US 6064970

I'll verify against live sources, particularly for any 2026 CAFC docket activity, before summarizing.

Let me search more specifically for any 2026 appellate activity.

One more targeted check for any recent (2026) proceedings.

Search scope and a necessary caveat

I searched for US 6,064,970 specifically (excluding similarly-numbered patents, e.g. the "6064970" strings that appear in unrelated records such as a Sardinian regional phone number). Retrieval was via web search of public sources (Google Patents, FreePatentsOnline, patentimages PDFs, PTAB/Docket Alarm, Federal Circuit coverage). I could not directly query PACER or the CAFC's internal docket system, so my statements about 2026 appellate activity are based on what is publicly indexed — treat that as a limitation.

Bottom line on 2026 CAFC activity: I found no CAFC 2026 docket, appeal, or pending proceeding involving US 6,064,970. The only Federal Circuit activity I can confirm for this patent is from the 2014–2015 period (Appeal Nos. 2014-1466 and 2014-1656), decided August 24, 2015. This is consistent with the patent having expired on January 29, 2016 (20 years from the 1996-01-29 priority date) and all claims having been cancelled/invalidated. If there is a 2026 docket and it is not publicly indexed, I cannot confirm it.

Bibliographic data for US 6,064,970

Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6064970/en; https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/6f/4e/00/c0e51f9ac8fde2/US6064970.pdf; https://www.freepatentsonline.com/6064970.html

Abstract (verbatim from official text)

"A method and system of determining a cost of automobile insurance based upon monitoring, recording and communicating data representative of operator and vehicle driving characteristics. The cost is adjustable retrospectively and can be prospectively set by relating the driving characteristics to predetermined safety standards. The method comprises steps of monitoring a plurality of raw data elements representative of an operating state of the vehicle or an action of the operator. Selected ones of the raw data elements are recorded when the ones are determined to have an identified relationship to safety standards. The selected ones are consolidated for processing against an insurer profile and for identifying a surcharge or discount to be applied to a base cost of automobile insurance. A final cost is produced from the base costs and the surcharges or discounts."

Plain-language overview of the independent claims (as issued)

• Claim 1 — A method of building a database of driving-characteristic data. Monitor several data elements reflecting the vehicle's operating state or the operator's actions over a selected time period, then record only the selected ones that are "appropriate for recording" relative to determining that period's insurance cost. The recorded set must include (a) the time and location of vehicle operation and (b) a corresponding log of vehicle speed for that time and location.

• Claim 2 — Claimed the database itself: data elements for a selected period including time/location of operation and a corresponding speed log, where the database is then used to determine an insurance charge for that period. (Note: the claim text provided in the authoritative Google Patents rendering shows claim 2 as issued, but the ex parte reexamination certificate states claim 2 is cancelled — see "Prosecution history" below.)

• Claim 4 — A method of insuring a vehicle operator for a selected period: generate an initial operator profile, monitor the operator's driving characteristics during that period, and decide the cost of insurance for the period based on the characteristics monitored in that period.

• Claim 5 — A method of determining a cost of vehicle insurance for a period, where the cost is adjustable by relating driving characteristics to predetermined safety standards: determine an initial insured profile and a base cost; monitor vehicle/operator data elements during the period; record selected ones having a preselected relationship to the safety standards; consolidate the recorded ones to identify a surcharge or discount to the base cost; and produce the final cost from the base cost plus/minus that surcharge or discount.

• Claim 6 — A method of monitoring a human-controlled, power-source-driven vehicle: extract data elements from at least one sensor (vehicle operating state and the operator's actions) during a data collection period; analyze, group and store them as group data values in a first memory; correlate those group values to preset values in a second memory; and generate an output data value that is used to compute an insurance rating for the vehicle for that data collection period.

Dependent claims (as issued):

• Claims 7 and 8 (both depend on 6) — detect predetermined "triggering events," correlate them to event types stored in a third memory, and store and transmit a corresponding signal to a receiving system (claim 7), or store or transmit it (claim 8).
• Claim 9 (depends on 6) — the output data value is additionally used to compute an insurance rating for a future data collection period.
• Claims 10–12 (10 depends on 6; 11 on 10; 12 on 11) — use safety/actuarial standard values as the preset values to generate an adjusted insurance cost; use location and time as the compared data elements; the adjusted cost may be prospective or retrospective.
• Claims 13–15 (13 depends on 6; 14 on 13; 15 on 14) — parallel to 10–12, but the output value is an adjusted underwriting cost.

Prosecution and validity history (important context)

1. Ex parte reexamination. The '970 patent underwent ex parte reexamination (Control No. 90/011,252), resulting in an ex parte reexamination certificate (US 6,064,970 C1; 8789th certificate). Per the certificate: claim 2 was cancelled; claims 1 and 3–6 were determined patentable as amended; claims 7–15 (dependent on an amended claim) were patentable; and new claims 16–18 were added. Amended claim 1 added a step of generating actuarial classes of insurance from actual monitored driving characteristics. Amended claims 4 and 5 added pre-monitoring insured-profile/coverage-information (limits and deductibles) limitations. I have partial text for new claim 18 (an on-board-computer monitoring method computing an insurance rating based on an actuarial class and setting prospective premiums); I do not have authoritative text for new claims 16 and 17, so I'm flagging that as uncertain. The reexamination certificate date is given in one secondary source as January 10, 2012 — I have not independently confirmed that date.

2. PTAB covered-business-method reviews. Liberty Mutual filed CBM2012-00002 and CBM2012-00004 against the '970 patent. Institution: January 25, 2013. Final Written Decisions: January 23, 2014 (Paper 66 in CBM2012-00002; Paper 60 in CBM2012-00004), holding all challenged claims unpatentable (17 claims challenged).

   • https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/CBM2012-00002/Covered_Business_Method_Patent_Review_of_U.S._Pat._6064970/
   • https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/CBM2012-00004/Covered_Business_Method_Patent_Review_of_U.S._Pat._6064970/

3. Federal Circuit affirmance. Progressive appealed (Appeal Nos. 2014-1466 from CBM2012-00002 and 2014-1656 from CBM2012-00004, consolidated with related appeals). On August 24, 2015, a panel (Taranto, J.) affirmed the Board. The court upheld the obviousness invalidations of all claims of the '970 patent, including the motivation-to-combine rationale relying partly on the "Florida Guide" and the patent's own acknowledgment of seatbelt-use detection for insurance-cost purposes. Per the opinion, the Board relied on the older "Black Magic" device as anticipatory/obviousness art:

   • VitalLaw summary: https://www.vitallaw.com/news/patent-fed-cir-ptab-properly-ruled-that-insurance-related-patents-were-invalid-over-prior-art/ipm0117c453cc7c3c100088c390b11c18c90205

4. District court cases (Northern District of Ohio) in which the '970 patent was asserted/at issue include the Allstate-related case numbers 1:10-cv-01370, 1:11-cv-00082, 1:12-cv-01068, and 1:12-cv-01070, as reflected in the Google Patents litigation links.

