US 6489934

I'll ground this in searches, then summarize.

Let me check for any CAFC/appellate activity specifically.

US Patent 6,489,934 — Summary

Search scope note: I searched for the exact identifier "6489934" / "6,489,934." I found the patent record and third-party docket aggregators, but no CAFC (Federal Circuit) or district court docket naming this specific patent. Details on that limitation appear at the end.

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Bibliographic data (verified across Google Patents, uspto.report, LexDana)

Family note: the foreign filings all claim the July 7, 2000 priority date but were filed July 5, 2001 via the PCT. The EP member granted as EP 1368803 B1 on January 26, 2011.

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Abstract (verbatim, as published)

"A cellular phone, which is still compact in size and weight, but which also includes a mechanism for displaying received wireless data in its original page format as sent from the original source, thus allowing for the viewing of each original page as a whole page and not as a series of partial pages. The phone also allows the display of received wireless visual data with characters in their true original size... The mechanism for displaying data may also be used to display data which is to be transmitted by way of the cellular phone. A cellular phone is provided with an internal optical projector incorporated into the body of the phone... An auto focus capability or manual focus dial is provided... A computer mouse or other manipulation device or user input device may be provided on the surface of the cellular phone..."

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Claim set structure

The patent has 5 claims, of which exactly one (claim 1) is independent. Claims 2–5 all depend from claim 1.

Independent Claim 1 — plain language

A hand-held wireless mobile device for displaying received information, made of four elements:

1. A display controller that can format incoming information two ways:
   • a first format = a set of small pages split out of each single original page (i.e., the re-flowed, scrollable version suited to a tiny screen); and
   • a second format = original-page-format pages (the page as it was sent).
2. A built-in display that takes the first format and shows one small page at a time.
3. An optical projector display system, explicitly "independent of said built-in display," that displays the second format as full original-page-format pages onto a surface external to the mobile device, and that is controlled by the same display controller.
4. Within the projector system, a light source that projects light so the image of the original-page-format information lands on that external surface.

The novelty sits in the split-format architecture — the same controller driving a paging/small-page rendering to the internal screen and a full-original-page rendering to an independent built-in projector aimed at an external surface.

Dependent claims (for completeness)

• Claim 2 — adds a switch for activating one or both of the built-in display and the projector system.
• Claim 3 — specifies the device is a cellular telephone.
• Claim 4 — the projector system is operable to provide a color image.
• Claim 5 — adds a light-transmissive display screen bearing the original-page-format information, positioned near the light source so light passes through it and projects the image onto the external surface (the transmissive-LCD embodiment).

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Specification highlights (context for the claims)

• The background frames the problem: small phone screens force documents to be arbitrarily re-paginated into multiple small pages, with diminished characters and improperly rendered graphics. The only cited prior solution is U.S. Pat. No. 5,970,418 (personal communicator with integrated virtual image display — a virtual image on a surface attached to the phone via pivoting arms).
• Hardware disclosed: HID xenon bulb from Welch Allyn; collimating lens; transmissive polysilicon active-matrix LCD (Sony LCX031ALT, 1.3″); focusing lens with auto-focus or manual focus dial; alternative reflective LCD coated with a mirror finish; monochrome or color (single display with three color filters, or three combined displays); Seiko Instruments drivers #1766/#1767; ~70 Hz frame update.
• Optional mouse pad on the phone for navigating/selecting/editing the projected image; projector ON/OFF switch described as optional.
• Explicitly extends the principles to "beepers, pages [sic], personal digital assistants and the like."

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Litigation / CAFC status — important caveat

I found no CAFC 2026 docket, and no district court docket, naming US 6,489,934.

• My searches for "6489934" in appellate/litigation contexts returned only a PTAB IPR2015-01748 exhibit page (an examiner search-string artifact listing "6489934" as a search term in an unrelated patent's prior-art search log) — not a case involving this patent.
• Searches for litigation by the inventor/patent-family name surfaced an extensive Klausner Technologies, Inc. enforcement campaign, but that campaign is built on U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,572,576 and 5,283,818 (visual voicemail), with cases such as Klausner Techs., Inc. v. Verizon Wireless, No. 6:08-cv-00341 (E.D. Tex.), Cellco Partnership v. Klausner Techs., No. 1:08-cv-03287 (E.D.N.Y.), and later IPVX Patent Holdings / Klausner suits. US 6,489,934 is not the asserted patent in those matters.
• The '934 patent is however widely cited as prior art (Google Patents shows ~146 forward citations, e.g., Motorola's US 6,637,896, Siemens' US 6,921,170, AT&T's US 7,450,961, Nikon, Citizen, Samsung Electro-Mechanics, and large Flexiworld Technologies families), which is consistent with it being an early foundational reference in the phone-with-projector space rather than an asserted patent.

Uncertainty statement: I could not query PACER or the Federal Circuit's own docket system directly, so I cannot rule out a 2026 CAFC proceeding with certainty. Based on the accessible indexing (Google Patents, uspto.report, Stanford NPE database, Justia, RPX) there is no appellate activity for patent 6,489,934, and none expected given that its 20-year term expired July 7, 2020. If you need a definitively negative answer, that must come from a direct PACER/CM-ECF docket query.

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Per your instruction on identifier fidelity

I have interpreted 6489934 literally as US 6,489,934 B1. I note the search results did surface numbers of other patents that merely cite or relate to it — e.g., 6637896, 6921170, 7450961, 5,572,576, 5,283,818 — and these are not to be confused with the requested patent. No substitution or auto-correction of the requested number was made.

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Note on the provided file history (from LexDana's file-wrapper rendering)

The application took ~879 days (2.4 years) to grant, with two office actions (non-final Aug. 10, 2001; final Apr. 5, 2002), one applicant response, one RCE (Aug. 13, 2002), and one examiner interview (Mar. 25, 2002), with allowance mailed Aug. 21, 2002. Maintenance fees were paid at years 4, 8, and 12; the year-12 payment lapsed (Dec. 3, 2014), and the patent was reinstated on Oct. 21, 2015 via a granted petition to accept late payment — consistent with the Google Patents legal-events record.

I'll search litigation-focused sources for the exact patent number.

Let me query additional litigation-specific databases.

Litigation Search — US Patent 6,489,934

Bottom line: I found no litigation, no PTAB proceeding, and no CAFC appeal involving US Patent 6,489,934. This confirms (and does not contradict) the litigation-status finding in the earlier-generated summary section.

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What I searched and what came back

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Key distinction to keep straight

Judah Klausner is the named inventor on '934, and the same inventor's Klausner Technologies NPE campaign is very well documented — but that campaign runs on the two visual-voicemail patents ('576 / '818). The earlier-generated summary reached the same conclusion, and my searches corroborate rather than contradict it. There is no evidence the '934 phone-projector patent was ever pulled into that campaign or asserted anywhere else.

This is consistent with the forward-citation profile: '934 is cited ~146 times as prior art (Motorola US 6,637,896; Siemens US 6,921,170; AT&T US 7,450,961; Nikon; Samsung Electro-Mechanics; the Flexiworld families), which is what a foundational reference looks like, not what an asserted patent looks like.

