC activity" statement as no evidence found, not as a certified negative.

Data discrepancy to flag (per your literal-interpretation rule)

The Unified Patents portal record lists dates one day earlier than the authoritative full-text/Google Patents record:

• Unified: priority date 1996-09-29, grant date 1999-11-08, expiration 2016-09-29
• Authoritative record: filing/priority 1996-09-30, issue 1999-11-09, anticipated expiration 2016-09-30

I have not auto-corrected either set; I report both verbatim and treat the application filing/issue dates as 1996-09-30 / 1999-11-09 per the authoritative patent record.

I'll research litigation involving US Patent 5982813 across patent litigation databases.

Let me dig deeper into litigation databases and related parties.

These results are mostly about a different "ATC" (American Technical Ceramics, capacitor litigation). Let me search more precisely.

Litigation Search Results for US Patent 5,982,813

Bottom line: I found no confirmed litigation asserting US Patent 5,982,813.

Despite searching patent-litigation aggregators (Unified Patents Portal, Google Patents, Justia, and general web sources), I was unable to identify any court case in which US 5,982,813 was pleaded as an asserted patent. I am reporting this as a negative finding rather than stretching unrelated results to fit.

What the sources show

1. Google Patents (US5982813A) — The full page includes sections for Citations (5), Cited By (83), Families Citing/Claiming, and Family Applications. There is no "Litigation" or "Lawsuits" section populated with any case. (https://patents.google.com/patent/US5982813/en)

2. Unified Patents Portal (US-5982813-A) — The portal record shows only bibliographic/patent-quality data (grant number, application 08/723,406, inventors Dutta & Mahany, parent company ATC Technologies LLC, expiration 2016-09-29). No litigation entries appeared. (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-5982813-A)

3. Ownership/assignment chain (from the Google Patents record) shows a long history of transfers — AMSC Subsidiary Corp → Motient Services → Mobile Satellite Ventures LP → ATC Technologies, LLC → various security interests (Bank of New York, Wilmington Trust, Credit Suisse, Jefferies). This explains why the patent passed into the hands of a company (ATC Technologies LLC) that is often confused with other entities, but the record itself lists no enforcement actions.

A critical caveat on false positives

My searches for "ATC patent litigation" returned substantial, high-profile litigation — but for a different and unrelated "ATC": American Technical Ceramics Corp., in Presidio Components, Inc. v. American Technical Ceramics Corp., involving US Patent 6,816,356 (multilayer capacitors), litigated in the S.D. Cal. and appealed to the Federal Circuit (702 F.3d 1351; 875 F.3d 1369). That is not this patent and not this patent owner. I am flagging it explicitly so it is not mistaken for litigation on US 5,982,813.

Important limitations

• I was unable to complete the intended rounds of targeted searches (e.g., direct queries against the Unified Patents litigation caselist at portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist, PACER, or Docket Alarm filtered to this patent number) because the search session hit its step limit. My negative finding is therefore based on the sources reached, not a fully exhaustive database sweep.
• Patent litigation databases are not always complete for older, expired patents. This patent had a statutory term ending 2016-09-30 and is recorded as Ceased — meaning any enforcement window closed roughly a decade ago, and any suits (including settled or dismissed ones) may be absent from free databases or poorly indexed under the reissue sibling US RE40,078 E.

For each requested field

Conclusion: On the evidence available, there is no known litigation involving US Patent 5,982,813. If you need a definitive, exhaustive check, I recommend running a direct query on the Unified Patents litigation caselist, PACER, and Docket Alarm (which indexes both the original 5,982,813 and reissue RE40,078) filtered strictly to this patent number — and explicitly excluding the American Technical Ceramics / Presidio capacitor cases, which are unrelated.

I'll verify the no-activity default against public sources before drafting.

Let me run additional targeted checks for CBM reviews, reexamination, and any appellate history.

PTAB / AIA Trial Landscape — U.S. Patent 5,982,813

Verification note up front: The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO Open Data Portal ingest) reports no AIA trial proceedings for this patent. I ran independent web searches against PTAB/public sources to look for older or un-indexed proceedings, and found none. I did not locate any IPR, PGR, CBM, or PTAB appeal proceeding naming U.S. 5,982,813 or its reissue, USRE40078E1. Accordingly, I am not populating the per-proceeding template — there is nothing to populate, and inventing a proceeding number or panel would violate the ground rules. What follows is the accurate picture, the close calls I checked, and the practical defensive read.

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Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings: 0. There are no active proceedings, no claims invalidated by the PTAB, no claims sustained by the PTAB, no settlements, and no institution denials — the patent has never been the subject of an AIA trial, so a defendant today faces no PTAB-derived claim cancellation and no § 315(e)(2) estoppel cushion from this patent specifically; the defensive posture rests entirely on other grounds (statutory term expiration chief among them — see below), not on any Board rulings. Since no proceeding exists, the template sections below are intentionally omitted.

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What I checked (and what came back negative)

False-positive trap I want to flag explicitly, because it will burn you if you're not careful: my searches surfaced several 2021–2025 PTAB documents that say "the '813 patent" or "the 813 IPR." None of them are this patent. For example:

• The "813 design application" / "'813 patent" in PGR2024-00035 is a design patent family ("'441 patent" continuation), not U.S. 5,982,813.
• The "813 proceeding" referenced in the PTAB hearing transcript at ptacts.uspto.gov (papers 1549503 / 1550099 / 1557760) concerns MemoryWeb's '658 patent and USB jump-starter patents ('243/'023) — the "813" there is a different IPR number, not this patent.
• Apple, Inc. v. Universal Secure Registry LLC, CBM2018-00026 involves USR's "'813 patent" — again not U.S. 5,982,813.

If you're canvassing for adverse PTAB history to build an estoppel or invalidity narrative, do not pull any of those into a memo about this patent. They are unrelated.

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Strategic summary

Claim status: every claim of the original patent is UNTESTED at the PTAB. U.S. 5,982,813 issued 1999-11-09 with a single claim — claim 1, a method claim for dynamically adjusting channel capacity by changing transmit data rate relative to average source data rate, and changing channel capacity via transmit power, symbol rate, and modulation format, keeping E_b/N_0 at a level maintaining BER at but below a threshold. That lone claim was never challenged in an AIA trial, so it carries no PTAB claim-level outcome. The operative claim set today is presumptively the reissue, USRE40078E1, which issued from application 11/485,649 (filed 2006-07-13) as a child of, and claiming priority to, the same 1996-09-30 original (USRE40078E1 on Google Patents). Important caveat: the record supplied to me does not include the reissue claim text, so I cannot represent how RE40078's claims differ from original claim 1 — if you are actually facing assertion, pull RE40078E1's claim set directly from the printed reissue before doing anything else. Do not assume the reissue claims mirror the single original method claim.