Uncertainties I want to flag explicitly

• The authoritative Google Patents claim text displays the original 15 issued claims, including claim 2; the reexamination certificate cancelled claim 2 and amended several others, so the "live" claim set after reexam differed from the printed text. Where these conflict, the reexamination certificate controls.
• No 2026 CAFC docket for 6,064,970 was found. Given the patent's expiration and total claim cancellation, new 2026 appellate activity is unlikely, but I cannot rule out activity not captured by public search.
• Full verbatim text of reexam-added claims 16 and 17 was not available to me.

I'll research the litigation history for US Patent 6064970. Let me search multiple sources.

Let me gather more details on the district court cases and their outcomes.

Let me verify the specific district court case details and parties.

Litigation Involving U.S. Patent 6,064,970

Patent: U.S. 6,064,970 — "Motor vehicle monitoring system for determining a cost of insurance"
Patent owner / plaintiff: Progressive Casualty Insurance Company (Mayfield Village, Ohio)
Inventors: Robert John McMillan, Alexander Dean Craig, John Patrick Heinen
Priority date: Jan. 29, 1996 · Filing date (this application, Ser. No. 09/135,034): Aug. 17, 1998 · Issued: May 16, 2000 (a continuation of Ser. No. 08/592,958, now U.S. 5,797,134)

The '970 patent is the asserted patent in a series of infringement suits all filed by Progressive in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio (Cleveland/Eastern Division), and was the subject of covered business method (CBM) reviews at the PTAB brought by Liberty Mutual, which were consolidated on appeal at the Federal Circuit. Notably, all of the CBM-challenged claims of the '970 patent were cancelled, and that result was affirmed on appeal.

Below is what I could verify. Where the sources are ambiguous, I flag it explicitly rather than guess.

1. District Court Litigation (N.D. Ohio)

a) Progressive Casualty Insurance Co. v. Safeco Insurance Company of Illinois, et al.

(Sources: Justia docket for 1:2010cv01370; RPX/Unified Patents litigation records; PTAB exhibits citing this docket.)

b) Progressive Casualty Insurance Co. v. Allstate Insurance Company, et al.

(Sources: UniCourt case summary 1:11-cv-00082; docket entries #134–#135; patent citation records.)

c) Two 2012 filings — Cases 1:12-cv-01068 and 1:12-cv-01070

⚠️ Uncertainty flag: My sources do not let me cleanly assign the "Rewind Defendants" and "Onboard Advisor Defendants" (Ohio Casualty, Safeco America, Liberty Mutual, Liberty Mutual Group, Open Seas Solutions) to one specific 2012 case number, versus the Hartford caption. A Progressive complaint dated September 21, 2012 asserts Count I against "Rewind Defendants" and Count II against "Onboard Advisor Defendants," but the docket excerpts label the 1:12-cv-01070-BYP complaint as Progressive v. Hartford Fire Insurance Co. et al. I cannot confirm with high confidence which of 1:12-cv-01068 vs. 1:12-cv-01070 corresponds to which defendant group. These should be verified directly against PACER for the N.D. Ohio docket.

2. PTAB — Covered Business Method Reviews (Petitioner: Liberty Mutual)

Liberty Mutual filed on September 16, 2012 — the first day the CBM program opened — the first four CBM petitions, two of which targeted the '970 patent.

CBM2012-00002 — Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. v. Progressive Casualty Insurance Co. (U.S. 6,064,970)

• Filed: Sept. 16, 2012
• Institution decision: Jan. 25, 2013 (instituted on all but two claims; found at least claim 4 directed to a covered business method, and held CBM review is "all or nothing" per patent)
• Final Written Decision: Jan. 23, 2014 — all reviewed claims held unpatentable/cancelled (Paper 66)
• Federal Circuit appeal: No. 2014-1466

CBM2012-00004 — Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. v. Progressive Casualty Insurance Co. (U.S. 6,064,970)

• Filed: Sept. 16, 2012
• Final Written Decision: Jan. 23, 2014 — all claims cancelled (Paper 60); entered roughly one hour after the -00002 decision
• Federal Circuit appeal: No. 2014-1656

(Sources: Docket Alarm PTAB dockets; RPX Empower "CBM2012-00002 – Liberty Mutual v. Progressive … CBM of US6064970A" — Filed 09/16/2012, Institution 01/25/2013; Finnegan "Non-CBM Claims May Be Subject to CBM Review" (Jan. 30, 2014); Lexology (Feb. 3, 2014); National Law Review (McDermott).)

3. Federal Circuit Appeals (consolidated)

• Appeals Nos. 2014-1466 (from CBM2012-00002), 2014-1656 (from CBM2012-00004) and related appeals from CBM2012-00003/2013-00009 and other Progressive patents, consolidated.
• Caption on appeal: Progressive Casualty Insurance Co. v. Liberty Mutual Insurance Co.
• Decision: August 24, 2015 — AFFIRMED (nonprecedential opinion). The court held the PTAB's invalidity findings were supported by substantial evidence (anticipation and obviousness), rejected Progressive's § 325(e)(1) estoppel and APA arguments as harmless error, and found the parent application did not provide adequate written description for certain claims. Liberty Mutual's cross-appeal was not reached.
• The opinion expressly notes the '970 patent claims at issue: claims 1 and 3–18 of U.S. 6,064,970.

(Source: CAFC Nos. 14-1466 / 14-1656, decided Aug. 24, 2015; PTABWatch and Open Legal Blog summaries.)

4. Related Administrative Proceeding — Ex Parte Reexamination

• Ex parte reexamination Control No. 90/011,252 of U.S. 6,064,970
• Requested by Liberty Mutual: filed Sept. 22, 2010
• Office Action (Mar. 7, 2011): all claims 1–73 rejected (e.g., claims 4–5 anticipated under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) by Kosaka, JP-A-4/182868; other art including Bouchard, U.S. 5,465,079)
• Result: the patent survived reexamination (a Reexamination Certificate issued). Progressive later filed a "Notice of Conclusion of Reexamination" in 1:10-cv-01370. The '970 claims that survived reexamination were then invalidated in the CBM proceedings and on Federal Circuit affirmance (2015).

Summary

Net outcome: The '970 patent's asserted claims were invalidated through the Liberty Mutual CBM reviews and the Federal Circuit's affirmance; the district court infringement cases brought by Progressive (which had been stayed) were resolved by a dismissal with prejudice (Allstate case) or remained stayed/subject to consolidated invalidity proceedings.

Caveats on accuracy (please verify before relying):

• I could not confirm a clean party-to-case-number mapping for the two 2012 N.D. Ohio cases (1:12-cv-01068 vs. 1:12-cv-01070). My search budget was exhausted before I could pull the PACER dockets directly, so the defendant lists for these two cases should be confirmed on PACER.
• I did not locate any appellate litigation over infringement liability (i.e., no merits CAFC appeal on infringement/damages) — the substantive appellate activity was the PTAB-CBM appeal.
• I did not find any litigation involving this patent outside the Progressive-as-plaintiff (N.D. Ohio) and Liberty-Mutual-as-petitioner (PTAB) universe in the sources reviewed. The Unified Patents record lists "First worldwide family litigation" through Darts-IP, suggesting the asserted disputes were concentrated in the U.S. N.D. Ohio actions above.

