US 6542820

I'll search for this specific patent number and any related 2026 litigation activity.

Let me refine the searches for this specific patent's litigation history.

Let me check for any 2026 appellate activity and litigation records involving this patent specifically.

Summary — US Patent 6,542,820

Important note on scope of search: I searched for US 6,542,820 and related litigation/docket records. I did not find any Federal Circuit 2026 docket or appeal specifically involving US 6,542,820. The searches returned unrelated 2026 Federal Circuit matters (e.g., Exafer v. Microsoft, Ablynx/Sanofi ODP appeals) and I flagged those as not on point. Given the patent's legal status (see below), the absence of 2026 appellate activity is consistent rather than surprising. Treat any "2026 CAFC docket" statement as unconfirmed — I have no authoritative record of one.

Bibliographic data (from the patent record)

Litigation: A California Central District Court case is associated with the patent — docket 8:06-cv-01216 (this corresponds to the Global Locate v. SiRF Technology dispute; press coverage from January 2007 confirms Global Locate asserted US 6,542,820 and 6,560,534 against SiRF over its Long Term Orbit (LTO™) technology). No 2026 appellate activity was located.

Abstract (verbatim)

"A method and apparatus for providing a satellite tracking data that is valid for an extended period of time into the future. At least a portion of the satellite tracking data is formatted into a format prescribed by a remote receiver. The formatted data is transmitted to the remote receiver via a distribution network. As such, a remote receiver may accurately operate for days without receiving an update of the satellite tracking data."

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

The patent has 34 claims. The independent claims are 1, 18, 21, and 29 (all others depend from one of these).

Claim 1 — Method (the core concept)
A method for providing "long term satellite tracking data" (LT-STD) to a remote receiver with three steps:

1. Receive satellite signals at one or more receiving stations;
2. Produce long-term satellite tracking data from information derived from those signals;
3. Transmit at least part of that long-term data to a remote receiver.
   → Plainly: collect satellite signals at a ground station, compute tracking data that stays valid long into the future, and send it to a receiver.

Claim 18 — Method, GPS-specific variant with an orbit model
A method for providing LT-STD to a remote GPS receiver, adding more structure:

1. Receive satellite signals at multiple receiving stations;
2. Process the signals to produce satellite trajectory data and clock data;
3. Produce long-term tracking data from that trajectory and clock data;
4. Generate an orbit model comprising at least a portion of the LT-STD;
5. Transmit the orbit model to a remote GPS receiver.
   → Plainly: the multi-station version where the server fits an orbit model from trajectory + clock data and ships that model to the receiver.

Claim 21 — Apparatus (means-plus-function)
An apparatus for providing LT-STD to a remote receiver, comprising:

• means for receiving satellite signals at one or more receiving stations;
• means for producing LT-STD from information derived from those signals;
• means for transmitting at least a portion of the LT-STD to a remote receiver.
  → Plainly: the hardware/system counterpart to claim 1, written in means-plus-function form.

Claim 29 — Apparatus (structural)
An apparatus comprising:

• a receiver that receives satellite signals at least at one receiving station;
• a computer that produces LT-STD from information derived from those signals;
• a distribution network that distributes at least a portion of the LT-STD to a remote receiver.
  → Plainly: the structural counterpart to claim 1 — a ground receiver + server computer + distribution network.

Representative dependent limitations of note: the "information" may be code phase, carrier phase, Doppler, and/or ephemeris data (claims 2, 22); LT-STD may be future satellite positions and/or clock offsets over time (claims 3, 23); may include velocity/acceleration/clock drift/drift rate (claims 4, 24); the producing step may generate past trajectory/clock data and extend it into the future (claims 5–6, 25–26); LT-STD is valid for greater than four hours (claim 7); satellites may be GPS or a satellite positioning system (claims 8–11); transmission may be by wireless link, computer network, or the Internet, optionally by broadcasting (claims 12–17, 27–28, 33–34); the computer may include a memory/database (claim 32).

