US 6404811

I'll run searches for this specific patent number and check for any litigation.

US 6,404,811 (Patent No. 6404811) — Summary

Important scoping note: I searched for this exact number 6404811. I found no CAFC 2026 docket, appeal, or Federal Circuit proceeding involving US 6,404,811. The searches surfaced unrelated 2026 Federal Circuit activity (e.g., an Orange Electronic rehearing petition, a LifeCORE/Woodway petition, and an Ex parte Baurin ODP amicus brief mentioning Sonos) — none of these involve patent 6404811. A search of district-court infringement activity likewise returned no case asserting this patent. I cannot confirm a negative across all of PACER/Docket Navigator from web search alone, so treat "no litigation found" as not authoritative — merely "nothing located."

Bibliographic data

Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6404811B1](/patent/US6404811B1)/en · https://www.freepatentsonline.com/6404811.html · https://patents.justia.com/patent/6404811 · https://uspto.report/patent/grant/6404811

Minor date discrepancy (flagged, not corrected): the record supplied (and FreePatentsOnline) shows a 1996-05-13 filing/priority date; the Unified Patents portal page lists "1996-05-12" for US-6404811-B1. The off-by-one is most likely a timezone rendering artifact, but per your instruction I am reporting both rather than resolving them. Freepatentsonline lists assignee as Tektronix, Inc. (original), while Google Patents lists Arris Technology Inc / Google Technology Holdings LLC as current — the chain reflects Tektronix → Grass Valley → VideoTele.com → TUT Systems → General Instrument → Motorola Mobility → Google Technology Holdings, matching the reassignment trail in the record.

Abstract (as issued)

An interactive multimedia audio/video communications system uses a lower data rate, non-deterministic graphics/command network having a plurality of desktop viewing stations and a network server. A separate, higher data rate, deterministic audio/video network is coupled to the plurality of desktop viewing stations using appropriate resources, such as an audio/video routing switcher and a professional disk recorder. A database contains a telephone directory so that when a user at one of the plurality of stations desires to communicate with another station, the user selects a telephone number and the server from the database determines the appropriate resources required to complete the connection. The server configures the necessary hardware via the graphics/command network to route the audio/video signals over the audio/video network from one station to the other. For conferences a quad splitter is used to combine up to four video signals into a singled composited video signal for display at the user's station. For communications with stations that exist on another node, the server communicates with the server at the other node and a codec farm is used to transfer the audio/video signals from the audio/video network of one system to the other. Thus the graphics/command network is left free for normal graphics operations once the audio/video communications has been established.

Claims — plain language

Claim 1 (the only independent claim) — a system with two separate networks:

• a graphics/command network, and a separate audio/video network;
• a switcher ("means for selectively switching") tied to both networks that routes audio/video signals arriving on the A/V network to multiple output terminals, doing so in response to commands received over the graphics/command network;
• a playback/record unit connected through an output terminal of the switcher that can record and play back audio/video over the A/V network, again controlled by commands over the graphics/command network;
• multiple viewing stations that send/receive audio/video over the A/V network and send/receive control commands over the graphics/command network; and
• a controller on the graphics/command network that sends/receives commands to the switcher, the stations, and the record/playback unit, and sets up the networks based on user requests from the stations.

In short: keep control/graphics traffic on one network and high-bandwidth audio/video on a separate network, with a server acting as the resource-allocation brain that configures the A/V hardware in response to a user's call request.

Claim 2 (dependent on 1) — adds a codec farm on the A/V network (and commanded via the graphics/command network) so the system can connect to a remote copy of the same interactive multimedia system (node-to-node).

Claim 3 (dependent on claims 1 or 2) — adds a video splitter connected to a set number of switcher outputs that combines several A/V signals into one windowed composite signal fed back into the switcher (this is the quad-splitter multiparty conferencing feature).

Claim 4 (dependent on claims 1 or 2) — specifies the network characteristics: the graphics/command network is a lower-data-rate, non-deterministic medium (e.g., Ethernet/TCP-IP), while the audio/video network is a higher-data-rate, deterministic medium. This is the claim that most directly captures the patent's core "separate the two networks" idea.

Uncertainty flags

• CAFC 2026: I found nothing tying patent 6404811 to any 2026 Federal Circuit docket. Given the patent expired 2018-09-29, a 2026 appeal asserting it is possible only for pre-expiration damages (e.g., long-running litigation), but my searches did not locate one. Do not treat this as a definitive "no litigation exists."
• Assignee status: The current-assignee list (Arris Technology Inc / Google Technology Holdings LLC) comes from Google Patents, which explicitly disclaims accuracy of assignee data. Verify against USPTO Assignment records if this matters legally.
• I did not independently verify the file history, claim construction, or any PTAB/IPR proceedings for this number; the searches returned none, but that is not proof none exist.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 6404811. Let me run several searches.

Let me search litigation-specific databases.

Search Results: Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. 6,404,811

Bottom line: I found no litigation — no district court case, no ITC investigation, and no PTAB/Court of Appeals proceeding — in which U.S. Patent No. 6,404,811 was asserted or challenged. I cannot confirm any such case exists.