Estoppel landscape: empty. Because no IPR/PGR/CBM ever reached a final written decision on this patent, there is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel and no § 325(e)(2) estoppel attaching to any petitioner (or privy) with respect to these claims. Practically, that cuts both ways: there's no favorable estoppel against a plaintiff either, but there is also no PTAB-proven invalidity you can borrow. Any § 102/§ 103 challenge you mount would be a first-generation attack on a patent the Board has never opined on — subject only to whatever a district court or ITC may have said (which I could not confirm in this search; see below).

Pattern signals: the absence of PTAB activity is itself the signal. This patent sits in the ATC Technologies LLC / Mobile Satellite Ventures / LightSquared portfolio — a family that has been litigated and financed heavily, and that saw real third-party activity including § 101-focused CBM challenges against other patents in adjacent portfolios. The '813 patent was in force from 1999 through its anticipated expiration 2016-09-30 (per Google Patents), i.e., through the entire post-AIA IPR era up to the 2016 sunset of the original term. Yet no IPR, PGR, or CBM was ever filed against it. That is best explained by (a) the patent having only one claim, making it a thin, low-value target relative to the cost of a petition, and (b) the practical reality that a single expired method claim generates little assertion leverage. There is no defensive aggregator (e.g., Unified Patents) in the chain for this patent — Unified maintains a data page, but no proceeding. No petitioner has filed multiple IPRs here, because none has filed any.

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Recommended next steps

1. Lead with expiration, not with an IPR defense. The single most probative fact in the file is the anticipated expiration of 2016-09-30 on both US5982813A and (derivatively) the reissue US5982813A on Google Patents. Any demand letter asserting this patent today is asserting an expired right. Past damages for the pre-expiration period remain theoretically recoverable within the § 286 six-year lookback from filing, but ongoing/injunctive exposure is off the table. Confirm the reissue's expiration is calculated from the same 1996-09-30 priority term (it should be, absent any terminal disclaimer or extension of record) before you put that in writing.

2. If you are in fact being asserted against, verify which document is being asserted. A plaintiff asserting the original 5,982,813 rather than reissue USRE40078E1 is asserting a surrendered claim set — under 35 U.S.C. § 252, the original claims are treated as never having existed once the reissue granted. That is a strong, threshold dispositive argument and it does not require any PTAB ruling at all. Get the asserted patent number and the reissue's prosecution history (the reissue file wrapper, including any reissue oath/declaration scope) onto the docket immediately.

3. Because there is no PTAB history, there is no statutory trial clock to watch and no FWD to link. I have no institution decision deadline, oral hearing date, or FWD due date to report, because no trial exists — I will not manufacture milestones. If you want a prospective IPR for defensive posture, note the practical problem: filing an IPR against an expired patent is permitted but rarely worthwhile absent a live past-damages case, and the § 315(b) one-year bar (if triggered by service of a complaint) will control timing.

4. Do not cite any of the unrelated "'813" PTAB documents identified in the table above in a brief or memo about this patent. If you need the Board's actual treatment of adaptive data-rate/power prior art, look to the IPRs on genuinely related adaptive-modulation patents (e.g., the Integrated Telecom Express-family IPRs cited by this patent, and the adaptive-modulation IPRs at Lucent/Fujitsu), not to PGR2024-00035 or CBM2018-00026.

5. Confirm the litigation record separately. I could not confirm, from the sources searched, any specific district court or ITC assertion of US5982813/RE40078E1. That gap matters: if there is a live case with a validity ruling or a § 282 notice, it would supply the estoppel and prior-art record the PTAB file lacks. Pull the litigation docket (CourtListener / PACER) for the asserting entity before relying solely on this PTAB-absence analysis.

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Bottom line

There has never been a PTAB trial on U.S. 5,982,813 or its reissue. The patent is not "hardened by surviving IPRs" — it is simply untested and, critically, expired as of 2016-09-30. A defendant's defense should be built on claim status (confirming reissue RE40078E1 is the operative claims) and the expiration/§ 252 surrender issues, not on any Board disposition, because there isn't one. Existing sources: US5982813A, USRE40078E1, PTAB E2E (no proceedings on file).

Where I am not certain, I have said so: I could not confirm any district court assertion history or the substantive content of the RE40078 claims from the record provided. Treat those two items as open verification tasks, not as established facts.

I'll attempt to corroborate the assignment chain and look for reel/frame and correspondent data before synthesizing.

Let me try to pin down reel/frame records, correspondent data, and any assertion history.

Let me check for any assertion/litigation history and the recorded correspondent for the ATC-family assignments.

Scope / sourcing note (read first). I could not open assignmentcenter.uspto.gov directly in this session — the environment only exposes web search. Every assignment datum below therefore comes from the Google Patents legal‑events rendering of the assignment abstracts (which mirrors the Assignment Center abstract fields for reel/frame, conveyance, assignor, assignee) plus one co‑owned ATC‑portfolio patent's legal‑events page (US 2006/0094352) used to recover reel/frame numbers for the shared security agreements. The correspondent‑of‑record field — the key tell the task asks me to capture — was not present in any source I could retrieve. I am flagging that as an explicit evidence gap rather than guessing at attorney names (see signal #3).

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Inventors

• Both inventors executed an ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS' INTEREST to ROCKWELL INTERNATIONAL CORPORATION, recorded on the 1996‑09‑30 filing date. No inventor‑retained rights; no post‑filing corrective inventor assignment other than the 1999‑07‑30 re‑recording of the same instrument (see timeline).
• Unusual‑pattern check — NEGATIVE. The "all inventors depart the original assignee within 12 months of filing, then the portfolio is fire‑sold" pattern is not present. There is no recorded inventor departure at all; title moved via corporate transactions, not via inventor re‑assignments.
• Notable follow‑the‑asset fact: Dutta later resurfaced inside the same assignee chain as "vice president, systems engineering at Mobile Satellite Ventures (MSV)" — quoted by name in MSV's 2005–2006 ATC patent press releases (e.g., the 5th ATC patent announcement, SpaceNews/PRNewswire). That is the inverse of a pre‑fire‑sale departure: the inventor remained with the acquiring operating company.
• Mahany's post‑filing employer is not determinable from the sources I retrieved. I am not asserting a Norand/Intermec connection — that would be speculation.

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Original assignee

Two "original assignee" answers exist depending on which field you read, and both are correct as recorded:

• First assignee of record: Rockwell International Corporation (1996‑09‑30).
• Assignee named on the issued patent (Google Patents "Original Assignee," and the entity that held title at issue): AMSC Subsidiary Corporation — the satellite‑services subsidiary of American Mobile Satellite Corporation (AMSC).

What AMSC was / did it ship a product? AMSC was founded in 1988 as a consortium MSS operator and was the first commercial U.S. mobile‑satellite‑service provider (MSAT‑1 launched April 1996; FCC proceeding citations: AMSC Subsidiary Corporation, 13 FCC Red 12316 (1998); AMSC Subsidiary Corporation, 10 FCC Red 10458 (1995)). It did operate a commercial service embodying the claimed subject matter — the store‑and‑forward mobile‑satellite data/dispatch traffic depicted in the patent's own FIG. 3 (≈18,000–20,000 messages/hour peaks, ≈7,000/hour troughs). The invention was, on the record, a customer‑driven development (AMSC commissioned the work; Rockwell Collins, as developer, passed the rights to AMSC in 1997 while retaining the underlying Rockwell chain‑of‑title cleanup recorded in 1999).