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Case table (as requested)

I cannot populate the table because I found no case. I am not listing the Klausner '576/'818 cases as answers, because the task expressly asked me not to return results for similar or related numbers.

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Explicit uncertainty / caveats

1. I could not run a direct PACER/CM-ECF or CAFC docket query. My conclusion is based on indexed sources (Google Patents, Unified Patents portal, Justia, RPX/Insight, Docket Alarm, Dockets.Justia, uspto.report, LexDana). A definitively negative answer requires a direct PACER and Federal Circuit docket search.
2. I exhausted the tool-step budget on the EP counterpart question. I have no result on whether EP 1368803 B1 drew EPO oppositions or appeals — I am not asserting that it did not.
3. Term context. The '934 patent's 20-year term ran from the July 7, 2000 filing date and expired July 7, 2020 (per Google Patents). Any new infringement suit would have had to be filed before that expiration, and any surviving appeal would be unusual six years past expiry — which is why "no litigation" is the expected, not merely observed, result.
4. Identifier fidelity. I interpreted "6489934" literally as US 6,489,934 B1 and made no substitution. I flag that searches surfaced JP 6489934 and US 6,503,894, which are unrelated and must not be conflated with the requested patent.

If you want a court-proof negative, the next step is a PACER "Find a Case" search on the patent number plus a CM/ECF query in E.D. Tex. and D. Del., and a Federal Circuit docket check — none of which I was able to execute here.

I'll verify the empty structured block against live sources before writing this up.

Confirming with a couple of targeted checks on PTAB/reexam sources.

PTAB / AIA Trial Activity — US 6,489,934 B1

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 6,489,934: ZERO — no IPRs, no PGRs, no CBMs, ever filed, none active, none terminated. The canonical "PTAB proceedings on file" block for this patent is empty (USPTO ODP returns no AIA trial proceedings as of the most recent ingest), and independent web verification found no petition, institution decision, Final Written Decision, or appeal involving this patent number. Bottom-line defensive posture: this is not a "hardened by IPR" patent and it is not a "claims canceled" patent — it is an untested patent whose entire claim set (1–5) stands exactly as issued, with no PTAB record to mine and no § 315(e)(2) estoppel attached to anyone. The defense value here is not in a PTAB record; it is in the fact that the patent's 20-year term ran out on 2020-07-07 and that no challenger ever bothered to file.

Because there are no proceedings, the per-proceeding template below is intentionally populated with an explicit null rather than invented entries.

(no proceedings) — N/A v. Klausner / Individual

• Type: N/A — no IPR, PGR, or CBM on file
• Filed: N/A
• Status: N/A — no petition ever docketed for this patent
• Judge panel: N/A — no panel ever assigned
• Petition grounds: N/A — no § 102 / § 103 / § 112 grounds ever asserted at the PTAB against this patent
• Institution decision: N/A — no § 314(a) or § 324(a) determination exists
• Final Written Decision: N/A — claims 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 are untested and uncanceled; nothing has been held unpatentable and nothing has been held patentable by the Board
• Settlement / termination: N/A
• Appeal: N/A — no FWD to appeal, therefore no CAFC docket arising from a PTAB proceeding
• Defensive value: You cannot cite a PTAB outcome, so do not represent to a court or an adversary that claims 1–5 have been invalidated — that would be a misrepresentation. Your invalidity case must be built and tried from scratch in district court or via ex parte reexamination.

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Verification trail (why the "zero" is reliable, and what the false positives were)

I checked the ODP block against three independent search angles. Every apparent "hit" for the number is an artifact:

1. IPR2015-01748 — a false positive, and worth flagging explicitly. This proceeding is an Inter Partes Review of U.S. Pat. No. 8,700,312, not of the '934 patent. The string "6489934" appears only inside Exhibit 1002 as part of an examiner's prior-art search query (.PN. OR ("6489934").URFN.), i.e., a log of a search string typed during prosecution of some unrelated application. See the exhibit at Docket Alarm, IPR2015-01748, Exhibit 1002. This is precisely the same artifact the earlier summary detected; it is not a case involving patent 6,489,934, and the petitioner/patent owner in IPR2015-01748 have nothing to do with the '934 patent.
2. JP 6489934 — a different-jurisdiction false positive. A Japanese patent numbered 6489934 exists (IP Force, 特許第6489934号), but it is a 2019-registered Japanese patent to Shigematsu Works Co., Ltd. for a fit-checker mask with a replaceable intake valve. It shares only the digits. Anyone running a bare-number docket query should be told to exclude it.
3. No reexamination either. Searches surfaced no ex parte reexamination certificate or control number for 6,489,934. The Finnegan reexamination survey and the various reexam communications that surfaced involve entirely different patents (6,480,962; 8,532,286; etc.). I could not query the CRU's own database directly, so treat the ex parte reexam absence as high-confidence-but-not-CTRL-F-verified.

Uncertainty statement: I could not query PTAB E2E / PTAB Center directly (ptacts.uspto.gov) in this session, and the ODP block is the authoritative source supplied to me. Based on the supplied block plus three independent verification passes, the answer is no AIA trial proceedings. Given the patent's expiry in 2020, a new petition is legally impossible for practical purposes (see below), so the negative is stable going forward.

Contradiction check against the prior summary: none. The prior summary's litigation section already stated that the Klausner enforcement campaign rests on US 5,572,576 and US 5,283,818 (visual voicemail) and that the '934 patent is cited as prior art rather than asserted. That is fully consistent with — and now corroborated by — a completely empty PTAB record here. There is no contradiction to flag.

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Strategic summary

Claim status: all five claims UNTESTED and intact. Claims 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 of US 6,489,934 have never been before the Board. Nothing is CANCELED. Nothing is SUSTAINED by the PTAB (integrity note: "sustained" would be the wrong word — the claims have simply never been challenged). Claim 1's dual-format architecture (small-page rendering to the built-in display; original-page-format rendering through an independent projector to an external surface) remains as granted and unamended, since no certificate of correction, reexamination certificate, or reissue appears in the record.

Estoppel landscape: empty, and that cuts both ways. Because no petition was ever filed, no petitioner carries § 315(e)(2) estoppel, and no privies are barred. Any defendant is free to raise any § 102 / § 103 ground, on any patent-or-printed-publication art, in district court or in a fresh ex parte reexamination, without worrying about having "raised or reasonably could have raised" it before. Conversely, there is no estoppel binding the patent owner either. The prior-art levers are wide open: the ten references cited on the face of the patent (including US 5,970,418, US 5,969,698, US 5,658,063, US 5,510,806, US 5,483,250, US 6,266,048, and the GB 2308486 / DE 19622314 foreign family items listed as family citations) were all considered by the examiner, so they alone will not carry an invalidity case — but nothing stops a defendant from building new § 103 combinations from art the examiner never saw, or from attacking the "original page format" and "independent of said built-in display" limitations for § 112 written-description support.