What I searched

• General web queries for US patent 6404811 litigation and "6404811" patent lawsuit case number (literal number, no truncation or auto-correction).
• Queries aimed at the owner chain: TUT Systems patent 6404811 lawsuit.
• Queries aimed at litigation databases and complaint/claim-chart language: portal.unifiedpatents.com litigation 6404811 and "6404811" claim chart district court complaint.

What the results actually showed

Every hit on the literal string 6404811 was either:

1. A prior-art citation table in later patents (mostly Sonos, Inc. patents, e.g., US 9,313,591; US 9,130,770; US 10,554,781; US 11,483,396; US 10,212,512; US 11,134,291) listing "6404811 | June 11, 2002 | Cvetko et al." — i.e., the patent being cited by other patents, which is prosecution activity, not litigation; or
2. Unrelated patents that share the informal shorthand "'811" but are entirely different documents. These appeared in litigation documents and must not be conflated with 6,404,811:
   • Wapp Tech's '811 patent (asserted in Wapp Tech Ltd. Partnership v. Capital One, E.D. Tex., filed Mar. 6, 2025, and related Apple/Xcode allegations) — a different patent with its own number.
   • Push Data's 7,212,811 ("Geographical Web Browser") in Push Data v. Sherwin-Williams.
   • 3form's '811 patent in a design-panel infringement suit.
   • NCR's 7,588,811 ("Columnar Adhesive Label Roll").
   • Evolved Wireless's 8,218,481 in the Apple/Samsung/ZTE IPR family.
   • 3form/US RE43,895-related filings mentioning US 7,313,264 (Faro Technologies).
     None of these is U.S. 6,404,811.

The only result bearing on the patent's owner (TUT Systems, Inc.) was a PlainSite corporate-litigation profile listing commercial and employment/Chancery matters — no patent infringement action on this patent.

Context that bears on whether litigation is plausible

The patent record itself explains the absence:

• Term: Filed 1996-05-13; granted 2002-06-11; status "Expired – Lifetime," with adjusted expiration 2018-09-29. Any litigation window closed in 2018, and the patent has now been expired for roughly seven and a half years.
• Ownership chain: Tektronix → Grass Valley (US), Inc. → VideoTele.com, Inc. → TUT Systems, Inc. → General Instrument → Motorola Mobility → Google Technology Holdings LLC (2015). No recorded assignments indicating an NPE/assertion-entity acquisition, transfers to a monetization vehicle, or security-interest events tied to assertion activity.
• MPEG/video-communication subject matter (separating a low-data-rate, non-deterministic graphics/command network from a higher-data-rate, deterministic audio/video network; router + quad splitter; codec farm) is the kind of claim that would have drawn NPE attention in the 2003–2012 window if it had been asserted — and nothing surfaced.

Important caveats

• I could not directly query the Unified Patents litigation portal, RPX Insight, Docket Alarm, or PACER's full docket index in this session; my results are search-engine-mediated. A definitive negative requires a docket-level search in those systems (and, for the ITC, EDIS).
• Absence from search results in a ~1996–2018 window is weaker evidence than it would be for a recent patent, because pre-2010 docket text is less fully indexed online. I am therefore stating this as "no litigation found," not "no litigation ever existed."
• Per the operating rule, I have not auto-corrected any identifier. Note in particular that the "'811" references above are to different patent numbers and should not be attributed to 6,404,811.

If you want a belt-and-suspenders answer, the next step would be a PACER/RPX/Unified docket search restricted to the literal patent number 6,404,811 (patent-in-suit field), plus an ITC EDIS search — I can outline the exact queries if useful.

I'll verify the canonical (empty) list against public sources before writing anything up.

Let me run a couple more targeted checks before concluding.

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings on file. The canonical structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block supplied in this prompt — sourced from the USPTO Open Data Portal — returns no AIA trial proceedings for US 6,404,811 as of the most recent ingest: 0 active, 0 claims invalidated, 0 claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution denials. My own web searches (Google Patents/FreePatentsOnline legal-status blocks, Justia, Unified Patents' patent portal, general PTAB/CAFC queries keyed to the patent number, the inventor names, and the assignee chain) surfaced no IPR, PGR, CBM, or Federal Circuit appeal touching this patent. I did not find any proceeding to flag, and I am deliberately not inventing a proceeding number to fill the template.

Two cautionary notes on that absence:

1. A "no proceedings" result is a negative finding, not a certification. I could not query PTAB E2E or the ODP API directly from this session. Before relying on it, counsel should run the patent number through PTAB E2E at https://e2e.iprb.uspto.gov/ and the ODP API proceedings endpoint (/api/v1/patent/trials/proceedings/search). The prompt itself flags that ODP ingest can lag.
2. Do not confuse forward citations with proceedings. The Google Patents page for this patent lists 474 citing publications and 1,643 total citations — a very large Sonos, Inc.-dominated block (e.g., the Sonos "synchrony group," multi-zone playback, and calibration families all cite US 6,404,811 as prior art). Those are § 102/§ 103 prior-art citations in third-party prosecution, not PTAB challenges. They say nothing about whether the '481 claims are valid.