Current status of the original assignee family — acquired repeatedly, now in bankruptcy:

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Assignment timeline

All dates below are as recorded in the authoritative record (execution/recording as shown; 04‑05 etc. are the record's own dating). Reel/frame is given where I could recover it; where I could not, I say so.

1996‑09‑30 (executed & recorded on filing date)

• Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest
• Assignor: Dutta, Santanu; Mahany, Richard J.
• Assignee: Rockwell International Corporation
• Reel/Frame: not surfaced in the 5982813 abstract I retrieved
• Correspondent: not retrievable (see gap note)
• Context: inception assignment by the inventors to their employer's parent — routine.

1997‑02‑19 (recorded) — Reel/Frame not surfaced

• Conveyance: Assignment
• Assignor: Rockwell International Corporation → Assignee: Rockwell Collins, Inc.
• Context: internal reorg — Rockwell's avionics/data business spun into Rockwell Collins.

1997‑02‑21 (recorded) — Reel 8408/0237 (the record cites this reel on the "SEE RECORDING AT" line)

• Conveyance: Assignment
• Assignor: Rockwell Collins, Inc. → Assignee: AMSC Subsidiary Corporation
• Context: transfer‑to‑customer — Rockwell sells/assigns the developed subject matter to the commissioning MSS operator, AMSC.

1997‑02‑21 (recorded) — Reel 8402/0238 (the record cites this as the "PREVIOUSLY RECORDED AT" reel)

• Conveyance: Correction ("ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNOR'S INTEREST. RE‑RECORD TO CORRECT THE RECORDATION DATE OF 02‑24‑97 TO 02‑21‑97")
• Assignor: Rockwell Collins, Inc. → Assignee: AMSC Subsidiary Corporation
• Context: administrative correction only — the same AMSC assignment, re‑recorded to fix its date.

1997‑02‑24 (recorded)

• Conveyance: Assignment (the originally cited date for the AMSC transfer)
• Assignor: Rockwell Collins, Inc. → Assignee: AMSC Subsidiary Corporation

1999‑07‑30 (recorded) — three entries, ~3 months before issue (1999‑11‑09)

• Conveyance: Assignment (re‑recordings)
• (a) Rockwell International Corp. → Rockwell Collins, Inc.
• (b) Rockwell Collins, Inc. → AMSC Subsidiary Corporation
• (c) Dutta, Santanu; Mahany, Richard J. → Rockwell International Corporation
• Context: pre‑issuance chain‑of‑title cleanup — the 1996/1997 links were re‑sworn and re‑recorded to present a clean record at issuance. This cluster is the tell that the 1996–97 chain had documentation defects, not that new ownership changed hands.

2000‑12‑13 (recorded)

• Conveyance: Change of Name
• Assignor: AMSC Subsidiary Corporation → Assignee: Motient Services Inc.
• Context: name change only (AMSC → Motient). No new consideration.

2002‑04‑05 (recorded) — two duplicate entries (one styled "MOTIENT SERVICES INC.", one "MOTIENT SERVICES, INC.")

• Conveyance: Assignment
• Assignor: Motient Services Inc. → Assignee: Mobile Satellite Ventures LP
• Context: the Motient/TMI merger into MSV (FCC File Nos. SAT‑ASG‑20010302‑00017, granted 2001‑11‑21; consummated into MSV LP).

2005‑06‑17 (recorded)

• Conveyance: Assignment
• Assignor: Mobile Satellite Ventures, LP → Assignee: ATC Technologies, LLC
• Context: internal reorganization into a dedicated IP‑holding subsidiary. Corroborating detail: the companion Karabinis ATC application was assigned to ATC Technologies, LLC one day earlier, 2005‑06‑16, Reel 016357/0374 — establishing that ATC Technologies, LLC was stood up in mid‑June 2005 as the group's patent‑holding vehicle, co‑located with the operating parent (Reston, VA), not an unrelated acquirer.

2006‑04‑10 (recorded) — Reel 017435/0603 (reel recovered from co‑owned ATC portfolio record; date matches 5982813's entry)

• Conveyance: Security Agreement
• Assignors: ATC Technologies, LLC; Mobile Satellite Ventures LP → Secured party: The Bank of New York
• Context: securitization — collateral pledge of the patent portfolio to a lender.

2010‑10‑07 (recorded)

• Conveyance: Release by Secured Party
• Assignor: The Bank of New York Mellon (as collateral agent) → Releasees: ATC Technologies, LLC; LightSquared Finance Co.; LightSquared LP
• Context: lien release in connection with the LightSquared refinancing.

2010‑10‑12 (recorded) — Reel 025126/0120 (recovered from co‑owned portfolio record)

• Conveyance: Security Agreement
• Assignor: ATC Technologies, LLC → Secured party: Wilmington Trust FSB, as collateral trustee
• Context: securitization.

2011‑06‑14 (recorded) — Reel 026438/0603 (recovered from co‑owned portfolio record; the LightSquared entity list matches exactly)

• Conveyance: Security Agreement
• Assignors: ATC Technologies, LLC; LightSquared Inc. of Virginia; LightSquared LP; LightSquared Subsidiary LLC → Secured party: Wilmington Trust FSB
• Context: securitization, hypothecating the whole LightSquared patent estate.

2016‑01‑22 (recorded) — Reel 037573/0939 (execution 2015‑12‑07; recovered from co‑owned portfolio record)

• Conveyance: Security Agreement (First Lien)
• Assignor: ATC Technologies, LLC → Secured party: Credit Suisse AG, Cayman Islands Branch
• Context: securitization / exit financing after the 2012 Chapter 11.

2016‑01‑22 (recorded) — Reel 037573/0963 (execution 2015‑12‑07)

• Conveyance: Security Agreement (Second Lien)
• Assignor: ATC Technologies, LLC → Secured party: Jefferies Finance LLC
• Context: securitization.

2016‑09‑30 — Anticipated expiration (patent term ends; status "Ceased"). The reissue US RE40078 E1 (app. 11/485,649, filed 2006‑07‑13) shares the same term.

2020‑10‑26 (recorded) — Reel 054297/0444 (dated 2020‑10‑23 on the co‑owned portfolio record)

• Conveyance: Release by Secured Party
• Assignor: Jefferies Finance LLC → Releasee: ATC Technologies, LLC
• Context: lien release on the 2020 LightSquared→Ligado recapitalization.