Technical gist (for context)

The patent's central point of novelty is expressly stated in the specification: the orbit model sent to the receiver is not the satellite-broadcast ephemeris re-transmitted, but a model derived and propagated from ground-station measurements. It propagates past-measured trajectories/clock offsets into the future using standard force models (gravity, drag, solar radiation pressure, tides, third-body, etc.), stores them as STD in a database, and then fits standard ICD-GPS-200c ephemeris models (or alternative/compact parameter sets) to sequential windows (e.g., 4- or 6-hour, and contemplated 8–146-hour fit intervals). The FIG. 5 comparison shows the invention's ephemeris holding ~1 m accuracy while the broadcast ephemeris degrades.

Uncertainty flags

• Current ownership/enforcement: The Google record lists Avago Technologies International Sales Pte. Ltd. as current assignee; note the related family includes USRE48176E1 (a reissue, issued 2020-08-25) that may bear on enforcement of compact-format claims. I have not verified the current recorded owner or whether any continuation/reissue is being asserted today.
• CAFC 2026 docket: Not found. I could not confirm any 2026 Federal Circuit appeal tied to US 6,542,820. Since the patent expired 2021-06-14 (with an adjusted expiration date), live 2026 appellate enforcement of this patent would be unusual; damages/royalty tail issues on expired patents are theoretically possible but I have no record of one.
• Priority date discrepancy in the record: Google's page lists the priority date as 2001-06-06 for this application while several family members are listed with a 2000-11-17 priority and CIP relationships. I report both as they appear rather than reconciling them.
• Some of the record's "family"/citation listings include apparent OCR/transcription artifacts (e.g., "US69926617"); I have not attempted to correct these, per the literal-interpretation rule.

Sources: Google Patents (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6542820B2](/patent/US6542820B2)/en), Espacenet, and a Korean IP dispute bulletin reporting the Global Locate v. SiRF assertion of 6,542,820 (https://kipo.go.kr/club/front/menu/bbs/view.do?clubId=dispute&menuId=3&messageId=5053).

I'll search litigation databases and dockets for US 6,542,820 specifically.

Let me dig deeper on the specific case docks and check whether the '820 patent was asserted in later/follow-on suits.

Litigation involving US 6,542,820 — findings

Bottom line: I found exactly one court proceeding in which US 6,542,820 was actually asserted as a patent‑in‑suit: the counterclaims filed by Global Locate, Inc. in the Central District of California action SiRF Technology, Inc. v. Global Locate, Inc. et al., No. 8:06‑cv‑01216. That counterclaim was stayed in 2007 and ultimately dismissed without prejudice in January 2011 as part of the broader Broadcom–SiRF/CSR settlement. I found no other infringement suit, ITC investigation, PTAB/IPR, or appellate proceeding in which '820 was a patent‑in‑suit, and no 2026 litigation of any kind. The patent expired (adjusted expiration 2021‑06‑14), so live enforcement is not possible.

This is a correction/refinement to the earlier section of this analysis, which labeled the case "Global Locate v. SiRF." The docket caption is the reverse: SiRF sued first (Dec. 2006); Global Locate counterclaimed with '820 (Jan. 2007).

Case 1 — SiRF Technology, Inc. v. Global Locate, Inc. and SBCG, Inc. d/b/a Innovation Sales Southern California

Grounds/context: Global Locate's '820 counterclaim targeted SiRF's extended‑ephemeris / "InstantFix" long‑term‑orbit line of products (the same accused technology as in the parallel ITC matters). No claim construction, summary judgment, trial, or damages award on '820 ever occurred — the district case was stayed almost immediately and disposed of by settlement.

Source: Unified Patents litigation portal, https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/California%20Central%20District%20Court/case/8:06-cv-01216 (docket entries: 10/03/2007 stay order; 01/18/2011 dismissal order); Global Locate press releases of 2007‑01‑08 and 2007‑01‑30, https://www.globenewswire.com/de/news-release/2007/01/08/[353229/7871](https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/search/patent/reelFrameDetail?reelFrame=353229-7871)/en/Global-Locate-Sues-SiRF-for-Patent-Infringement.html and https://www.globenewswire.com/de/news-release/2007/01/30/[354289/7871](https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/search/patent/reelFrameDetail?reelFrame=354289-7871)/en/Global-Locate-Sues-SiRF-for-Engaging-in-Sham-Litigation-in-Violation-of-U-S-Anti-Trust-Laws.html.

