US 6292198

I'll search for authoritative information on this patent number.

Let me run a couple more targeted searches to check for any litigation or docket activity.

Search results — US 6,292,198

Important caveat on scope of search: I ran web searches against publicly indexed USPTO/PTAB materials, Google Patents, CourtListener/Federal Circuit opinion collections, and general litigation sources. I found no CAFC 2026 docket entry, appeal, IPR/PGR, or district-court complaint naming US 6,292,198. I cannot rule out docket activity that is not publicly indexed or that I could not reach, and I did not have direct authenticated access to PACER or the USPTO PatentCenter/Assignment APIs in this session. The "no litigation found" statement should therefore be treated as not found, not as confirmed absent.

One search hit did list the string "6292198" inside a large exhibit/patent-number table in a PTAB petition document (ptacts.uspto.gov, petition 1529782), but that appears to be a list of cited references/patents rather than an action against this patent. I could not confirm it as litigation involving the '198 patent.

Bibliographic data (from the authoritative Google Patents record provided)

⚠️ Uncertainty flag on assignee: The record contains an apparent inconsistency — a recorded 2015 assignment to LINE Corporation, while the "Current Assignee" field shows Z Intermediate Global Corp. I have no authoritative documentation reconciling these, so I report both literally rather than picking one.

Abstract (verbatim substance)

A virtual reality life object is prevented from performing any behavior impossible in the real world, without having to detect collision of the virtual reality life object with an obstacle. Data specifying a range in which a virtual reality pet may move is entered in a moving-range control table stored on a hard disk drive of an information processing apparatus providing a virtual reality space. The position of an avatar corresponding to a moving object (the virtual reality pet) is detected, and the moving object's position is generated based on the detected avatar position. It is then determined whether the generated position is inside the limited moveable range. If not, a position inside the limited range nearest to the generated position is searched for, and the object's position is corrected to the position found by the search.

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

The patent's Summary section sets out three aspects corresponding to the three independent claims (a method claim, an apparatus claim, and an "information providing medium" claim). Note: the claim text itself was not included in the authoritative excerpt I was given, so the numbering below (1st/2nd/3rd aspect → claim numbers) is my inference and should be verified against the printed claims.

1. Independent method claim (first aspect) — An information processing method for providing a virtual reality space to a client apparatus connected to a network, comprising:

   • generating data about a new position of an object existing in the virtual reality space;
   • correcting that generated position to a position within a specified moving range, using data (stored in a storage device) that specifies the object's moving range; and
   • moving the object to the corrected position.

   In plain terms: rather than simulating physics/collision detection, the system computes where the pet "wants" to go, checks that against a pre-defined allowable region (e.g., a path/arena), snaps any out-of-range destination to the nearest in-range spot, and moves the pet there.

2. Independent apparatus claim (second aspect) — An information processing apparatus for providing a virtual reality space to a networked client apparatus, comprising four means-plus-function style elements:

   • storing means for storing data specifying a moving range of the object;
   • generating means for generating data about a new position of the object;
   • correcting means for correcting the generated position to a position in the specified moving range; and
   • moving means for moving the object to the corrected position.

3. Independent "information providing medium" claim (third aspect) — A medium providing control information for providing a virtual reality space to a networked client apparatus, where the control information implements the same three steps: generating a new object position, correcting it (based on stored moving-range data) into the specified range, and moving the object to the corrected position. This is the classic carrier/medium claim format covering the distribution of the controlling software.

Common inventive core across all three independents: the shift from collision-sensing / path-search behavior to pre-defined geofenced movement region with nearest-point correction. The specification expressly frames this as reducing CPU load and avoiding the complicated programs required when a virtual pet must detect collisions and search for legal routes.

Supporting technical context from the specification

• Built on VRML 2.0 and its sensor/routing/script "Behavior" mechanism; Sony's Community Place Browser/Bureau, used with Netscape Navigator over HTTP/TCP-IP.
• System architecture: client PCs, WWW server, WLS (World Location Server), shared server, AO (Application Object) servers (universal AO, object AO, agent AO, area AO), mail server, and communication server.
• The preferred embodiment implements the moving-range using Java PathNode and PathLink classes, with positional nodes N1–N9 corresponding to positions E1–E9 and a path D; moving-range data is stored in a moving-range control table (e.g., on HDD 13a).
• FIG. 27 flow: enter moving-range data (S21); detect avatar position (S22); generate pet position relative to avatar (S23); decide whether within limited range (S24); if not, search nearest in-range position (S25); correct position (S26); move following avatar (S27).
• Claimed subject matter is also closely related to the patent's broader virtual-pet growth-parameter disclosure (growth parameter control table, physical/mental parameters, keeper notification via telephone/fax/pager/e-mail).

Bottom line

US 6,292,198 is a Sony VRML-era patent (issued 2001, now expired) directed to constraining a virtual-reality pet's movement to a predefined allowed region and snapping out-of-range positions to the nearest in-range point — avoiding collision detection. Inventors: Matsuda, Naito, Ueno. Recorded chain of title shows Sony → LINE Corporation (2015), with "Z Intermediate Global Corp" listed as current assignee (resolution of that discrepancy not confirmed).

No CAFC 2026 docket activity for this patent was found in my searches. If you need a definitive litigation check, the authoritative sources would be PACER/CourtListener for district-court dockets and the Federal Circuit's own docket system, plus the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) and USPTO Assignment records — which I was not able to query directly here.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 6292198.

Let me search more specifically across litigation databases.

Let me check the Unified Patents litigation portal and other specialized databases directly.

Litigation Search Results — U.S. Patent No. 6,292,198

Bottom line: I found no evidence of any litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 6,292,198. Based on the searches I was able to run, there are no known infringement suits, declaratory judgment actions, IPRs, or other adversarial proceedings asserting or challenging this specific patent.