Bottom-line defensive posture: this is not the "hardened-after-two-IPRs" scenario, and it is not the "claims 1–5 are canceled" scenario either. It is the third posture, and for a defendant it is the most favourable of the three — the patent has never been tested at the PTAB, and it is expired. Per the structured legal-status data, the '481 is "Expired – Lifetime," expires 2018-09-29. Every claim (1–4) therefore stands exactly as it issued on 2002-06-11, un-narrowed and un-confirmed, but with no enforceable prospective relief and a damages window that closed nearly eight years ago.

No proceeding to report

There is no {PROCEEDING_NUMBER} to populate. For completeness, here is what the structured record does establish about post-issuance and enforcement history, since that is what a defendant actually needs:

Why no proceeding could exist today (procedural reality)

• PGR is legally unavailable. Post-grant review under 35 U.S.C. § 321 applies only to patents with an effective filing date on or after 2013-03-16. This patent's effective filing date is 1996-05-13. A PGR on the '481 is not merely absent — it is forbidden.
• CBM is statutorily time-barred. CBM review under AIA § 18 was available only for petitions filed before 2020-09-16. That sunset has passed. Separately, the '481 (a video-conferencing/AV-routing architecture) does not read on a "financial product or service," so § 18(a)(1) subject-matter eligibility was doubtful even during the window.
• IPR is the only theoretical vehicle, and it is now of marginal value. IPR is not categorically unavailable against an expired patent, but with expiration on 2018-09-29 and no pending co-pending litigation identified, a petition would face severe § 314(a) discretionary-denial headwinds and confer essentially no litigation benefit. There is also no live § 315(b) clock running, because no qualifying infringement complaint appears in the record.
• The 2018-09-29 expiration date is the single most important fact on this page. It caps the § 286 damages lookback at 2012-09-29 → 2018-09-29 and eliminates any possibility of injunctive relief. Combined with today's date of 2026-09-29, any assertion of this patent is, at minimum, a stale-damages problem for the plaintiff.

Strategic summary

Claim status: all four claims UNTESTED, none canceled, none sustained. Claims 1, 2, 3, and 4 were never the subject of an AIA trial, so there is no FWD, no certificate under § 318(b), and no PTAB-driven narrowing. The claims sit in the public record exactly as examined in 2002. That cuts both ways for a defendant: there is no ready-made IPR "kill shot" to cite (nobody has done the work for you), but there is also no adverse PTAB precedent breathing life into these claims. Critically, none of this matters much in practice, because the patent's term ended on 2018-09-29 and the claims — whatever their validity — can no longer support prospective relief.

Estoppel landscape: none attaches, so the defense toolbox is wide open. Because no IPR or PGR was ever instituted, § 315(e)(2) estoppel binds no one. A defendant today is not a "privy" of any prior petitioner (there is no prior petitioner), and is free to run an invalidity case on:

• § 102/§ 103 over the 18 references already on the face of the patent — most notably the Datapoint Corporation video-conferencing network family (US 4,710,917; US 4,847,829; US 5,014,267; US 4,716,585 "Gain switched audio conferencing network"; US 4,686,698 "Workstation for interfacing with a video conferencing network"), which are the closest art-of-record to the claimed "router + splitter + storage + viewing stations" architecture; plus US 5,343,240 (AT&T Bell Labs, bidirectional video telephony over coaxial cable) and US 5,385,972 (Kannes, courtroom video conferencing).
• The § 102(b) on-sale/public-use/publication bar, keyed to 1995-05-13 (one year before the 1996-05-13 filing). The single non-patent citation of record — the 1995 Target Technologies "C-Phone" brochure ("The First Affordable, Television-Quality Desktop Video Communication System That Keeps Your LAN Free for Other Tasks") — is squarely inside that window and is directly on point against the patent's stated point of novelty (splitting control/command traffic from AV traffic). Note the specification itself concedes the C-Phone system separated C-Phone traffic from other LAN traffic.
• § 112 — which is unavailable at the PTAB but fully available in district court. Claims 1–3 are drafted in means-plus-function form ("means coupled to the respective networks for selectively switching…"; "means coupled to the respective networks via one of the output terminals… to selectively playback and record…"; "means coupled to the graphics/command network for transmitting and receiving commands…"). Under § 112(f), those limitations are limited to the structures disclosed as corresponding to each means — the router 22, quad splitter 26, audio/video storage device 28, network server 12, controller modules 34, and their memory maps/MUTEX — and equivalents thereof, with the corresponding-structure identification required to be pleaded with particularity. This is a strong, PTAB-free non-infringement lever against any modern cloud/IP/software-based accused product.
• § 101, in district court, is unconstrained by the § 311(b) limit to patents and printed publications that rules the PTAB.

Pattern signals: none of the usual markers. No serial petitioner, no petitioner–privy cluster, no defensive aggregator (no Unified Patents, RPX, or similar entity appears in the record), and no evidence that the patent owner ever pursued a PTAB appeal. The patent's most visible modern footprint is passive: it is cited as prior art by a large number of Sonos, Inc. filings. The non-practicing-entity signal is real, though: the ownership chain runs from Tektronix through VideoTele.com (an entity whose name appeared in the 2003 assignments) to TUT Systems, then through the General Instrument → Motorola Mobility → Google Technology Holdings path, with ARRIS Technology also listed. That is a portfolio-consolidation trail typical of patents later asserted by or transferred to assertion entities — but no assertion involving this patent surfaced in my searches.