Would you like me to attempt to retrieve the exact PACER dockets for 1:12-cv-01068 and 1:12-cv-01070 to resolve the defendant-mapping ambiguity?

I'll research the PTAB proceedings on this patent. The structured block says the ODP ingest shows none, but the patent page itself lists two CBM cases — let me verify those and dig into outcomes.

Good — rich results. Both CBMs were filed by Liberty Mutual (the Google Patents "petitioner" tag was the litigation-data aggregator, not the filer). Let me pin down claim-level outcomes, institution reasoning, and any Federal Circuit appeal.

Strong results. Now let me confirm the exact claim-level dispositions, the panels, the rehearing outcome, and the Federal Circuit disposition.

Important threshold note on the source data

The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block says the USPTO ODP ingest returns no AIA trial proceedings. That is a data gap, not a fact about the patent. US 6,064,970 was the subject of two covered business method reviews — CBM2012-00002 and CBM2012-00004 — both filed on 2012-09-16, decided 2014-01-23, and appealed to the Federal Circuit in 2014. Those filings predate the ODP/AIA-trial indexing conventions that populate this feed, which is why they don't appear. The Google Patents page for the patent itself confirms both proceedings (and labels them "Final Written Decision"). I flag one misattribution in that page's data: the "Petitioner: Unified Patents PTAB Data" line is the data provider's name, not the petitioner's. The real petitioner was Liberty Mutual Insurance Co.

Everything below is sourced from the public FWDs, the Board's institution decisions, and the Federal Circuit opinion.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trials on US 6,064,970: 2 — both Covered Business Method reviews (CBM2012-00002, CBM2012-00004), both filed by Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. against Progressive Casualty Insurance Co., both decided 2014-01-23 on the merits, both resulting in cancellation of every claim reviewed (17 of 17 live claims across the patent), and both affirmed by the Federal Circuit on 2015-08-24. Breakdown: 0 active, 2 claims-invalidated, 0 claims-sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution denials. The defensive posture this gives a defendant is the strongest possible: there is no enforceable claim left in this patent. If a demand letter cites US 6,064,970, it is citing a patent whose entire claim set was canceled by the PTAB and whose cancellation the Federal Circuit affirmed — the assertion is baseless on its face.

CBM2012-00004 — Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. v. Progressive Casualty Insurance Co.

• Type: Covered Business Method review (AIA § 18; 35 U.S.C. §§ 324, 326)
• Filed: 2012-09-16 (first day of CBM program eligibility)
• Status: Final Written Decision — all challenged claims canceled (Paper 60, 2014-01-23). One of the Google Patents family entries lists the PTAB disposition simply as "Final Written Decision."
• Judge panel: Joni Y. Chang, Jameson Lee, Michael R. Zecher; Chang authored the Final Written Decision.
• Petition grounds: challenged claims 1 and 3–18 of the '970 patent (i.e., every live claim), all under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a); no § 101 or § 112 grounds were instituted. Instituted grounds, verbatim from the FWD:
  • Claims 1, 3, 6-8, 10, 11, 13, 14, and 18 — § 103(a) over Bouchard, Pettersen, and Herrod
  • Claims 4, 5, 16, and 17 — § 103(a) over Bouchard, Pettersen, and Florida Guide
  • Claim 9 — § 103(a) over Bouchard, Pettersen, Herrod, and Camhi
  • Claims 12 and 15 — § 103(a) over Bouchard, Pettersen, Herrod, and Dorweiler
• Institution decision: instituted 2013-01-25 on all grounds (Paper 11). The Board also rejected Progressive's threshold argument that it had to find every challenged claim directed to a CBM: because AIA § 18(d)(1) defines a covered business method "patent," one CBM-eligible claim qualifies the whole patent, so the Board could review "claims 1 and 3-18."
• Final Written Decision (2014-01-23): Claim 1 and claims 3–18 canceled. The Order reads: "Liberty has met its burden of proof, by a preponderance of the evidence, in showing that claims 1 and 3-18 of the '970 patent are unpatentable..." and "ORDERED that claims 1 and 3-18 of the '970 patent are CANCELLED." Representative reasoning: the Board construed "initial operator profile" broadly as "an initial collection of information associated with an operator that is related to motor vehicle characteristics or driving characteristics," rejected Progressive's narrower construction, and held Bouchard's driver-specific baseline profile plus Pettersen and the Florida Guide taught the "insured profile... coverage information, including limits and deductibles" limitation because "insurance companies are required, in issuing policies, to do so." No claim reviewed on the merits in this proceeding was sustained.
• Settlement / termination: none — decided on the merits. Progressive filed a Request for Rehearing on 2014-02-21 arguing (a) 35 U.S.C. § 325(e)(1) barred the Board from maintaining CBM2012-00004 on claims 1, 3-6 and 9-18 after CBM2012-00002 decided the same claims, and (b) the second decision was an improper advisory opinion. Progressive supported the request with a declaration (Ex. 2026, Wamsley Declaration) establishing that the two FWDs were posted to PRPS one minute apart (13:25:52 EST vs. 13:26:42 EST on 2014-01-23) — the factual hook for the argument that one decision estopped the other. I could not confirm the Board's disposition of that rehearing request from the sources retrieved, so I do not state it.
• Appeal: yes. Consolidated into Progressive Casualty Insurance Co. v. Liberty Mutual Insurance Co., 625 F. App'x 552 (Fed. Cir. 2015) (nonprecedential; Judge Taranto), appeal nos. 2014-1466, -1538, -1549, -1586, -1636, -1637, -1639, -1656. The Federal Circuit listed the '970 claims on appeal as "claims 1 and 3-18." It affirmed on 2015-08-24. On the § 325(e)(1) timing argument the court held the statute "only limits certain actions by a petitioner. It does not prohibit the Board from reaching decisions," and that because the Board expressly issued the two decisions "concurrently," a one-hour (indeed one-minute) difference in docketing timestamps did not warrant reversal. Decision: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/[2829928](/patent/2829928)/progressive-casualty-insurance-v-liberty-mutual-liberty-mutual-insurance/
• Defensive value: Every live claim of the patent is dead in this proceeding, and the Federal Circuit affirmed. A defendant needs nothing else — there is no claim left to infringe.

CBM2012-00002 — Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. v. Progressive Casualty Insurance Co.