What the patent is

• Patent: US 6,292,198 B1 — "Information processing apparatus, information processing method and information providing medium"
• Application: US 09/229,818; filed 1999-01-13; granted 2001-09-18
• Priority: 1998-01-23
• Inventors: Koichi Matsuda, Taketo Naito, Hiroshi Ueno
• Original assignee: Sony Corporation
• Assignment history of record (per Google Patents bibliographic data):
  • 1999-03-15 — assigned to Sony Corporation
  • 2015-08-27 — assigned to LINE Corporation
  • Current listed assignee: Z Intermediate Global Corp
• Legal status: Expired – Lifetime (anticipated expiration 2019-01-13)

The invention concerns preventing a virtual-reality "life object"/pet in a shared 3D VR space from performing physically impossible behaviors (e.g., passing through walls) by pre-defining a permitted movement range and correcting a generated position to a nearest point within that range — rather than detecting collisions with obstacles (see claims/abstract and FIG. 27).

Searches performed and what they returned

1. General web search for "US patent 6292198 litigation" — No relevant hits. Results returned unrelated patents (e.g., Lucent/Crater coupler case, Bell Semiconductor IPRs, Whirlpool/LG refrigerator patents) and nothing tied to 6,292,198.
2. Search for the number with "lawsuit/case number" and "district court" — The only appearance of "6292198" was (a) a coincidence inside an unrelated PCT search-report table ("AU 6292198 A," a patent-office document number, not a US litigation reference) and (b) an incidental string in an unrelated USPTO petition exhibit listing many patent numbers. Neither is litigation involving the US patent.
3. Search for LINE Corporation / Z Intermediate Global Corp. + patent 6292198 — No litigation results attributable to this patent.

Important caveats

• I was unable to directly query the Unified Patents litigation portal, PACER, or Docket Navigator in this session before my search budget was exhausted. My conclusion rests on general web/search-engine coverage, which can miss sealed, very old (1998–2019), or unresolved docket entries.
• Because the patent expired on its 20-year term in January 2019 and the operating entity (Sony → LINE → Z Intermediate Global) did not appear in any searchable litigation, it is plausible the patent was simply never asserted. Corporate reassignments of this kind sometimes precede assertion campaigns, but I found no suit naming Z Intermediate Global Corp. or LINE Corporation as plaintiff on this patent.
• I will not speculate about cases I cannot ground in a source.

Recommendation for definitive verification

To confirm the negative with certainty, check these authoritative sources directly using the exact number 6,292,198:

• Unified Patents litigation portal – https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist
• PACER – https://pacer.uscourts.gov (search "6,292,198" in case documents / patent docket reports)
• CourtListener / RECAP – https://www.courtlistener.com (run a full-text query for "6,292,198")
• FreeLaw via Docket Navigator / Lex Machina (if you have access) – search the exact patent number
• CAFC – https://cafc.uscourts.gov for any appeal referencing the patent

If you can grant another search round, I can run these targeted queries and, if anything surfaces, provide the plaintiff, defendant, jurisdiction, case number, filing date, and status for each case.

I'll verify the structured ODP result against public sources before writing anything.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 6,292,198 on file: 0 (zero). Breakdown by status: active 0 / claims invalidated 0 / claims sustained 0 / settled 0 / institution denied 0.

The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block from the USPTO Open Data Portal returns no AIA trial proceedings, and my independent web checks of PTAB petition/decision materials and Federal Circuit coverage surfaced no IPR, PGR, or CBM petition naming US 6,292,198 as the challenged patent. The default therefore stands: no PTAB activity on file.

Defensive posture this gives a defendant: the patent is completely untested at the Board — there is no FWD to hand to a court, no claim cancellations to point to, and no petitioner estoppel to inherit. That cuts both ways. It is not "hardened" (nothing has validated it), and it is also not "dead" (nothing has killed it). What you have is a blank slate: the entire IPR-based attack, if you want one, is yours to build — and, as explained below, the patent's age and expired status materially shape whether that is worth doing at all.

I will not invent proceeding sections. With zero proceedings, there is no "{PROCEEDING_NUMBER} — {Petitioner} v. {Patent Owner}" subsection to write, and fabricating one would be misconduct before the Office and before your client.

What I checked, and two false positives to avoid

1. ODP structured data (canonical, per your instruction): no proceedings — the authoritative answer.
2. Web search for petitions/decisions citing 6292198: nothing. The only hit containing the literal string "6292198" was OCR of an exhibit-search page from an unrelated petition (Petition ID 1529782), where the number appears inside a keyword/citation list. That is a string match, not a challenge to this patent.
3. Numeric lookalike trap: several search results concerned U.S. Patent No. 6,128,298 (Rockstar Consortium, IPR2015-00202 / IPR2015-00212, Google as petitioner) — a different patent in a completely different field (network packet routing). If a vendor's docket alert shows you "an IPR on the '298 patent," verify the full number before relying on it.
4. No Federal Circuit appeal of any PTAB decision on this patent exists to find, because there is no underlying PTAB decision. I found no CAFC opinion or CourtListener docket tied to US 6,292,198's PTAB history. (CourtListener: https://www.courtlistener.com — PTAB decisions index: https://www.uspto.gov/patents/ptab/decisions — PTAB E2E: https://ptab.uspto.gov.)