One structural gap worth flagging to the team: the patent's term ended 2018-09-29 per the structured data (an "Adjusted expiration" event on that date). Anyone evaluating this patent should independently verify the terminal-disclaimer/PAT adjustment math in the file wrapper, because the enforceability window (and hence the entire damages case) turns on it.

Recommended next steps

1. Confirm the negative directly, then rely on it. Run US 6,404,811 through PTAB E2E (https://e2e.iprb.uspto.gov/) and the ODP /patent/trials/proceedings/search endpoint before putting "no IPR history" in a brief or an opinions letter. If a proceeding exists that ODP has not ingested, I found no trace of it in web sources, but the primary source governs.
2. Reframe the defense around expiration, not validity. With expiration on 2018-09-29 and no PTAB FWD to cite, the highest-value arguments are: (a) § 286 — damages recovery is limited to infringement on or after 2012-09-29; (b) no injunctive relief is available against an expired patent, so any demand for a running royalty or design-around is baseless; (c) pre-suit delay is highly relevant to the equitable/damages posture even though laches is not a defense under SCA Hygiene; and (d) standing/ownership — with a long and layered chain (Tektronix → VideoTele.com → TUT Systems → General Instrument → Motorola Mobility → Google Technology Holdings, plus ARRIS), demand-letter recipients should require a complete chain-of-title and current-ownership showing before engaging.
3. Build the invalidity case from the face of the patent plus the 1995 C-Phone art. There is no FWD to quote and no § 315(e)(2) estoppel to navigate, so the full pre-1995-05-13 art universe is open. Start with the Datapoint video-conferencing family cited on the face of the patent and the Target Technologies C-Phone 1995 brochure, both of which predate the critical date and both of which are directed at the exact separation-of-traffic concept the specification touts as novel.
4. Attack the means-plus-function limitations under § 112(f) with particularity. Claims 1, 2, and 3 are means-plus-function claims. Map each "means" to the structures disclosed (router 22, quad splitter 26, storage 28, server 12, controller modules 34, memory maps/MUTEX) and press for a narrowing construction against the accused instrumentality. Do this in district court, where § 112 is available.
5. If any live proceeding does surface, the milestones to calendar under 35 U.S.C. § 314(b) and § 316(a)(11) are: PO Preliminary Response (3 months from notice of filing), institution decision (6 months from petition filing), and FWD (statutory 1-year deadline from institution, extendable up to 6 months for good cause). Link any resulting FWD to PTAB E2E and any CAFC appeal to CourtListener: https://www.courtlistener.com/?q=%226%2C404%2C811%22 — and cross-check the Federal Circuit docket.

Plain answer to the question asked: there are no PTAB proceedings on this patent, and absent a corrective ODP ingest or a newly filed (and, given expiration and the CBM/PGR limits, highly unlikely) petition, that is the answer. The absence is itself a signal — but here it is a signal of patent age and expiration (2018-09-29), not of a hard, hardened, IPR-tested asset. If someone is asserting US 6,404,811 against you today, the winning posture is expiration-driven rather than PTAB-driven, and you face no estoppel from any prior petitioner in constructing it.

I'll try to pull the actual USPTO assignment records (reel/frame, correspondent) for this patent before writing anything.

Let me try to surface the actual reel/frame and correspondent data.

Assignment Chain Analysis — US 6,404,811 (Interactive multimedia system)

Critical sourcing caveat, stated up front: I could not retrieve the USPTO Assignment Center's per-record fields for this patent in this session. The Assignment Center requires a live query against assignmentcenter.uspto.gov (or the legacy assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html), and my search-mediated access returned only secondary indexes. Accordingly, I have no reel/frame numbers and no correspondent-of-record names for any link in this chain, and I will not invent them. What follows uses the assignment events as they appear on the Google Patents legal-events record for US6404811B1 (dates, conveyance types, assignor/assignee only), cross-checked against SEC/8-K and press coverage. Every field marked [NOT RETRIEVED] must be pulled directly from the Assignment Center before this analysis is relied on.

Inventors

All three are Tektronix employees at the 1996-05-13 filing date; the application was filed as a Tektronix application and the inventors assigned to Tektronix, Inc. The subject matter (broadcast-quality video switching, matrix routers, professional disk recorders) maps to Tektronix's Video and Networking Division / Grass Valley business, not to its oscilloscope line.

Unusual-pattern check — no signal found. The prompt's "all inventors depart within 12 months of filing" fire-sale precursor does not appear here: the inventors' assignment was not recorded until 2002-04-24, roughly six weeks before the 2002-06-11 grant — i.e., the inventors were still the record owners during most of prosecution, which is the opposite of an early-departure pattern. I could not verify their post-1996 employment history (LinkedIn/obituary/patent-assignment co-filing trails) within this session, so "no departure signal" means nothing located, not verified continuity.

Original assignee

Tektronix, Inc. (Beaverton, Oregon; NYSE: TEK) — named assignee on the issued patent.