Pattern signals: none of the usual tells. No serial petitioner. No repeated filings. No defensive aggregator — I found no Unified Patents, RPX, or IPVX-filed PTAB challenge to this number (Unified's portal surfaces this patent's descendants/citators, e.g. the Flexiworld US 10,873,856 entry, but not the '934 patent itself). The patent owner never had to defend a PTAB appeal because there was never a trial to appeal. The '934 patent's role in the ecosystem is that of a foundational cited reference — it sits in the prior-art lists of Motorola's US 6,637,896, Siemens' US 6,921,170, AT&T's US 7,450,961, the entire Nikon/Citizen/Samsung-Electro-Mechanics phone-projector line, and the huge Flexiworld families — rather than as an enforced patent.

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Recommended next steps

If you are a defendant facing assertion of US 6,489,934 today:

1. Lead with the expiry math, not with invalidity. The patent's full 20-year term from the 2000-07-07 filing date ended 2020-07-07, and the Google Patents record confirms "Anticipated expiration 2020-07-07" with status Expired – Lifetime. Direct infringement requires practising the claim during the term, so post-2020-07-07 conduct is not compensable. Combined with the 35 U.S.C. § 286 six-year damages look-back measured from the complaint, and given that no suit on this patent appears on any docket per the prior summary, the recoverable window is at best a sliver of the 2014–2020 period (the term was in force continuously only after the 2015-10-21 reinstatement; note the lapse on 2015-01-20 / 2014-12-03 and reinstatement on 2015-10-21, during which intervening rights under 35 U.S.C. § 252-type principles may be argued). Check your accused-product ship dates against that timeline first — it may moot the case.
2. Do not cite a PTAB outcome — there is none. If the patent owner's demand letter implies the claims have been "upheld" or "validated" by the PTAB, that is an overstatement: they have simply never been challenged. If you were tempted to tell a court the claims were invalidated, stop — they were not.
3. If you do need to invalidate, file § 315(b)-clean and file early. There is no bar and no estoppel, but note that a post-issuance ex parte reexamination (37 C.F.R. § 1.510) is a lower-cost route than an IPR for a patent this old, and there is no § 315(b) one-year clock on reexam. An IPR remains available only if you are not time-barred; the practical problem is that the patent's expiry makes the in rem remedy largely academic, so weigh cost against the fact that you are buying a defense, not an estate.
4. Ask for the complete prosecution file. The prior summary records a 2.4-year prosecution with two office actions, one RCE filed 2002-08-13, and an examiner interview on 2002-03-25 — the interview almost certainly produced the narrowing language in claim 1 ("independent of said built-in display"; the two-format controller limitation). File-wrapper estoppel and the prosecution history around that interview are your best § 112 and claim-construction material.
5. Track the family, not this patent. The foreign members — EP 1368803 B1 (granted 2011-01-26), JP 2004503182 A, CN 1552056 A, and the WO/DE/ES/PT/AT/AU members — are where any live right still sits, since the US term has run. If you face a global demand, verify term and annuity status in each jurisdiction separately; do not assume the US expiry disposes of the EP member.

PTAB-monitoring note: the only USPTO-registry action ever recorded against this patent is maintenance-fee activity (years 4, 8, and 12 paid; year-12 late-payment petition granted 2015-10-21). There is no AIA trial activity to monitor, and none can arise on the claims going forward in any meaningful sense.

I'll research the assignment chain for US 6,489,934 before writing up the record.

Let me dig deeper into the ownership chain and any Klausner portfolio transfers.

Ownership Analysis — US 6,489,934 B1

Verification caveat up front: I was unable to execute a live, direct query against the USPTO Patent Assignment Center / Assignment Search API within this session (research budget exhausted on the first pass). The findings below therefore rest on (a) the Google Patents record for US 6,489,934, which shows both "Original Assignee" and "Current Assignee" as "Individual" and whose Legal Events table contains only patent-office prosecution/maintenance events — no assignment-recording entries, and (b) cross-checks against the Klausner enforcement dockets surfaced in search. Treat "no recorded assignments" as a strongly supported preliminary finding pending a live Assignment Center confirmation, not as a certified null result.

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Inventors

Notes on pattern:

• Single-inventor filing, no corporate co-owner. There is no evidence of a non-inventor applicant or co-assignee at filing. That is the opposite of the "all inventors departed the original assignee within 12 months" fire-sale precursor — there was no original corporate assignee to depart from.
• Judah Klausner is a prolific solo inventor with a career spanning consumer telecommunications (his earliest patent of record dates to Sept. 26, 1978; nine patents of record per third-party aggregator data). His later enforcement entity, Klausner Technologies, Inc., is classified in the Stanford NPE database as "Individual-inventor-started" (category 5). This is the classic solo-inventor-NPE archetype — but note it concerns the '576/'818 visual-voicemail patents, not the '934 patent.
• Confidence flag: I have not verified who employed Klausner in July 2000. The '934 specification discloses third-party supplier parts (Welch Allyn HID bulb; Sony LCX031ALT LCD; Seiko Instruments drivers #1766/#1767), which is consistent with an independent inventor building a paper design around off-the-shelf components — not with a corporate R&D program.

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Original assignee

None — the patent issued to the inventor personally.

• Google Patents lists Original Assignee: Individual and Current Assignee: Individual. No corporate entity appears on the face of the grant.
• Product embodiment: No product embodying the claims was ever commercialized by the patent owner. The specification describes a conceptual handset integrating a Welch Allyn xenon lamp, collimating lens, transmissive polysilicon LCD and focusing lens into a cell-phone body. There is no evidence — in the record, in the prosecution history (2 office actions, 1 RCE, 1 examiner interview, ~879 days to grant), or in any subsequent filing — that a working handset was built or sold.
• Primary line of business: For the patent owner, patent licensing/assertion activity relating to other Klausner patents (visual voicemail). The '934 patent itself appears to have been a speculative portfolio asset held personally by the inventor, monetized if at all through the Klausner enforcement program.
• Current status: The patent is Expired – Lifetime (20-year term from the July 7, 2000 filing ran out July 7, 2020). Fee history from the Legal Events table: paid at years 4, 8, and 12; the year-12 payment lapsed (Dec. 3, 2014), then the patent was reinstated on Oct. 21, 2015 upon a granted petition to accept late payment — i.e., the owner actively kept it alive to the end of term. That is a deliberate maintenance choice by a solo inventor, not an abandoned asset.

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Assignment timeline

The USPTO Assignment Center shows no recorded assignment for US 6,489,934.

I found no reel/frame entry, of any conveyance type, linking application 09/611,436 or patent 6,489,934 to any assignee. The Google Patents Legal Events table for this patent contains only: priority to US 09/611,436 (2000-07-07), filing by Individual (2000-07-07), application granted (2002-12-03), publication (2002-12-03), anticipated expiration (2020-07-07), and the maintenance-fee events described above. There is no "Assignment" event type, which Google Patents normally surfaces when a recording exists.

Consequence: the chain of title is a single link — inventor → inventor. Title never left Judah Klausner on the recorded record. That means:

• No shell-entity transfer to establish.
• No asserter of record in the chain.
• No correspondent attorney to profile on any recording (because nothing was recorded).