Strategic summary

Claim status. No claim of US 6,292,198 has been CANCELED by the Board, none has been SUSTAINED by the Board, and none has been CERTIFIED as patentable in a trial. Every claim is UNTESTED in AIA proceedings. I also flag a limit on what I can tell you: the authoritative patent text supplied to me does not enumerate the claim set, and I could not verify the exact number of issued claims from the sources I checked. Do not assume a claim count. The Summary section does show the patent was drafted with three parallel aspects — a method (first aspect: generate a new position for an object in the virtual reality space, correct it against stored moving-range data, move the object to the corrected position), an apparatus (second aspect, "storing means / generating means / correcting means / moving means"), and an information providing medium (third aspect), which is the classic method/apparatus/medium claim triad of that era.

Estoppel landscape. Because no IPR was ever instituted, 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) estoppel is a null set. There is no petitioner, no privy, and no "raised or reasonably could have raised" ground to inherit or to be trapped by. Practically: every § 102 and § 103 ground based on patents and printed publications remains fully available to you. You are not blocked by anyone else's prior petition, and you cannot free-ride on anyone else's record either. The one estoppel-adjacent constraint to watch is § 315(b): if the patent owner has served you with a complaint alleging infringement, your one-year clock to petition runs from service — but see the next point, which likely dominates.

Availability of the AIA vehicles themselves — this is the key practical insight. US 6,292,198 has an effective priority of 1998-01-23 (JP priority) and a US filing date of 1999-01-13. That means:

• PGR is unavailable — post-grant review only reaches patents with a claim having an effective filing date on or after 2013-03-16.
• CBM is unavailable — the transitional CBM program expired for new petitions on 2020-09-16, and independently, this patent claims a computer-graphics/VRML virtual-life-object invention, not a "financial product or service," so it never was a covered business method patent.
• IPR is the only possible trial vehicle.
• And per Google Patents' status data, the patent's term expired 2019-01-13 (20 years from US filing; status listed as "Expired – Lifetime," with anticipated expiration of 2019-01-13). IPR against an expired patent is technically permissible but its value is confined to wiping out past damages; there is no prospective injunction or ongoing royalty to defeat. That is a very different economics case from a live patent, and it should drive your cost/benefit analysis.

Pattern signals. (a) No repeat-petitioner pattern — no petitioner has ever filed, let alone filed twice. (b) No patent-owner PTAB appeal practice — nothing to appeal. (c) No defensive aggregator in the chain — I found no Unified Patents or similar challenger. (d) Ownership history is real and documented, but it is a corporate reorganisation, not a litigation-funding shell: originally assigned to Sony Corporation (assignment recorded 1999-03-15, inventors Matsuda / Naito / Ueno), assigned to LINE CORPORATION on 2015-08-27, and the current assignee per Google Patents is Z Intermediate Global Corp — which is LINE Corporation renamed in connection with the LY / LINE-Yahoo reorganisation (renamed 2023-10-01). The field plausibly explains the lineage: the patent is a shared-VRML-space virtual-pet invention, and the original assignee's own "Community Place" VRML browser product is described throughout the specification.

Recommended next steps

If the patent owner asserts this patent against you and cites a specific claim, the correct response is not an IPR reflex — it is a threshold challenge to the assertion itself.

1. Establish what is actually being asserted, and whether it can be. Because I could not verify the issued claim set from the authoritative text supplied, pull the patent's own claim listing before responding to any demand letter and confirm which claims exist and which are being asserted. Demand letters from non-practising holders of expired, reorganised portfolios are sometimes generated from stale records and cite claims loosely or not at all.
2. Confirm the expiration math. If the term indeed ended 2019-01-13 (post-URAA twenty-year term from the 1999-01-13 US filing), then pre-suit damages are time-barred under 35 U.S.C. § 286 for essentially all practical purposes: six years before a 2026 complaint reaches back only to 2020, after expiry. Any theory that the portfolio is being asserted for money today should be tested against that arithmetic — for many defendants it disposes of the matter without any PTAB filing at all.
3. If you do choose to file an IPR (you principally would, e.g., where a stale claim is being used to leverage a settlement, or where the patent owner is a co-defendant issue, or to establish a clean record):
   • File within one year of service of any § 315(b)-triggering complaint.
   • Your grounds are limited to § 102 / § 103 on patents and printed publications — § 112 and § 101 are outside IPR jurisdiction. Given the art here, that is not a severe constraint: the specification itself discusses VRML 2.0 (ISO/IEC CD 14772), the Habitat cyberspace service (Benedikt, MIT Press 1991), Tamagotchi-style virtual pets, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,572,646 (Japanese Patent Laid-open No. Hei 07-160853) as admitted background — a rich § 103 landscape of pre-1998 virtual-pet and 3D-graphics art.
   • The strongest looking target, per the patent's own framing, is the "correct the generated position into a pre-specified moving range" feature — the patent positions itself defensively against collision-detection approaches, and asserted prior art on bounded-navigation/path-graph movement in 3D worlds would go at the core claim limitation.
   • Understand the statutory 1-year trial deadline from institution (35 U.S.C. § 316(a)(11)) and the ~6-month institution-decision deadline from your filing; if instituted, plan discovery and any motion to amend around that clock.
4. Do not represent to a court or a counterparty that any claim of US 6,292,198 has been invalidated, canceled, or upheld by the PTAB. Nothing has. The accurate statement — and the one to put in your own invalidity contentions — is that no AIA trial proceeding has ever been filed or instituted against this patent as of 2026-10-01. That absence is itself a signal: a well-asserted patent eventually attracts IPRs, and this one never did, over more than a decade of AIA-trial availability and more than seven years past expiry.
5. Re-verify before you certify. The ODP ingest is your canonical source but it lags; run a fresh PTAB E2E / PTAB Decisions keyword check on "6292198" and "6,292,198" immediately before filing anything that turns on the absence of proceedings, and keep a dated screenshot. If you find a proceeding I could not, treat it as superseding everything above.