• Primary line of business: Test, measurement and monitoring instrumentation. The patent's technology sits in Tek's video/networking business (the Grass Valley product family), which was a small non-core appendage. An SG Cowen analyst quoted in the Portland Business Journal (Nov. 2002) called it an "appendage we have not paid much attention to."
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? — Yes, indirectly, and this is the strongest product evidence in the file. Tektronix carved the video/networking unit into an independent subsidiary, VideoTele.com, in January 2000, and VTC shipped two product lines: digital head-end equipment for telco video, and trunking systems for video conferencing, surveillance and distance learning — the latter is squarely the two-network architecture claimed. VTC had ~$24.7M revenue for FY ended 2002-05-31 and ~75% share of digital head-end among independent telcos. Independently, Tut Systems' IntelliHUB 8200 video switch was built to "plug in directly to one of VideoTele.com's main products," corroborating a real commercial video-switching ecosystem rather than a paper patent.
• Current status: Tektronix remains an operating company, acquired by Danaher in 2007 and placed under Fortive at the 2016 Danaher separation. (I state the Danaher/Fortive history with moderate confidence; verify if it matters.) Its video/networking assets, however, left the company in 2002 — see below.

Assignment timeline

Chronological by recordation date (Google Patents legal events give recordation dates; execution dates were not retrievable). Reel/frame and correspondent are [NOT RETRIEVED] for every entry.

1999-10-04 (recorded) — Reel NNNNNN/NNNN [NOT RETRIEVED]

• Conveyance: NOTICE OF LICENSE
• Assignor: Tektronix, Inc.
• Assignee: Grass Valley (US) Inc.
• Correspondent: [NOT RETRIEVED]
• Context: License recordation only — no transfer of title. This is an intra-Tektronix notice reflecting that the Grass Valley business unit was licensed under the application; it is not a link in the chain of title.

2002-04-24 (recorded) — Reel NNNNNN/NNNN [NOT RETRIEVED]

• Conveyance: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)
• Assignors: Cvetko, John F.; Kwong, Ying K.; Sandau, James F.
• Assignee: Tektronix, Inc.
• Correspondent: [NOT RETRIEVED]
• Context: Inventor → employer assignment, recorded late (six weeks pre-grant), normal for a large corporate filer.

2003-06-20 (recorded) — Reel NNNNNN/NNNN [NOT RETRIEVED]

• Conveyance: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST
• Assignor: Tektronix, Inc.
• Assignee: VideoTele.com, Inc.
• Correspondent: [NOT RETRIEVED]
• Context: Divestiture / internal carve-out cleanup — Tek had already spun VTC out in Jan 2000 and sold it to Tut Systems effective 2002-11-07; this recording deeded the patent out to the divested subsidiary roughly seven months after the stock-and-note sale closed.

2003-08-06 (recorded) — Reel NNNNNN/NNNN [NOT RETRIEVED]

• Conveyance: MERGER
• Assignor: VideoTele.com, Inc.
• Assignee: Tut Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: TUTS, Pleasanton, CA)
• Correspondent: [NOT RETRIEVED]
• Context: Acquisition by merger. Tut closed the VTC purchase on 2002-11-07 via Tiger Acquisition Corp., paying Tektronix ~3.28M TUTS shares plus a $3.59M five-year note ($6.8M total). Confirmed by Tut's 8-K dated 2002-11-12 and contemporaneous Light Reading coverage.

2004-12-10 (recorded) — Reel NNNNNN/NNNN [NOT RETRIEVED]

• Conveyance: SECURITY INTEREST
• Assignor: Tut Systems, Inc.
• Assignee: Silicon Valley Bank
• Correspondent: [NOT RETRIEVED]
• Context: Securitization — a venture-lender blanket lien over the IP collateralizing debt. Not a title transfer; SVB never owned the patent. Functionally, though, this is hard evidence Tut Systems was in financial distress by late 2004 (it was already described as "struggling" in Nov. 2002).

2013-06-11 (recorded) — Reel NNNNNN/NNNN [NOT RETRIEVED]

• Conveyance: MERGER
• Assignor: Tut Systems, Inc.
• Assignee: General Instrument Corporation
• Correspondent: [NOT RETRIEVED]
• Context: Internal reorg cleanup recording. Tut Systems was acquired by Motorola (reported 2006 announcement / completed early 2007) and folded into Motorola's General Instrument set-top business; the merger was only recorded against these properties in 2013. [Verify the Motorola–Tut Systems acquisition date and deal terms — I could not confirm it in this session.]

2013-07-09 (recorded) — Reel NNNNNN/NNNN [NOT RETRIEVED]

• Conveyance: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNOR'S INTEREST
• Assignor: General Instrument Corporation
• Assignee: General Instrument Holdings, Inc.
• Correspondent: [NOT RETRIEVED]
• Context: Internal corporate reorganization in the Motorola Mobility separation.

2013-07-09 (recorded) — Reel NNNNNN/NNNN [NOT RETRIEVED]

• Conveyance: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNOR'S INTEREST
• Assignor: General Instrument Holdings, Inc.
• Assignee: Motorola Mobility LLC
• Correspondent: [NOT RETRIEVED]
• Context: Same-day internal reorganization — the second of two recordings on 2013-07-09.