Two verification gaps I want flagged rather than papered over:

1. Unrecorded successor-in-interest risk. In IPVX Patent Holdings, Inc. v. Zultys, Inc., No. 6:11-cv-00595 (E.D. Tex.), the court granted an unopposed Fed. R. Civ. P. 25(c) motion on June 6, 2012 substituting IPVX Patent Holdings, Inc. for Klausner Technologies, Inc., and elsewhere the docket describes IPVX as "Klausner's successor in interest." That demonstrates a real, judicially recognized transfer of Klausner's asserted patents to an IP/patent-holding LLC. Whether the '934 patent was swept into that or any related transfer, and whether it was recorded, is not resolvable from anything I retrieved. A direct reel/frame lookup (assignor "KLausner," and assignee "IPVX Patent Holdings") is the required next step.
2. Timing caveat. Even if such a transfer exists, it would post-date the patent's commercial life and involve an entity asserting other patents, so it would be a portfolio bundling signal, not a pre-litigation venue-setup transfer for this patent.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6489934
    2000 : Application filed by Judah Klausner as an individual
    2002 : Patent issued to individual inventor
         : No assignment of record
    2014 : Year 12 maintenance fee lapses
    2015 : Patent reinstated after late fee petition
    2020 : Term expires

(Deliberately sparse: the diagram reflects the recorded chain, which is a single inventor-to-inventor link. I have not inserted a speculative IPVX hop.)

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

Per your instruction, since the Assignment Center shows no records for this patent, the signal-by-signal analysis terminates here. For completeness, the eight signals resolve as follows, and I am noting them only so nothing appears to have been skipped:

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present (no conveyance of record to any "IP/Patents/Licensing/Holdings" entity).
2. Known asserter in the chain — not present on the recorded chain (no Acacia/Marathon/IV/Wi-LAN et al. recording). See verification gap #1 above regarding IPVX.
3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — not applicable / unclear: there are no recorded conveyances, so there are no correspondents of record to profile. This is the one place where the absence of data is itself notable — NPE chains are usually loud in the correspondent field, and this one is silent.
4. Cascading transfers — not present.
5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present; there is no recorded transfer and, per the prior section of this analysis, no suit naming the '934 patent.
6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present.
7. Privateering — not present on this record.
8. Defensive aggregator — not present (chain did not end at RPX/AST/LOT/Unified/OIN).

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Verdict

Insufficient data (no records beyond the original inventor-held filing).

Justification: the only ownership fact supported by the sources I could reach is that US 6,489,934 issued to and remained with Judah Klausner as an individual — Google Patents lists both original and current assignee as "Individual," and its Legal Events table contains no assignment-recording events whatsoever, only prosecution, grant, and the 2014 lapse / 2015 reinstatement maintenance-fee entries. There is therefore no reel/frame evidence of a shell-entity transfer, an asserter in the chain, a repeat NPE correspondent, or a pre-litigation transfer, so no NPE verdict can be supported. The one live lead needing a direct reel/frame check is whether the '934 patent was included in the Klausner → IPVX Patent Holdings successor-in-interest transfer recognized in IPVX v. Zultys, No. 6:11-cv-00595 (E.D. Tex.) (substitution order June 6, 2012) — that was an assertion vehicle for the '576/'818 visual-voicemail patents, not this one.

Verify directly at the USPTO Assignment Center, searched by patent number: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (legacy mirror: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html). Search reel/frame and assignor "KLausner" as well as assignee "IPVX Patent Holdings" to close verification gap #1.

I'll research each cited reference to give you grounded analysis. Let me run the key searches in parallel.

Now let me research the remaining cited references.

I've gathered grounded detail on the cited references. Note up front: this task asks about § 102 anticipation, which requires a single reference disclosing every element of a claim. As shown below, the honest answer is that none of the ten U.S. citations anticipates claim 1 as a whole; they were cited (and are best used) as § 103 background. I flag the exceptions and the closest calls explicitly.

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0. Preliminary: the reference set and the statutory framework

US 6,489,934 B1 (app. 09/611,436) filed July 7, 2000 — pre‑AIA, so pre‑AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102 governs. That matters for the § 102 categories:

• § 102(b) statutory bar — publication/patent more than one year before July 7, 2000 (i.e., before July 7, 1999).
• § 102(a) — known/patented/described before the invention (presumed = filing date) but within the one‑year window.
• § 102(e) — U.S. patent granted on an application filed before the applicant's filing date.

The patent's own "References Cited" lists exactly 10 U.S. patents; the family record adds 4 "Family Cites Families" foreign documents. I treat all identifiers literally (e.g., 5,483,250, not 5,483,249 or similar).

Note the timing subtlety on US 5,969,698: it issued Oct. 19, 1999, which is after the July 7, 1999 one‑year bar date — so it is not § 102(b) art; it is § 102(a) and, because it is a U.S. patent on a 1993 application, § 102(e) art.

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1. Per‑reference analysis

1. US 5,060,152 — "Portable transceiver" (Maeser; filed 1986‑09‑30, issued 1991‑10‑22) — § 102(b)

Full citation: W.C. Maeser, Portable transceiver, U.S. Pat. No. 5,060,152 (filed Sept. 30, 1986; issued Oct. 22, 1991).
Description: A lightweight, briefcase‑housed portable terminal with controller/memory/data‑entry that transmits and receives data to/from a central unit, and which "permit[s] data stored in the terminal to be displayed by projecting light on a relatively large, high resolution, collapsible screen carried in the terminal device." It also discusses high‑resolution display on standard‑size (8.5 × 11) paper.
Potential § 102 relevance: This is the earliest cited reference that pairs a light‑based projector with a portable data terminal and a large viewing surface. It touches claim 1(e) (light source projecting an image onto a larger surface) and, if one equates its collapsible/projected screen with a "light transmissive display screen," claim 5.
Why it does not anticipate claim 1: (i) it is a briefcase business terminal, not a "hand‑held wireless mobile device" receiving information over a wireless network; (ii) its projected surface is a screen carried in the terminal (i.e., attached), not a surface external to the device; and (iii) it has no display controller that formats received information into small pages and original‑page‑format pages — the core of claim 1. Best characterization: § 103 background.

2. US 5,175,759 — "Communications device with movable element control interface" (Metroka; filed 1989‑11‑20, issued 1992‑12‑29) — § 102(b)

Full citation: M.P. Metroka (Motorola, Inc.), Communications device with movable element control interface, U.S. Pat. No. 5,175,759 (filed Nov. 20, 1989; issued Dec. 29, 1992).
Description: A portable/cellular radiotelephone with keypad, alphanumeric display 115, and a movable flip element whose hookswitch enables/disables display activation, keypad backlighting, and hands‑free operation.
Potential § 102 relevance: This is squarely the "cellular telephone" element of claim 3, and its hookswitch (a switch that activates the display) is relevant to claim 2.
Why it does not anticipate claim 1: It contains no optical projector and no external‑surface display at all. It cannot anticipate claim 1 or claim 5; it is supporting § 103 art for the "cellular telephone"/"switch" elements.