Sources / verification links: patent text and status — https://patents.google.com/patent/US6292198/en; PTAB decisions — https://www.uspto.gov/patents/ptab/decisions; PTAB E2E — https://ptab.uspto.gov; Federal Circuit opinions and dockets — https://www.courtlistener.com.

I'll research the assignment record for US 6292198 using multiple sources.

Let me dig into the specific assignment records and the LINE Corporation transaction.

Assignment Record — US 6292198 B1

Patent: "Information processing apparatus, information processing method and information providing medium"
Filing date: 1999-01-13 · Issue date: 2001-09-18 · Priority: 1998-01-23
Status: Expired — Lifetime (anticipated expiration 2019-01-13)

⚠️ Evidence caveat up front: The authoritative patent text I was given reproduces Google Patents' legal events (which confirm that two reassignments were recorded) but does not expose the reel/frame numbers, execution dates, or correspondent fields. Live search in this session did not return the USPTO Patent Assignment Search detail pages for this patent. I therefore report the two transfers I can confirm, and explicitly mark the reel/frame and correspondent fields as not retrieved rather than inventing them. Verify the full abstract of title at the Assignment Center links at the bottom.

Inventors

Unusual-pattern note: No anomaly observed. All three inventors executed an assignment in favor of the employer-of-record ~2 months after filing, the standard employee-invention pattern for a large corporate filer. There is no evidence in the available record of all inventors departing within 12 months of filing. I could not independently verify inventor tenures (no employment data surfaced), so a departures-based fire-sale predicate is unable to be confirmed — not affirmatively absent.

Original assignee

Sony Corporation (Tokyo, Japan) — named on the issued patent as original assignee.

• Product embodying the claims: Yes. The specification describes Sony's own "Community Place Browser / Bureau" VRML 2.0 browser and shared-server stack, and the claimed subject matter (correcting an object's newly-generated position back into a pre-stored moving range) is the AO-server movement logic described at FIGS. 25–28. So the claims trace directly to a shipped Sony product, not a paper asset.
• Primary business: Consumer electronics, entertainment, and software/network services.
• Current status: Operating (public, Tokyo-listed; still a going concern in 2026).

Assignment timeline

Two recorded transfers are reflected in the authoritative legal-events text. Reel/frame not retrieved for either (see caveat above).

• Executed ~1999-01/02 (date not shown) / recorded 1999-03-15 — Reel NNNNNN/NNNN (not retrieved, see caveat)

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest ("see document for details")
  • Assignor: Koichi Matsuda; Taketo Naito; Hiroshi Ueno
  • Assignee: Sony Corporation
  • Correspondent: not retrieved — cannot assess recurrence
  • Context: Initial employee-inventor assignment of rights to the original employer at filing.

• Executed (date not shown) / recorded 2015-08-27 — Reel NNNNNN/NNNN (not retrieved, see caveat)

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignor's interest ("see document for details")
  • Assignor: Sony Corporation
  • Assignee: LINE Corporation
  • Correspondent: not retrieved — cannot assess recurrence
  • Context: Portfolio disposition / corporate transfer out of Sony to an operating messaging-platform company. This is the only post-issuance recorded event visible in the provided text.

• Post-2015 event (unverified): Google Patents lists the current assignee as "Z Intermediate Global Corp." No corresponding recorded-assignment entry appears in the legal-events text I was given, so the LINE Corporation → Z Intermediate Global Corp link (if recorded) is unverified here. The "Z Intermediate Global Corp" naming is consistent with an intermediate holding entity in the Z Holdings / LINE / SoftBank–NAVER group structure (LINE was folded into Z Holdings in 2021; Z Holdings was renamed LY Corporation in 2023), but I have no reel/frame or document in hand to confirm a recorded transfer — treat as a lead, not a finding.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6292198
    1998 : Priority date
    1999 : Filed by Sony
         : Inventors assign rights to Sony
    2001 : Patent issued to Sony
    2015 : Sony assigns to LINE Corporation
    2019 : Patent expires

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. The only confirmed transfer is Sony Corporation → LINE Corporation (recorded 2015-08-27), i.e., operating company to operating company. LINE Corporation is an operating messaging-platform business, not a licensing-only LLC; no "IP / Patents / Licensing / Ventures" suffix, no registered-agent-service address, no single-purpose LLC evidence in the record. The unverified "Z Intermediate Global Corp" link is a holding-company name, and I have no document confirming it is a licensing-only shell.

2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. None of Sony Corporation, LINE Corporation, or the listed Z Intermediate Global Corp appears on the supplied NPE lists (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg entities). No RPX/Unified high-frequency-plaintiff match surfaced.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Unclear. The correspondent-of-record field was not retrievable in this session for either event, so recurrence cannot be tested. This is the single most important gap in the analysis; the Assignment Center abstract of title would close it.

4. Cascading transfers — Not present. Only one confirmed post-issuance transfer (2015), ~14 years after the 2001 issue and ~16 years after the 1999 filing — the opposite of a rapid chained-LLC cascade. No sub-24-month chain of assignees sharing an address or principal.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present. No infringement suit naming US 6292198 was found in this session, so there is no assertion date against which to measure a 6-month pre-suit transfer. (The 2015 transfer also long predates the 2019 expiration.)

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. Sony Corporation did not file Chapter 7/11; the 2015 transfer is not a bankruptcy sale.

7. Privateering — Not present / unclear. No SEC filing, Patent Progress, or EFF coverage was found showing Sony transferring this patent to an NPE to assert against competitors. Absence of evidence here, not evidence of absence.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN.

Verdict

Insufficient data.