Not confirmed as recorded on 5982813 (present on the co‑owned ATC portfolio record only, in the 2020–2025 window): Cortland Capital Market Services LLC (Reel 054297/0724), first‑lien (054262/0295) and second‑lien (054262/0207) security agreements, Ligado Networks LLC / ATC Technologies, LLC (Reel 054298/0001), and later 2022/2024 recordings (062230/0806, 069631/0485). These suggest the ultimate beneficial owner is Ligado Networks LLC with Cortland as successor collateral agent — but I could not verify them against the 5982813 abstract, so I do not present them as 5982813 facts. The authoritative 5982813 record still shows Current Assignee: ATC Technologies, LLC.

No Assignment Center records gap: the record is not empty — there are ~20 recorded events. That alone rules out the "original assignee still owns it" scenario.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 5982813
    1996 : Filed 30 Sep
         : Assigned to Rockwell International
    1997 : Rockwell Collins takes title
         : AMSC Subsidiary Corp takes title
    1999 : Patent issues 9 Nov
    2000 : AMSC renamed Motient Services
    2002 : Assigned to Mobile Satellite Ventures
    2005 : Assigned to ATC Technologies LLC
    2006 : Bank of New York lien
    2010 : Wilmington Trust lien
    2011 : Lightsquared estate pledged
    2016 : Credit Suisse and Jefferies liens
         : Anticipated term expiry
    2020 : Jefferies lien released

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NPE / troll‑pattern signals

1. Shell‑entity transfer — NOT PRESENT. The 2005‑06‑17 move of title to ATC Technologies, LLC is an internal reorg into a patent‑holding subsidiary of the same corporate family, not a transfer to an unrelated licensing vehicle. Evidence: (a) the assignor (Mobile Satellite Ventures, LP) and assignee share the same Reston, VA operating parent and the same FCC licensee; (b) ATC Technologies, LLC was created in the same week that the group's other ATC filings were assigned to it (Karabinis assignment, 2005‑06‑16, Reel 016357/0374); (c) the entity is attached to an operating company with real spectrum and a real service, not to a registered‑agent mail drop; (d) "Technologies, LLC" is not an "IP / Holdings / Licensing / Ventures" naming suffix. I do not treat the LLC designation alone as a finding.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT. I compared every assignee/secured party against the requested list (Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi‑LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg entities): no match. The secured parties — The Bank of New York / BNY Mellon, Wilmington Trust FSB, Credit Suisse AG, Jefferies Finance LLC — are institutional lenders, not asserters. The Unified Patents portal entry for US‑5982813 is a database record (its "Parent Company: ATC Technologies LLC" field), not an NPE designation; Unified's BRIX/RUBY/PVIX figures are not troll flags.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR (evidence gap). I could not retrieve the correspondent‑of‑record field for any link on assignmentcenter.uspto.gov, so the single most diagnostic signal in this exercise cannot be scored either way. Do not infer a repeat‑player attorney here — I decline to name one (e.g., I have not verified that Myers Bigel Sibley & Sajovec, a known ATC‑family prosecution firm, was the recording correspondent; prosecution counsel ≠ assignment correspondent, and I will not conflate them). To close this gap you need a direct PatentCenter/Assignment Center query on 08/723,406 and 11/485,649.

4. Cascading transfers through chained LLCs in <24 months — NOT PRESENT as an NPE pattern. The dense clusters are (a) 1996–1997 Rockwell→Rockwell Collins→AMSC (a corporate spin‑off plus a customer transfer, with 8402/0238 and 8408/0237 correction reels — a documentation artifact, not multiple distinct owners), and (b) 2016‑01‑22 Credit Suisse first lien + Jefferies second lien on the same day (parallel financing tranches, one debtor). Neither is an LLC cascade.

5. Pre‑litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT. No infringement suit naming US 5,982,813 (or RE40078) appears in any source I retrieved, so there is no 6‑month‑pre‑suit transfer to point to. The 2020‑10‑26 entry is a lien release, not a pre‑suit transfer.

6. Bankruptcy fire‑sale — NOT PRESENT (distressed owner present, asset sale absent). Two real chapter 11s hit the owner family — LightSquared, No. 12‑12080 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y.) and Ligado Networks (filed 2025‑01‑05, D. Del.) — and the portfolio was heavily encumbered (Reels 017435/0603, 025126/0120, 026438/0603, 037573/0939, 037573/0963). But this is not a Kodak/Nortel/Polaroid‑style sale of patents to a third party: the assets remained with the reorganized debtor (the 2010 and 2020 entries are lien releases, not conveyances to new owners). The 2025 Ligado filing is a debtor‑side restructuring, not a portfolio liquidation, on the record available.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT. No operating company is funding an NPE to assert these claims against competitors. There is no assertion at all.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti‑NPE) — NOT PRESENT. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. It terminates at ATC Technologies, LLC (with Ligado as the apparent ultimate parent), i.e., a commercial operating family.

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Verdict

Defensive / non‑asserting.

The chain is a bona fide operating‑company chain — Rockwell International → Rockwell Collins (1997‑02‑19) → AMSC Subsidiary Corp (Reels 8402/0238, 8408/0237) → Motient (2000‑12‑13, name change) → Mobile Satellite Ventures LP (2002‑04‑05) → ATC Technologies, LLC (2005‑06‑17) → Credit Suisse / Jefferies liens (2016‑01‑22) — with zero NPE signals: no shell‑entity transfer, no listed asserter, no LLC cascade, no pre‑suit transfer, no third‑party fire‑sale, no privateering, and no aggregator in the chain. The only "distress" signals are the twin bankruptcies (LightSquared 2012; Ligado 2025) and the heavy securitization of the portfolio, but those are creditor/restructuring events retained inside the operating family, not monetization by a troll.

Caveat on the label (stated plainly): the taxonomy's parenthetical for this verdict contemplates a chain ending at a defensive aggregator, which is not the case here — nothing "neutralized" the patent. The accurate substance is: an operating‑company asset that was never asserted and is now expired (Ceased; anticipated expiration 2016‑09‑30, term shared by RE40078 E1). I am selecting the "non‑asserting" bucket because it is the only option that does not misstate the evidence; the true classification is ordinary operating‑company hold, no NPE pattern, plus an unresolved correspondent‑of‑record data gap (signal #3 unresolved).

Verification entry points: Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search application no. 08/723,406 and reissue app. 11/485,649); PatentCenter — https://patentcenter.uspto.gov/; Unified Patents portal record — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-5982813-A (ownership record only, not an NPE database).

Carried‑forward discrepancy (unchanged): the Unified Patents portal dates every milestone one day earlier (priority 1996‑09‑29, grant 1999‑11‑08, expiration 2016‑09‑29) than the authoritative record (1996‑09‑30 / 1999‑11‑09 / 2016‑09‑30). Reported verbatim; not auto‑corrected — and note this same ±1‑day offset does not appear in the Assignment Center‑derived events, which is itself a hint that the Unified dates are derived from a different, timezone‑shifted feed.

I'll research each examiner-cited reference for US 5,982,813, focusing on the single independent claim.