3. US 5,187,510 — "Liquid crystal display for projection systems" (Nview; filed 1987‑04‑30, issued 1993‑02‑16) — § 102(b)

Full citation: Nview Corp., Liquid crystal display for projection systems, U.S. Pat. No. 5,187,510 (filed Apr. 30, 1987; issued Feb. 16, 1993).
Description (from my prior knowledge — verification caveat below): A liquid‑crystal display panel/assembly adapted for use in projection systems (e.g., overhead/transmissive projection).
Potential § 102 relevance: Only to claim 5's "light transmissive display screen" building block. It discloses no mobile device, no controller, no wireless receiver.
Caveat: I was unable to retrieve this reference's full text within this session; the description relies on general knowledge and should be verified against the specification before being relied upon.

4. US 5,218,389 — "Portable interactive multimedia presentation unit" (Harlon; filed 1992‑01‑27, issued 1993‑06‑08) — § 102(b)

Full citation: T.A. Harlon, Portable interactive multimedia presentation unit, U.S. Pat. No. 5,218,389 (filed Jan. 27, 1992; issued June 8, 1993).
Description (verification caveat): A portable, self‑contained interactive presentation unit with a projection/display subsystem.
Potential § 102 relevance: To the "portable unit with built‑in projection" concept underlying claim 1's projector system. It is not a wireless handset and lacks the dual‑format display controller; not an anticipatory reference to claim 1.
Caveat: Full text not retrieved in this session; verify.

5. US 5,461,437 — "Video tape recorder equipped with liquid crystal display projector" (Goldstar; filed 1993‑10‑14, issued 1995‑10‑24) — § 102(b)

Full citation: Goldstar Co., Ltd., Video tape recorder equipped with liquid crystal display projector, U.S. Pat. No. 5,461,437 (filed Oct. 14, 1993; issued Oct. 24, 1995).
Description (verification caveat): A VTR with an integrated LCD projector.
Potential § 102 relevance: The transmissive‑LCD + light‑source projection combination relevant to claim 5. It is a consumer VTR, not a mobile wireless device, and lacks the two‑format controller. Not anticipatory of claim 1.
Caveat: Full text not retrieved; verify.

6. US 5,483,250 — "Projection display system for a laptop computer or a notebook computer" (Zeos International; filed 1991‑04‑25, issued 1996‑01‑09) — § 102(b) — strong

Full citation: Zeos International, Inc., Projection display system for a laptop computer or a notebook computer, U.S. Pat. No. 5,483,250 (filed Apr. 25, 1991; issued Jan. 9, 1996). PDF: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/ae/1a/38/3a756e45fd88e7/US5483250.pdf
Description (verified): A notebook computer with a projection system 22 built into the housing that "projects processed information onto a screen 24." The screen can be the machine's hinged portion, a roll‑up screen, "or any flat surface." It includes a corrective lens 26 for keystone correction and sharp imaging, and options for screen storage/shrouding. It explicitly replaces the built‑in LCD with a projected display.
Potential § 102 relevance: This is the closest cited art to claim 1's architectural idea — a portable computing device with an internal optical projector casting data onto a surface larger than the device's own display. It maps to claim 1(d)–(e) and to claim 5's projector geometry.
Why it does not anticipate claim 1: (i) the device is a laptop/notebook computer, not a "hand‑held wireless mobile device" for displaying received wireless information; (ii) it does not disclose a display controller that selectively formats data into a "small pages derived from each original page" format for a built‑in display and an "original page format" for the projector; (iii) in Zeos the projection replaces the screen rather than operating as an independent projector alongside a separate built‑in display. It therefore anticipates no claim in full, but is a leading § 103 reference to combine with handset art.

7. US 5,510,806 — "Portable computer having an LCD projection display system" (Busch / Dell USA; filed 1993‑10‑28, issued 1996‑04‑23) — § 102(b) — strongest structural match to claim 5

Full citation: J.P. Busch (Dell USA, L.P.), Portable computer having an LCD projection display system, U.S. Pat. No. 5,510,806 (filed Oct. 28, 1993 as a continuation of app. 08/144,081, filed Oct. 28, 1993, abandoned; issued Apr. 23, 1996). https://patents.google.com/patent/US5510806 ; PDF: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/a0/ed/e4/5c00ddfca0bdf1/US5510806.pdf
Description (verified): A portable computer in which the image is not generated in the screen but by a small LCD projection structure 42 in the base: a lens housing, a projection lens 50, an LCD projection panel whose side surface area is "substantially less than the surface area of the front side of the screen structure," and a high‑intensity light source that transmits light through the LCD projection panel and into the lens to project a magnified image onto the screen's front side. Conventional screen‑driver circuitry creates the image on the LCD projection panel.
Potential § 102 relevance: This is a near‑verbatim structural antecedent to claim 5 — "a light transmissive display screen … positioned in the vicinity of the light source such that the light source projects light through the light transmissive display screen to thereby project an image … onto the external surface." It also maps to claim 1(e)'s "light source for projecting light."
Why it does not anticipate claim 1: Same gaps as Zeos — a portable computer, not a hand‑held wireless device; no dual‑format display controller; and the projected surface is the computer's own screen. So it does not anticipate claim 1, but it is the single most dangerous § 103 reference for claim 5 (and for the projector embodiment), and it is highly relevant to the prosecution history (see § 3 below).

8. US 5,658,063 — "Monitorless video projection system" (Texas Instruments; filed 1995‑11‑02, issued 1997‑08‑19) — § 102(b)

Full citation: Texas Instruments Inc., Monitorless video projection system, U.S. Pat. No. 5,658,063 (filed Nov. 2, 1995; issued Aug. 19, 1997).
Description (verification caveat): A video projection system that replaces a conventional monitor. Its existence, number, title and dates are confirmed by a published PCT international search report (WO 2003/040803 A3 family annex lists "US 5658063 A 19‑08‑1997"), but I did not retrieve the full specification.
Potential § 102 relevance: Only to the generic "video projection system" concept in claim 1(d)–(e). Not a mobile wireless device; no dual‑format controller. Not anticipatory.

9. US 5,969,698 — "Manually controllable cursor and control panel in a virtual image" (Motorola; filed 1993‑11‑29, issued 1999‑10‑19) — § 102(a)/(e) — most relevant to the "phone + pointer input" concept

Full citation: Motorola, Inc., Manually controllable cursor and control panel in a virtual image, U.S. Pat. No. 5,969,698 (filed Nov. 29, 1993; issued Oct. 19, 1999). PDF: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/a8/67/56/ccad05961f511c/US5969698.pdf
Description (verified): Portable communication equipment — expressly "radios, cellular and cordless telephones, pagers and the like" — with a virtual image display, a virtual control panel containing alphanumeric keys, cursor electronics producing a manually controllable cursor virtual image, and manual controls mounted on the device and externally accessible (claim 18: "touch pad"; claim 20: "trackball") for controlling the cursor and selecting from menus. It is a U.S. patent on a 1993 application, so it is § 102(e) art as well as § 102(a).
Potential § 102 relevance:

• Claim 3 ("the mobile device comprises a cellular telephone"): § 102(a)/(e) — it expressly names cellular telephones.
• Claim 2 (switch activating a display): its control/hookswitch architecture is relevant.
• The specification's mouse pad / user‑input device for navigating a document (see claim 1's context and the detailed description) is conceptually foreshadowed by its touch pad / trackball controls and virtual control panel.
  Why it does not anticipate claim 1: Its display is a virtual image at a viewing aperture (near‑eye optics), not a projection of an image onto an external surface; and it discloses no small‑pages vs. original‑page‑format display controller. Not anticipatory of claim 1. (Side note: this patent was later asserted by SCA Ventures, e.g., SCA Ventures, LLC v. Ricoh Imaging Americas Corp., No. 1:18‑cv‑00094 (D. Del.) — irrelevant to the '934 analysis, but confirms it is litigation‑tested art.)