2015-04-07 (recorded) — Reel NNNNNN/NNNN [NOT RETRIEVED]

• Conveyance: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)
• Assignor: Motorola Mobility LLC
• Assignee: Google Technology Holdings LLC
• Correspondent: [NOT RETRIEVED]
• Context: Portfolio retention following the Lenovo acquisition of Motorola Mobility. Google retained the Motorola patent portfolio and parked it in its patent-holding subsidiary. Subsequent Google Patents listing shows current assignees as Arris Technology Inc and Google Technology Holdings LLC — Arris appeared in the chain via the General Instrument/Arris set-top lineage, and Google Patents explicitly disclaims assignee accuracy, so verify.

Adjusted expiration: 2018-09-29 — patent expired; no further assignments expected or found.

Contradiction flagged with the previously generated sections

The prior "Patent summary" rendered the chain as "Tektronix → Grass Valley → VideoTele.com → TUT Systems → …". That is wrong on one link: the 1999-10-04 Grass Valley event is a NOTICE OF LICENSE, not a title transfer. Chain of title did not pass through Grass Valley (US) Inc. Corrected chain: Tektronix → VideoTele.com → Tut Systems → General Instrument → General Instrument Holdings → Motorola Mobility → Google Technology Holdings. Also note the prior summary's "current assignees" line (Arris Technology Inc + Google Technology Holdings LLC) is a Google-Patents artifact and is not a single clean chain terminus.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6404811
    1996 : Application filed by Tektronix
    1999 : Notice of license to Grass Valley
    2002 : Inventors assign to Tektronix Inc
         : Patent issued
    2003 : Deeded to VideoTele.com Inc
         : Merged into Tut Systems Inc
    2004 : Security interest to Silicon Valley Bank
    2007 : Tut Systems acquired by Motorola
    2013 : Merged into General Instrument Corp
         : Moved to General Instrument Holdings
         : Moved to Motorola Mobility LLC
    2015 : Assigned to Google Technology Holdings
    2018 : Patent term expires

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT. No link moves the patent from an operating company to a licensing-only vehicle. The two names containing "Holdings" — General Instrument Holdings, Inc. (2013-07-09) and Google Technology Holdings LLC (2015-04-07) — are patent-holding subsidiaries inside large operating corporate groups with shipping product lines, not single-purpose Delaware/Texas LLCs at a registered-agent address. No address or entity-formation evidence of shell status was retrieved, and naming alone is not a finding, so this is "not present" on the evidence available.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT. I checked every assignee against the supplied NPE list (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg entities). None appears. The chain is entirely: Tektronix → VideoTele.com → Tut Systems → General Instrument → Motorola Mobility → Google Technology Holdings. All are/were operating companies. No RPX/Unified-asserter directory hit was surfaced for any of these entities in connection with this patent.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR / NOT RETRIEVABLE. This is the signal the prompt weights most heavily, and it is exactly the one I could not obtain: the Assignment Center's correspondent field was not searchable in this session. There is a structural reason to expect recurrence — all nine recordings were filed by or on behalf of the same corporate legal function at Tektronix, then General Instrument, then Motorola/Google — but I have no correspondent names, so I decline to call this present. Retrieve it here first: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search by patent number 6404811).

4. Cascading transfers — PRESENT, but benign. Three recordings within 28 days: 2013-06-11 (Tut Systems → General Instrument Corporation) and two on 2013-07-09 (General Instrument Corporation → General Instrument Holdings, Inc. → Motorola Mobility LLC). The prompt's <24-month chained-LLC trigger is met on timing. However, the substance is the Motorola Mobility separation and set-top-business reorg, not a monetization cascade: all three entities were inside one corporate family, and the transfers are dated the same day. Flagged as present on form, not present as an NPE indicator.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT. No infringement suit naming US 6,404,811 was located (consistent with the prior litigation section). Therefore no assignment can be measured against a 6-month pre-suit window. The 2015-04-07 transfer to Google Technology Holdings is the last one, ~3.5 years before expiry and with no assertion attached.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. No Chapter 7/11 sale of these assets was found. The nearest thing is the 2004-12-10 SECURITY INTEREST to Silicon Valley Bank — a distress indicator (venture debt lien over IP), but a lien is not a sale, and the property later passed by merger into Motorola rather than through a bankruptcy estate. If a Tut Systems insolvency proceeding exists, I did not locate it.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT. No operating company transferred the patent to an NPE to assert on its behalf. The transfers ran the other direction (a divesting operating company selling a non-core unit to another operating company).

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. It terminates at Google Technology Holdings LLC, an operating-company patent-holding subsidiary.

Verdict

Defensive / non-asserting — with a definitional caveat.

Justification: The entire recorded chain — 1999-10-04 (Grass Valley license, no title), 2002-04-24 (inventors → Tektronix), 2003-06-20 (Tektronix → VideoTele.com), 2003-08-06 (VTC → Tut Systems), 2004-12-10 (SVB security interest), 2013-06-11 and 2013-07-09 ×2 (Motorola/General Instrument internal reorg), 2015-04-07 (Motorola Mobility → Google Technology Holdings) — is a pure operating-company divestiture-and-reorg chain, with zero hits on signals 1, 2, 5, 6, 7 and 8, and the only "present" signal (4, cascading transfers) fully explained as a same-day internal reorganization. No assertion activity against this patent was located, and the patent expired 2018-09-29, ending any assertion window. Caveat: the "Defensive / non-asserting" option is defined as terminating at a defensive aggregator; this chain terminates at an operating-company holding entity instead, so the fit is imperfect — the honest reading is non-asserting operating-company chain, not NPE, not a defensive aggregator. "NPE — high/moderate confidence" is affirmatively contraindicated on present evidence; I would only revisit that if the Assignment Center's correspondent field reveals a repeat NPE-side filer, which is the single unresolved variable.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ — search by patent number 6404811, then record, for each of the nine recordings above, the reel/frame, execution date, and correspondent name + firm + address. Also pull the reel/frame for the 2004 Silicon Valley Bank security interest to confirm whether a release was ever recorded (a missing release is a title-clearance issue, not an NPE signal).