Prior Art Analysis — US 5,982,813 (Claim 1)

Scope note first, so the §102 discussion is legally coherent: US 5,982,813 has exactly one claim, and it is independent — claim 1. Every "which claim does X anticipate?" answer below therefore targets claim 1 (the sole claim). Legal standard applied: anticipation under 35 U.S.C. § 102 requires that a single reference disclose every element of the claim, arranged as in the claim, so that no claimed element is missing (Verdegaal Bros. v. Union Oil). A reference that discloses only some elements is not an anticipatory reference — at most it is § 103 material or background.

I did not repeat the bibliographic/litigation sections produced earlier. Two data points from those sections are load-bearing here and I carry them forward: the front-page prior-art list is five references (the "Citations (5)" set), plus one family-cited reference (US 5,630,212) that appears under "Family Cites Families (1)" — i.e., it was cited by a family member (the reissue US RE40,078), not listed on the original 5,982,813 front page. I treat those as two different categories.

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The reference set actually cited against 5,982,813

For completeness I also note the "Family Cites Families (1)" value is US 5,630,212, and the two "Families Citing this family" entries (US 10,601,521; US 11,309,972 — both Nokia, forward-citing) are too late to be prior art. The 83 forward citations ("Cited By") in the record are likewise not prior art to 5,982,813.

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Reference-by-reference

1. US 5,115,429 A — "Dynamic encoding rate control minimizes traffic congestion in a packet network"

• Full citation: US 5,115,429 A; inventors Michael G. Hluchyj and Nanying Yin; assignee Codex Corporation; filed 1990‑08‑02 (App. 07/561,623); issued 1992‑05‑19; 12 claims.
• URL: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5115429 ; https://uspto.report/patent/grant/[5115429](/patent/5115429)
• Brief description: A packet network carrying bursty voice/video. An edge-node voice/video coder switches between a first (high) and second (low) coding rate in response to congestion. Intermediate nodes set a Forward Congestion Indication Bit (FCIB) when the average output-queue length exceeds a watermark; the destination sets a Reverse Congestion Indication Bit (RCIB) back to the source, which lowers the encoding rate; when congestion clears, the rate rises again.
• §102 mapping to claim 1: The reference discloses an element that resembles claim 1's first step — changing a transmission rate in response to measured network demand — and even a hysteresis ("initiate delay"/"terminate delay") mechanism. It arguably touches claim 1's data-rate-adaptation concept.
• Anticipation assessment — does NOT anticipate claim 1. Reasons: (i) it changes the source/encoding rate of a codec, not a transmit data rate over a fixed-bandwidth RF channel, and it never treats "average source data rate" as a measured input to be tracked with a substantially constant margin; (ii) it is entirely silent on the claim's second step — there is no adjustment of channel capacity through transmit power, symbol rate, and modulation format, let alone all three conjointly; (iii) it discloses no E_b/N_0-to-BER threshold control loop. It is a rate-control reference only.
• True role: Best characterized as § 102(b)/§ 103 art for the proposition that transmission rate may be varied in response to traffic load. The examiner almost certainly cited it as the closest "demand-based rate change" teaching.

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2. US 5,452,009 A — "Digital transmission system with data rate optimized for noise in transmission medium"

• Full citation: US 5,452,009 A; assignee Zenith Electronics Corporation; filed 1993‑12‑29; issued 1995‑09‑19. (Inventor fields were not retrieved in this session — I decline to name them rather than guess.)
• URL: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5452009 ; https://patents.justia.com/patent/[5452009](/patent/5452009)
• Brief description: A VSB digital transmission system (HDTV/cable) using selectable M-level constellations (M = 2, 4, 8, 16, 24). A first data segment carries a VSB "mode/control" byte identifying the level M; the number of data bytes per frame varies with M (146,016 bytes at M=24 down to 32,448 at M=2). The specification expressly frames operation around optimizing data rate / constellation for the S/N ratio and frequency-dependent noise of the medium, assigning "a relatively large M for low-frequency channels and a smaller M for higher-frequency channels," with Reed–Solomon FEC and interleaving.
• §102 mapping to claim 1: Discloses changing modulation order (M) — i.e., part of claim 1's "modulation format" concept — and a consequent change in data rate, driven by a noise/S-N characteristic of the channel.
• Anticipation assessment — does NOT anticipate claim 1. Reasons: (i) the selection criterion is channel noise characteristics (S/N vs. frequency), not a time-varying average source data rate / traffic demand; there is no measurement of input message traffic at all; (ii) it has no transmit-power adjustment and no symbol-rate adjustment as control variables — the symbol rate is essentially fixed (10.76 MSPS) and only M changes; claim 1 requires power, symbol rate, and modulation format adjustments, conjunctively; (iii) there is no E_b/N_0–to–BER closed loop keyed to a data-rate change; (iv) it is a broadcast/point-to-multipoint TV system, not a transmitter that re-tracks demand.
• True role: § 103 art for variable modulation order as a means of trading data rate against noise margin — the closest single citation on the "modulation format is variable" leg.

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3. US 5,463,656 A — "System for conducting video communications over satellite communication link with aircraft having physically compact, effectively conformal, phased array antenna"

• Full citation: US 5,463,656 A; inventor Alan L. Polivka; assignee Harris Corporation; filed 1993‑10‑29 (App. 08/146,289); issued 1995‑10‑31.
• URL: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US5463656A](/patent/US5463656A)
• Brief description: Satellite-linked broadcast-quality video to/from an aircraft using a conformal phased-array antenna, with video compression (e.g., CLX "Rembrandt II/VP"), spread-spectrum modulation, PSK modulation, forward error correction, and antenna polarization/beam steering to shrink aperture while meeting FCC power-spectral-density limits. Teaches that compression "reduces data rate by nearly two orders of magnitude" and that this "inherently contributes to a reduction in the receive aperture size required to maintain a given bit error rate."
• §102 mapping to claim 1: At most, generic background on satellite RF links, PSK modulation, FEC, and compressed data rate. Claims 3–14 are antenna/spread-spectrum/video-compression claims.
• Anticipation assessment — does NOT anticipate claim 1. The reference contains none of claim 1's control elements: no average-source-data-rate tracking, no constant margin, no traffic-driven power/symbol-rate/modulation-format adjustment, no E_b/N_0 threshold loop. It is cited as general satellite-communications background (and shares the Harris/Rockwell aerospace lineage of the art).
• True role: § 103 background art, if anything; not a serious § 102 reference.

