US 6175922

I'll search for the specific patent number and any CAFC litigation involving it.

Let me dig further into litigation/CAFC dockets and the specific claim text.

US Patent 6,175,922 — Summary

Sourcing note: I retrieved this via live web search (Google Patents, Espacenet, USPTO report mirrors, PACER-derived litigation trackers). I was not able to query USPTO PatentCenter or the CAFC docket system directly. Treat the bibliographic data below as consistent across the sources I did see, but flag any item I mark as uncertain.

Bibliographic data

Continuity (important): The '922 patent is a continuation-in-part of US 09/067,176 (filed Apr. 27, 1998), which is itself a continuation of US 08/759,555 (filed Dec. 4, 1996), now US 5,917,913 ("Portable electronic authorization devices and methods therefor"). That 1996 filing is the source of the 1996-12-04 priority date. Note that the issue date (2001) is well after the 1996 priority, and the patent expired in 2016.

Assignment chain (per Google Patents legal-events listing, which the page itself cautions is not a legal conclusion): eSign, Inc. → Esignx Corporation (2001) → eSign Inc. (2007) → eSign, Inc. (2010) → Otomaku Properties Ltd., L.L.C. (2010) → eSign, Inc. (2010) → Esignx Corporation (2011) → Callahan Cellular L.L.C. (2015) → Servstor Technologies, LLC (2022, from Intellectual Ventures Assets 170 LLC).

Abstract (verbatim)

"A method and apparatus is disclosed for approving a transaction request between an electronic transaction system and a portable electronic authorization device (PEAD) carried by a user using an electronic service authorization token. The method includes the steps of receiving at the PEAD first digital data representing the transaction request. The PEAD provides information to the user regarding an ability to approve the transaction request. When the transaction request is approved by the user, the PEAD receives second digital data representing the electronic service authorization token. In one aspect of the invention, the method and apparatus include a remote agent server that provides a bridge between the electronic transaction system and the PEAD. In yet another aspect of the invention, the method and apparatus are used at a point of sale location. Advantages of the invention include the ability to securely and conveniently perform transactions with a portable device."

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Based on the claim text published at the SumoBrain full-text mirror (I did not retrieve the complete official claims from USPTO/PatentCenter, so numbering of the first independent claim is my best reconstruction and is flagged):

• Independent method claim (point-of-sale form) — reconstructed, claim number uncertain; likely an early independent claim such as claim 1. A method for approving a transaction request between an electronic point-of-sale transaction system and a PEAD carried by a user, comprising: receiving at the PEAD, at a point-of-sale location, first digital data representing the transaction request; [presenting the request to the user and obtaining approval]; and returning approval data. (I have only a fragment of this claim, so the full limitations are uncertain.)

• Claim 18 — Method using an "electronic service authorization token." A method for approving a transaction request between an electronic transaction system and a PEAD carried by a user, in which the PEAD receives first digital data representing the transaction request, the user is shown/asked about approving it, the PEAD receives second digital data representing the electronic service authorization token, the PEAD transmits the token data back to the transaction system, the system validates the token, and the system authorizes the service if the token is valid.

• Claim 25 — Method via a remote agent server. A method for approving a transaction request between an electronic transaction system and a PEAD carried by a user using an electronic service authorization token via a remote agent server, comprising: receiving at the remote agent server first digital data representing the transaction request; providing information to the user through the PEAD about the ability to approve; and when the user approves, receiving at the remote agent server second digital data representing the electronic service authorization token.

• Claim 33 — Apparatus claim (PEAD, remote-agent-server architecture). A PEAD for approving a transaction request with an electronic transaction system using an electronic service authorization token via a remote agent server, comprising: an Internet connection at the remote agent server configured to receive first digital data representing the transaction request; a receiver in the PEAD configured to receive from the remote agent server, and to provide to the user, information about the ability to approve the request; and wherein, upon user approval, the Internet connection is further configured to receive second digital data representing the electronic service authorization token.

Representative dependent claims (18–38 excerpts): the token may be an electronic hotel room key, airline ticket, theater ticket, or coupon (claims 19, 26, 34) or an electronic car key (claim 18 per the description); the token may be encrypted with the token issuer's private key (claims 20, 27, 35) and validated by decrypting with the token issuer's public key (claim 21); the token issuer may be a hotel, airline, movie theater, supermarket, car rental service, or merchant (claims 22, 28, 36); transmission may be over a wireless communication port (claims 23, 37); the authorized service may be opening a hotel room, theater admittance, airplane boarding, discounting the transaction amount, or igniting a car (claim 24); the remote-agent-server receipt may be over the Internet (claim 29); information may be provided to the user in audio format (claim 30); the PEAD may be a cellular phone (claims 31, 38); and user approval may involve entering a password to the remote agent server (claim 32). The claim set appears to run to at least claim 39+.

Specification context (from the full text you provided): the core technical story is that all approval and encryption happens inside the portable device — the user's private key and identification data are held in memory blocks that are not directly coupled to any I/O path and are reachable only through the encryption logic, so the key/ID data never leaves the device. Public-key cryptography (RSA, Diffie-Hellman, discrete-log, elliptic-curve, etc.) is used, with optional issuer-key-encrypted configuration data, one-time-write memory (PROM/WORM), optional scrambling or on-device key generation (logic 413/414), tamper-responsive key destruction, and biometric user authentication. The specification also describes a downloaded transaction program (TP)/applet (Java, ActiveX, HDML) that auto-detects a transaction-approval device, and an "xAgent" software agent that can run in a web phone or on a remote "Agent Server" for ordinary cellular phones (Bluetooth, infrared, GPS-assisted POS linking, etc.).

CAFC / litigation check

I found no CAFC (Federal Circuit) 2026 docket, opinion, or appeal involving US 6,175,922. I want to be explicit about this rather than infer one:

• The patent's own record shows expiration on 2016-12-04 (anticipated expiration), which would make a 2026 merits appeal on the '922 patent itself unusual.
• The current assignee, Servstor Technologies, LLC, does appear in Eastern District of Texas patent litigation in 2022–2024 (e.g., v. Wiwynn, 2:22-cv-00161; v. Atos SE, 2:23-cv-00106; v. Celestica, 2:23-cv-00181; v. Inventec, 2:23-cv-00184; v. Lenovo, 2:24-cv-00204; v. MediaTek, 2:24-cv-00760; v. Broadcom, 2:24-cv-00761), but the asserted patents in those suits are the 6,738,930 / 7,000,010 / 7,191,274 / 7,310,750 / 7,870,271 family and the 7,603,476 / 7,643,476 / 7,688,814 / 7,742,473 family — not 6,175,922. Those cases also appear to have resolved by voluntary dismissal with prejudice rather than merits rulings.
• The only "6175922" appearances I saw in other documents were prior-art citations (in PCT search reports and foreign prosecution, e.g., cited as an "X"/"P,X" reference) and a PTAB petition exhibit list — not as a patent in an active CAFC appeal.

Uncertainty statement: I cannot rule out a very recent CAFC filing that post-dates my search index, or a docket that references the '922 patent only tangentially (e.g., as part of a family/priority dispute). If you need a definitive negative, the authoritative sources would be the CAFC's own docket/opinion search and PACER/PatentCenter, which I was not able to query directly here. Any claim that US 6,175,922 is currently on a 2026 CAFC docket would be unsupported by what I found.

I'll search multiple litigation databases for this specific patent number.

Initial searches found no litigation hits — mostly prior-art citations. Let me search the specific litigation databases.

Still no direct litigation hits. Let me try several more targeted angles.

Litigation Search — U.S. Patent No. 6,175,922 B1

Search date: 2026-09-29 (system date) / task date given as 2026-04-26 — see the date-discrepancy note in §5.
Patent searched literally: 6,175,922 / 6175922 — "Electronic transaction systems and methods therefor," Ynjiun P. Wang, granted 2001-01-16, expired 2016-12-04.

1. Bottom line

No litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 6,175,922 was found. I searched litigation-oriented sources and patent databases for the literal numbers 6,175,922 and 6175922 and found no complaint, docket, case number, judgment, or settlement in which 6,175,922 is a patent-in-suit — in any district court, in the ITC, or on the Federal Circuit. I am not going to manufacture a case to fill the requested fields.

Every hit for the string 6175922 in my searches resolved to one of three things, none of which is litigation over this patent:

No entry in the requested table — plaintiff, defendant, jurisdiction, case number, filing date, outcome — exists for this patent on the record I could reach.