• Type: Covered Business Method review (AIA § 18; 35 U.S.C. §§ 324, 326)
• Filed: 2012-09-16 (same day as CBM2012-00004)
• Status: Final Written Decision — all reviewed claims canceled (Paper 66, 2014-01-23)
• Judge panel: not confirmed in the sources retrieved. The two proceedings were handled by overlapping Board panels issuing concurrent decisions; I will not state the CBM2012-00002 panel members without a confirming source.
• Petition grounds: § 103(a) only, over a different prior-art set from CBM2012-00004 (the Board expressly declined joinder so it could run "two smaller proceedings with different prior art issues"). Instituted grounds, verbatim from the FWD:
  • Claims 4, 5, 16, and 17 — § 103(a) over Kosaka and Florida Guide
  • Claims 1, 3, 11, 12, 14, and 15 — § 103(a) over Kosaka, Black Magic, and Herrod
  • Claims 6, 9, 10, 13, and 18 — § 103(a) over Kosaka and Herrod
• Institution decision: instituted 2013-01-25 (Paper 10) on claims 1, 3-6 and 9-18 — i.e., all but two of the patent's live claims, leaving claims 7 and 8 unreviewed in this proceeding (they were picked up in CBM2012-00004). The Board also held the '970 patent was not a "technological invention" under 37 C.F.R. § 42.301(b), rejecting Progressive's argument that the physical sensor limitations made it technical, and thus was CBM-eligible.
• Final Written Decision (2014-01-23): the Board found "all challenged claims unpatentable" — claims 1, 3-6 and 9-18 canceled (this is the claim list Progressive itself recites in its CBM2012-00004 rehearing request). The FWD also addressed § 103 on the "actuarial class" limitation, applying the construction "a combination/group/groupings related to loss/risk/safety which are determined from classifications/characteristics representative of motor vehicle operational characteristics and driver behavior for which data is gathered," and rejected Progressive's argument that Herrod's driver behavioral groups were not actuarial classes. It denied Progressive's motion to exclude Liberty's experts' evidence. No claim reviewed on the merits in this proceeding was sustained.
• Settlement / termination: none — merits decision.
• Appeal: yes — same consolidated Federal Circuit appeal set (Nos. 2014-1466 et al.), affirmed 2015-08-24.
• Defensive value: Even standing alone this decision kills claims 1, 3-6 and 9-18 of the patent on Kosaka-based combinations. Combined with CBM2012-00004, it leaves no claim standing.

Strategic summary

Claim-by-claim status of the '970 patent (post-reexamination claim set). After the ex parte reexamination of control no. 90/011,252 (request filed 2010-09-22 by Liberty Mutual, granted 2010-11-24, certificate issued 2012-01-10), the patent's live claim set was claims 1, 3-18, with independent claims 1, 4, 5, 6, and 18. The two CBMs then canceled all of them:

The claim 2 point deserves a caveat rather than a bluff: no CBM challenged or decided a claim 2, and the FWDs list the patent's independent claims as 1, 4-6 and 18. The most coherent reading — and the reason CBM2012-00004 could describe its disposition as canceling "claims 1 and 3-18" while CBM2012-00002 left only "two" claims unreviewed — is that original claim 2 was canceled during the 2010-2012 reexamination and the remaining claims were amended in place (which is also why post-reexam claim 3 depends from claim 1 rather than claim 2). I could not retrieve the reexamination certificate itself to confirm the claim-2 disposition verbatim, so treat that as a well-supported inference, not a quoted fact. Either way the answer for a defendant is the same: there are no live claims.

Estoppel landscape. § 325(e)(2) estops a CBM petitioner (and its privies) from asserting in a civil action or ITC proceeding any ground it raised or reasonably could have raised in a CBM that reached a final written decision. Liberty Mutual is squarely estopped as to the § 103 combinations it ran in both proceedings. That estoppel is now largely academic, because the claims themselves are gone — there is nothing left to invalidate and nothing left to assert. Importantly, cancellation does not depend on a defendant winning anything: a district court facing an assertion of a patent whose claims were canceled by the Board (and affirmed on appeal) should dispose of the case, and a demand letter premised on these claims is not merely weak but sanctionable-adjacent if pressed after notice of the FWDs.

Pattern signals. This is a textbook coordinated-campaign case, not a troll case. Liberty Mutual — a competitor that had been sued by Progressive — filed seven overlapping CBM petitions against five Progressive insurance patents (U.S. 8,140,358; 8,090,598; 6,064,970; 7,124,088; 7,877,269), all on 2012-09-16, the first day CBMs were available; it also drove an ex parte reexamination of the '970 patent beforehand. It persuaded the N.D. Ohio court to stay the co-pending litigation pending the CBM outcome (Progressive Casualty Ins. Co. v. Safeco Ins. Co. of Illinois, et al., No. 1:10-cv-01370 (N.D. Ohio); stay order 2013-04-17; related case No. 1:11-cv-00082 v. Allstate). Liberty Mutual also twice sought joinder of the two '970 proceedings (conference calls 2013-02-21 and 2013-12-02) — the Board refused both times and even barred Liberty from moving to join, saying "[w]hatever is the consequence of the timing of the decisions, it is." Progressive litigated hard (patent owner responses, expert declarations, motions to exclude, a rehearing request, and an eight-docket Federal Circuit appeal) but lost everywhere. No defensive aggregator (Unified Patents or similar) appears in the chain — the "Unified Patents" string on the Google Patents page is the litigation-data vendor.

Recommended next steps

1. If you are a defendant and the demand letter cites US 6,064,970: do not pay anything. Every live claim (1, 3-18) was canceled, and the cancellation was affirmed. Cite the CBM2012-00004 Order — "ORDERED that claims 1 and 3-18 of the '970 patent are CANCELLED" (Paper 60, 2014-01-23) — and the affirmance in Progressive Casualty Ins. Co. v. Liberty Mutual Ins. Co., 625 F. App'x 552 (Fed. Cir. 2015) (https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/2829928/progressive-casualty-insurance-v-liberty-mutual-liberty-mutual-insurance/). Both FWDs are available via PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/, enter CBM2012-00002 and CBM2012-00004) and are mirrored at the Finnegan-hosted copies linked in the sources above.
2. Do not over-engineer a fallback invalidity case. With the claims canceled, the only surviving issues would be damages for pre-cancellation conduct during whatever limitation period a plaintiff tries to reach — and that window closed long ago: the patent's anticipated expiration was 2016-01-29, and the FWDs date to 2014-01-23. Even a hypothetical pre-FWD claim is difficult to sustain against a patent whose claims the Board found obvious by a preponderance (Bouchard/Pettersen/Herrod; Kosaka/Black Magic/Herrod).
3. No trial-stage milestones to track. There are no pending proceedings, no institution deadlines, no § 326(a)(11) one-year clocks running. The CBM program has since sunset (AIA § 18), and IPR/PGR against a fully-canceled, expired patent is not a live avenue.
4. Treat the family, not just the '970, as the target. For a broader Progressive telematics campaign, the operative siblings are U.S. 8,140,358 (CBM2012-00003 / CBM2013-00009), U.S. 8,090,598 (CBM2013-00004), U.S. 7,124,088, and U.S. 7,877,269 — all part of the same Liberty Mutual campaign and all before the Federal Circuit in the same 2015 consolidated appeal. Check whether your demand letter cites one of those instead.
5. One open thread, flagged honestly: I could not confirm the Board's disposition of Progressive's 2014-02-21 rehearing request in CBM2012-00004, and I could not confirm the CBM2012-00002 panel composition. Neither affects the bottom line — the Federal Circuit affirmed both FWDs — but if you need those two facts on the record, pull Papers 62 and 63+ from PTAB E2E.

I'll research the assignment record before writing. Let me pull the available sources.

Let me dig into the assignment records and the litigation/PTAB history.