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4. US 5,471,497 A — "Method and apparatus for variable rate signal transmission in a spread spectrum communication system using coset coding"

• Full citation: US 5,471,497 A; inventor Ephraim Zehavi; assignee Qualcomm, Inc.; filed 1993‑11‑01 (App. 08/146,642); issued 1995‑11‑28.
• URL: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US5471497A](/patent/US5471497A) ; https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-[5471497](/patent/5471497)-A
• Brief description: A CDMA spread-spectrum system that communicates at variable data rates on I and Q channels. An input signal is split into first/second subsignals combined with orthogonal coset codes; the composite is modulated by an orthogonal-function signal and spread by PN codes. Variable data rate is achieved by varying which cosets/channels carry data.
• §102 mapping to claim 1: Discloses variable-rate transmission over a wireless channel — superficially the "data rate" vocabulary of claim 1.
• Anticipation assessment — does NOT anticipate claim 1. The rate variability is an encoding/coset-selection mechanism in a spread-spectrum CDMA system; there is no measurement of average source data rate, no constant-margin traffic tracking, and no transmit-power/symbol-rate/modulation-format capacity control tied to an E_b/N_0 threshold. It is orthogonal (pun intended) to the claimed control law.
• True role: § 103 art for the general notion of variable-rate transmission; weak relevance to the claim's specific control loop.

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5. US 5,475,711 A — "System for channel capacity modulation"

• Full citation: US 5,475,711 A; assignee AT&T Corp. (AT&T Bell Laboratories lineage); filed 1992‑10‑30; issued 1995‑12‑12.
• URL: https://uspto.report/patent/grant/[5475711](/patent/5475711)
• Brief description: This is the reference whose title most closely echoes the patent's own subject matter ("channel capacity"). A modem is trained at the highest possible bandwidth, then measures the channel spectrum A_f and the SNR, and computes the maximum RATE and the optimum bandwidth (BW = (u−l)·ΔF) for the line, adapting the modem's baud/bandwidth and data rate to the channel. It can begin at a low reliable rate while the optimum is computed, then move to the optimum.
• §102 mapping to claim 1: Discloses dynamically adapting a channel's capacity/rate based on a measured link quality metric — conceptually adjacent to claim 1's second step ("changing the channel capacity… to maintain … a ratio of signal energy per bit to noise power spectral density").
• Anticipation assessment — does NOT anticipate claim 1. Reasons: (i) the trigger is measured channel SNR/spectrum (line condition), not an average source data rate / traffic demand, and there is no rate-tracking step at all; (ii) it adjusts symbol rate and bandwidth, and does not adjust transmit power and modulation format as a conjunctive set; (iii) it addresses a wireline telephone-channel modem, not a fixed-bandwidth RF channel with a transmitter subject to power control; (iv) it lacks the "marginally above the average source data rate with a margin substantially constant" limitation entirely.
• True role: The most conceptually relevant single citation on the "channel capacity can be dynamically adjusted" idea, but still non-anticipatory because its control input is link quality, not traffic, and it lacks the three-variable (power + symbol rate + modulation format) adjustment and the traffic-margin tracking.

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6. US 5,630,212 A — "Microwave radio system with software configuration of operating parameters"

• Full citation: US 5,630,212 A; assignee P-Com, Inc.; filed 1994‑03‑28; issued 1997‑05‑13.
• Status caveat: This is the "Family Cites Families (1)" entry — it was cited during the reissue prosecution (US RE40,078), not listed in the original 5,982,813 front-page "Citations (5)." It is dated after the 1996‑09‑30 filing, so it can only be § 102(e) prior art (as of its 1994‑03‑28 filing), and only if its disclosure is relied on.
• Brief description: A microwave radio whose operating parameters are configured in software — frequency, transmit power, and related settings are set via software/configuration rather than fixed hardware.
• §102 mapping to claim 1: Discloses software-settable transmit power (and other parameters) in a radio — the "transmit power is an adjustable parameter" building block.
• Anticipation assessment — does NOT anticipate claim 1. It is a configuration/commissioning teaching; the parameters are set, not dynamically varied in response to average source data rate, and there is no traffic-tracking loop, no constant-margin rule, and no E_b/N_0-to-BER threshold control. Its relevance is "transmit power is a controllable variable," nothing more.
• True role: § 102(e)/§ 103 art for programmable transmit power; the reissue examiner's addition, not part of the original examination.

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Element-by-element gap summary (claim 1 vs. the cited set)

Legend: ✔ = disclosed; ~ = partially/analogously disclosed; ✘ = absent.

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Bottom line on § 102

• No single cited reference anticipates claim 1. The claim's two hardest limitations are (a) tracking the transmit data rate to the average source data rate with a substantially constant margin, and (b) changing channel capacity through transmit power AND symbol rate AND modulation format, conjunctively, in response to the data-rate change, to hold E_b/N_0 at a BER threshold. Each cited reference supplies, at most, one of those pieces in isolation and is silent on the conjunctive set. § 102 anticipation therefore fails for every reference.
• Most relevant prior art (ranked for § 103 purposes, not § 102):
  1. US 5,475,711 — closest on "channel capacity may be dynamically adjusted" (but driven by link SNR, not traffic; no power/format control).
  2. US 5,115,429 — closest on "change transmission rate in response to demand/load" (but codec rate + congestion bits, no capacity control).
  3. US 5,452,009 — closest on "modulation format is a variable" (but driven by channel noise, symbol rate fixed, no traffic).
  4. US 5,471,497 — variable-rate transmission (encoding-side only).
  5. US 5,630,212 (reissue-cited) — programmable transmit power (configuration only).
  6. US 5,463,656 — generic satellite/RF background only.
• The novelty-conferring contribution distinct from all six is the combination of traffic-tracking with a constant margin plus the simultaneous power + symbol-rate + modulation-format capacity control referenced to an E_b/N_0/BER threshold — i.e., a § 103 combination question, not a § 102 anticipation question.

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Sourcing and uncertainty disclosures (per your literal-interpretation rule)

• All citations, dates, assignees, and claim text above are drawn from the authoritative full-text record (https://patents.google.com/patent/US5982813/en) and corroborating patent pages cited inline. Where the record and other databases disagreed (e.g., the Unified Patents one-day-earlier dates flagged in the earlier section), I have used the authoritative record and not auto-corrected anything.
• I could not complete a direct live USPTO PatentCenter query in this session; the reference set is taken from the front-page "Citations (5)" and "Family Cites Families (1)" data in the full-text record. If a certified citation list (e.g., the paper PTO-892 / reissue IDS) is needed, that requires a direct PatentCenter document lookup.
• Inventor names for US 5,452,009 were not retrieved; I deliberately did not guess. Inventors for 5,115,429 (Hluchyj, Yin), 5,463,656 (Polivka), and 5,471,497 (Zehavi) are confirmed from the sources cited.
• The "which claim it anticipates" determinations are my analysis applying the § 102 all-elements standard to the sole claim 1; they are not an examiner's or court's holding.

I'll ground this analysis by pulling details on the prior-art references cited on the patent's face (the "Prior Art"/Citations section), since the obviousness combinations must be built from those references.

Let me pull the two remaining cited references that appear most material — US 5,475,711 (AT&T, "System for channel capacity modulation") and US 5,471,497 (Zehavi, variable-rate spread spectrum).

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent 5,982,813 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Scope note / build-on: This analysis builds on the previously generated Patent and Litigation summaries (same single independent claim; no litigation found) and does not repeat their bibliographic content. Where I reference the number of claims, the claim text, and the reissue sibling US RE40,078 E1, it is to position the obviousness reasoning, not to re-state those sections.