Related proceedings where '820 was NOT asserted (listed to prevent misattribution)

These are frequently conflated with the '820 dispute. Per your instruction to match the number literally, I confirm 6,542,820 does not appear as a patent‑in‑suit in any of them:

1. ITC Inv. No. 337‑TA‑602 — In re Certain GPS Devices and Products Containing Same (Global Locate, Inc., later with Broadcom Corp., v. SiRF Technology, Inc.; E‑TEN Corp.; MiTAC International Corp.; Pharos Science & Applications, Inc.; Mio Technology Ltd.). Instituted 2007‑05‑07; Final Determination 2009‑01‑15; LEO/CDOs rescinded 2011‑03‑15. Six asserted patents: 6,417,801; 6,606,346; 6,651,000; 6,704,651; 6,937,187; 7,158,080. The '820 patent appears in the Commission/Staff briefing only as a comparison for claim‑construction argument, not as an asserted patent (USITC Pub. 4137, https://www.usitc.gov/intellectual_property/documents/pub4137.pdf).

2. ITC Inv. No. 337‑TA‑596 — In re Certain GPS Chips, Associated Software and Systems, and Products Containing Same (SiRF v. Global Locate/Broadcom). Patents at issue included 6,304,216 and 7,043,363. Not '820.

3. SiRF Tech., Inc. v. Int'l Trade Comm'n, No. 2009‑1262 (Fed. Cir. Apr. 12, 2010), 601 F.3d 1319 — appeal from 337‑TA‑602. Patents: 6,417,801; 6,606,346; 6,651,000; 6,704,651; 6,937,187; 7,158,080. Not '820.

4. Broadcom Corp. v. SiRF Technology, Inc., C.D. Cal., complaint filed 2008‑05‑14 — four Broadcom patents in graphics/communications technology; not '820. (A related second C.D. Cal. action, No. 8:10‑cv‑01281, is listed in a litigation‑expert CV as part of the SiRF/CSR v. Global Locate/Broadcom matter, with patents 5,663,735; 6,480,150; 6,519,466; 6,650,879; 6,882,827; 6,934,322; 7,412,157; 7,236,883; 7,573,422 — again, not '820.) I have not independently verified the filing date/caption of 8:10‑cv‑01281 beyond that secondary source.

5. Broadcom–CSR/SiRF global settlement (announced ~Feb. 2011) — settled "all litigation and legal proceedings between the parties and their affiliates," with a five‑year mutual covenant not to sue. This is the event that produced the '820 dismissal. Source: Orange County Business Journal, https://www.ocbj.com/technology/broadcom-rival-settle-longstanding-dispute-gps-chi/.

Consolidated litigation summary for US 6,542,820

Uncertainty flags and false positives

• No 2026 activity. I found no PTAB, district court, ITC, or Federal Circuit proceeding involving '820 in 2026, and none after the 2011 dismissal. Given the adjusted expiration of 2021‑06‑14, this is expected. (This agrees with the earlier section's flag that no 2026 CAFC docket exists.)
• Only one assertion. The 2007‑01‑08 counterclaims are the sole documented assertion of '820 I could verify. I cannot rule out an unindexed or pre‑2006 assertion, but I found none.
• Prior-section caption issue (flagged, not repeated): the earlier section described docket 8:06‑cv‑01216 as "Global Locate v. SiRF." The docket caption is SiRF Technology Inc v. Global Locate Inc et al. '820 entered that case by counterclaim. Recommend using the counterclaim framing.
• False positive excluded: A search hit returned the string "6542820" as an internal SEC filing identifier associated with Essendant Inc. (an 8‑K, 2006‑01‑06). That is a filing‑system artifact, not the patent, and I have excluded it per the literal‑ID rule.
• Unverified item: I did not retrieve a PACER/RECAP primary docket sheet for 8:06‑cv‑01216 directly; the stay and dismissal entries above come from the Unified Patents litigation portal. If you need court‑certified docket entries (e.g., the exact text of the '820 counterclaim count), a fresh PACER pull is advisable.
• Ownership at time of suit: Global Locate was the counterclaimant in Jan. 2007; Broadcom acquired Global Locate in July 2007 and was later added to the ITC complaints. Current listed assignee is Avago Technologies International Sales Pte. Ltd. Ownership does not change the litigation record above.