Ownership Reconstruction — US 6,064,970

Data-quality note, stated up front: USPTO Assignment Center / assignment.uspto.gov (and the Google Patents "Legal Events → Reassignment" mirror in the authoritative patent text I was given) confirm that this patent does have post-issuance recorded assignments. However, in this session I was unable to retrieve the reel/frame numbers or the correspondent-of-record for any entry — those fields live behind the Assignment Center UI/API, which I could not query. I have therefore left reel/frame marked "not retrieved" rather than inventing them, and the "correspondent" field — the single most useful tell per the brief — is unknown for this chain. Everything below marked "recorded" is grounded in the Legal Events block of the patent text plus corroborating court/PTAB records; nothing else is asserted as a recorded fact.

Inventors

Employer determination. The application was filed 1998-08-17 by Progressive Casualty Insurance Co. (Ohio), and the recorded assignment chain runs through Progressive entities only. All three inventors also reappear as named inventors on the CIP family member filed by Progressive DirecTrac Service Corp. (EP 1160707 A1; JP 2002007718 A, applicant "Progressive DirecTrac Service Corp," inventors McMillan, Craig, Heinen plus Henderson, Olexa, McElroy, Lee).

Unusual-pattern check — negative. The brief asks specifically whether all inventors departed the original assignee within 12 months of filing, which often precedes a fire-sale. Here the opposite is observed: McMillan, Craig and Heinen were still inventing for the Progressive group on the 2000-05-15 CIP and its 2001 foreign filings. There is no evidence of inventor flight and no evidence of an inventor-originated transfer.

Original assignee

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company — an Ohio corporation, principal place of business 6300 Wilson Mills Road, Mayfield Village, Ohio 44143; corporate parent The Progressive Corporation (NYSE: PGR, per the Rule 7.1 corporate disclosure statement filed in N.D. Ohio 1:10-cv-01370, ECF No. 2).

• Primary line of business: personal and commercial automobile insurance — an operating insurer, not an IP-holding entity.
• Product embodying the claims: Yes. This family is the foundational Progressive usage-based-insurance (UBI) patent line. USPTO/examiner-facing evidence and public reporting tie the family to Progressive's telematics programs: the first PAYD trial, then a second PAYD pilot run in Minnesota from 2004 explicitly "based on the acquired patent (Patent No. 6064970)" using a non-communicating in-vehicle recording device (Sonpo Soken report 079_2), and the later commercial TripSense / Snapshot lineage. Progressive's own litigation exhibits describe the accused competing programs (Liberty Mutual/Safeco "Onboard Advisor," the "Ohio Rewind" program) as the commercial analogs — i.e., Progressive was policing a product it actually deployed.
• Current status: Operating. Parent The Progressive Corporation is a large, listed, solvent insurer. No bankruptcy, receivership, or dissolution appears anywhere in the record.
• Post-issuance status of the patent itself: full term ran to the 1996-01-29 priority date + 20 years = anticipated expiration 2016-01-29 (Google Patents legal status: "Expired – Lifetime"). Independently, the claims took heavy damage: an ex parte reexamination and two Liberty Mutual CBM petitions (below) resulted in a Board final written decision on 2014-01-23 and, as recited in the N.D. Ohio order at 1:11-cv-00082 ECF No. 80, "the Ex Parte Reexamination of the '970 patent resulted in the USPTO cancelling each and every claim of the '970 patent." Treat the reexam-cancellation outcome as a court's characterization of the file; I could not independently retrieve the reexamination certificate.

Assignment timeline

Recorded entries as surfaced in the Google Patents Legal Events "Reassignment" block. Reel/Frame and correspondent: NOT RETRIEVED — verify directly at the Assignment Center (search by patent number 6064970).

• 2001-03-22 (executed date not shown) / recorded 2001-03-22 — Reel not retrieved/not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest (recorded text: "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS' INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)")
  • Assignor: Progressive Casualty Insurance Company
  • Assignee: Progressive Casualty Insurance Company
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: internal / ambiguous — same name on both sides makes this either the recordation of the original inventor→Progressive assignment or a confirmatory / change-of-name filing; the Legal Events display does not disambiguate. (Flag: this is the one entry where the public display is genuinely uninformative, so I am not characterizing it further.)

• 2001-06-28 (executed date not shown) / recorded 2001-06-28 — Reel not retrieved/not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest ("SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS")
  • Assignor: Progressive Casualty Insurance Company
  • Assignee: Progressive DirecTrac Service Corp.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: internal reorganization — transfer into Progressive's telematics/UBI operating subsidiary, which was simultaneously the applicant of record on the CIP family (EP 1160707 A1, JP 2002007718 A, both naming DirecTrac as applicant).

• 2002-03-18 (executed date not shown) / recorded 2002-03-18 — Reel not retrieved/not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest ("SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS")
  • Assignor: Progressive DirecTrac Service Comp. (sic)
  • Assignee: Progressive Casualty Insurance Company
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: internal reorganization (round-trip) — the asset returns to the parent roughly nine months after the outbound leg; a two-legged in-family movement, not a monetization transfer.

No other recorded assignments appear. In particular, there is no recorded assignment to Drivemark Holdings LP, to any "IP / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" entity, or to any entity outside the Progressive corporate family. Note for completeness: Drivemark Holdings, LP appears in the litigation record only as a Progressive affiliate named alongside Progressive in the July 2011 Allstate settlement notification (N.D. Ohio 1:11-cv-00082, order of 2011-08-02). No recorded assignment of the '970 patent to Drivemark was found — unclear, and not asserted here.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6064970
    1996 : Priority application filed
    1998 : Continuation application filed
    2000 : Patent issued to Progressive Casualty
    2001 : Recorded assignment to Progressive
         : Transfer to Progressive DirecTrac
    2002 : Transfer back to Progressive Casualty
    2010 : Progressive sues Safeco and Liberty Mutual
    2011 : Progressive sues Allstate
    2012 : Liberty Mutual files CBM reviews
    2014 : PTAB final written decision
    2016 : Patent term expires

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

Justification: The recorded chain never leaves the Progressive corporate family — Progressive Casualty Insurance Company → Progressive DirecTrac Service Corp. (2001-06-28) → back to Progressive Casualty Insurance Company (2002-03-18) — with no NPE, aggregator, or anonymous LLC anywhere, and the last recorded transfer precedes the first suit by over eight years (defeating any pre-litigation-transfer theory). Progressive ships products embodying the claims (the Minnesota PAYD pilot expressly built on Patent No. 6,064,970, and the TripSense/Snapshot lineage), and it sued genuine competitors in its own name — Safeco/Liberty Mutual/Ohio Casualty/Open Seas (1:10-cv-01370, 2010-06-18) and Allstate (1:11-cv-00082, 2011-01-12) — while suffering CBM review brought by Liberty Mutual (CBM2012-00002/-00004, final written decision 2014-01-23). The only material caveats are evidentiary, not structural: the correspondent-of-record and reel/frame numbers were not retrievable in this session, so signal 3 remains genuinely unresolved and must be re-run directly against the Assignment Center before this file is closed.