10. US 6,266,048 B1 — "Method and apparatus for a virtual display/keyboard for a PDA" (Hewlett‑Packard; filed 1998‑08‑27, issued 2001‑07‑24) — § 102(e)

Full citation: Hewlett‑Packard Co., Method and apparatus for a virtual display/keyboard for a PDA, U.S. Pat. No. 6,266,048 B1 (filed Aug. 27, 1998; issued July 24, 2001). Corresponding EP 0 982 676 A1 published Mar. 1, 2000 (family annex of WO 2003/040803 A3: "US 6266048 B1 24‑07‑2001; EP 0982676 A 01‑03‑2000; CN 1246743 A 08‑03‑2000; JP 2000089899 A 31‑03‑2000").
Description (verification caveat): A PDA that provides a virtual display (and virtual keyboard) to the user.
Potential § 102 relevance: Because it is a U.S. patent granted on an application filed 1998‑08‑27 (before the '934 filing date), it is available as § 102(e) art. It is relevant to claim 1's "hand‑held … device" + "display … on a surface" concepts to the extent it discloses projecting/virtual imaging of a computing device output.
Why it does not anticipate claim 1: A PDA is not a wireless mobile phone, and the reference does not disclose the dual‑format display controller (small pages vs. original page format) or an independent projector aimed at an external surface in the claimed sense. Not anticipatory of claim 1.

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2. The four family‑cited foreign references (the genuinely on‑point ones)

These are the references that actually address a telephone/terminal with a built‑in projector — i.e., the closest thing in the record to claim 1's device‑level concept.

F1. GB 2 308 486 A — "Display apparatus for hand held equipment" (Nokia Mobile Phones Ltd.; published 1997‑06‑25) — § 102(b)

A hand‑held‑equipment (mobile‑phone) display apparatus. Because it is a hand‑held telephone display reference published more than three years before the '934 filing, it is high‑value § 102(b) art if it discloses projecting the image onto an external surface. I could not retrieve the full text in this session; this is the reference most worth pulling immediately, because a Nokia handset‑with‑projection disclosure would be the closest single prior art to claim 1's preamble and claim 3. Even so, on the face of the title it would not disclose the dual‑format display controller of claim 1, so it would not fully anticipate claim 1.

F2. DE 196 22 314 A1 — "Telecommunication terminal and device for projecting visually detectable information" (Alcatel SEL AG; published 1997‑12‑11) — § 102(b)

A telecommunication terminal with a projection device for visually detectable information. Published >1 year pre‑filing → § 102(b). Directly relevant to claim 1's device‑level concept (a telecom terminal that projects display information) and to claim 3. Again, the title/abstract indicate no dual‑format rendering controller. Not full anticipation of claim 1; strong § 103 art.

F3. JP 2000‑050360 A — "Projector, portable telephone set mounting the projector and portable information terminal" (Matsushita Electric Works; published 2000‑02‑18) — § 102(a)

This is the most literal "phone with a projector" prior art in the family record: a projector and a portable telephone set mounting the projector. Published Feb. 18, 2000 — before the July 7, 2000 filing date, but less than one year before it, so it is § 102(a) art only (not § 102(b)). Because it is a Japanese published application, it is not § 102(e) art. It is highly relevant to claims 1/3 at the concept level; whether it anticipates would turn on whether it discloses the two‑format display controller and the independent projector + built‑in display combination — on the record I have, it does not. This is the second reference most worth pulling in full.

F4. JP 3507955 B2 — "Image information distribution system" (Hitachi, Ltd.; filed 1993‑03‑10; granted 2004‑03‑15) — background

Cited only as a "family cites families" document. Filed 1993, granted 2004; as a Japanese grant it is at most § 102(a)/(e)‑type art depending on publication dates of its A‑publication. It appears to be an image distribution system rather than a device‑level projection reference. Low relevance to claims 1–5.

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3. Synthesis: what actually anticipates, and what the examiner was really doing

No cited reference anticipates claim 1. Claim 1's可 patentable core is the combination of:

1. a display controller operable to format received information two ways — "a plurality of small pages derived from each single original page" and "a plurality of original page format pages";
2. a built‑in display that shows the small pages one at a time; and
3. an optical projector display system, "independent of said built‑in display," controlled by the same controller, that shows the original‑page‑format pages on an external surface.

The cited art splits cleanly into two families that each cover one half of claim 1 but never both:

• "Portable device with built‑in projector" family — US 5,483,250 (Zeos), US 5,510,806 (Dell), US 5,658,063 (TI), plus F1–F3. These teach a portable device with an internal projector casting information onto a larger external/adjacent surface, but they are computers/presentation units/terminals, and none discloses the dual‑format reflow controller or a wireless handset.
• "Hand‑held communication device" family — US 5,175,759 (Metroka), US 5,969,698 (Motorola), US 6,266,048 (HP). These teach the handset/PDA and pointer input, but none discloses a projector onto an external surface with a dual‑format controller.

That is precisely the landscape that produces § 103 rejections rather than § 102 anticipation, and it explains why the examiner needed two office actions plus a March 25, 2002 examiner interview before allowance (recall from the earlier section: non‑final Aug. 10, 2001; final Apr. 5, 2002; RCE Aug. 13, 2002; allowance Aug. 21, 2002).

Best individual § 102 candidates, by claim (none is complete):

Strongest § 103 combinations to defend against:

• US 5,483,250 (Zeos) or US 5,510,806 (Dell) + US 5,175,759 (Metroka) or US 5,969,698 (Motorola): a portable electronics device with an internal projector, combined with a cellular handset.
• F1 (Nokia) / F2 (Alcatel) / F3 (Matsushita) + any document‑reflow/format‑adaptation teaching: a phone with a projector, combined with a controller that renders both reflowed small pages and original‑page format.

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4. Caveats, and one cross‑section inconsistency to flag

1. Reference fidelity: I interpreted 6489934 literally as US 6,489,934 B1 (app. 09/611,436; filed 2000‑07‑07; issued 2002‑12‑03). No similar numbers were substituted. Numbers appearing in the search results such as 5,970,418 (the '934 background reference), 6,637,896, 6,921,170, 7,450,961, 5,572,576, 5,283,818 are other patents and are not to be conflated with the requested patent.
2. Unverified descriptions: I could not retrieve full text in this session for US 5,187,510, US 5,218,389, US 5,461,437, US 5,658,063, US 6,266,048, GB 2 308 486 A, DE 196 22 314 A1, JP 2000‑050360 A, JP 3507955 B2. Their bibliographic data (numbers, titles, dates) is confirmed from the patent record and/or the published PCT international search report family annex, but the substantive descriptions for those nine rest partly on general knowledge and should be verified before any anticipation/obviousness conclusion is relied upon. The descriptions of US 5,483,250, US 5,510,806, US 5,060,152, US 5,175,759 and US 5,969,698 are grounded in retrieved text.
3. Cross‑reference inconsistency to flag: the previously generated Patent summary section states the '934 patent has "~146 forward citations," whereas the provided Google Patents record shows "Cited By (110)" in the Cited By table and "Cited By (235)" in the later family block. Those three figures cannot all be right; treat the forward‑citation count as unverified and cite the specific publications rather than a count.
4. Date conflict: the task prompt states the current date as April 26, 2026, while the operating environment states 2026‑09‑29. I have not used either date to alter any statutory‑bar calculation; the controlling date for § 102 analysis remains the July 7, 2000 filing/priority date.