2. What I searched, and the negative result

• Litigation portals / NPE trackers: RPX Empower, Unified Patents portal (portal.unifiedpatents.com), Stanford NPE Litigation Database (npe.law.stanford.edu), Justia dockets, Docket Alarm, Patexia. I searched each for the literal patent number and for the assignee names Servstor Technologies LLC, Callahan Cellular L.L.C., Otomaku Properties Ltd., eSign / eSignX, and "portable electronic authorization device."
• Patent-number search on the Unified Patents portal surfaced a US-6175922-B1 page — but it is a patent-information page (showing that '922 is itself cited by later documents, e.g., the "Referenced By (66)" list on US 2010/0177970 A1). That is citation data, not an assertion.
• Case-law/docket aggregators: no opinion or docket turned up referencing "6,175,922" as a patent-in-suit.

Result: a negative. I found no case to enumerate.

3. Adjacent cases that are frequently confused with this patent — none names '922

The assignee of record and its chain are active litigants, so if you were given a case number "involving Servstor" you may have been handed one of these. Each asserts a different patent. I list them so you can check a demand letter or docket citation against the right number:

Key point: the ServStor campaign asserts the Charles Frank / Ludwig / Hanan / Babbitt server-and-storage patents (6,738,930; 7,000,010; 7,191,274; 7,310,750; 7,870,271). The '922 patent is a completely different technology and a different inventor team (Wang, PEAD / electronic-authorization). The Stanford NPE database's ServStor party page and the RPX docket pages for these cases confirm the asserted patents do not include 6,175,922. Do not fold these into a '922 analysis.

I also confirmed that no suit naming 6,175,922 appeared in the Callahan Cellular / Intellectual Ventures activity (e.g., the Travelers Indemnity Co. v. Intellectual Ventures I LLC et al., D. Del. 1:26-cv-00397, and the Hartford parallel action, in which Callahan Cellular is a defendant). Those are declaratory-judgment actions over IV's other assets, and '922 is not among the asserted patents on the record I retrieved.

4. Why the negative is plausible (consistency check, not proof)

This negative is consistent with what the earlier sections of this analysis already established, and I want to be explicit that this is corroboration rather than independent verification:

1. The patent expired 2016-12-04 (anticipated expiration, "Expired – Lifetime"). The § 286 damages tail closed 2022-12-04. A suit filed in 2022–2026 asserting only '922 would recover nothing.
2. The last transfer was 2022-01-04 (Intellectual Ventures Assets 170 LLC → Servstor Technologies LLC) — five-plus years after expiration. That conveyance looks like the patent riding along inside a bundled IV asset sale, not a targeted pre-suit pickup.
3. No PTAB proceeding, no CAFC appeal — both previously established — is consistent with a patent that was never commercialized in litigation.

However — flagging a contradiction risk in the record: the earlier sections state the claim set runs to 76 claims with independents 1, 6, 18, 25, 33, 45, 53, 66, 67, 76, and that the disclosure describes a hotel-key/e-ticket/agent-server/POS platform. A patent that broad and that on-point for 2000s e-commerce is a natural litigation candidate, so the absence of any suit is a real finding, not an artifact of the patent being obscure. I could not identify any suit against the '913 parent (US 5,917,913) or the 8,225,089 / 7,635,084 / 8,016,189 siblings in this session either — but I did not run a dedicated per-patent search on those, so I state that as not checked, not as a negative.

5. Discrepancies and sourcing limits — read before relying on this

1. Date discrepancy (flagged, not resolved). The task states current date April 26, 2026; the system context states 2026-09-29; the previously generated Obviousness section also used 2026-04-26 while the PTAB section used 2026-09-27. This ~5-month spread matters here only at the margin: it does not change the conclusion (the patent expired in 2016 either way), but any "as of" date you put in a filing should use one date consistently.
2. I could not query PACER or the CAFC docket directly. My searches were web searches against public aggregators. The negative is therefore "no litigation found," not a certified nullity. A negative in PACER is only definitive when run against the court's own docket system, and PACER access was not available in this session.
3. The record shows the patent being cited, never asserted. Every 6175922 hit I retrieved was a citation, a Boolean search string, or a coincidence of digits. None was a case caption.
4. Literal-number discipline observed. I did not auto-correct 6,175,922 into any neighbouring number. Note the traps that will recur: US 6,175,743 (Ericsson SMS patent, same 2001-01-16 grant date — appears twice in my results literally adjacent to 6175922), US 6,175,860 / 6,175,864 / 6,175,887 (same-day grant cluster), and EP 0 572 592 (Luwa AG textile testing). Also note the OCR-garbled ISR strings earlier flagged, e.g. "US 0325:55 B1" / "AU 5871913" — these are corrupt renderings of US 6,282,656 B1 and US 5,917,913, and they are not citation data for '922.

6. Recommended verification steps to close the negative definitively

If you need a defensible "no litigation" statement for a filing or opinion, run these before relying on this section:

1. PACER Case Locator (pcl.uscourts.gov) — search the full-text party/patent field for 6,175,922. This is the authoritative check; I could not run it here.
2. CourtListener / RECAP — https://www.courtlistener.com/?q=%226%2C175%2C922%22 (comma-formatted) and %226175922%22 (unformatted). Run both; the formatting differences produce different result sets.
3. Unified Patents litigation caselist — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist — and the Unified Patents patent page for US-6175922-B1, checking the "Litigation" tab (not the citation/"Referenced By" tab, which is what I retrieved).
4. USPTO Patent Assignment Center (https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/) — confirm the 2022-01-04 IV Assets 170 → Servstor transfer and check whether any security agreement, license, or exclusive-license recordation exists. A recorded exclusive license would be the likeliest reason a patent could be asserted by someone other than the recorded assignee.
5. ITC EDIS (https://edis.usitc.gov/) — Section 337 investigations are not in district-court databases and would be missed by PACER alone.
6. Run the same checks per-patent on the family — US 5,917,913 (parent), US 8,225,089, US 7,635,084, US 8,016,189 — since a family member with a later expiration could be the actual asserted patent, and the demand would still "look like" a '922 assertion.

Conclusion: On the record available to me, no litigation is known involving U.S. Patent 6,175,922. The patent expired 2016-12-04, its damages window closed 2022-12-04, it has no PTAB record and no CAFC docket, and every appearance of the number 6175922 in public documents is a prior-art citation, a Boolean search string, or an unrelated identifier. I state this as a finding of absence, and I have deliberately not named any case, plaintiff, defendant, or docket number for this patent, because inventing one would be the single most damaging error I could make in this section.

I'll verify the ODP's "no proceedings" result against public records before concluding.

Let me run additional targeted checks for CBM/reexam activity and the litigation backdrop.

PTAB / AIA Trial Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 6,175,922

Patent: U.S. 6,175,922 B1, "Electronic transaction systems and methods therefor" (Wang; eSign, Inc.)
App. No. 09/523,825 · Filed 2000-03-13 · Granted 2001-01-16 · Priority 1996-12-04 (via US 08/759,555, now US 5,917,913)
Claims on face of patent: 1–76 (independent claims 1, 6, 18, 25, 33, 45, 53, 66, 67, 76)
Current assignees of record per Google Patents: Servstor Technologies LLC; Callahan Cellular LLC; eSignx Corp
Legal status: Expired – Lifetime; anticipated expiration 2016-12-04

Proceedings overview

There are zero (0) AIA trial proceedings on file against U.S. 6,175,922 — the USPTO Open Data Portal returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM involving this patent, and my independent web searches surfaced no proceeding number, institution decision, or Final Written Decision naming 6,175,922 as the challenged patent; the defensive posture this gives a defendant is therefore not "hardened by PTAB wins" but something better: the patent expired on 2016-12-04, its claims were never PTAB-tested, and as of 2026-09-27 essentially no damages window remains — an assertion letter citing these claims is a monetization gesture against a dead patent, not a live PTAB-risk event.

I found no proceedings to enumerate. Rather than fabricate entries, the section below documents the negative result, the adjacent record (where the patent does appear in PTAB files), and the true defensive value, which here comes from expiration rather than adjudication.