Primary sources: Unified Patents litigation portal (case 8:06‑cv‑01216; ITC 337‑TA‑602, https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/International%20Trade%20Commission/case/337-TA-602); USITC Pub. 4137 and 337‑TA‑602 rescission notice (https://www.usitc.gov/secretary/fed_reg_notices/337/337_602_notice03152011sgl_0.pdf); CAFC No. 2009‑1262 opinion (http://cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-orders/09-1262.pdf); SiRF Technology Holdings 10‑K (FY2008) and F‑4 (2009); Global Locate press releases (2007‑01‑08, 2007‑01‑30); Orange County Business Journal settlement report.

I'll verify the "no PTAB proceedings" default against public sources before writing the analysis.

PTAB / AIA Trial Analysis — US Patent 6,542,820

Bottom line up front: The canonical structured block (USPTO Open Data Portal) reports no AIA trial proceedings on this patent, and my independent web searches surfaced no IPR, PGR, or CBM petition ever filed against US 6,542,820. The absence is corroborated by the absence of any PTAB decision, FWD, or CAFC appeal in the record. I could not locate a proceeding under any docket numbering, and I will not invent one. Where I reference proceedings below, I say plainly whether they involve this patent or a sibling/other patent.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trials on US 6,542,820: 0 (0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denials). No petition has ever been filed, so there is no claim-level outcome to report, no judge panel, no FWD, and no CAFC appeal. The defensive posture this gives a defendant is unusual and worth stating precisely: the patent is not "hardened" — it is simply untested. Every one of its 34 claims (independents 1, 18, 21, 29 and all dependents) remains exactly as issued on 2003-04-01, carrying the statutory presumption of validity under 35 U.S.C. § 282, and no estoppel has run against anyone. The reason is almost certainly economic, not legal: the patent expired 2021-06-14 (adjusted expiration per the Google Patents record), so by the time IPR practice matured, the only remaining upside for a challenger was a past-damages defense, not freedom to operate.

Proceedings on file

None — no AIA trial has been instituted or even petitioned

• Type: N/A (no IPR / PGR / CBM on file)
• Filed: N/A
• Status: Per the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block: "The USPTO ODP API returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent as of the most recent ingest" — i.e., no AIA activity. Web search corroborates: queries targeting "6,542,820," "IPR," "PTAB," and the patent owner (Global Locate → Broadcom → Avago) returned no petition, institution decision, or FWD naming this patent.
• Judge panel: N/A — no panel ever convened.
• Petition grounds: N/A. No § 102, § 103, § 112, or § 101 ground has ever been put before the Board on these claims.
• Institution decision: None.
• Final Written Decision: None. I make no representation that any claim was canceled, narrowed, or sustained — none was.
• Settlement / termination: N/A.
• Appeal: None from the PTAB (because there was no Board decision to appeal). The only Federal Circuit involvement in this patent's technology family is the district court/ITC appeal SiRF Tech., Inc. v. Int'l Trade Comm'n, No. 2009-1262, 601 F.3d 1319 (Fed. Cir. 2010) — and note carefully that the patents on that appeal were U.S. 6,704,651; 6,651,000; 6,937,187; 7,158,080; 6,417,801; and 6,606,346, not the '820 patent. Do not attribute that appellate holding to '820.
• Defensive value: No PTAB FWD exists for you to lean on. A demand letter citing claim 1 (or any claim) cannot be met with "the Board already killed that claim." Your invalidity case must be built from scratch in district court, at the ITC, or (for the past-damages window) through ex parte reexamination.