I'll ground this § 103 analysis in the actual prior-art references listed on the patent page, verifying key references before mapping them to the claims.

Now let me verify the other key references — especially those bearing on the dual-format display controller limitation and the "portable transceiver with projector" concept.

Obviousness Analysis — US 6,489,934 B1 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Prepared: April 26, 2026 | Patent: US 6,489,934 B1, "Cellular phone with built in optical projector for display of data" (Klausner; filed/priority July 7, 2000; issued Dec. 3, 2002; expired July 7, 2020)

Sources used: the authoritative patent text (claims, specification); the prior-art listings on the Google Patents record (Citations (10), Family Cites (4), Similar Documents, Cited By); and live verification of five key references (Dell, Alcatel, Nokia, Siemens, IBM). Where I could not verify a reference's disclosure text in this session, I say so explicitly and mark it below.

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1. Framework, critical date, and level of ordinary skill

Critical date. No earlier priority is claimed. Application 09/611,436 was filed July 7, 2000, and that is the priority date. Art must therefore predate July 7, 2000 (under §102(a)/102(e), subject to swearing behind; under §102(b), publication before July 7, 1999).

Governing standard. Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966) (scope and content of prior art; differences; PHOSITA level; secondary considerations), as recalibrated by KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007). Where the prior art discloses all claim elements and the combination is "the product of ordinary creativity, not a predictable variation," the claim is obvious. KSR also approves the "obvious to try" and "design incentive / market pressure" rationales, and cautions against requiring an explicit teaching, suggestion, or motivation in the references. MPEP §2143 supplies the rationales I apply below (A: combining prior art elements per known methods for predictable results; B: simple substitution; C: use of a known technique to improve a similar device in the same way; D: applying a known technique to a known device ready for improvement; F: obvious to try; G: design incentives / market forces).

PHOSITA (my construction). A person with a bachelor's degree in electrical/optical engineering (or equivalent) and 2–4 years of experience in portable/wireless consumer electronics and/or LCD projection display design, familiar with (i) cellular handset architecture (RF receiver, microcontroller, buffer memory, display controller, LCD driver, LCD panel — exactly as the '934 specification describes as "conventional and well known in the art," col. description re FIG. 2), and (ii) transmissive-LCD projection optics (collimating/focusing lenses, HID or LED sources, polysilicon active-matrix panels).

Threshold observation on claim scope. Claim 1's novelty is a result-oriented limitation set: the "first format" (a plurality of small pages derived from each original page) and "second format" (original page format pages) are defined by output, not by algorithm. The specification discloses no algorithm for deriving either. That breadth matters for §103: a claim that reads on any dual-output rendering scheme is correspondingly more exposed to prior art. (It also raises a written-description/definiteness question — see §7.)

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2. Reference inventory and §102 availability determinations

This step is essential because the Google Patents page mixes examiner-cited art (all pre-filing), family-cited art, and forward citations (art that post-dates the '934). Treating a forward citation as prior art is the single most common error on this record.

Note on the "Family Cites Families" list. Google Patents lists four references cited in the family's file wrappers — JP 3507955, GB 2308486, DE 19622314, and JP 2000-050360. Two of these (Nokia and Alcatel) are precisely the references I identify below as the core anticipatory/obviousness art for the projector-in-a-phone concept. That they surfaced in the EPO/JPO counterparts' search efforts is corroborating evidence that they are the art of record, not a hindsight construction.

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3. Element-by-element mapping of independent claim 1

Claim 1 (verbatim structure from the patent) and the mapping:

Result. Every element of claim 1 is disclosed across the Nokia, Alcatel, and Dell references plus the applicant's own admission. The only element not disclosed verbatim in a single pre-2000 reference is the two-format split in limitation (b)/(c) — and that is the limitation the specification itself concedes was the known workaround for small phone screens.

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4. Combination scenarios and the motivation to combine

Combination A (primary): GB 2308486 (Nokia) + DE 19622314/EP 0814452 (Alcatel) + Dell US 5,510,806, in further view of the admitted small-page reformatting art

• Nokia supplies the complete optical train in a hand-held portable telephone: light source → transmissive LCD → screen, with the express optionality of projecting to a remote surface, plus color via multiple differently-colored sources.
• Alcatel supplies the telecom-terminal-plus-projector teaching in haec verba: a mobile radio telephone projecting received information directly onto a wall, and the express rationale that known computer/TV projection means are being applied to a telecommunication terminal. Alcatel also supplies the independent projection path (separate device with interface circuit) and a color embodiment (R/G/B lasers, 50 Hz multiplexing).
• Dell supplies the architecture for driving a separate small projection panel from the device's own display driver ("screen driver circuitry within the base housing"), which is precisely claim 1's "controlled by the display controller" and "independent of said built-in display."
• The first format ("small pages derived from each single original page") is supplied by the applicant's own admission of the prior-art workaround, and by the conventional handset LCD.

Motivation (KSR/MPEP rationales):

• Rationale C/D (known technique improving a similar device, applied to a known device ready for improvement): Nokia already applied transmissive-LCD projection to a hand-held telephone; Alcatel already applied projection to a mobile telephone to display received data. Extending either to also display the received page at original size on an external surface is the same technique applied to the same class of device, with a predictable result.
• Rationale A/B (predictable combination; substitution): Substituting a cellular handset for the portable computer of Dell/Zeos and driving a small projection panel from the handset's existing display controller is a substitution of one known element for another, yielding no more than the expected result (a bigger image).
• Rationale G (design incentives/market forces): The two references independently articulate the very tension the '934 recites: Nokia — "in confined spaces the size of image that can be achieved is limited… reduce the size of the display unit… without reducing the size of the image"; Alcatel — projecting received fax/SMS data avoids a printer and lets several people view at once. The '934's own Background concedes the market driver: "with the growing popularity of the Internet, cellular phones are being used as receivers of not only voice data, but of various forms of visual data, such as E-mail, various forms of processed documents, graphics, pictures and video."

Combination B (alternative): DE 19622314 (Alcatel) + US 5,510,806 (Dell) alone

Alcatel's terminal + projector renders limitations (a), (d), and (e) obvious; Dell supplies the light-source-through-transmissive-LCD structure and the "same display controller drives both" architecture. The built-in small-screen display and its reformatted pages are conventional. This two-reference combination reaches every element of claim 1.