No proceeding — none located

• Type: N/A (no Inter Partes Review, Post-Grant Review, or Covered Business Method Review on file)
• Filed: N/A
• Status: Per the canonical structured data: "The USPTO ODP API returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent as of the most recent ingest." Web search surfaced no proceeding the ODP had not yet indexed. Net: no AIA trial activity.
• Judge panel: N/A — no panel ever convened on this patent.
• Petition grounds: N/A. For the record, what could have been filed: IPR (§§ 102/103, patents and printed publications only) at any time after 2012-09-16; but PGR was never available (PGR applies only to patents filed on/after 2013-03-16 — this application was filed 2000-03-13), and CBM review is no longer available to any petitioner (AIA § 18 sunset, petitions due by 2020-09-16).
• Institution decision: None. No § 314(a)/(b) or § 324(a) decision exists.
• Final Written Decision: None. There is no FWD, so no claim of 6,175,922 has been canceled, confirmed, or held unpatentable by the Board. I will not attribute outcomes to claims the Board never addressed.
• Settlement / termination: N/A. (Note: ex parte reexamination and pre-AIA inter partes reexamination are not AIA trials and would not appear in the ODP AIA-trial dataset. My searches returned no reexamination certificate or reexam control number for 6,175,922, but I could not conclusively exclude a reexam from the record assembled in this session — treat "no reexam" as unverified, not confirmed.)
• Appeal: None — with no FWD there is nothing appealable under 35 U.S.C. § 319, and no CAFC docket could exist for this patent.
• Defensive value: Your IPR/CBM door is closed for reasons unrelated to the merits — the patent lapsed for failure to reach expiration on anything but the original 20-year term and is expired as of 2016-12-04. The relevant question for a defendant today is therefore not "how do I invalidate it at the PTAB" but "is there any actionable damages period left," and the answer is essentially no (see below).

Where 6,175,922 does show up in PTAB files (it is cited, never challenged): the patent appears as a prior-art reference / claim-chart entry in other parties' PTAB papers — e.g., copies of petition exhibits in which "6175922" is listed alongside patent numbers such as 7,167,543, 6,260,147, and 6,175,743 — and in a PTAB record describing it as "C 178 US PAT 6175922 ELECTRONIC TRANSACTION SYSTEMS AND METHODS THEREFOR, Assignee: eSign, Inc." in a list of prior-art references. It also appears as a family member in the search reports of later-filed applications (e.g., WO 01/54084, WO 02/067211). None of this is a proceeding against the '922 patent.

Strategic summary

Claim status: all 76 claims UNTESTED, and all 76 claims EXPIRED. Independent claims 1, 6, 18, 25, 33, 45, 53, 66, 67, 76 and every dependent claim — including the token-centric claims 2–5 (hotel key / airline ticket / theater ticket / car key / coupon, issuer-private-key encryption) and the POS/link-up claims 55–65 (GPS proximity, barcode/OCR entry of a POS terminal ID, Bluetooth/IR) — stand exactly as granted. There is no narrowing claim — no certificate of cancellation, no certificate of reexamination amendment, no reissue, no disclaimer reflected in the record I assembled. Nothing about this patent has been adjudicated at the PTAB. The practical consequence: you cannot tell a court "claims 1–5 are canceled." Conversely, and more importantly, you also cannot be accused of infringing them going forward, because the patent's term ended 2016-12-04 (20 years from the 1996-12-04 priority; the listed anticipated expiration date is 2016-12-04, and I saw no indication of a § 154(b) term extension or PTA that would push it later).

Estoppel landscape: there is none, and none is possible. Because no IPR/PGR/CBM was ever instituted, § 315(e)(2) estoppel never attached to anyone. No petitioner, privy, or real party in interest is barred from any ground. If you are currently defending against this patent, you may raise any § 102/§ 103 ground in district court, plus § 101 (Alice/Mayo — this is a G06Q20/xx-classified patent with claims drafted largely at the level of "receive data, provide information, receive a token," a soft target on eligibility) and § 112 grounds, free of any PTAB estoppel overlay. The only meaningful IPR-related constraints are the ones everyone faces: the one-year § 315(b) bar from service of an infringement complaint, and the general disutility of an IPR on an expired patent (the Board applies a Phillips-style construction to expired claims, and there is no injunction to prevent, so an IPR would be an expensive way to obtain a piece of paper about a dead patent). IPR is not your tool here; expiration and § 286 are.

Pattern signals: the interesting pattern is the absence of one. This is a 1996-priority patent in an e-commerce/authentication space (G06Q20/02, G06Q20/32, G06Q20/34, H04L63/04, G07F7/08) that would have been a textbook CBM candidate between 2012 and 2020 — the claims are financial-services-flavored, and later patents in the same field were CBM'd at high rates. Yet no defendant ever filed a CBM or IPR against it. The most plausible explanation is temporal: the patent's term ran out on 2016-12-04, and by the time the CBM/IPR era was in full swing the patent had roughly four years of life left, a shrinking § 286 damages tail, and an ownership chain that was already moving toward non-practicing holders. There is no serial-petitioner pattern, no defensive-aggregator involvement (no Unified Patents, no RPX-filed petition), no Patent Owner motion to amend, and no PTAB appeal. The ownership chain — eSign, Inc. → eSignX Corp → eSign, Inc. → Otomaku Properties Ltd. (2010-02-04) → Callahan Cellular L.L.C. (2015-12-29) → Intellectual Ventures Assets 170 LLC → Servstor Technologies, LLC (2022-01-04) — shows the asset was monetized through the IP holding/roll-up channel after the AIA trial regime was in place, which is consistent with a portfolio whose remaining value was in grouping and licensing rather than in assertion of this particular expired patent.

One more asset to remember: 6,175,922 is a continuation-in-part of 09/067,176, itself a continuation of 08/759,555 (US 5,917,913). If a demand letter or complaint invokes this family, verify which patent is being asserted. The '922 patent expired 2016-12-04 and is on the face of the record the one the PTAB has cited as prior art against others — not a claim set with live teeth.

Recommended next steps

1. Check the demand letter's patent number and issue date first. If it cites U.S. 6,175,922, the patent expired 2016-12-04. Any damages theory must run from infringement occurring on or before that date, subject to the six-year lookback of 35 U.S.C. § 286 — which closed on 2022-12-04. As of 2026-09-27, a complaint asserting only this patent is effectively a claim for pre-2016 conduct already time-barred. Confirm there is no term extension, reissue, or later-expiring continuation being smuggled in under the same family name.
2. Verify the negative on the official systems before relying on it. Search PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptabweb/), the PTAB Decisions database (https://www.uspto.gov/patents/ptab/decisions), and Docket Navigator / CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com/?q=%226%2C175%2C922%22) for both the patent number and the family (5,917,913; 8,225,089; 7,635,084; 8,016,189). The ODP AIA-trial dataset is authoritative for AIA trials but does not cover ex parte reexaminations, pre-AIA inter partes reexaminations, or interferences — my search found no evidence of any for 6,175,922, but I could not rule them out with the record gathered here, and a reexam certificate that amended a claim would matter.
3. If a live sibling patent is in suit (5,917,913 is the parent; 8,225,089 / 7,635,084 / 8,016,189 share the PEAD disclosure), do the PTAB check per-patent, not per-family. Because the family shares one specification and priority chain, arguments you develop on this disclosure travel well — and, usefully, the '922 patent's own issued claims and prosecution history are fair game as prior art and as admissions against the later members.
4. Do not spend IPR money on the '922 patent. With no estoppel attached, no live claims, and no injunction exposure, the cost-effective defensive posture is a § 286 / expiration-driven motion and an Alice-eligibility challenge if a sibling patent is asserted, not a Board petition against a patent whose term ended in 2016.

Bottom line for a defendant: there is no PTAB record to lean on because there is no PTAB record at all — and for this patent, that is a stronger answer than a canceled claim. No claim of 6,175,922 has ever been canceled, sustained, or even reviewed; the entire claim set expired on 2016-12-04; and the last date on which recoverable damages could have accrued for this patent passed in 2022. Treat any assertion of U.S. 6,175,922 in 2026 as an expired-patent demand and respond accordingly.

Caveat on fabrication: I did not locate, and have deliberately not created, any proceeding number, judge panel, institution decision, FWD, settlement, or CAFC docket for this patent. The absence of such items is the finding.

I'll gather what I can from live sources before writing, since reel/frame and correspondent data aren't in the Google Patents text I was given.

Good progress. Now let me dig into reel/frame data, litigation against this patent, and the correspondents on the recording side.

Data-availability caveat (read first)

I could not retrieve the reel/frame numbers or the recording correspondents for this patent's assignments in this session. The USPTO Assignment Center (assignmentcenter.uspto.gov) and its legacy index are not machine-readable from here, and my searches returned the Google Patents legal-events table and third-party assignment aggregators (Justia, Limestone, Unified Patents) but not the reel/frame + correspondent fields. Every entry below is grounded in the Google Patents legal-events table supplied with this patent and in the third-party sources cited. I have not invented reel/frame numbers or attorney names; where the record requires them, the field is marked [not retrieved]. The prosecution-side agent data point I do have is labelled as such and is not an assignment correspondent.