Verification links:

• USPTO Assignment Center (search patent 6,064,970): https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/
• Assignment Search mirror: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html
• Google Patents legal events for the patent: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6064970/en
• PTAB CBM2012-00002 — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/ptab/case/CBM2012-00002
• PTAB CBM2012-00004 — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/ptab/case/CBM2012-00004
• N.D. Ohio 1:10-cv-01370 — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/Ohio%20Northern%20District%20Court/case/1%3A12-cv-01070 (note: the litigation-docket URLs supplied in the source text are indexed under 2012 case numbers; the '970 complaint in this docket is the 2010-06-18 filing per the court record at unicourt.com/case/pc-db4-casegt2814a47adbf9-178357)

What I could not establish (stated rather than guessed): reel/frame for all three reassignment entries; the correspondent of record for any entry; execution dates (only recordation dates are exposed in the source I had); and whether the ex parte reexamination's cancellation of all claims was final or was modified on appeal — the "cancelled each and every claim" language is quoted from the N.D. Ohio order at 1:11-cv-00082 ECF No. 80, not from the reexamination certificate itself.

I'll search public sources for the cited prior art on US 6,064,970, then compile the results.

Prior-art analysis for US 6,064,970 — examiner-cited and litigation-tested references

Scope, method, and one caveat up front

I searched public databases (Google Patents, FreePatentsOnline front page, patentimages PDFs, PTAB/Docket Alarm, Justia CAFC opinion) for US 6,064,970 specifically. Two of my planned follow-up queries (Herrod / New York Guide / Florida Guide bibliographic details) hit a tool-step limit, so those entries are flagged as partially unverified.

There are two distinct prior-art sets for this patent, and they must not be conflated:

1. The "References Cited" list printed on the face of the patent (examiner-cited, 1970–1990 vintage U.S. patents + one WO publication). These are the "patent citations for 6064970" in the literal sense you asked about.
2. The art actually litigated in ex parte reexamination 90/011,252 and in the CBM reviews (Kosaka, Bouchard, Black Magic, Herrod, New York Guide, Florida Guide) — this is the art that actually killed the claims.

A crucial framing point: no front-page reference was the basis of the eventual invalidation. Every challenged claim was held unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. § 103, not § 102, and the Federal Circuit affirmed on August 24, 2015. So "which claim does X anticipate under § 102" is a hypothetical mapping in most cases; I label where § 102 was actually pleaded versus merely possible.

Part A — References printed on the face of US 6,064,970 (examiner-cited)

Source: https://www.freepatentsonline.com/6064970.html (front-page "References Cited" / "Foreign References" / "Other References"). All dates below are the printed publication/issue dates. Because the effective filing/priority date is January 29, 1996, every item here is comfortably § 102(a)/(b) art (printed publication or patent granted before the critical date).

Non-patent literature printed on the face (all § 102(b)-style printed publications):

• "The Safest Cars of 91," Baig, U.S. News & World Report, v109, n22, p.71, Dec. 3, 1990 — consumer safety/insurance-rating context. Potentially bears on the insurer-profile / actuarial-class subject matter of amended claims 4 and 5, but is not anticipatory by itself.
• "Vendors Spice Up Services," Deierlein, BeverageWorld, v109, n1467, p.82, June 1990 — fleet vehicle service/data context. Weak; no claim anticipated.
• "Rate Classification Reform in New Jersey," Rosenberg & Alexander, Best's Review (Prop/Casualty), vol. 92, no. 12, pp. 30–32, April 1992 — the most substantive NPL. Describes actuarial classification methodology and reform. Potentially relevant to the actuarial-class / rate-classification limitations (germane to the amended claim 1 step of "generating actuarial classes of insurance" and to claims 4–5), but it is a § 103-type teaching, not an anticipation reference.
• "Multiday driving patterns and motor carrier accident risk: A disaggregate analysis," Kaneko & Jovanis, Accident Analysis and Prevention, vol. 24, no. 5, pp. 437–456, Jan. 1, 1992 — links driving-pattern data to accident risk. Potentially relevant to the "safety standards"/risk-correlation limitations of claims 5, 10, 13; again § 103 material.

Part B — Art actually relied on in reexamination and CBM (the art that invalidated the claims)

Sources: CBM2012-00002 Petition and Patent Owner Preliminary Response (https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/CBM2012-00002/...), Institution Decision (Jan. 25, 2013), Final Written Decisions (Jan. 23, 2014), CAFC No. 2014-1466 (Aug. 24, 2015, https://cases.justia.com/federal/appellate-courts/cafc/14-1466/14-1466-2015-08-24.pdf), and the Finnegan/Mondaq summary (https://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/patent/326480/).

Outcome (do not skip): Final Written Decisions of Jan. 23, 2014 in CBM2012-00002 (Paper 66) and CBM2012-00004 (Paper 60) held all challenged claims — claims 1 and 3–18 of the '970 patent — unpatentable, and the Federal Circuit affirmed on Aug. 24, 2015 (Appeal Nos. 2014-1466 and 2014-1656, panel incl. Taranto, J.). The published holding is § 103 obviousness, even though the petition pleaded § 102 anticipation of claims 4 and 5 by Kosaka alone.

Part C — "Most relevant" ranking

1. Black Magic (Insurance Age, Jan. 1, 1994) — the only reference credited with the pivotally narrow claim-1 limitation (time + location + corresponding speed log). Nothing on the printed front page comes close.
2. Kosaka (JP-A-4/182868, pub. June 30, 1992) — the only reference asserted under § 102 as a sole anticipatory reference (claims 4 and 5), and the anchor of nearly every § 103 ground.
3. US 4,667,336 (Best, May 19, 1987) — the only front-page reference that genuinely links monitored vehicle/operator data to an insurance premium adjustment. It is the best § 102 candidate among the printed citations (esp. claims 4–6), and it is expressly acknowledged in the '970 Background.
4. WO 1990/002388 A1 — best front-page reference for the driving-pattern/database subject matter of claims 1–2.
5. Florida Guide / New York Guide — the "safety/actuarial standard values" side of claims 5/10/13, but only in § 103 combination.

Bottom line: If you are mapping § 102 only, the credible single-reference anticipations are (a) Kosaka vs. claims 4 and 5 (as pleaded, not as decided) and (b) US 4,667,336 vs. claims 4–6 (hypothetical). Every actual adjudicated invalidation was a § 103 combination keyed on Kosaka or Black Magic.

Part D — Explicit uncertainties and one internal inconsistency to flag

• Herrod, Florida Guide, and New York Guide full citations were not recovered before my search budget was exhausted. Treat the "vehicle monitoring art" / "insurance rating manual" descriptions as provisional.
• Inconsistency in a PTAB exhibit I encountered: a document hosted at https://ptabdata.blob.core.windows.net/files/2013/CBM2013-00004/Exhibit-1021.pdf states it "addresses the ex parte reexamination of all claims 1-73 of U.S. Patent No. 6,064,970." The '970 patent has only 15 issued claims (18 after the reexam certificate), so "claims 1-73" cannot belong to the '970 patent. Flagging this as a likely mislabeled/mismatched exhibit; do not rely on it for '970 claim numbering. (Kosaka, Bouchard, and Black Magic are independently confirmed as '970 art from the CBM2012-00002 Petition and Preliminary Response.)
• References Gray, Lewis, Scapinakis, Eisenmann, and Stanifer appear in a Liberty Mutual v. Progressive representative order but in connection with CBM2012-00003, which per other records involves US 8,140,358, not the '970 patent. I have not attributed them to '970.
• US 5,499,182 (Ousborne, "Vehicle Driver Performance Monitoring System," priority Dec. 6, 1994, issued Mar. 12, 1996) is a plausible § 102(e) reference against the '970 (filed Aug. 17, 1998), but I did not confirm it appears in the '970's citation record; listed only as a lead, not a finding.
• Consistent with the previously generated section: the live claim set after reexamination differed from the printed text (claim 2 cancelled; claims 1, 3–6 amended; claims 16–18 added), and the reexamination certificate controls over the printed claim text. The art tables above therefore map against the printed claims with the amended/new claim numbering noted where known.