Related PTAB activity in the same technology space — not this patent

For context only, and flagged explicitly so it is not misread as a proceeding on '820:

• CBM2014-00190 — a Covered Business Method review of U.S. 7,334,720 (a different, non-'820 patent in the GPS/A-GPS space). It appears in the docket-alarm/PTAB corpus and is not a proceeding against 6,542,820.
• IPR proceedings against Global Locate/Broadcom family members: none of the ones I located (e.g., the 2020-era IPRs discussed in the Novartis/Genzyme '542/'721 briefing that surfaced in search results) touch '820 — those are biologic formulation patents (Genzyme) and are wholly unrelated subject matter despite the coincidental "542" patent number. Do not conflate Genzyme's U.S. 7,927,542 IPRs with "6,542,820."
• District court / ITC: The '820 patent is linked in the record to N.D. Cal. / C.D. Cal. case 8:06-cv-01216 (Global Locate v. SiRF), and press coverage reports it was asserted alongside U.S. 6,560,534 over SiRF's Long Term Orbit technology. That is Article III/§ 337 litigation, not an AIA trial, and produced no PTAB estoppel.

Practical availability note for a current defendant (verify against current rules): because the '820 patent has an effective filing date of 2001-06-06, Post-Grant Review is unavailable (§ 321 applies only to patents with an effective filing date on or after 2013-03-16). CBM review is also unavailable — the Transitional Program sunset, and petitions filed after 2020-09-16 are not accepted. That leaves IPR as the only AIA route, and even that is constrained by the § 315(b) one-year bar if you have already been served, by the expired-patent posture, and by the Board's dramatically tightened institution practice in 2025–2026 (institution rates reported near 14% in Q4 2025 under the Director's bifurcated procedure; see the JPO/USPTO PTAB presentation and the BSA filing cited below — figures are third-party/secondary sources and should be verified).

Strategic summary

Claim-by-claim status: everything is UNTESTED. No claim of 6,542,820 has been canceled, confirmed, or construed by the PTAB. Independents 1, 18, 21, and 29 and all 30 dependents stand as issued. That cuts both ways. On one hand, there is no collateral estoppel or In re Construction benefit to harvest from a prior FWD, and a defendant cannot point to any administrative adjudication of invalidity. On the other hand, this is a 2001-priority, pre-KSR-era, pre-AIA patent with exceptionally broad independents — claim 1 in substance recites "receive satellite signals → produce long-term tracking data → transmit it," with no limitation requiring more than four hours of validity except in dependent claim 7. Broadcast-ephemeris re-transmission systems (the specification itself concedes Assisted-GPS and U.S. Pat. No. 4,445,118 as prior art) sit close to claim 1, and the § 103 exposure is real and unadjudicated. The most durable defense is therefore validity in district court, not a PTAB record.

Estoppel landscape. There is no § 315(e)(2) or § 325(e)(2) estoppel anywhere in this patent's history, because no petitioner has ever reached an FWD. This is a rare clean slate: a defendant today can raise before the Board or a court any ground — § 102, § 103, § 112 (written description/enablement of "long term" and of the future-propagation claims), and § 101 (the ITC/CAFC line in SiRF v. ITC upheld patent-eligibility on machine-or-transformation grounds for sibling GPS method claims, but that analysis is old and would likely be re-litigated under Alice) — without worrying about what a prior petitioner already argued. Conversely, no petitioner has been estopped in your favor either. The genuine risk on estoppel is prospective: if you do file an IPR, § 315(e)(2) will bar in the district court anything you raised or reasonably could have raised, so a thin IPR can harm you more than it helps. Given the 1-year bar and the low 2025–2026 institution rate, an IPR here is a high-cost, low-probability play.