Inventors

Notes:

• The patent is a continuing application: this case (09/523,825, filed 2000-03-13) is a continuation-in-part of 09/067,176 (filed 1998-04-27), itself a continuation of 08/759,555 (filed 1996-12-04, issued as US 5,917,913). Priority date 1996-12-04.
• Sibling family members name Joshua C. Ding (San Jose, CA) and James A. Grizzard (San Jose, CA) as co-inventors — e.g., US 8,225,089 and PCT/US02/05701 (WO 02/069291), where eSignX Corporation is the applicant of record. So the family has a three-inventor team; this specific patent names only Wang.
• Departure pattern: not determinable. Wang is the sole named inventor here, so an "all inventors left within 12 months" test has no purchase on this record. What is observable is that the entire Wang PEAD family was sold away by the original assignee in 2010 (see timeline) — a portfolio wind-down, addressed below. Wang is independently widely credited as a prolific inventor in barcode/imaging patents assigned to other companies (Symbol Technologies, Metrologic, Hand Held Products), but I could not verify the exact employment chronology from live sources in this session, so I state that as unverified background rather than a finding.

Original assignee

• Assignee on the face of the issued patent: Esign, Inc. (Original Assignee: Esign Inc per Google Patents; citing documents list the 2001-01-16 grant as "Esign, Inc.") — which later appears under the name eSignX Corporation in the PCT filing of the same family.
• Line of business: an early-stage electronic-authentication / digital-signature startup commercialising the "PEAD" (portable electronic authorization device) claimed here — a key-fob or card-shaped device that holds the user's identification data and private key and signs transaction approvals locally. The disclosure (FIGS. 5A–6B) describes IR, RF, contact and PCMCIA interfaces, biometric sensors (Thomson-CSF Fingerchip FC 15A140; Veridicom FPS110), and implementation on Palm/Newton PDAs and Nokia/Ericsson/Motorola phones — plus a much broader vision of hotel keys, e-tickets and car ignition tokens.
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Unclear / no evidence found. I found no live evidence of a commercially shipped eSign/eSignX PEAD in this session. The disclosure is heavily implementational, which suggests prototyping, but I will not assert a shipped product.
• Current status: not operating. The company's patent family was transferred out to Otomaku Properties Ltd., L.L.C. in February 2010, and by 2010–2011 recordings show only chain-of-title confirmatory paperwork in the eSign/eSignX names. That pattern is consistent with a wind-down/asset-monetisation. I found no bankruptcy filing for eSign/eSignX (so signal 6 is not present, not "present but unverified").

Assignment timeline

Recorded assignments for US 6175922, as reflected in the Google Patents legal-events record. Execution dates are not exposed by that source, so I list recording/publication dates and mark execution date as [not retrieved].

1. [exec not retrieved] / recorded 2001-03-19 — Reel [not retrieved]

   • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
   • Assignor: ESIGN, INC.
   • Assignee: ESIGNX CORPORATION
   • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
   • Context: internal reorganisation / rename-adjacent transfer — the operating company's patent moves to the eSignX Corporation name four months after grant.

2. [exec not retrieved] / recorded 2007-05-31 — Reel [not retrieved]

   • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
   • Assignor: ESIGNX CORPORATION
   • Assignee: ESIGN INC.
   • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
   • Context: reverse direction of entry 1 — chain-of-title housekeeping between the two affiliated names.

3. [exec not retrieved] / recorded 2010-01-14 — Reel [not retrieved]

   • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
   • Assignor: ESIGNX CORPORATION
   • Assignee: ESIGN, INC.
   • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
   • Context: repeat of entry 2, re-recorded — again housekeeping, forming the "clean" assignor name used three weeks later.

4. [exec not retrieved] / recorded 2010-02-04 — Reel [not retrieved]

   • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
   • Assignor: ESIGN, INC.
   • Assignee: OTOMAKU PROPERTIES LTD., L.L.C. (Dover, DE)
   • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
   • Context: fire-sale / portfolio divestiture by the original assignee. Otomaku Properties is the first non-operating holder in the chain; the same entity holds sibling family members US 8,016,189 and US 8,225,089, both naming Wang.

5. [exec not retrieved] / recorded 2010-12-20 — Reel [not retrieved]

   • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
   • Assignor: WANG, YNJIUN P. (the inventor)
   • Assignee: ESIGN, INC.
   • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
   • Context: inventor-to-company confirmation — a late curative link in the chain (the inventor's own assignment being recorded after the company had already sold the asset to Otomaku).

6. [exec not retrieved] / recorded 2011-02-10 — Reel [not retrieved]

   • Conveyance: Confirmatory Assignment
   • Assignor: ESIGN, INC.
   • Assignee: ESIGNX CORPORATION
   • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
   • Context: Anomaly worth verifying at the Assignment Center. A confirmatory assignment back to eSignX recorded after the 2010-02-04 sale to Otomaku, and pointing at a different assignee than the sale. That is characteristic of either (a) corrective re-recording after a mis-recorded 2010 entry, or (b) family-wide blanket recordings being docketed against multiple members. It is not evidence of a competing ownership claim by itself.

7. [exec not retrieved] / recorded 2015-12-29 — Reel [not retrieved]

   • Conveyance: MERGER
   • Assignor: OTOMAKU PROPERTIES LTD., L.L.C.
   • Assignee: CALLAHAN CELLULAR L.L.C.
   • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
   • Context: intra-Intellectual-Ventures consolidation. Callahan Cellular L.L.C.'s disclosed corporate parent is Invention Investment Fund II, LLC (stated in Callahan Cellular's corporate-disclosure filing in The Travelers Indemnity Company v. Intellectual Ventures I LLC et al., D. Del. 1:26-cv-00397). The "merger" conveyance type indicates the Otomaku shell was folded into the Callahan shell rather than the patent being separately re-sold.

8. [exec not retrieved] / recorded 2022-01-04 — Reel [not retrieved]

   • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
   • Assignor: INTELLECTUAL VENTURES ASSETS 170 LLC
   • Assignee: SERVSTOR TECHNOLOGIES, LLC
   • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
   • Context: transfer-to-asserter (bundled IV divestiture). "Intellectual Ventures Assets NNN LLC" is IV's serial asset-disposal vehicle. Note the patent had already expired (2016-12-04) more than five years before this recording, so this conveyance cannot be a targeted pre-suit patent pickup for this patent.

Correspondent recurrence: Cannot be assessed — no correspondent fields retrieved on any of the eight links. The one related name I can offer is prosecution-side only, and I flag it as not a finding: William B. Patterson, Moser, Patterson & Sheridan LLP, 3040 Post Oak Blvd., Suite 1500, Houston, TX 77056, named as agent on eSignX's related PCT/US02/05701 (WO 02/069291). That is a patent-prosecution agent of record for a sibling application in 2002; it is not evidence of a recording correspondent on any 2010–2022 assignment, and Moser Patterson is a large firm that does both operating-company and monetisation work. Treat as a lead to check against the Assignment Center, not a signal.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6175922
    1996 : Priority application filed by Wang
    2000 : CIP application filed by Esign Inc
    2001 : Patent issued to Esign Inc
         : Assigned to eSignX Corporation
    2007 : Assigned back to Esign Inc
    2010 : Re-recorded to Esign Inc
         : Sold to Otomaku Properties
         : Inventor assigns to Esign
    2011 : Confirmatory assignment to eSignX
    2015 : Merger into Callahan Cellular
    2016 : Patent term expired
    2022 : Assigned to Servstor Technologies

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — PRESENT. Concrete, not naming-based. The 2010-02-04 recording moved the patent from the operating company Esign, Inc. to Otomaku Properties Ltd., L.L.C. (Dover, DE) — a Delaware-registered holding entity that also holds family members US 8,016,189 and US 8,225,089 and appears in Justia/Google Patents only as an assignee of Wang PEAD patents, never as a product company. That shell was then merged into Callahan Cellular L.L.C. (2015-12-29), whose corporate parent is disclosed as Invention Investment Fund II, LLC in Travelers v. IV I LLC et al., 1:26-cv-00397 (D. Del.). Documentation of the parent is what converts "shell-looking name" into a finding here.

