Invalidity dossier
US 6038605
Method and apparatus for interfacing two remotely disposed devices coupled via a transmission medium
Current assignee: EMC Corp
Added 9/23/2026, 11:46:38 PM
Active provider: DeepSeek · deepseek-flash
Patent summary
Title, assignee, inventors, filing/issue dates, abstract, and a plain-language overview of the claims.
US 6038605 — Patent Overview
Title: Method and apparatus for interfacing two remotely disposed devices coupled via a transmission medium
Patent number: US 6038605 A
Application number: US08/947,926
Filing date: 1997-10-09
Publication (grant) date: 2000-03-14
Priority date: 1996-02-15 (claimed from US08/601,733, which issued as US 5,960,216 A)
Inventors: Natan Vishlitzky, Yuval Ofek, Gadi Shklarsky
Original/current assignee: EMC Corp (Hopkinton, Mass.)
Status as listed: Expired – Lifetime; anticipated expiration 2016-02-15
Classifications: H04L9/40 (network security protocols); H04L69/26 (special purpose or proprietary protocols or architectures)
Purpose. The invention interfaces two remotely disposed devices over a transmission medium suited to long-distance data transmission. One disclosed application is a remote data mirroring facility in which a host CPU's master storage device (e.g., an EMC SYMMETRIX disk array) communicates with a remotely disposed mirroring storage device. The master side may use ESCON, SCSI, or IBM Bus and Tag; the excerpt notes conventional dedicated ESCON links are limited to roughly 60–80 km, while this approach contemplates links using public-carrier data communication lines (AT&T, MCI, Sprint; T-carriers) with distances greater than 80 km.
Plain-language scope. The disclosure describes communicating between first and second devices using a protocol having fewer transactions per operation than ESCON, and covers methods and devices in which a receiving device has a storage buffer holding no more than N frames, yet a request (or transmission) transfers more than N data frames in a single data transmission. Protocols are illustrated in FIGS. 4–6, with a performance comparison in FIG. 7.
Not established by this excerpt. The excerpt omits the full claim set, detailed description, and drawings; it does not establish claim scope, embodiments beyond those named, the actual public-network or distance limits achieved, or the content of FIGS. 4–7. No litigation, ownership-transfer, validity, or prior-art analysis is presented, and none is asserted here.
Generated 10/1/2026, 9:32:29 PM
Cases on file (0)
Specific litigation cases in our database that name US patent 6038605. The free-form analysis below may also discuss cases beyond this list.
No cases on file mention this patent. Upload a CSV or add a case manually in Admin → Manage litigation cases.
Litigation summary
Past and pending lawsuits — plaintiffs, defendants, jurisdictions, outcomes, and notable rulings.
Proceedings on file (0)
All PTAB activity →AIA trial proceedings (IPR / PGR / CBM) filed at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board against this patent. Sourced from the USPTO Open Data Portal and refreshed every six hours; each proceeding number deep-links to the PTAB E2E docket.
No PTAB proceedings on file. This patent has not been challenged via IPR, PGR, or CBM. The absence is itself a signal — well-asserted patents eventually attract IPRs. The LLM analysis below may surface filings the ODP feed hasn’t indexed yet.
PTAB challenges
AIA trial proceedings at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board — IPR, PGR, and CBM. Petitioners, judge panels, claim-level invalidation outcomes from Final Written Decisions, and Federal Circuit appeals. The single most important defensive datapoint after litigation history.
Assignment history
Inventors, original assignee, and the chain of ownership recorded with the USPTO — including the correspondent attorney who recorded each assignment, since shell-LLC chains often share one repeat-player attorney even when the entity names look unrelated. Surfaces NPE / patent-troll patterns: shell-entity transfers, known asserters in the chain, repeat correspondent fingerprints, pre-litigation assignments, and bankruptcy fire-sales.
Prior art
Earlier patents, publications, and products that may anticipate or render the claims unpatentable.
Obviousness
Combinations of prior art that suggest the claimed invention would have been obvious under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
Extensions
Patent term adjustments, term extensions, continuations, divisionals, family members, and expiration dates.
Derivative works
Defensive disclosure: derivative variations of each claim designed to render future incremental improvements obvious or non-novel.