The visible record shows a single, ordinary corporate transfer — Sony Corporation → LINE Corporation (recorded 2015-08-27) — with no assertion activity, no NPE-list match, no shell-entity indicia, and no cascading transfer; the patent then expired 2019-01-13. That pattern is not an NPE pattern, but I cannot upgrade it to "defensive / non-asserting" (which requires a defensive-aggregator terminus) or to any operating-company-assertion finding (no suit exists). Critically, the reel/frame numbers and the correspondent-of-record were not retrievable in this session, and the LINE → "Z Intermediate Global Corp" step shown only as a current-assignee label is unverified. Because the definitive fields are missing, the honest call is insufficient data rather than a manufactured conclusion.

Verify: USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ · Legacy search — https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html (search "6292198"). Confirm reel/frame, execution dates, and correspondent for each entry, then re-test signals 3 and the LINE → Z Intermediate step.

I'll research US patent 6292198 and its cited prior art references. Let me search for authoritative information.

Let me find the specific cited references for US6292198.

Let me get the specific cited references from patent databases.

Summary of Findings

First, an important methodological note on scope: my searches confirmed the bibliographic identity and the patent's legal status, but I was not able to retrieve a clean, verbatim dump of the front‑page "References Cited" (examiner/applicant) list for US 6,292,198 from the sources I could reach. I therefore base the reference analysis below on the references that are affirmatively identified within the authoritative patent text you supplied (the "references cited in the description"), and I flag that limitation explicitly rather than fabricate an examiner citation list I could not verify.

Where I am uncertain, I say so.

1. Patent identification (verified)

Per the authoritative text and search results:

• Patent number: US 6,292,198 B1 — "Information processing apparatus, information processing method and information providing medium" (Google Patents)
• Application no.: US 09/229,818
• Inventors: Koichi Matsuda, Taketo Naito, Hiroshi Ueno
• Original assignee: Sony Corporation (later reassigned — LINE Corporation in 2015; current listed assignee Z Intermediate Global Corp)
• Priority date: 1998‑01‑23; Filing date: 1999‑01‑13; Grant date: 2001‑09‑18
• Classification: G06N 3/006 (Artificial life); landscapes include "Artificial Intelligence," "Processing Or Creating Images," "Information Transfer Between Computers"
• Status: Expired – Lifetime (anticipated expiration 2019‑01‑13)

Independent claims (the anticipation target):

• Claim 1 — Method: generating data about a new position of an object in the VR space; correcting, based on data specifying a moving range stored in a storage device, the generated position to a position in the specified moving range; moving the object to the corrected position.
• Claim 2 — Apparatus with storing means, generating means, correcting means, moving means (same functional core).
• Claim 3 — Information providing medium carrying the same control steps.

The three independent claims are functionally coextensive; the distinguishing limitation across all three is the "correct generated position into a pre‑stored moving range" step, which replaces collision sensing (see Abstract and Background, which stresses avoiding collision detection to reduce CPU load).

2. References identified within the patent (references cited in the description)

These are the prior‑art items the specification itself names. For each I give citation, date, description, and the § 102 anticipation assessment.

(a) Japanese Patent Laid‑open No. Hei 07‑160853 / U.S. Pat. No. 5,572,646

• Citation: JP Hei 07‑160853, corresponding to U.S. Pat. No. 5,572,646 (named in the Background).
• Date: JP filing/publication 1995 era (Hei 7 = 1995); U.S. patent issued 1996. (Exact dates not stated in the supplied text — I could not verify them.)
• Description: Applicable to an electronic notepad; stores bit‑map images representing growth processes of a plant/animal character in ROM and displays the character according to the degree of growth computed from user‑entered growing elements (water/light/fertilizer registers).
• § 102 assessment: No anticipation of claims 1, 2, or 3. The reference is directed to displaying a growth–stage image from ROM based on user inputs. It does not disclose (i) generating a new position of a moving object in a shared 3D space, (ii) a stored data structure specifying a moving range, or (iii) correcting a generated position into that range. It is background/supporting art only for the "virtual reality life object growth" context.

(b) Japanese Patent Laid‑open No. Hei 09‑081781 / U.S. application Ser. No. 08/678,340

• Citation: JP Hei 09‑81781, corresponding to U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/678,340 (named in the Background and again for the connection procedure).
• Date: Hei 9 = 1997; U.S. filing 1996.
• Description: Enables a user to "walk as desired" with the avatar viewpoint in a 3D virtual reality space represented using VRML; also describes the shared‑server connection procedure.
• § 102 assessment: No anticipation of claims 1–3. This reference supports the environment (3D shared VR space, avatar navigation, client/server connection) but, as described, does not teach the claimed position‑correction‑into‑a‑stored‑moving‑range. Under § 102 a reference must disclose every limitation; the correction step is missing.

(c) Japanese Patent Laid‑open No. 09‑214486 / U.S. application Ser. No. 08/789,083

• Citation: JP 09‑214486, corresponding to U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/789,083 (named in the description of the voice‑chat / intimacy notification feature).
• Date: Hei 9 = 1997; U.S. filing 1997.
• Description: Relates to the chat/voice‑notification capability for the virtual‑reality life object.
• § 102 assessment: No anticipation of claims 1–3. Directed to messaging/notification, not movement control. No teaching of the claimed position correction or moving‑range data.

(d) "VRML: Browsing & Building Cyberspace," Mark Pesce, 1995

• Citation: Mark Pesce, VRML: Browsing & Building Cyberspace, 1995, New Readers Publishing, ISBN 1‑56205‑498‑8 (Japanese translation published Mar. 25, 1996, Prentice‑Hall, ISBN 4‑931356‑37‑0).
• Description: General text on VRML and 3D cyberspace construction.
• § 102 assessment: No anticipation of claims 1–3. It is a general‑knowledge/background reference on VRML; it does not disclose the specific position‑correction‑into‑a‑moving‑range method.

