Invalidity dossier
US 6484261
Graphical network security policy management
Current assignee: Cisco Technology Inc
Added 9/17/2026, 1:06:44 PM
Active provider: DeepSeek · deepseek-flash
Patent summary
Title, assignee, inventors, filing/issue dates, abstract, and a plain-language overview of the claims.
Patent Overview — US6484261B1
Title: Graphical network security policy management
Patent number: US6484261B1
Inventor: Scott L. Wiegel (per the source listing)
Assignee: Cisco Technology, Inc. (original assignee; listed as current assignee)
Application number: US09/210,143
Priority date: 1998-02-17 (stated as an assumption, not a legal conclusion)
Filing date: 1998-12-11
Publication/grant date: 2002-11-19
Anticipated expiration: 2018-12-11; legal status listed as "Expired – Lifetime"
Purpose and plain-language scope (based only on the supplied text):
The patent concerns graphically managing network security policy. The supplied excerpt indicates the disclosure relates to representing and handling policy for network devices through symbols, a decision tree, and actions/responses, with terms such as "policy," "network device," "symbols," "script," "decision tree," "communication," and "action" appearing among the most frequent terms. The classifications indicate the subject matter falls under arrangements for maintenance, administration or management of data switching networks — specifically policy-based network configuration management, graphical user interfaces for network management, and network security policy management (H04L41/28, H04L41/0894, H04L41/22, H04L63/20, among others).
The abstract and claims are referenced in the source's term-frequency listing but their full text is not present in the supplied excerpt, so the precise claimed scope cannot be restated here.
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6484261](/patent/US6484261)/en
What the excerpt does not establish: The full abstract, claim language, and detailed description are not included, so the exact scope of the claims, the specific embodiments, and any described figures cannot be summarized. The excerpt also does not establish prosecution history, the accuracy of the assignee listing, or the correctness of the stated priority/expiration dates, which the source itself labels as assumptions rather than legal conclusions.
Generated 10/1/2026, 10:03:12 PM
Cases on file (0)
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Litigation summary
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Proceedings on file (0)
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No PTAB proceedings on file. This patent has not been challenged via IPR, PGR, or CBM. The absence is itself a signal — well-asserted patents eventually attract IPRs. The LLM analysis below may surface filings the ODP feed hasn’t indexed yet.
PTAB challenges
AIA trial proceedings at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board — IPR, PGR, and CBM. Petitioners, judge panels, claim-level invalidation outcomes from Final Written Decisions, and Federal Circuit appeals. The single most important defensive datapoint after litigation history.
Assignment history
Inventors, original assignee, and the chain of ownership recorded with the USPTO — including the correspondent attorney who recorded each assignment, since shell-LLC chains often share one repeat-player attorney even when the entity names look unrelated. Surfaces NPE / patent-troll patterns: shell-entity transfers, known asserters in the chain, repeat correspondent fingerprints, pre-litigation assignments, and bankruptcy fire-sales.
Prior art
Earlier patents, publications, and products that may anticipate or render the claims unpatentable.
Obviousness
Combinations of prior art that suggest the claimed invention would have been obvious under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
Extensions
Patent term adjustments, term extensions, continuations, divisionals, family members, and expiration dates.
Derivative works
Defensive disclosure: derivative variations of each claim designed to render future incremental improvements obvious or non-novel.