2. Known asserter in the chain — PRESENT (strong). Two independent confirmations: (a) Callahan Cellular L.L.C. is named alongside Intellectual Ventures I LLC and Intellectual Ventures II LLC as a defendant in declaratory-judgment actions brought by The Travelers Indemnity Company (1:26-cv-00397, D. Del., served on Callahan Cellular 2026-04-09) and by The Hartford (D. Del., filed April 2026) — i.e., an active IV assertion family. Note Callahan Cellular also appears as current assignee on other patents with IV LLC stated as parent company in the Unified Patents portal (e.g., US 11,363,127; US 6,072,780). (b) Servstor Technologies LLC, the current assignee, is a documented serial plaintiff — see the Stanford NPE litigation database party page (ServStor Technologies LLC, "Cases where party is a Patent Asserter," incl. 2:22-cv-00250 v. Fujitsu, 2:23-cv-00106 v. Atos, 2:24-cv-00204 v. Lenovo) and RPX Insight entries for 2:22-cv-00162 v. Quanta, 2:24-cv-00761 v. Broadcom. Unified Patents tags ServStor's 2:22-cv-00221 (v. Acer, filed 2022-06-19) as "NPE (Patent Assertion Entity) — Intellectual Ventures LLC — Third Party Financing."

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR / NOT VERIFIED. No correspondent of record retrieved for any of the eight recordings, so recurrence cannot be tested. This is the single highest-value field to pull from the Assignment Center, because eight recordings across five entity names (2001–2022) is exactly the fact pattern where a single repeat filer is the common denominator.

4. Cascading transfers — PRESENT. Four recordings between 2010-01-14 and 2011-02-10 (a 13-month window): eSignX→Esign (2010-01-14), Esign→Otomaku (2010-02-04), Wang→Esign (2010-12-20), Esign→eSignX confirmatory (2011-02-10). Plus the 2015-12-29 merger, giving five ownership-affecting recordings in ~6 years and three distinct non-operating holder names (Otomaku → Callahan Cellular → IV Assets 170 → Servstor). I could not confirm that the intermediate entities share a correspondent address or common principals, because that data was not retrievable; the transfers themselves, however, are on the record.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT. The last transfer (2022-01-04, IV Assets 170 LLC → Servstor Technologies LLC) post-dates the patent's anticipated expiration on 2016-12-04 by over five years (Google Patents: "Expired – Lifetime"). And the ServStor complaints I reviewed name different patents-in-suit — the '271, '274, '010, '930 and '750 server/storage patents (inventors Charles Frank, Thomas Ludwig, Thomas Hanan, William Babbitt per the Lenovo complaint), not US 6175922. I found no infringement suit naming US 6175922. So there is no pre-suit reassignment of this patent to establish standing or venue.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT (no evidence). The 2010 sale out of Esign to Otomaku has the shape of a distressed exit, but I found no Chapter 7/11 filing for Esign, Inc. or eSignX Corporation. Do not label it a bankruptcy sale without a docket.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT. Esign/eSignX was a startup that had stopped operating by 2010; there is no evidence of an operating company funding assertion against its own competitors. The IV acquisition is classic IV aggregation, not a competitor-directed proxy.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT. The chain terminates at an asserter (Servstor Technologies LLC), not at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents or OIN. The inverse signal does not apply.

Verdict

NPE — high confidence.

Two independently evidenced strong signals drive it. First, a documented shell-entity transfer: 2010-02-04, Esign, Inc. → Otomaku Properties Ltd., L.L.C., later folded by merger on 2015-12-29 into Callahan Cellular L.L.C., an entity whose corporate parent is publicly disclosed as Invention Investment Fund II, LLC (Callahan Cellular's disclosure in Travelers v. IV I LLC et al., 1:26-cv-00397). Second, a known asserter at the end of the chain: 2022-01-04, Intellectual Ventures Assets 170 LLC → Servstor Technologies LLC, where Servstor is listed as a patent asserter in the Stanford NPE database (ten-plus suits 2022–2025) and whose 2:22-cv-00221 was tagged by Unified Patents as an IV-backed NPE with third-party financing.

Two qualifications I will not paper over: (i) no correspondent of record was retrievable, so signal 3 is unfalsified rather than cleared; and (ii) this particular patent expired 2016-12-04 and I found no suit naming it — it rode along inside an IV asset bundle rather than being asserted, so the verdict characterises the ownership chain, not an assertion campaign against US 6175922.

Verify the reel/frame and correspondent fields at the USPTO Patent Assignment Center: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ and the legacy index https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html — search patent number 6175922 and pull each reel/frame to fill the three [not retrieved] fields above.

I'll research the prior-art citations for US 6,175,922 directly from the patent's front page and related records.

Let me pull the front-page "References Cited" for 6175922 specifically, and confirm on FreePatentsOnline/Justia mirrors.

Let me try to retrieve the actual front-page reference list from the patent PDF text and USPTO full-text.

Prior-Art Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 6,175,922 B1

Patent: US 6,175,922 B1 — "Electronic transaction systems and methods therefor"
Inventor: Ynjiun P. Wang · Assignee of record: Esign, Inc. (original) → Servstor Technologies LLC (current)
App. No. 09/523,825 · Filed 2000-03-13 · Granted 2001-01-16 · Priority 1996-12-04 (CIP of 09/067,176 ← 08/759,555, now US 5,917,913)
Disposition of the patent itself: Expired – Lifetime; anticipated expiration 2016-12-04

1. Sourcing note — read before using the tables below

The record is asymmetric in a way that matters for a § 102 analysis, and I will not paper it over:

Bottom line on sourcing: the definitive (56) list for 6,175,922 must be pulled from the printed patent front page, USPTO PatentCenter/Patent Full-Text, or the patent PDF. Nothing below is invented; where I am working from a sibling rather than from '922, I say so in the row.

2. Guard against similar numbers (per instruction)

Searches for 6175922 reproduce several numbers that are not this patent and must not be folded in:

Also flagged: several OCR'd ISR annexes render '922's family members as garbled strings (e.g. "US 5629656 B1 29-08-2001", "AU 5871913", "US 0325:55 B1"). These almost certainly correspond to US 6,282,656 B1 (2001-08-28) and US 5,917,913, but I am not auto-correcting them; they are OCR artifacts and are not reliable citation data.

3. "Citations for 6175922" means two opposite things — they must not be mixed

The task asks for "each patent citation for 6175922." That phrase is ambiguous, and the two readings produce different legal conclusions:

• (A) References cited on the '922 patent (backward citations / "References Cited") → these are candidate § 102 prior art against '922. This is the analysis the task is really after, and it is the one where my retrieval is weakest (see §1).
• (B) Documents citing '922 (forward citations) → these show '922 being used as § 102 art against others. Useful evidentially (see §8) but they are not prior art against '922.

I analyze both, kept strictly separate.

4. The controlling date question — effective filing date per claim

This is the single most important input to any § 102 analysis of '922, and it is a genuine vulnerability:

'922 is a continuation-in-part. Claims supported by the 08/759,555/09/067,176 disclosure get 1996-12-04. Claims resting on CIP-added matter get only the 2000-03-13 filing date.

Internal evidence that substantial matter was CIP-added:

• The specification's own recital that "In one aspect of the invention, the method and apparatus include a remote agent server… In yet another aspect… used at a point of sale location" (abstract) — a classic CIP-new-matter framing.
• The specification names Apple Newton; 3COM Palm VII; Nokia 7110 Media Phone; Ericsson R280 SmartPhone; Motorola i1000 plus; Veridicom FPS110; SprintPCS NeoPoint 1000; Bluetooth. The Palm VII (1999), Nokia 7110 (1999), R280 (1999–2000), i1000 plus (1999) and Bluetooth all post-date 1996-12-04. Art the applicant describes as his own implementation platform in 1999–2000 cannot have been in a 1996 disclosure.
• Independent claim 31/38 recites the PEAD as "a cellular phone", claim 39 a two-way pager, claim 40 a wireless device.

Consequence: art published after 1996-12-04 but before 2000-03-13 is available against the token/agent-server/cellular/POS claims (18–44, 45–76). Critically, pre-AIA § 102(b) has no "by others" requirement, so the applicant's own pre-1999 publications become statutory bars against CIP-only claims if the priority chain fails for those limitations.

5. Table A — Patent references of record (family level; flagged)

Retrieved from US 7,635,084 and US 8,225,089, same-family continuations sharing the '922 disclosure. These are presented as the best available proxy, not as verified '922 front-page entries.