(e) "The Virtual Reality Modeling Language Version 2.0," ISO/IEC CD 14772, Aug. 4, 1996

• Citation: ISO/IEC CD 14772, Aug. 4, 1996 (VRML 2.0 spec), and its Japanese version.
• Description: Defines VRML 2.0 Behavior model — sensor, routing, script; TouchSensor/ProximitySensor/TimeSensor.
• § 102 assessment: No anticipation of claims 1–3. It defines the autonomous behavior framework the patent builds upon, but does not disclose generating a new position and correcting it to a stored moving range within a shared multi‑user space.

(f) Habitat / "Cyberspace: First Steps," Michael Benedikt, ed., 1991, MIT Press

• Citation: Cyberspace: First Steps, Benedikt (ed.), 1991, MIT Press, ISBN 0‑262‑02327‑X (Habitat discussion, pp. 282–307); Japanese translation published Mar. 20, 1994, ISBN 4‑87188‑265‑9.
• Description: Background on the Habitat cyberspace service (2D‑graphics virtual city, avatars, chat).
• § 102 assessment: No anticipation of claims 1–3. Historical/background art describing a 2D avatar chat world; no position‑correction‑into‑moving‑range feature.

(g) NIKKEI Electronics, Sep. 9, 1996, No. 670, pp. 151–159

• Citation: NIKKEI Electronics, Sep. 9, 1996, No. 670, pp. 151–159.
• Description: Article on cyberspaces in which chat is conducted using a user's avatar.
• § 102 assessment: No anticipation of claims 1–3 on its face; background literature on avatar cyberspaces.

(h) NIKKEI Electronics, Apr. 7, 1997, No. 686, pp. 131–134

• Citation: NIKKEI Electronics, Apr. 7, 1997, No. 686, pp. 131–134.
• Description: Describes a simulated pet (dog/cat) displayed on an electronic notepad for the user to enjoy its growth.
• § 102 assessment: No anticipation of claims 1–3. Describes virtual‑pet growth display, not movement‑range correction in a shared 3D space.

(i) "Most Recent Trend of VRML and CyberPassage," Matsuda & Honda, the bit magazine, 1996

• Citation: Koichi Matsuda & Yasuaki Honda, "Most Recent Trend of VRML and CyberPassage," bit, Kyoritsu Publishing, 1996, Vol. 28, Nos. 7–10.
• § 102 assessment: No anticipation of claims 1–3. General VRML/cyberpassage background.

(j) Web how‑to reference: http://www.ses.co.jp/SES/STAFF/kan/howto/howtol.html

• § 102 assessment: No anticipation. A tutorial on writing VRML 2.0.

3. Honest bottom line on anticipation

• None of the references named in the specification anticipate independent claims 1, 2, or 3. They are background art establishing (i) virtual‑pet growth simulation, (ii) 2D avatar cyberspaces, and (iii) the VRML/VRML 2.0 environment. The patent's defining contribution — correcting a newly generated object position to the nearest position inside a pre‑stored moving range, thereby avoiding collision sensing (see the FIG. 27 flowchart: steps S21–S27, and the Abstract) — is not taught by any of them.
• The closest field for genuinely anticipatory art on claims 1–3 would be constraint‑based/spatial‑navigation systems in multi‑user 3D graphics (e.g., path/link or "air‑wall"/play‑area constraint systems), not the growth‑simulation references. I could not verify whether any such reference appears on the examiner's front‑page citation list, and I decline to invent one.

Specific caveats I want to be explicit about:

1. I could not retrieve the verbatim USPTO/Google Patents front‑page "References Cited" list for US 6,292,198 within my search; the list above is drawn from the references the patent text itself identifies. Treat these as the applicant‑cited/description references, not necessarily the examiner‑cited set.
2. Exact publication dates for the Japanese priority documents (JP Hei 07‑160853, JP Hei 09‑081781, JP 09‑214486) were not verifiable from the supplied text, so I did not assert precise dates.
3. § 102 anticipation requires a single reference disclosing every limitation as arranged in the claim. On the material available, no cited reference meets that standard for claims 1–3.

If you can supply the front‑page "References Cited" list (or a link to the USPTO PatentCenter/Global Dossier "References Cited" tab for US 09/229,818), I can extend this into a full per‑reference, per‑claim element‑by‑element anticipation chart.

I'll analyze the obviousness of US 6,292,198 under § 103 using the prior art identified on the patent page. Let me first verify the key references.

Let me get the precise claim language and check related prior-art documents in this family.

Obviousness Analysis — US 6,292,198 B1 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Patent under analysis: US 6,292,198 B1, "Information processing apparatus, information processing method and information providing medium" (Sony Corporation; inventors Matsuda, Naito, Ueno; filed 1999‑01‑13; priority 1998‑01‑23; granted 2001‑09‑18).

Scope note / evidentiary caveat. The authoritative text supplied to me contains the Abstract, the Summary, and a description, but it does not reproduce the full numbered claim set. The independent claims I analyze below are the three aspects recited verbatim in the Summary (method, apparatus, and information providing medium), which correspond to the issued independent claims 1, 2 (and the medium/claim-3 family). I could not independently confirm the exact multi‑dependent claims or the examiner's face‑of‑patent cited references; where I rely on the patent's own "Prior Art" discussion I say so. I flag below the two references (V‑COLLIDE, QOTA) that I retrieved via search but could not confirm appear on the US 6,292,198 face.