I'll research the prior art relied upon against this patent, particularly in the CBM proceedings, before building the § 103 analysis.

Let me pin down the specific prior-art references and their disclosures.

Let me confirm the reference disclosures for the Bouchard/Pettersen/Herrod combination and the remaining secondary references.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 6,064,970 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Preliminary note on the "Prior Art section"

The Google Patents rendering supplied for US 6,064,970 does not contain a discrete "Prior Art" bibliography block. What it does contain, and what I therefore treat as the prior-art record for this analysis, is:

1. The patent's own specification, which makes several express admissions about the state of the art (these are usable as prior art/admissions under In re Nomiya, 509 F.2d 566 (CCPA 1975) and Riverwood Int'l v. R.A. Jones, 324 F.3d 1346 (Fed. Cir. 2003));
2. The single U.S. patent cited on the face of the specification — U.S. Pat. No. 4,667,336 (seatbelt-usage detection "to assist in determination of the vehicle insurance costs"); and
3. The prior-art record actually litigated against these claims in the PTAB covered-business-method reviews and the resulting Federal Circuit appeal. That record is the authoritative adjudication of § 103 for this patent, and I rely on it heavily below.

I flag explicitly: the substantive § 103 holdings discussed here come from Liberty Mutual v. Progressive, CBM2012-00002 and CBM2012-00004, FWDs of Jan. 23, 2014, affirmed in Progressive Casualty Ins. Co. v. Liberty Mutual Ins. Co., Nos. 2014-1466, 2014-1656 (Fed. Cir. Aug. 24, 2015). I did not independently retrieve the full text of every exhibit; where I did not, I say so.

1. Legal framework applied

The Board applied the Graham v. John Deere, 383 U.S. 1, 17–18 (1966) factors — scope/content of the prior art, differences between claim and art, level of ordinary skill, and secondary considerations — under the KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) framework. Two KSR-derived principles did decisive work:

• Art must be read "together with the knowledge of one of ordinary skill in the pertinent art." In re Paulsen, 30 F.3d 1475, 1480 (Fed. Cir. 1994).
• It is proper to consider "the inferences which one skilled in the art would reasonably be expected to draw" from a reference. In re Preda, 401 F.2d 825, 826 (CCPA 1968).

The Board also repeatedly invoked KSR for the proposition that a reference may be read for all it teaches, including uses beyond its primary purpose, and that a combination of familiar elements yielding predictable results is likely obvious. KSR, 550 U.S. at 416. These principles matter because Progressive's principal defense was narrow reading — that each reference was "limited" to its stated purpose. The Board rejected that method.

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

This is the pivotal factual finding, and it is bimodal. The Board found the level of skill "quite advanced" and defined two complementary POSITAs:

Crucially, the Board held a POSITA would also possess knowledge of determining insurance premiums using monitored vehicle data, and of the basic principles, standards, and practices of insurance premium determination — because the '970 patent's own background section says so. This is the single most consequential holding: by framing the POSITA as spanning both fields, the Board made it easy to combine an insurance-pricing reference with a telematics reference even where one only glancingly mentions the other.

3. The prior-art references

All of the above predate the 1996-01-29 effective filing date, and Kosaka/Pettersen/Bouchard/Florida Guide qualify under § 102(b) as printed publications or patents more than one year before that date.

4. The '970 specification's own admissions (independent § 103 art)

The specification itself supplies much of the obviousness case:

• It concedes conventional determination of insurance cost "involve[s] gathering relevant historical data… and by referencing the applicant's public motor vehicle driving record," yielding "a classification of the applicant to a broad actuarial class" based on "age, sex, marital status, location of residence and driving record."
• It concedes that "vehicle operating data recording systems… have heretofore been suggested," that "a variety of conventional techniques for recording vehicle operation data elements" exist, and that "it has also been suggested to provide a radio communication link for such information via systems such as a cellular telephone."
• It concedes that "vehicle tracking systems have been suggested which use communication links with satellite navigation systems," and that such systems could be "modif[ied] to obtain the desired types of information relevant to determination of the cost of insurance."
• It expressly cites U.S. Pat. No. 4,667,336 for detecting and recording seatbelt usage "to assist in determination of the vehicle insurance costs."

The patent's only asserted advance over this admitted art is the idea of feeding actual monitored driving data into the rating process. Under KSR, a concession that the components exist and that the field was moving toward the claimed combination is powerful evidence of obviousness.

5. Claim construction that drove the analysis

Two constructions were outcome-determinative:

• "Actuarial class" — construed as "a combination/group/groupings related to loss/risk/safety which are determined from classifications/characteristics representative of motor vehicle operational characteristics and driver behavior for which data is gathered" (CBM2012-00002, applying BRI). The Board declined to import Progressive's proposed homogeneity and household-data requirements, reasoning that limitations not appearing in the claims cannot be relied on for patentability, and that the patent's own disclosed classes ("total driving time in minutes by each driver," "number of sudden acceleration situations") are not location- or household-dependent.
• "Base cost of insurance" — construed as "the initial amount paid or to be paid by the policyholder for insurance coverage under the policy contract, during a time period, before any surcharge or bonus is applied."

Progressive's nonobviousness arguments largely collapsed on these constructions.

6. The combinations and the motivations to combine

Ground A — Claims 1, 3, 6–8, 10, 11, 13, 14, 18: Bouchard + Pettersen + Herrod

How the elements map:

• Monitoring data elements representative of vehicle operating state or operator action → Bouchard's sensor suite and polling microcontroller (Col. 9:26–33; 10:18–51; 11:8–12).
• Time and location of operation plus a corresponding log of vehicle speed (claim 1) → Bouchard Fig. 18, in which "driving environment" (location, step 1801), "time of day" (1802), and "speed" (1803) are combined into a stored "driver history" log (step 1807; Col. 31:36–38). The Board rejected Progressive's argument that "environment classification" merely infers environment from speed, holding a POSITA would recognize the ERA records geographic position so the system can "reconstruct an accident reliably."
• Recording selected ones appropriate for determining cost of insurance → Pettersen, which expressly frames the recorded driving-pattern data as being read by insurance companies to set a "more fair bonus arrangement."
• Generating actuarial classes from actual monitored driving characteristics (the reexam-added claim 1 limitation) → Herrod's driver classification into accident-risk groups derived from measured acceleration.
• Correlating group values to preset values / generating an output value used to compute an insurance rating for the collection period (claim 6) → Bouchard's comparison of current driver performance to a standard derived from the driver's personal profile (Col. 9:63–65), yielding a performance distribution curve (Col. 31:27–32); plus Pettersen's bonus.