Foreign patent references of record on the family list (also flagged as family-level): WO 97/21188 (1997-06), WO 97/46980 (1997-12, "Personal identification"), WO 98/25371 (1998-06-11, "Portable electronic authorization devices and methods therefor" — the family's OWN PCT), WO 98/32093 (1998-07, "Security apparatus and method"), WO 99/46691 (1999-09, "Internet/intranet communication security utilizing entrance and exit keys"), WO 99/49613 (1999-09, "Cryptographic key-recovery mechanism"), WO 00/52866 (2000-09, Wang family), WO 01/003086, WO 01/024091, WO 01/069388 (2001-09, the '922 family's own PCT), WO 03/065318, EP 0 261 030 (1988-03), EP 1 152 378 (2003-03), CN 1211770 (1999-03), JP 10-320458 (1998-12), JP 11-252069 (1999-09), JP 2000-0069521 (2000-03), TW 355899 (1997-11), AU 200077342 (2001-04).

The single sharpest § 102 point in this entire table: WO 98/25371, the applicant's own PCT publication of the parent disclosure, published 1998-06-11. If claims 18–44 (token) and 45–76 (agent-server / POS) lack written-description support in 08/759,555 or 09/067,176, their effective date is 2000-03-13, and WO 98/25371 published more than one year before it → § 102(b) statutory bar regardless of common inventorship. This is a real, checkable attack that does not depend on finding third-party art at all. It is also the reason the (56) list on the '922 front page should be read with the '913/'176 priority documents side by side.

6. Table B — Non-patent references of record (family level)

7. Table C — References cited inside the '922 specification (fully verified)

Only one external document is cited in the '922 specification body:

Everything else the patent names (Apple Newton; 3COM Palm VII; Nokia 7110; Ericsson R280; Motorola i1000 plus; Motorola NC68HC05SC28; Infineon SLE 22/44/66, SLE66CX320S; Thomson-CSF Fingerchip FC 15A140; Veridicom FPS110; Netscape SSL; Java; ActiveX; HDML; Microbrowser; SprintPCS/NeoPoint 1000; Bluetooth) is named as commercial implementation detail, not cited as prior art — but those product names are themselves date evidence bearing on § 4.

8. Documents citing '922 — where '922 is the § 102 art, not the target

These are forward citations and are not prior art against '922. They matter for two reasons: (a) they show which portions of the '922 disclosure third-party examiners treat as its operative teaching; (b) they independently corroborate that the POS/token material was CIP-added.

Evidential payoff: two independent examiners locate the operative disclosure at columns 17:59–20:3 — the service-token/agent-server/POS passage — to invalidate point-of-sale claims. That is precisely the material the abstract frames as the CIP's new aspects, which is consistent with (though not proof of) claims 18–44 and 45–76 being entitled only to the 2000-03-13 date.

9. § 102 anticipation assessment, by claim group

I have verified claim text only for claims 18–40 (SumoBrain mirror). Claims 1–17, 41–76 are identified by their independent-claim numbers only (1, 6, 18, 25, 33, 45, 53, 66, 67, 76). That limitation is stated in every row.

Overall § 102 verdict. Across the claim set, no single reference of record appears to disclose every limitation of any independent claim that requires the PEAD's internal approval-plus-encryption architecture with I/O-isolated key storage. The realistic invalidity posture is § 103 for claims 1–17 and 66–76, and § 102(b)/§ 103 for the CIP-dated token, agent-server, cellular and POS claims (18–65) — where the decisive lever is not third-party art at all, but the priority/entitlement boundary: push those claims off 1996-12-04 and they become exposed to the applicant's own 1998 PCT (WO 98/25371), to 1996–1999 smartcard/NPL art (Fancher, Haber, Asokan), and to a crowded 1999–2000 field that includes a reference published eleven days before the CIP filing.

10. What I cannot tell you, and how to close it

1. I did not retrieve the actual (56) list from the '922 front page. Tables A and B are family-level proxies. Get the authoritative list from the printed patent front page, USPTO PatentCenter (App. 09/523,825, the "References Cited" / "Foreign References" / "Other References" boxes), Patent Full-Text (patft), or the Granted Patents PDF on patentimages.
2. I did not read any of the cited references. All "potentially anticipates" calls above are limitations-to-subject-matter mappings, not element-by-element readings. Every § 102 conclusion must be run against the reference text before it is relied on.
3. Two entries on the family reference list are not prior art at all (Fung et al., IEEE 2001; the US Office Action of 2008) — do not let them into a chart.
4. Verify the priority boundary claim-by-claim against US 5,917,913 and the 09/067,176 file. That single exercise is worth more than any additional prior-art search on this patent: it decides whether the token/agent-server/POS claims are measured from 1996 or 2000, and it is the difference between a strong patent and a § 102(b)-barred one.
5. Cross-check the prosecution history. The '922 file wrapper will show whether the examiner cited any art against claims 18–76 at all, and whether any terminal disclaimer, § 132 declaration, or priority statement was filed to keep the CIP claims on the 1996 date.

No contradiction with the previously generated sections was found. The claim inventory used here (76 claims; independents 1, 6, 18, 25, 33, 45, 53, 66, 67, 76) matches the earlier PTAB section, and the SumoBrain/Espacenet extracts confirm claims 18–40 verbatim. The earlier sections' caution that claims 1–17 were only partially reconstructed is confirmed and carried forward here.

I'll ground this analysis in the actual prior-art record for US 6,175,922 before constructing combinations. Let me pull the cited references and the key field art.

Good — I now have the field's core art grounded. Let me pin down a few more specific references (on-card signing/smart-card art, e-ticket art, and downloaded-applet/device-detection art) so the combinations rest on real documents.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 6,175,922 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Working date: On the date given for this task (April 26, 2026). Note: the previously generated sections of this analysis use 2026‑09‑27; the eight‑month discrepancy does not affect the § 103 conclusions below, since the patent has been expired since 2016‑12‑04 either way.

Source discipline. I ran searches before writing and did not obtain the citation table that normally appears on the Google Patents page for US 6,175,922 (the "Patent Citations"/"Cited By" tables were not present in the text supplied, and my searches returned the definition/keyword blocks rather than the citation table). I therefore built the prior‑art inventory from (i) references that appear as citations inside documents retrieved this session and (ii) the applicant's own admissions in the '922 specification. Every reference is labelled verified this session or unverified recollection. I have not invented a patent number or a citation. Where the claim text is incomplete, I say so.

Claim-text caveat carried forward. Two prior sections reconstructed the claims. The SumoBrain mirror retrieved this session supplies verbatim text for claims 18–39, which supersedes the reconstruction where they overlap. Claims 1–17 and 40–76 remain unaudited; my analysis of those groups is at the limitation‑concept level, not the limitation‑by‑limitation level, and is flagged accordingly.

1. Governing law and the standard

Pre‑AIA § 103 applies. Application 09/523,825 was filed 2000‑03‑13, before the AIA's effective date of 2013‑03‑16. So pre‑AIA §§ 102/103 govern, which matters: 102(e) references are measured from their own U.S. filing dates, 102(b) statutory‑bar references cannot be antedated by a Rule 131 declaration, and 103(c) common‑ownership shields apply only to commonly owned art.

The test. Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966) (scope/content, differences, PHOSITA level, secondary considerations); KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) (a combination of known elements is obvious where it does "no more than yield predictable results"; motivation may come from the references, the PHOSITA's knowledge, the nature of the problem, or market demand; "obvious to try" suffices where there are "a finite number of identified, predictable solutions"). In re Kahn / KSR require an articulated reason with rational underpinning.

Two structural facts drive everything below:

1. The '922 is a continuation‑in‑part. It is a CIP of 09/067,176 (filed 1998‑04‑27), itself a continuation of 08/759,555 (filed 1996‑12‑04, issued as US 5,917,913). The 1996‑12‑04 "Prior art date" on the face of the patent (per Google Patents) is therefore an assumption, not a conclusion — Google itself labels it as such.
2. The CIP added new matter. The service‑authorization‑token, remote‑agent‑server, and downloaded‑transaction‑program subject matter appears in the '922 disclosure but not in the 1996 parent. Claims resting on that new matter are entitled at best to 2000‑03‑13 (or 1998‑04‑27 if also supported in 09/067,176). That opens a 1997–1999 prior‑art window against those claims.

I did not perform a limitation‑by‑limitation § 112 support analysis of the two priority applications — I don't have them — so the priority allocation below is the standard provisional allocation a challenger would advance and a patentee would contest under Anascape / PowerOasis.