1. The claimed subject matter (construing the independent claims)

The three independent aspects recite the same core steps:

1. Storing data specifying a moving range of an object existing in the virtual reality space (Summary; Detailed Description: "data for specifying a range in which a virtual reality pet can move is entered into a moving range control table stored on the HDD 13a").
2. Generating data about a new position of the object (FIG. 27, step S23: "based on the detected position of the avatar, the position of the virtual reality pet is generated").
3. Correcting the generated position, based on the stored moving‑range data, to a position within the specified range (FIG. 27, steps S24–S26: if the generated position is out of range, "a position in the limited range nearest to the generated position … is searched for" and "the position of the virtual reality pet is corrected").
4. Moving the object to the corrected position (step S27).

The point of novelty the specification stresses is negative: the object is prevented from doing "any behavior that is impossible in a real world without sensing the collision of the virtual reality life object with an obstacle" (Abstract; Background). The patent expressly characterizes the prior art as sensing collision and searching a route ("a virtual reality pet senses the collision or the possibility thereof with an obstacle to circumvent the collision, searches for a moving route (for example, a route not passing through a house wall) that is possible in the real world, and moves along the route found by the search"), and criticizes that approach only for its CPU load.

This is a critical framing point: the specification admits that constrained, race‑free movement in a virtual world was already known and practiced. The alleged contribution is a computational shortcut — replace runtime collision sensing with a pre‑stored admissible region plus a projection back inside it.

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

As of the Jan. 1998 priority date, a POSITA would be a software engineer with ~2–4 years in interactive 3‑D graphics / networked virtual environments, familiar with VRML 2.0 (ISO/IEC CD 14772, Aug. 4, 1996), scene graphs, sensor/event/routing/script "Behavior," networked multi‑user servers, and basic 3‑D collision/proximity mathematics. This is a combination art in which the reference pool is small, well‑defined, and cross‑pollinating (most of the cited references were authored or reviewed by the same Sony/VRML community — see §5).

3. The prior‑art landscape (as identified on the patent page)

The references relied upon in the patent's own background are:

Additional contemporaneous art surfaced by search but not confirmed on the § 6,292,198 face (from the Second Symposium on VRML, Monterey 1997): V‑COLLIDE — Accelerated Collision Detection for VRML (Hudson, Lin, Cohen, Gottschalk, Manocha, pp. 117–123); QOTA — A Fast, Multi‑Purpose Algorithm for Terrain Following in Virtual Environments (Barrus & Waters, pp. 59–63); MaPS — Movement and Planning Support for Navigation in an Immersive VRML Browser (Edwards & Hand, pp. 65–73). These are highly probative analogous art if they were before the examiner (and the Community Place architecture paper by Lea, Honda, Matsuda & Matsuda, pp. 41–50, was authored by the same Sony team). I treat them below as secondary, clearly‑flagged support.

4. Combination No. 1 — Community Place / Ser. No. 08/678,340 + the admitted "constrained movement" technique

Teaching of the primary reference (C + F + E): The Sony 3‑D multi‑user system places objects and avatars in a VRML world, generates their positions from client/server shared data, applies the VRML 2.0 Behavior mechanism (timer/sensor events → routing → script → changed field values), and moves objects accordingly. The Community Place press release (sony.com, Jan. 30, 1997) confirms a commercial multi‑user 3‑D VRML client/server that "controls multi‑user information and consistency of shared behaviors" across a network. That reads on claim element "providing a virtual reality space to a client apparatus connected to a network."

Teaching of the secondary reference (the admitted prior art technique + E): The patent's own Background states the conventional method: sense collision/possibility, search a real‑world‑possible route, and move along the found route. That is an admission that computing admissible movement for a virtual creature in a shared 3‑D world was known. A precomputed admissible route/path (a set of positions and links) is merely the static counterpart of a runtime‑searched route.

Substitution and result: Replacing a dynamically searched route with a stored range of admissible positions and projecting an out‑of‑bounds generated position back into it (steps S23–S27 of FIG. 27) is an elementary, predictable substitution. The patent itself supplies the motivation: collision‑sensing "requires a complicated program … the CPU load increases … hampering prompt CPU processing."

§ 103 analysis: Under KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007), where a technique is known and the improvement is a predictable use of a known element to solve a known problem (here, reducing per‑frame CPU cost of keeping an object on valid ground), the combination is obvious. Claim 1 would have been obvious over (C/F/E) alone, informed by the applicant's own admission, and a fortiori in view of a path/graph‑constraint reference such as QOTA or MaPS.

5. Combination No. 2 — 3‑D shared space + autonomous virtual pet (for dependent‑claim breadth and for the "object" being a virtual life object)

Even if one read the "object" as specifically a virtual reality pet/life object, the combination is still obvious:

• B (U.S. 5,572,646) and J/K (NIKKEI; Tamagotchi) teach an autonomous virtual creature that moves/behaves and changes growth state.
• C/E/F teach the networked 3‑D environment and the Behavior mechanism for autonomously moving objects.
• The patent's own narrative (FIG. 8 growth table, FIG. 9 action panel, FIG. 15 activity index affecting "behavioral sequence") explicitly applies the pre‑existing VRML Behavior mechanism to a virtual pet; the pet's autonomy and the movement‑constraint are thus both supplied by known references.

Motivation to combine: A POSITA populating a shared 3‑D world with an autonomous pet has an obvious reason to ensure the pet "looks right" — it must not walk through the house wall A2 (FIG. 24) or sink through the step C (FIG. 25). The design incentive is game realism, explicitly recognized by the patent ("An action impossible in a real world … is an action in which a virtual reality pet collides a wall … and then penetrates into the wall"). Combining a known virtual‑pet behavior engine with a known admissible‑region constraint is the predictable arrangement of familiar elements.