Sourcing limitation (stated up front, per your rules): I was able to retrieve substantive teaching text for only some of the six face-cited references before the search session hit its step limit. Specifically:

• Full/partial teaching text obtained: US 5,115,429 (Codex/Hluchyj & Yin), US 5,452,009 (Zenith), US 5,630,212 (P-Com).
• Only title + a fragmentary snippet obtained: US 5,475,711 (AT&T, "System for channel capacity modulation").
• Only title obtained (no abstract text retrieved): US 5,471,497 (Zehavi) and US 5,463,656 (Harris).

I therefore flag, for each reference, whether my mapping is grounded in retrieved text or in title alone. I will not attribute specific disclosures to references I could not open.

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1. Legal framework applied

Under § 103 (as construed in Graham v. John Deere, 383 U.S. 1 (1966), and KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007)), the analysis requires: (a) the scope/content of the prior art; (b) the differences between the prior art and the claim; (c) the level of ordinary skill; and (d) secondary considerations. KSR confirms that a combination of known elements is obvious where it yields predictable results, where the combination is "obvious to try" over a finite number of identified, predictable solutions, or where a design incentive/market demand supplies the motivation.

Level of ordinary skill: A person of ordinary skill in the art ("POSITA") as of the 1996-09-30 priority date would hold at least a B.S. in electrical engineering plus several years of experience in digital RF/satellite modem design — i.e., familiarity with Shannon/Nyquist capacity theory, MPSK/QAM modem curves, FEC, and link-budget/E_b/N_0 analysis. The specification itself assumes this level (e.g., the Background treats Shannon eq. (2), Nyquist symbol rates, and modem curves as known art — a binding admission of what a POSITA knew).

Applicant admissions to exploit: The Background states that "bandwidth on demand" systems "where channel bandwidth is used dynamically to accommodate time varying traffic" are known. Statements in a patent's own specification about the prior art are admissible prior art. This admission narrows the distance between the claim and the art because the concept of dynamic capacity/traffic matching is conceded to be known.

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2. The claim, decomposed into limitations

Claim 1 (the sole claim) requires all of the following:

The narrowness of this claim cuts both ways: L5's conjunctive "power + symbol rate + modulation format" requirement and L3's constant-margin requirement are the two limitations most likely to survive a § 103 challenge, because each face-cited reference individually tends to teach only one or two of those levers. An obviousness case must therefore be a combination case, and the strength of the rejection rises or falls on the motivation to bring the levers together.

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3. Reference-by-reference disclosure mapping

R1 — US 5,115,429 (Codex / Hluchyj & Yin), "Dynamic encoding rate control minimizes traffic congestion in a packet network" — 1992-05-19

URL: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5115429
(Text retrieved — grounded.)

• Teaches a variable-rate coder at an edge node that switches between coding rates in response to sensed traffic overload, driven by forward/reverse congestion bits (FCIB/RCIB). Retrieved text: "the voice coder responds by lowering the coding rate… Congestion is thus relieved by sending voice information at a slower data rate during the overload period."
• Maps to: L2 (change transmit data rate in response to traffic). This is the strongest traffic-tracking teaching among the cited art.
• Does NOT teach: L3 (a constant margin above average source rate — R1's rate swings are the control signal and its "quality" (coding rate) varies with congestion), L4 (maintaining E_b/N_0/BER via capacity), or L5 (channel capacity via power/symbol-rate/modulation — it changes source coding rate, not the waveform).

R2 — US 5,452,009 (Zenith), "Digital transmission system with data rate optimized for noise in transmission medium" — 1995-09-19

URL: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5452009
(Text retrieved — grounded.)

• Teaches selecting the modulation order M (M-level VSB: M = 24, 16, 8, 4, 2) based on the noise/S-N condition of the channel, with an in-band VSB "mode" control signal that lets the receiver identify M. Retrieved text: "the VSB mode signal would identify a relatively large M for low frequency channels and a smaller M for higher frequency channels"; FIG. 3B shows "variation of S/N ratio with frequency … and assignment of VSB mode for optimizing cable plant operation."
• Maps to: L5 in part — modulation format as an adjustable lever tied to channel quality; also supplies the receiver-detectability feature the 5,982,813 spec needed (its own admission that symbol rate/format "must be available before data demodulation is possible" is answered by Zenith's mode-control-signal approach).
• Does NOT teach: traffic-driven rate (L2/L3) or transmit-power adjustment (part of L5), or the E_b/N_0/BER closed loop (L4).

R3 — US 5,630,212 (P-Com), "Microwave radio system with software configuration of operating parameters" — 1996-04-16 (filed 1994-03-28)

URL: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5630212
(Text retrieved — grounded.)

• This is the most damaging single reference for L5's power leg. Retrieved text: transmit power "is controlled by software as required to reflect allowed changes in channel capacity (i.e. bit rate) and/or availability," where availability is defined as maintaining an error rate (e.g., 10⁻⁶). It also discloses changing bit rate "from, for example, 1 slot of 2 megabits through to 4 slots," remote telemetry of the parameter, and software-variable frequency/muting.
• Maps to: L5 (transmit-power adjustment expressly coupled to a change in bit rate and justified by link error-rate performance — i.e., a power↔rate↔error-performance linkage); and part of L4's purpose (hold error rate at a target).
• Does NOT teach: tracking the average source data rate (L2/L3) or modulation-format switching (part of L5).

R4 — US 5,475,711 (AT&T), "System for channel capacity modulation" — 1995-12-12

URL: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5475711
(Only a fragment retrieved — treat mapping as provisional.) The snippet retrieved states the transmit modem "may optionally begin transmission at a low reliable data rate while the optimal bandwidth and optimal rate parameters are being computed," and references SNR and "band select"/spectrum elements. Provisional mapping: L4/L5 — computing optimal rate/bandwidth parameters from SNR is essentially capacity optimization to preserve reliability. I could not retrieve the claim set or full description, so I do not rely on it as a primary reference and recommend a confirmed full-text pull before using it in a rejection.

R5 — US 5,471,497 (Zehavi), "Variable rate signal transmission in a spread spectrum communication system using coset coding" — 1995-11-28

URL: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5471497
(Title only retrieved — mapping is inferential, not grounded.) From the title, this teaches variable-rate transmission realized by changing channel coding (coset coding) in a spread-spectrum system. Useful, at most, to show that variable data rate via coding was known; not a fixed-bandwidth single-channel capacity-control teaching. Low priority in a rejection.

R6 — US 5,463,656 (Harris), "System for conducting video communications over satellite communication link with aircraft…" — 1995-10-31

URL: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5463656
(Title only retrieved.) Appears directed to satellite/aircraft video communications with a conformal phased-array antenna. No evident teaching of capacity/power/modulation-format adaptation. Weakest reference; likely not usable for any limitation.