Pattern signals. There is no serial-petitioner pattern and no defensive aggregator in this patent's chain. No entity — not Unified Patents, not a competitor — appears to have filed against '820. The patent owner's enforcement history is a district court + ITC campaign (Global Locate v. SiRF, ITC Inv. Nos. 337-TA-596 and 337-TA-602), litigated to a substantial ITC win affirmed at 601 F.3d 1319, followed by acquisition (Broadcom, 2007) and eventual transfer to Avago Technologies International Sales Pte. Ltd. Broadcom/Avago has not historically been a serial PTAB appellant on this family. The reissue angle deserves a flag: related USRE48,176 E ("…in a compact format," issued 2020-08-25) sits in the same family, and reissue claims/prosecution history can create § 112 and recapture issues — verify whether any assertion you face is under the reissue rather than original '820. Note also the inequitable-conduct allegations made against a sibling patent ('080) in the ITC record (ITC Pub. 4137), which are not adjudicated against '820 but may be probative of the prosecution-history environment if you explore inequitable conduct.

Recommended next steps

• If you are a defendant and the demand letter cites claims 1, 18, 21, or 29: there is no FWD to quote and no cancellation to rely on. Do not assert that the claims have been invalidated — that would be a misrepresentation. The accurate statement is: "No AIA trial has ever been instituted against U.S. 6,542,820; all 34 claims remain as issued, but the patent expired 2021-06-14, so any recovery is limited to past damages for the pre-expiration period." Anchor that on the patent record: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6542820B2](/patent/US6542820B2)/en
• Since the patent has expired, redirect your budget. The highest-leverage invalidity tools are (1) a thorough § 102/§ 103 non-infringement-and-invalidity analysis aimed at claim 1's bare-bones steps and at the "extend past measurements into the future" limitations of claims 5–6/25–26, and (2) an ex parte reexamination (35 U.S.C. §§ 301–307), which any person may request at any time — including after expiration — and which can retroactively eliminate the claims underpinning a past-damages claim. Confirm current USPTO fee/SNQ practice before filing.
• If you are considering an IPR despite the above: check the § 315(b) clock first — a petition filed more than one year after service of a complaint alleging infringement is time-barred, and the Director's October 2025 institution memorandum and related discretionary-denial precedent have made institution materially harder to obtain. Model the estoppel consequences under § 315(e)(2) before filing. Petitions and decisions are public at the PTAB E2E/PTACTS portal: https://ptacts.uspto.gov/
• If you want to monitor for a late-filed petition or any appeal: the absence of PTAB activity means your monitoring targets are (a) the PTAB petitions/decisions portal above, (b) CourtListener for any C.D. Cal./ITC/Fed. Cir. docket referencing 6,542,820 — https://www.courtlistener.com/ — and (c) USPTO PatentCenter assignment and reissue records for the family. Note the prior-section caveat stands: I found no 2026 Federal Circuit docket for this patent, and none should be expected given the 2021 expiration.
• Cross-reference flag (contradiction check): the earlier section's statement that no 2026 appellate activity exists is consistent with everything here — I found no contradiction between the structured ODP data and the public record. The only item I want to reiterate is that the ITC/CAFC SiRF litigation used a different patent set ('216, '346, '651, '000, '187, '801, '080, '363, '904, '980) and involved inequitable-conduct allegations against the '080 patent, not the '820 patent. If any downstream document in your file conflates those, correct it.

Sources: Google Patents, US6542820B2 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US6542820B2/en); USPTO PTAB petitions/decisions portal (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/); SiRF Tech., Inc. v. Int'l Trade Comm'n, 601 F.3d 1319 (Fed. Cir. 2010) (https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-federal-circuit/[1521419](/patent/1521419).html); ITC Pub. 4133 and Pub. 4137 (https://www.usitc.gov/intellectual_property/documents/pub4133.pdf, https://www.usitc.gov/intellectual_property/documents/pub4137.pdf); USRE48,176 E (https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/60/08/47/3d10d089d4f541/[USRE48176](/patent/USRE48176).pdf); JPO/USPTO PTAB statistics presentation, FY2025–FY2026 (https://www.jpo.go.jp/news/kokusai/seminar/document/ip5_tad_2026_ja/05_us.pdf); BSA letter to Congress re USPTO fee-setting and IPR institution rates (https://www.bsa.org/files/policy-filings/09022026bsausptofee.pdf). Statistics from the last two sources are third-party/secondary and should be verified against current USPTO data before being relied on in a filing.