6. Combination No. 3 — VRML navigation/collision art (V‑COLLIDE, QOTA, MaPS)

If V‑COLLIDE and QOTA were before the examiner (flagged as unconfirmed), they would be strongly probative:

• V‑COLLIDE teaches collision detection for VRML objects — i.e., the art was actively addressing object‑obstacle interaction in VRML at the same 1997 symposium. Its existence rebuts any argument that "preventing wall penetration in VRML" was a non‑obvious problem.
• QOTA teaches a fast algorithm for terrain following — i.e., constraining a viewpoint/object's motion to a defined surface. Projecting a generated position onto an admissible surface/region is the same mathematical operation as claim 1's "correcting … the generated position to a position in the specified moving range."
• MaPS teaches movement and planning support for navigation in a VRML browser — i.e., pre‑planned admissible movement paths.

Motivation: Each is in the same field (VRML virtual environments), addresses the same problem (keeping situated objects/viewpoints in valid locations), and the combination yields no more than the predictable sum of its parts. Even absent these two, the V‑COLLIDE/QOTA category of art demonstrates that the claim 1 solution was a routine engineering choice at the priority date.

7. Why the specific "correction" step is obvious

Claim 1 recites "correcting … the generated position to a position in the specified moving range," and the specification's preferred form is "a position … nearest to the generated position" (FIG. 27, step S25). Both are classic clamping/projection operations:

• Projecting an out‑of‑range point onto the nearest point of an admissible set is elementary 3‑D geometry (nearest‑point-on‑segment/hull), ubiquitous in physics engines, CAD, and robot path planning well before 1998.
• Even the "nearest position" search recited for the preferred embodiment is a nearest‑neighbor query over the stored path‑link/position‑node graph (the PathNode/PathLink Java classes of FIG. 26). Choosing the nearest admissible node/link when an object strays is the natural and only sensible selection criterion a POSITA would apply; there is no unexpected result.

Thus even if one argues claim 1 requires the "nearest‑position" refinement, that refinement is a predictable design choice supported by abundant analogous art (navigation meshes, terrain following, path graphs).

8. Motivation‑to‑combine summary (the KSR / Graham factors)

1. Same field / analogous art: All references are in networked 3‑D virtual environments and virtual‑pet simulation — a small, self‑referential art (the VRML 1997 program shows the same authors, including the patent's own inventors' colleagues, publishing across these topics).
2. Known problem, known solution: The patent admits collision‑and‑route‑search was the known technique; reducing CPU load is an express design goal; precomputing an admissible region is the predictable optimization.
3. Reasonable expectation of success: The patent's own FIG. 27 flowchart shows the approach works with a simple table lookup and a nearest‑point search — no experimentation.
4. Design incentive / market pressure: Multi‑user worlds (Habitat, Community Place, BBC "The Mirror"/Inhabited TV) demanded real‑time performance; the art repeatedly notes frame‑rate limits (the BT/"Inhabited TV" report laments slow frame rates), giving a concrete reason to offload collision logic.
5. No unexpected results: The claimed correction yields only the expected benefit (an object stays on valid ground) with no asserted criticality or synergy beyond reduced CPU load.

9. Anticipated rebuttals and their weakness

• "The references don't teach storing a movement‑range table." Weak: the patent's own Background admits route‑searching movement; a route is stored/computed data specifying admissible positions. The PathNode/PathLink vector is a routine data structure.
• "The prior art senses collisions; the invention doesn't." Weak: claim 1 is apparatus/steps, not a negative limitation. The absence of collision‑sensing is a performance property of the claimed steps, and the claim does not positively exclude collision sensing. Under KSR, the substitution of a stored‑constraint for runtime sensing is a predictable improvement.
• "Unexpected reduction in CPU load." Weak as a secondary consideration: reduced load is the express, expected purpose of removing per‑frame collision computation; the specification presents no comparative data establishing unexpected magnitude.

10. Conclusion

The independent claims of US 6,292,198 would likely have been obvious under § 103 as of the Jan. 23, 1998 priority date, on at least the following combinations:

• Primary combination: Sony's networked 3‑D VRML virtual‑reality‑space system (JP Hei 09‑81781 / U.S. Ser. No. 08/678,340; Community Place Browser/Bureau) in view of the VRML 2.0 Behavior mechanism, further in view of the applicant's admitted collision‑sensing/route‑search prior art — the stored admissible range + projection being the predictable optimization to cut CPU load.
• Alternative / reinforcing combination: the above in view of a virtual‑pet/creature reference (U.S. Pat. No. 5,572,646; Tamagotchi/NIKKEI) to supply the autonomous "virtual reality life object," the constraint feature being the routine arrangement of known elements.
• Strongest secondary‑art support (if on the face): the VRML‑1997 navigation/collision references (V‑COLLIDE, QOTA terrain‑following, MaPS movement/planning), each of which teaches constraining or planning object movement within a VRML world — directly teaching the "correcting … to a position in the specified moving range" step.

Confidence and honesty flags:

• I am high‑confidence on the substance of the admitted prior art (this is stated in the patent's Background and Summary) and on the analogous‑art reasoning.
• I am moderate‑confidence that the virtual‑pet references (U.S. 5,572,646 and the Tamagotchi/NIKKEI art) were formally cited on the US 6,292,198 face; they are cited as background in the text I was given. Their citation status matters for an actual office action but not for the § 103 merits.
• I could not verify (a) the complete dependent‑claim set of US 6,292,198, nor (b) whether V‑COLLIDE/QOTA/MaPS were listed on its face; I have labeled them as unconfirmed and used them only as reinforcing analogous art.
• Any statement about the examiner's cited references, or about claim scope beyond the three Summary aspects, should be re‑checked against the granted claims and the file wrapper before being relied upon.