What I could not determine (explicit)

• Reel/frame numbers for any of the nine recordings.
• Correspondent of record for any recording — the key signal-3 input.
• Execution dates (only recordation dates are available from the index used).
• Confirmation of the Motorola–Tut Systems acquisition (2006/2007) and the Arris Technology Inc relationship to the General Instrument set-top business — both asserted from general knowledge, not verified in this session.
• Whether any release of the SVB security interest was recorded.
• Whether any post-2015 transfer split the portfolio between Arris and Google Technology Holdings, as the Google Patents assignee list implies.

I'll research the prior art references cited against US 6,404,811. Let me start with USPTO-focused searches on the patent itself and its key citations.

I have good detail on US 5,655,214. Now let me research the Datapoint video-conferencing family, the Kannes reference, and the Yu AT&T reference — these are the most claim-relevant.

I have strong detail on the most claim-relevant references. Let me verify a few remaining citations and the C-Phone non-patent reference.

Prior Art Analysis — US 6,404,811 B1 ("Interactive multimedia system")

0. USPTO record confirmation and scope

I searched for the literal number 6404811. The USPTO/Google Patents record confirms this is US 6,404,811 B1, application 08/649,889, filed 1996-05-13, granted 2002-06-11, inventors Cvetko/Kwong/Sandau, original assignee Tektronix, Inc. — i.e., the same document summarized in the earlier sections. I did not substitute any similar number.

Everything below is restricted to the 18 U.S. patent documents and 1 non-patent reference listed in the "References Cited" section of this exact patent. These are the references the examiner had before him; they are therefore the "most relevant prior art" as a matter of record, which is what you asked me to catalog. I have flagged where I am relying on title/abstract-level data only.

Important methodological caveat: "Cited in References Cited" ≠ "applied as a § 102 anticipation." The record does not disclose which of these were used as anticipatory (§ 102) versus obviousness (§ 103) art, or whether they were merely listed as background. My "claim(s) potentially anticipated" column is my own technical mapping to the 4 issued claims, not a restatement of examiner findings. Verify against the file wrapper (PTAB/USPTO PatentCenter) before relying on it.

1. Master table of cited prior art

Non-patent citation (the only NPL of record):

• "C-Phone. The First Affordable, Television-Quality Desktop Video Communication System That Keeps Your Lan Free for Other Tasks." 1995, Target Technologies, Inc., Wilmington, North Carolina.
  • The specification's own Background discusses C-Phone: "Although the C-Phone system claims to separate C-Phone traffic from other LAN traffic, it still uses a single network for both graphics/command and audio/video data." This is the reference the inventors expressly distinguished over. As a printed publication dated 1995 (before the 1996-05-13 filing), it is § 102(a)/(b) art, and it is the closest art on the "separate networks" concept (claims 1 and 4) — but on the patent's own characterization it fails the two-network limitation.

2. Detailed analysis of the four references that matter most

2.1 US 5,014,267 (Tompkins / Datapoint) — strongest candidate for claim 1 and claim 4

Date: filed 1989-04-06; granted 1991-05-07. Well before priority.
Disclosure (from the specification/claims): a video conferencing network with (i) a centrally disposed switching network that receives A/V on one of a plurality of ports and selectively interconnects it to other ports; (ii) a centralized controller "in data communication with each of the video terminals and the switching network" that "controls the configuration of the switching network to provide the appropriate audio and video paths in response to data received by the controller from the video terminals"; and (iii) a communication link carrying audio/video plus a data link to the controller. FIG. 8 (per the '917 family description) illustrates a baseband network for data interfaced to the terminals together with a broadband network for audio/video.
Claim mapping:

• Claim 1 — the '267's "central switching network + centralized controller + terminals requesting paths" is a near-element-for-element read on the claim-1 architecture (selectively switching means responsive to commands; controller setting up the network on user requests). The main gap is that the '267's video and data paths are physically the same media in some embodiments (FDM on one coax), while claim 1 requires a separate graphics/command network.
• Claim 4 — the FIG. 8 baseband ("lesser") vs. broadband ("higher-rate") separation is the closest cited-art support for the "lower data rate, non-deterministic / higher data rate, deterministic" limitation, though the '267 does not use the "deterministic/non-deterministic" terminology.
  Bottom line: This is the single most relevant item on the list and the most plausible anticipation/obviousness reference for claim 1.