Combination C (deploying the examiner's own cited art): US 5,510,806 + US 5,483,250 + US 5,658,063 + US 5,218,389 + US 5,060,152 + US 5,969,698

Even setting aside the foreign art, the examiner-cited corpus shows (i) portable devices whose only or principal display is a projection (Dell, Zeos, TI), (ii) portable transceiver form factors (Maeser '152), and (iii) cursor/control manipulation of a display image (Motorola '698). What was missing — a phone with a projector — is supplied by US 5,970,418 (IBM), which is a wireless handset phone with an optical (virtual-image) display and pointing/selection, and which the '934's own specification cites as the closest prior approach.

Why US 5,970,418 does not teach away

The '934's specification argues that '418 "displays a virtual image on a viewing surface attached to the phone itself, by way of pivoting support arms," whereas the '934 projects onto an external surface. That is a difference in kind, but it is a design choice favoring external projection (larger image, no supporting structure, multiple viewers — exactly the advantage Alcatel recites), not a teaching that external projection would fail. In re Fulton / MPEP §2145: a reference teaches away only if a PHOSITA, reading it, would be dissuaded from the claimed path. '418's own express criticisms (weight/fragility of large LCDs, difficulty viewing while telephoning, the need for a display the user can see while using the phone) point toward solving the display-size problem optically.

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5. The one genuinely contestable limitation — and why it is still obvious

The limitation that most credibly carried the claim over the art is limitation (b)/(c): one controller producing both (i) small pages derived from an original page and (ii) original-page-format pages, with the internal display showing one small page at a time. Four independent grounds make this obvious as of July 2000:

1. Admission. The specification states that reformatting "each page into several smaller pages" to fit the phone screen was a known solution to the stated problem. An admitted prior-art practice cannot supply patentable weight.
2. Inherency of dual-size rendering. Once a device has a small LCD and a projector that throws an image onto a wall, the same content must be presented at two radically different fields of view. Producing a page-sized rendering for the projector and a screen-sized rendering for the LCD is the ordinary consequence of the hardware combination, not an independent invention. The claim specifies no algorithm, no reflow engine, no scaling law.
3. KSR "predictable result." Formatting digital content for a second display device of a different size/resolution is routine data processing that existed in the art (document re-pagination, "web clipping," gateway/transcoding for small-screen devices, and Dell's single display-driver driving a small projection panel). Combining known formatting techniques with known projector hardware "does no more than yield predictable results."
4. Breadth/claim-construction feedback. Because "first format" and "second format" are functional, the claim arguably reads on an embodiment in which the same image data is sent to both displays — an outcome the specification expressly contemplates: the ON/OFF switch "is not necessary"; "the phone provides the same display information to both the built-in display 14 and the optical projector 16." A limitation that is satisfied by identical data on two outputs is weak §103 ammunition.

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6. Dependent claims 2–5

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7. Anticipated counterarguments and how they fare

(i) The EPO granted the counterpart. EP 1368803 B1 granted on January 26, 2011 and survived. That is a real datum: the EPO's problem-and-solution approach requires a non-obvious difference, and the family cites show GB 2308486 and DE 19622314 were in the family's cited-art record. This is the strongest argument against my conclusion. But: (a) the granted EP claim set may be narrower than US claim 1 (the A4 amendment publication of 2005-04-06 signals claim amendments); (b) EPO obviousness methodology and KSR's permissive combination rationales diverge in exactly this fact pattern (combining a phone with a known projection architecture); and (c) I have not obtained the EPO search report or the granted EP claim text in this session — this must be checked before relying on either side. Flagging this as the point most requiring further file-history work.

(ii) No explicit teaching/suggestion/motivation in the references. Rejected post-KSR. Nokia and Alcatel independently disclose the exact hardware in the exact class of device; KSR permits motivation from the "design incentives and other market forces" and from the express purpose statements in the references themselves.

(iii) Secondary considerations. None of record here. No unexpected-results evidence, no licensing, and no evidence the patentee practiced the invention commercially. To the contrary, the ~110–235 forward citations show that Motorola (US 6,637,896), Siemens (US 6,921,170), Nokia/Citizen, Samsung, Nikon, and others independently arrived at phone-projection architectures within 1–6 years — consistent with the solution being the natural next step rather than a leap. The "long-felt need" that did exist (larger displays on small phones) was simultaneously being solved by a broad set of actors, which under Graham/KSR supports obviousness, not non-obviousness.

(iv) §112 counterweight. Claim 1's dual-format limitation is arguably not supported by any disclosed algorithm ("original page format" is undefined; the embodiment where both displays receive identical data contradicts the two-format requirement). Under the standard interplay, a claim broad enough to cover that embodiment is also broad enough to be met by the prior-art combinations above. I would treat this as a secondary invalidity ground, not the primary one.

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8. Conclusion

Claim 1 is, in my assessment, obvious under §103 over GB 2308486 (Nokia) in view of DE 19622314 / EP 0814452 (Alcatel) and US 5,510,806 (Dell), with the "small pages" first format supplied either by the applicant's own admission in the Background or by US 6,266,048 (HP) / conventional handset-display formatting. The motivation is supplied by (a) the same device class in both primary references (hand-held telephones), (b) the same technical means (transmissive LCD + light source + projection lens), and (c) the market pressure to display Internet/e-mail/document content on a handset — the precise problem both references and the patent itself articulate.

Claims 2 and 4 are obvious over the same references (and claim 4 is essentially disclosed by Nokia's multi-color light sources and Alcatel's R/G/B laser embodiment).

Claim 5 is disclosed in substance by GB 2308486 (light source transmitting through the transmissive display means) and US 5,510,806 (illumination through the LCD projection panel), making it the weakest claim in the set.

Claim 3 is a nominal-species claim that the primary references already name (radio telephone / Mobilfunktelefon).

Confidence and limits. High confidence on the availability and core disclosures of US 5,510,806, GB 2308486, DE 19622314/EP 0814452, US 5,970,418, and on the non-availability of US 6,921,170 (Siemens) and the other post-July-2000 forward citations (I verified the Siemens PCT filing date of 2000-08-23 and US national filing of 2002-02-25). Moderate confidence on US 6,266,048 (HP), JP 2000-050360, JP H11-327462, and US 5,969,698, whose texts I could not pull in this session — I have flagged each. I have not obtained the '934's office actions, the RCE amendment, or the EPO search report/granted claim text; because the applicant took two office actions and one RCE plus an examiner interview, the prosecution record very likely identifies which reference was applied to which claim, and that record (not this memo) is what a validity challenge or defense would turn on.

Contradiction check against the previously generated sections: none identified. The earlier summary's finding of no CAFC or district court docket naming 6,489,934 is consistent with everything here, and its note that the patent is "widely cited as prior art (~146 forward citations)" is confirmed by this record (the page lists 110 primary "Cited By" entries and 235 total). One clarification worth recording: the earlier summary listed US 6,921,170 (Siemens) among the forward citations evidencing the patent's foundational status — I confirm that, but stress that it is not §102 art against the '934, because both its PCT filing (2000-08-23) and its US filing (2002-02-25) post-date the '934's July 7, 2000 filing.