2. Person of ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA)

A bachelor's degree in electrical engineering or computer science, or equivalent, plus 2–3 years of experience designing secure electronic payment, smart‑card, or cryptographic systems — or a master's degree with 1–2 years. This person, as of the 1996 critical date, would know: public‑key cryptography and digital signatures (RSA, DSA), tamper‑resistant key storage on smart cards, point‑of‑sale terminals and stored‑value cards, and the difference between passive magnetic‑stripe cards and microprocessor cards. As of the 2000 date they would additionally know Java applets/ActiveX, browser plug‑in architectures, SSL, WAP/HDML microbrowsers, and short‑range RF (Bluetooth 1.0, 1999). The patent's own disclosure confirms this level: it lists RSA, Diffie‑Hellman, discrete‑log and elliptic‑curve systems, names specific Motorola and Infineon security controllers, and names Java, ActiveX and HDML as available languages.

3. Claim grouping and effective prior‑art window

The specification's own Summary of the Invention recites the Group C subject matter verbatim in three embodiments, which is useful because it fixes the claim substance without my needing the full claim text:

"receiving from the server at the requesting device a transaction program, which includes an executable portion… searching, employing the executable portion, for a transaction approval device associated with the requesting terminal. If the transaction approval device is detected, … employing the transaction approval device to approve the transaction request."

and

"…wherein the executable portion of the transaction program includes a first set of codes configured to encrypt the transaction approval data."

and the fallback:

"If the transaction approval device is not detected, … employing an input device associated with the requesting device to approve the transaction request."

Claim 33 (verified verbatim) is also notable for a drafting defect worth recording: it is an apparatus claim to "a portable electronic authorization device … comprising: an Internet connection at the remote agent server …" — i.e., the claimed apparatus is made to comprise structure belonging to a different entity. That is a § 112 ¶ 1/¶ 2 vulnerability independent of § 103.

4. Prior‑art inventory

4.1 Verified this session

4.2 Unverified this session — treat as leads, not evidence

• Hennige, multi‑function card storing data sets of all the user's cards with contactless (optical/inductive/capacitive) communication. The PTAB/Unwired‑Planet papers retrieved refer to "Hennige" (Ex. 1009) but I did not retrieve its patent number; I will not assert one.
• Open Market / CyberCash‑era network‑sales art (a "network sales system" that downloads a shopping/transaction application to a client browser, and a "digital active advertising" reference) — I believe these are US 5,715,314 (Payne et al.) and US 5,724,424 (Gifford), but I did not verify either number in this session.
• US 5,708,780 (Levergood et al.), server‑side client access control — unverified number.
• IBM's SET‑era secure e‑commerce system reference (believed US 5,790,677, Fox et al.) — unverified.
• Bluetooth 1.0 (1999) and Java Card 2.0 API (1996) — dates from recollection, unverified.
• GPS‑enabled mobile telephony patents (early 1990s) — recollection only.

Anyone running this as a real IPR‑style challenge must replace §4.2 with verified copies before the art is usable.

5. Combinations rendering the claims obvious

Group A — claims 1–17 (the core PEAD)

Primary combination: Gutman '838 + Fischer '953 (+ Rivest '829). Secondarily: Pitroda '038 + Fischer '953.

Why the combination discloses the claim. Gutman supplies every hardware and workflow element of a portable approval device: a hand‑held, battery‑powered unit with a controller, memory holding account data, a display, user input controls for approval, and a communication path to a financial institution. It even supplies the encryption element (a key stored in the device) and the key erasure on a control message. Fischer '953 supplies the one thing Gutman lacks: a tamper‑resistant private key held on the portable device itself, with the signing operation performed on the device and a time stamp automatically bound into the signature. Rivest supplies the public‑key scheme the '922 specification itself lists first.

Motivation. The '922 specification states the problem itself: in the prior art "the identification data is not encrypted before being entered into ATM 100"; "the storage of the user's private key within ATM 100 renders this private key vulnerable to theft"; and even for smart cards, "the transmission of these data to the requesting device unnecessarily exposes these data to risks of theft and/or unauthorized interception." That is the entire motivation, admitted on the face of the patent. Both references are in the same field (portable financial transaction devices — Gutman is classified in 235/379, 235/380, squarely the classification the '922 itself carries), so they are analogous art, and the field was one of ordinary mechanical/electrical combination: a POSITA seeking to eliminate terminal‑side key exposure would move Fischer's on‑chip signing engine into Gutman's portable wallet. The result is predictable, the substitution preserves each element's function, and there is a finite number of ways to do it (KSR).

Expectation of success. Both references are complete, enabled, commercial‑grade designs. Springing Fischer's key‑storage/signature module against Gutman's microcontroller, display, keypad, and IR/RF front end requires no undue experimentation. Fischer's own device is expressly designed to sit behind a "conventional smart card reading device" coupled to a PC — i.e., the interface problem was already solved in the art.

Dependent‑level refinements. Biometric user authentication, "complicated ID data," transmission over IR/wireless/RF, contact‑type plug, and optional display are each individually known or obvious: Pitroda's IR/RF option and Gutman's wand and RF antenna give the wireless limitation; Gutman's display and keypad give the user‑review step; the '922's own statement that displays "may be omitted… [and] the transaction… viewed… at a display associated with the electronic transaction system" shows the display is a design choice.

Weakest link. If any Group A claim (or its prosecution history) requires the specific architectural negative — the user ID data block and private‑key block having "no direct connection from any of the I/O data paths" and being reachable only through the encryption logic (FIGS. 3A/4) — that is a structure Fischer '953 does not describe in those words. A patentee would argue that a 1993–95 smart card's on‑chip security module is not the same as the claimed decoupling of memory from all I/O paths. Expect this to be the fight, and expect it to turn on an expert's testimony about standard smart‑card memory‑access architectures plus the specification's own admission that the claimed advance over the smart card was merely that a reader was needed. Under KSR's "predictable results" branch, that admission is damaging to the patentee.

Group B — claims 18–24 (the electronic service authorization token)

This is where the CIP priority bites.

Combination B1: Pitroda '038 + Fischer '953/'877 (or the Fischer family + FIPS 186). Pitroda discloses a portable card that (i) receives transaction information from a service institution, (ii) stores that information in the card, (iii) displays it and lets the user select/approve, and (iv) communicates with a point‑of‑sale terminal and a "main central computer." Fischer '877/'200 supplies the token‑as‑signed‑object: a value that a trusted issuer signs with its private key so the recipient can verify it with the issuer's public key. Claims 20–21 — "the electronic service authorization token can be encrypted by the token issuer's private key" and "decrypting… using token issuer's public key" — are the textbook signature/certificate scheme of Fischer '877 and FIPS 186. Claims 19/22/24 (hotel key, airline ticket, theater ticket, coupon, car key; opening the room, boarding, admittance, discount, ignition) are the enumerated commercial instantiations of that abstract token. Hotels, airlines and theaters had all issued access credentials by 1996; issuing them as a signed data object to a personal card is the predictable application of the known technology. Claims 23/37 (wireless port) are met by Pitroda's IR/RF option 39.

Combination B2 (ticketing‑specific): Vazvan (1996) + Fischer '953 + Pitroda '038. Vazvan is directed to mobile‑communication transaction and mobility solutions, giving the mobile‑user‑transacts‑remotely motivation.

Motivation. KSR's "market demand / design incentive" branch applies forcefully: eliminating paper tickets and physical keys reduces cost and settlement latency. The problem the claims solve — "how does the token I bought get into my device, and how does the door/gate know it's mine?" — was known and addressed commercially (stored‑value transit cards, magnetic hotel keys) before 1996.

Note the breadth. Verified claim 18 requires only: receive a transaction request at the PEAD; show the user they may approve; on approval, receive second digital data representing the token; transmit it back; validate; authorize. It does not require the user's signature over the token, nor any cryptographic binding of the token to the user. That is a claim to "hold a service token in a portable device and present it," which any smart‑card stored‑ticket system practices. Breadth of this kind helps the challenger and is a separate § 101 vulnerability.

Group B2 — claims 25–32 and 33–44 (remote agent server)

Combination: Gutman '838 + cellular telephony (GSM) + server‑side proxy/IVR art, optionally + Vazvan.

Gutman is unusually strong here because it already recites telephone interface circuitry 230, a modem 232, and a DTMF transceiver 234 driving communication over a telephone line to a central financial computer, with the wallet receiving confirmation messages remotely. Read claim 25's and 33's limitations against that:

• "receiving at the remote agent server first digital data representing the transaction request" → Gutman's central financial computer receiving the transaction.
• "providing information… via the portable electronic authorization device to user" → Gutman's display 108 and audible alert 110.
• "when… approved… receiving at the remote agent server second digital data" → Gutman's message/confirmation path.
• Claim 30 ("converting… to a audio format") → Gutman's DTMF/audible alert; plus ubiquitous phone banking IVR.
• Claim 31/38 (PEAD is a cellular phone) → routine substitution of the wallet's DTMF/modem path for a cellular handset.
• Claim 32 (password to the agent server) → PIN/password entry.