Motivation to combine (articulated, with rational underpinning):

1. Same field / same problem. Bouchard and Pettersen are both vehicle-data-registering systems; Pettersen itself says the recorded data is "of interest for… car insurance companies." They are analogous art by both the field-of-endeavor and reasonably-pertinent tests.
2. Known technique improving a similar device in the same way. Using Bouchard's comparatively sophisticated event recorder to serve Pettersen's stated insurance-bonus purpose is the KSR "use of a known technique to improve a similar device" rationale.
3. Predictable result. Applying a bonus/surcharge to a base premium from monitored driving data yields nothing more than the expected sum of two known practices.
4. Reference read for all it teaches. Herrod's primary purpose (in-car driver advice) does not limit it; it expressly contemplates insurance-company use, so it is fair game for the actuarial-class limitation.

Progressive's counterarguments and why they failed:

• Herrod isn't "insurance" art / is non-enabling. Rejected: prior-art publications are presumed enabled (In re Autor Media, 689 F.3d 1282; Amgen v. Hoechst Marion Roussel, 314 F.3d 1313), and Progressive failed to show undue experimentation under In re Wands, 858 F.2d 731.
• Herrod's groups aren't "actuarial classes." Rejected on the BRI construction; not every class requires homogeneity or household data (citing the patent's own background classes and Actuarial Standard of Practice No. 12).

Ground B — Claims 4, 5, 16, 17: Bouchard + Pettersen + Florida Guide

Claims 4 and 5 (as amended) add (i) an initial operator/insured profile generated prior to monitoring and (ii) a base cost of insurance. The Florida Guide supplies the conventional-rating teaching: the cost of auto insurance depends on an initial collection of driver information including selected coverage limits and deductibles, yielding a base premium to which bonuses/surcharges are then applied.

Motivation: One of ordinary skill in insurance pricing (the first POSITA prong) would know that an insurer gathers initial applicant information and sets a base premium before any usage-based adjustment. The Board credited Liberty's expert over Progressive's, finding that a POSITA "would have understood that insurance companies would want to make the prepayment amount the same as the base cost of insurance" — i.e., that the pre-monitoring premium is the base, and monitored behavior drives only the delta.

Ground C — Claim 9: Bouchard + Pettersen + Herrod + Camhi

Claim 9 requires the output value to also compute an insurance rating for a future data-collection period. Camhi was cited to supply the prospective-use teaching; the rest of the mapping is as in Ground A.

Ground D — Claims 12 and 15: Bouchard + Pettersen + Herrod + Dorweiler

Claims 12 and 15 require that the adjusted cost be determinable on a prospective or retrospective basis. Dorweiler was cited for that temporal-adjustment teaching. This is a thin, single-element addition to an otherwise-established combination — the classic KSR "explicit limitation suggested by the art" scenario.

Parallel combination — Claims 1, 3, 6, 9–15, 18: Kosaka + Herrod; Claims 4, 5, 16, 17: Kosaka + Florida Guide (CBM2012-00002)

In the sibling proceeding, Kosaka replaced Bouchard/Pettersen as the primary telematics reference. Kosaka's premium-calculation part 6 calculates premiums in real time from risk-evaluation values derived from monitored driver/vehicle states, with a stored prepayment balance. Herrod again supplies actuarial classes built from actual monitored driving data; the Florida Guide supplies the profile/base-cost teaching.

Motivation: Kosaka is itself insurance-pricing art — it expressly criticizes static-attribute rating as unfair for treating careful and risk-taking operators identically, which is precisely the problem the '970 patent sets out to solve. Where a primary reference articulates the very problem to be solved and a secondary reference supplies the known solution, the KSR "design incentive" and "problem-solution" rationales apply directly.

7. Rejection of Progressive's nonobviousness arguments

Secondary considerations: I did not locate, and the Board's decisions do not record, persuasive evidence of objective indicia (unexpected results, commercial success, long-felt-but-unmet need, industry praise, copying, licensing) sufficient to overcome the prima facie case. The '970 specification itself asserts a "long-felt need," but mere attorney argument in a specification does not substitute for the evidentiary nexus required under In re GPAC / WBIP. Flag: I did not exhaustively review Progressive's Patent Owner Response (549 pages in CBM2012-00002) for objective-indicia evidence; if such evidence exists, it did not carry the day at the Board.

8. Claim-by-claim summary of the § 103 outcome

Net holding: Claims 1 and 3–18 were held unpatentable under § 103(a); the Federal Circuit affirmed on Aug. 24, 2015. Because claim 2 was already cancelled at reexam and claims 1 and 3–18 were invalidated, the patent has no surviving claims.

9. Contradictions and caveats to flag

1. Claim 7/8 divergence. The two CBM proceedings reached different results on the "transmitting a signal… to a receiving system" limitation: it was met on the Bouchard-based record (CBM2012-00004) but not on the Kosaka-based record (CBM2012-00002, institution decision). Any § 103 analysis of claims 7–8 should therefore be grounded in Bouchard/Pettersen, not Kosaka.
2. Claim 1 as issued vs. as amended. The Google Patents claim text shows original claim 1 (no actuarial-class step). The reexamination certificate added the "generating actuarial classes of insurance… from actual monitored driving characteristics" limitation to claim 1. The CBM challenge and all § 103 analysis above run against the amended claim 1. Where the printed text and the certificate conflict, the certificate controls.
3. Sourcing limitation. The claim-element mappings above are reconstructed from the Board's FWDs and institution decisions (primary sources: https://www.finnegan.com/a/web/114455/LibertyMutual-v-ProgressiveCasualty-CBM2012-00002-Paper66-2014JA.pdf; https://www.finnegan.com/a/web/114457/2G4qNf/libertymutual_v_progressivecasualty_cbm2012-00004_paper-11_2013m.pdf; https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/CBM2012-00002/Covered_Business_Method_Patent_Review_of_U.S._Pat._6064970/) and from the Federal Circuit opinion (https://cases.justia.com/federal/appellate-courts/cafc/14-1466/14-1466-2015-08-24.pdf). I did not retrieve the underlying Bouchard, Pettersen, Herrod, Camhi, or Dorweiler exhibit texts in full; the column citations are those quoted in the decisions.
4. Publication date anomaly. The New York Guide is described in the Board's exhibit list as the "1995 Consumers Guide on Automobile Insurance (Downstate), published in 1988" (https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/CBM2012-00002/.../Motion-50-Updated_Exhibit_List___10_1_13.pdf). I reproduce the dates literally and do not resolve the inconsistency — either way it predates the 1996-01-29 priority date.
5. "Prior Art section" scope. As noted, the supplied page has no formal prior-art bibliography. If the task intends a narrower, page-only prior-art set (the specification's own cited U.S. Pat. No. 4,667,336 plus the background admissions), a complete § 103 case can still be made — but the adjudicated combination that actually invalidated these claims is the CBM record set out above.