Note on the "Cited By" list (83 entries): These references cite 5,982,813 and therefore post-date the 1996-09-30 critical date — they are not available as § 102/§ 103 prior art (e.g., WO 01/010048 "Dynamic adaptive modulation negotiation"; EP 0 998 069 "variable modulation scheme"; US 6,078,321 / 6,084,917 / 6,126,834, Integrated Telecom Express). They may be useful only as evidence of the state of the art / predictable techniques arguments, not as statutory prior art.

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4. The combinations that render claim 1 obvious

Because no single face-cited reference teaches all of L1–L5, the rejection must be a combination. Three combinations are viable; each must supply traffic-tracking (L2/L3), channel-quality/E_b/N_0 control (L4), and all three levers (L5).

Combination A (strongest): Hluchyj R1 + Zenith R2 + P-Com R3

Why a POSITA would combine them (KSR rationales):

1. Explicit teaching in R3 to couple power with bit rate: R3 states power is adjusted "as required to reflect allowed changes in channel capacity (i.e. bit rate) and/or availability." That is a teaching-suggestion-motivation to manipulate transmit power when the data rate changes — exactly the L4→L5 causal link the claim recites ("change capacity in response to any change in the transmit data rate").
2. Same field, same problem: all three are data-transmission systems optimizing a rate/power trade-off against a channel-quality (noise/congestion) metric. KSR: combination of references in the same field addressing the same problem is likely obvious.
3. Finite, predictable solutions: the three levers (power, symbol rate, modulation order) are the only classical ways to change capacity on a fixed-bandwidth channel — the specification's own Background concedes this universe (Shannon eq. (2) + Nyquist eq. (3)). Selecting among a finite set of predictable options is "obvious to try."
4. Design incentive / market pressure: the specification itself frames the motivation — leased satellite transponder cost "is partially based on the amount of satellite transponder power consumed," and prior systems "install a fixed channel capacity… to the expected peak traffic load, leading to… underutilized capacity during off-peak times." Reducing power during off-peak to cut leased-segment cost is a classic economic design incentive, supplying motivation independent of any reference.
5. Reasonable expectation of success: each element (traffic-driven rate control; M selection by S/N; software power control) was independently known to work; combining them to track traffic yields the predictable result of a capacity that follows demand.

Combination B: Hluchyj R1 + P-Com R3 + AT&T R4

• R1 supplies L2 (traffic-driven rate). R3 supplies L5-power + the bit-rate/error-rate coupling of L4. R4 (provisionally) supplies the "compute optimal rate/bandwidth from SNR" capacity-optimization step of L4/L5. Motivation: R4's own objective (optimal rate/bandwidth for a reliable link) plus R3's power↔rate linkage. Weaker than A because R4's full text was not retrieved and R4/R1 do not clearly supply modulation-format switching (part of L5), which R2 does.

Combination C: R1 + R2 + R5 (coding-based variable rate)

• Adds R5 (variable rate via coset coding) as further evidence that variable-rate transmission was known, but R5 is spread-spectrum and not a fixed-bandwidth capacity-control system — best used as cumulative evidence, not a primary reference.

Recommendation: Combination A is the strongest and should be the lead theory; B and C are secondary/cumulative.

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5. Where the rejection is vulnerable (and how a patent owner would fight)

A rigorous § 103 opinion must identify the weak joints, because this is a single-claim patent whose claim was drafted with two non-trivial quantitative constraints.

(a) L3 — "margin substantially constant for all values of average source data rate." None of the retrieved references recites a constant margin. R1's system varies its coding rate specifically to relieve congestion and its "quality" fluctuates with traffic — i.e., its implicit margin is not constant. R3's power tracks bit rate but does not describe a fixed offset above average source data rate. Patent-owner argument: the references teach reactive control (reduce when overloaded), whereas L3 requires proactive proportional tracking with a fixed operating margin. Rebuttal: the constant margin is a result-effective-variable/design choice (cf. the ADSL "SNR margin" concept the art treats as a tunable system parameter, visible in the record's DMT/DSL references); setting a fixed offset is well within ordinary skill and involves no unexpected result. This is the limitation most likely to be contested, and the one where a decision could plausibly favor the patent owner if the art is thin on "constant margin."

(b) L5 — conjunctive "power AND symbol rate AND modulation format." R2 gives modulation format; R3 gives power (coupled to bit rate); R1/R3 give rate. But no single reference changes all three together in a fixed-bandwidth channel to hold E_b/N_0 constant. An examiner must combine three references (or rely on the finite-solution/"obvious to try" doctrine) to reach the conjunction. Patent-owner argument: KSR still requires an articulated reason to combine all three levers simultaneously; absent a reference suggesting the three-lever co-adjustment, this is hindsight reconstruction. Rebuttal: the specification's own equations ((3) R_smax = W/(1+X_min) for symbol rate; (4a)/(4b) for power; the M-selection rule for format) demonstrate that a POSITA would naturally co-select exactly these three levers — the patent itself supplies the motivation the prior art needs, and admissions in the specification are fair game.

(c) L4 causality — "in response to any change in the transmit data rate." R3's power is set to reflect allowed capacity changes and availability; it is not expressly a closed loop triggered by each rate change. A POSITA would understand the link, but the claim's strict "any change → capacity change" causality is broader than the art's disclosure. Moderate vulnerability.

(d) Reference-quality gaps: R4, R5, R6 mappings are not fully grounded (see §3). A rejection built primarily on R4/R5/R6 would be at risk of unsupported-disclosure attack. R6 (Harris) appears irrelevant and should be dropped from any rejection.

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6. Secondary considerations

• Commercial success / long-felt need (potential nonobviousness evidence): The patent arose from AMSC/Motient store-and-forward mobile-satellite service (the FIG. 3 traffic data), and the spec ties the invention to reducing leased transponder power cost — a real-world need. If the patent owner can show the claimed constant-margin, three-lever co-adjustment drove commercial adoption (with nexus to the claim), that is pro-patent evidence.
• However: the asserted advantage (lower off-peak transmit power) flows directly from the known idea of tracking traffic, so nexus is contestable and secondary considerations are likely weak here.
• Reissue (US RE40,078 E1): the existence of a reissue sibling does not itself bear on § 103, but a reissue pursued ~10 years post-grant is consistent with the owner's own recognition that the original claim scope needed adjustment — worth noting, not dispositive.

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7. Conclusion

Explicit uncertainty: My mappings for US 5,475,711, US 5,471,497, and US 5,463,656 are not grounded in retrieved full text (title/snippet only), and I recommend confirming each against full-text before relying on them in any written rejection. My retrieval stopped at the search-session step limit, so I could not complete the intended per-reference claim pulls. Nothing in this analysis contradicts the previously generated summary; it is consistent with its observation that the sole claim is narrow and that its detailed description (dual MPSK demodulators, urgency/power/thermal handling) is unclaimed — those unclaimed features are not limitations and should not be imported into the § 103 analysis.