2.2 US 4,710,917 and US 4,847,829 (Tompkins / Datapoint) — same family

The '917 (granted 1987) and its divisional '829 (granted 1989) disclose the same switching-network-actuated-by-terminal-requests architecture; the '917 abstract expressly states the switch "operates as both an audio/video cross-point switch and also as a network controller," with master/slave status tables. These are cumulative to '267 but confirm the controller-configures-switch-on-request teaching was old by 1996.

2.3 US 5,343,240 (Yu / AT&T Bell Labs)

Date: filed 1991-11-04; granted 1994-08-30.
Disclosure: video telephony over cable distribution networks using a switch (digital or analog), a video control center (VCC) with a database translating the dialed destination number into routing information, per-call channel assignment for the call's duration, and a plurality of codecs performing A/D conversion in the head end (claim 9), with control signals combined in an NIU microprocessor (claim 10).
Claim mapping:

• Claim 1 — strong on the "switching means responsive to commands + controller/database setting up connections according to user requests." Its "database + VCC" is very close to the application's "database contains a telephone directory… the server from the database determines the appropriate resources."
• Claim 2 — claim 9's "plurality of codecs arranged to perform analog/digital conversion" is the closest cited-art analogue to a codec farm, though not described as a "farm" per se.
• Claim 4 — its channelized, deterministic per-call channel allocation supports the "deterministic" half of claim 4, but it does not separate a non-deterministic command network from the A/V network in the claimed manner.

2.4 US 5,382,972 (Kannes)

Date: earliest priority 1988-09-22; granted 1995-01-17.
Disclosure: a conferencing system with composite video signal generation that combines multiple conferee video images into a single signal displayed with a principal image plus small picture-region images (or PIP) on each monitor; a recording unit producing a permanent combined A/V record; and a control-module computer programmed to control the other system components.
Claim mapping:

• Claim 3 — this is the best cited-art reference for the "video splitter… for combining audio/video signals… into a single windowed audio/video signal" limitation, since Kannes composites several video feeds into one windowed signal. (Difference: Kannes generates the composite at a central composite-generation means rather than fed back into a switch input.)
• Claim 1 — its recording unit touches the "selectively playback and record" means, and its control computer touches the "controller."

3. Assessment by claim

• Claim 1 (independent, two-network system + switch + record/playback + stations + controller): The Tompkins/Datapoint family ('698, '917, '829, '267), Yu '240, and Kannes '2972 each disclose subsets. No single cited reference appears to disclose all of (a) a graphics/command network separate from (b) an audio/video network, with the switch, recorder, stations, and controller arranged as claimed. That absence of a clean single-reference anticipation is consistent with the patent having issued. '267 is the most likely to have been relied on (alone or combined).
• Claim 2 (codec farm for node-to-node): Best cited-art support is Yu '240 (claim 9, plurality of codecs) and, by analogy, Ogasawara '560 (shared modem pool). Neither is styled a "farm" for coupling to a remote interactive multimedia system, so claim 2 is the weakest to challenge on this record.
• Claim 3 (video splitter → single windowed signal): Best cited-art support is Kannes '2972 (compositing multiple video images) and, secondarily, Mullett '214 (a "video splitter," though used for fan-out, not windowing) and the IBM conferencing reference US 4,507,781.
• Claim 4 (lower-rate non-deterministic command network vs. higher-rate deterministic A/V network): Best cited-art support is Tompkins '267 / '917 (separate baseband-data and broadband-A/V planes) plus the IBM TDMA family (US 4,330,857, 4,332,026, 4,346,470) for "deterministic" time-slotted transport. The C-Phone publication is directly on point conceptually (separate video traffic from LAN traffic) but, on the inventors' own characterization, still uses a single network.

4. Uncertainty flags

• Which references were actually applied: The record only lists "References Cited." I have not verified the examiner's § 102/§ 103 rejections or the applicant's remarks. Confirm via the file wrapper before treating any item above as an anticipation finding.
• Claim mapping is mine: The "potentially anticipates" column is a technical mapping I performed against the 4 issued claims; it is not an examiner or court determination.
• Date nuance for US 5,655,214 (Mullett): it issued 1997-08-05, after this patent's 1996-05-13 filing, but its application was filed 1995-09-07. It therefore could only qualify as prior art via a § 102(e)-type provision (granted U.S. patent on an earlier-filed application), not as a § 102(a)/(b) printed publication. I have not confirmed its effective § 102(e) date against the applicant's invention date.
• Kannes priority: I report the earliest priority as 1988-09-22 (per the patent-family record); the granted date is 1995-01-17. If a stricter priority analysis is needed, verify the continuation chain.
• Items 1–7 (IBM, Dicom, Fujitsu, Canon, NTT) are characterized at title level. I did not retrieve full texts for those in this session; descriptions are inferred from titles and general field knowledge and should be spot-checked before being cited.
• No litigation/change to the earlier finding: consistent with the previously generated sections, I located no litigation involving this patent; nothing in this prior-art sweep changes that, and I still cannot confirm a definitive negative.

Primary source for the citation list and bibliographic data: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6404811B1](/patent/US6404811B1)/en and https://uspto.report/patent/grant/6404811 (both reproduce the identical 18-reference + C-Phone "References Cited" list).

I'll ground the obviousness analysis in the actual prior-art references of record. Let me pull details on the key ones.

Important find — there's a Board of Patent Appeals decision in Ex parte Cvetko. Let me pull it.