Motivation. The embodiment exists to serve ordinary (non‑web) cell phones. That is a stated problem in the specification ("an ordinary cellular phone not necessarily having web capability"), and thin‑client/server‑proxy architectures were the standard answer. KSR's "obvious to try" applies: there was a small, identified set of solutions (server‑side agent, WAP gateway, IVR), and the claimed one was among them. Note also that a claim to a portable device comprising an Internet connection that belongs to a remote server (claim 33) is not a technical advance over Gutman so much as a drafting artefact — see § 3.

Group C — claims 45–76 (downloaded transaction program)

Combination: network‑sales / active‑advertising art (browser downloads a transaction application and executes it) + Java applets/ActiveX (admitted) + device auto‑detection (Plug‑and‑Play / Java Card API) + SSL or applet‑resident crypto.

The three embodiments the specification recites for this group map directly onto the art:

1. "receive a TP from the server; search for a transaction approval device; use it if detected." The server‑delivered transaction application is the core of the 1995–97 browser commerce systems; the "search for a transaction approval device" is ordinary port/registry enumeration, the same problem Microsoft's Plug‑and‑Play solved for peripherals and that Java Card solved for card acceptance devices. The applicant's own admission that Java, ActiveX and HDML were available, and that browsers were available, makes the "executable portion" trivial.
2. "the executable portion… includes a first set of codes configured to encrypt the transaction approval data." Shipping the crypto in the downloaded applet is the standard applet model; the specification itself says the TP may be "backwardly compatible" and that if the requesting device has SSL, "the presence of the encryption codes in the TP may not be required" — an admission that the encryption placement is a design choice.
3. "if the transaction approval device is not detected, use an input device." Graceful degradation to keyboard entry is the routine back‑compatibility choice, and the specification states the reason ("backwardly compatible with requesting devices that may not be equipped with a transaction approval device").

Motivation. Vendor control of the transaction protocol, version updates without client reinstallation, and heterogeneity of client devices — all recited as the rationale in the '922 specification itself. KSR: "a finite number of identified, predictable solutions" (stand‑alone program vs. browser plug‑in; download‑once vs. download‑per‑transaction; detect‑and‑use vs. prompt‑the‑user). Each is claimed as an alternative in the '922.

Group D — claims 55–65 (POS link‑up; GPS proximity; barcode/OCR; Bluetooth/IR)

Combination: Gutman '838 (bar‑code wand 116) + Pitroda '038 (IR/RF) + Schilit et al. (1994) (location/proximity‑aware service association) + GPS/navigation art + Bluetooth (1999).

• Entering a POS terminal's ID by barcode or OCR is met by Gutman's optical wand reading UPC‑type codes — a directly analogous identification task. (The '922's own POS passage contemplates exactly this.)
• GPS‑assisted automatic discovery of the nearest POS terminal via a location‑ID mapping table is Schilit‑style context awareness plus a look‑up table — a navigation/POI problem solved well before 1996 (in‑car navigation with point‑of‑interest lookup).
• Infrared/Bluetooth local link‑up is met by Pitroda's IR option and, for Bluetooth, by the 1998–99 Bluetooth specification (before the 2000‑03‑13 critical date).

6. Consolidated motivation‑to‑combine rationales

1. Same field / analogous art. All primary references address portable devices that authorize financial or access transactions; Gutman and the '922 sit in the same U.S. classes (235/379, 235/380). The '922's own "Prior art keywords" — electronic, portable electronic, transaction, authorization device, user — describe Gutman and Pitroda almost verbatim.
2. The problem was known and stated in the patent. Terminal‑side PIN capture, terminal‑side private‑key storage, and the smart‑card "reader requirement" are admitted deficiencies in the '922 Background. An admitted problem plus known solutions is the paradigm KSR case.
3. Design incentives / market demand. Cost (eliminate the reader/terminal), convenience, eliminating paper tickets and physical keys, serving legacy phones, and back‑compatibility.
4. Predictability and unchanged function. Every element (microcontroller, memory, display, keypad, IR/RF, key storage, signature engine, server, browser, applet) performs the same function it performed in the reference; nothing in the claims is an unexpected result.
5. Finite, identified solutions ("obvious to try"). Where to put the key (device vs. terminal), which token types to support, where the agent runs (phone vs. server), how to find the terminal (manual entry vs. barcode vs. GPS), and how to fall back (input device) are all short, closed lists.
6. Common ownership does not shield these references. Gutman is Motorola, Pitroda is an individual, Fischer is an individual. Pre‑AIA § 103(c) therefore does not apply to them.

7. Where the patent can resist — and the parallel theories

• Priority is the whole ballgame for Groups B and C. If the patentee proves the token, agent‑server and downloaded‑TP limitations were supported under § 112 in the 1996‑12‑04 application, essentially all of the 1997–1999 art in § 4.2 drops out and the challenger is thrown back on the 1987–1996 art. This is a factual dispute about written description, and the challenger bears it. Note, however, that US 5,917,913 (issued 1999‑06‑29) is a printed publication more than one year before the CIP's 2000‑03‑13 filing and — in principle, because § 102(b) contains no "by others" requirement — is available as a statutory bar even against the same inventive entity (In re Katz, 687 F.2d 450 (CCPA 1982)). I flag that the same‑inventive‑entity‑under‑102(b) issue is contested territory and would need verification; it is not a ground I would lead with.
• Obviousness‑type double patenting may be the cleaner theory for Group A than § 103. US 5,917,913 and US 6,175,922 share an inventor and an overlapping disclosure; if the '922's claims are not patentably distinct from the '913 claims, ODP (nonstatutory) is available regardless of any prior‑art date problem. Confirm whether a terminal disclaimer was filed.
• § 101 is a co‑equal and independent attack. The token, agent‑server and TP claims are drafted at the level of "receive data, provide information, receive a token, transmit," performable on a generic computer/phone. A G06Q20/xx‑classified claim of that shape is a soft Alice target, and it does not depend on winning the priority fight.
• § 112 ¶ 2 (indefiniteness) against claim 33 (apparatus comprising "an Internet connection at the remote agent server") and § 112 ¶ 1 for lack of written description of a single apparatus owning another entity's structure.

8. Bottom line

The '922 claim set is, on the record I could assemble, highly vulnerable under § 103, and the vulnerability is concentrated exactly where it matters least for a 2026 defendant and most for a family‑wide strategy.

• Claims 1–17 (if they get 1996‑12‑04) fall to Gutman '838 + Fischer '953 (+ Rivest '829) with Pitroda '038 + Fischer '953 as a second string — the motivation being the patent's own admitted deficiencies.
• Claims 18–24 (token) fall to Pitroda '038 + Fischer '877/'200/FIPS 186, with Vazvan supplying the mobile motivation; claims 20–21 are nearly per‑se the Fischer certificate scheme.
• Claims 25–44 (agent server) fall to Gutman '838's telephone/modem/DTMF/central‑computer architecture + GSM cellular art + server‑proxy/IVR practice.
• Claims 45–76 (downloaded TP) fall to the browser‑delivered transaction application art + the applicant's admitted Java/ActiveX/HDML/SSL knowledge + routine device auto‑detection and keyboard fallback.
• Claims 55–65 (POS/GPS/barcode/Bluetooth) fall to Gutman's bar‑code wand + Pitroda's IR/RF + Schilit + 1999 Bluetooth.

Two caveats I will not paper over. First, I did not have the '922 citation table or full claim text for claims 1–17 and 40–76 in this session, so Group A and the upper reaches of Groups B/C are analysed at the limitation‑concept level and must be completed with the official claim copies. Second, half the § 4.2 references (Hennige's number, the Open Market and IBM numbers, Bluetooth's date) are unverified recollection and must be pulled as authenticated exhibits before any of this is filed.

Practically: this does not change the conclusion of the earlier sections — with the patent expired 2016‑12‑04 and no PTAB proceeding ever filed, an IPR is not the tool. But a § 103 invalidity defense under 35 U.S.C. § 282 remains fully available and is not mooted by expiration; and because the family (5,917,913; 8,225,089; 7,635,084; 8,016,189) shares this specification, the combinations above — and the '922's own issued claims and admissions — travel directly to whichever sibling is still live.