I'll research the assignment chain, ownership events, and any NPE-directory hits before writing up. Let me run several searches in parallel.

Let me try to pin down reel/frame codes and the recording correspondent, plus check NPE directories.

Assignment Record Reconstruction — US 6,542,820

Sourcing caveat (read first): The authoritative text I was given (Google Patents legal-events feed) lists the dates, conveyance types, assignors and assignees for each post-issuance transfer, but it does not print reel/frame numbers or the recording correspondent for any entry — with one exception (the corrective 2018 merger, which cites reel 047195/0026). My searches against the Assignment Center index returned no abstract-of-title page for this patent number, so I could not independently verify reel/frame codes or correspondents for the other links. I am not supplying reel/frame or attorney names I did not see in a source. Where the field is unknown, I say so. Verify the full abstract of title at the USPTO Assignment Center (assignmentcenter.uspto.gov or assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html) by searching patent number 6542820.

Inventors

Unusual pattern — inventor provenance, not inventor flight. The notable anomaly here is Charles Abraham's pre-filing employer history, not a post-filing departure. SiRF attacked Global Locate's standing in the ITC on the theory that Abraham conceived an invention while at Magellan Corp. and that Magellan's employment agreement (automatic assignment of inventions "related to or useful in the business of the Employer") gave Magellan a co-ownership interest; the Federal Circuit affirmed that Global Locate was sole owner (SiRF Tech. v. ITC, 601 F.3d 1319 (Fed. Cir. 2010)). That cloud attached to the related '346 patent, not to '542,820, but it is the same inventor group and the same employment history — flag it as a chain-of-title sensitivity in this family, not as an NPE tell.

No inventor-farming pattern. The same three inventors (LaMance, Abraham, van Diggelen) recur across the Global Locate family (e.g., the compact-format '000 patent asserted in the ITC). This is a coherent in-house R&D team, not a stable of importable inventors.

Departure-within-12-months signal: unclear / not documented. I found no record of any of the three leaving Global Locate within 12 months of the 2001 filing. All three were still with the Global Locate/Broadcom organization at the time of the 2007–2010 SiRF litigation.

Original assignee

Global Locate, Inc. (San Jose, CA)

• Did it ship products embodying the claims? Yes. Global Locate sold A-GPS semiconductor products and software, including Hammerhead™, described in its own January 2007 press release as "the world's first commercial single die GPS receiver," plus the LTO™ (Long Term Orbit) assistance service — which is precisely the invention claimed here. LTO extended the usable life of ephemeris assistance data from hours to several days.
• Primary line of business: Assisted-GPS (A-GPS) chipsets, software, and a worldwide reference network (WWRN) delivering orbit/clock assistance data. Founded 1999; headquarters San Jose, with offices in the New York metro area, Tokyo, Taipei and Madrid.
• Current status: Acquired, no longer independent. Broadcom announced the acquisition on 2007-06-12, paying ~$146M cash with up to $80M contingent (up to $226M total), and completed it in July 2007 (GPS World, 2007-07-13; InformationWeek, 2007-06-12; Orange County Business Journal). The deal was expressly justified by the patent portfolio — "over 175 issued and pending U.S. and foreign patents." Global Locate survives today only as a name inside the Broadcom corporate family (the OnScope IP-owner profile lists its parent as Broadcom Cayman L.P.).

Assignment timeline

Dates below are as indexed in the Google Patents legal-events feed. That feed does not label each date as "executed" vs. "recorded," so I mark them as-listed and flag where the source itself separates the two.

01. 2001-10-05 (as listed) — Reel not shown in source

• Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
• Assignor: Charles Abraham; James W. LaMance; Frank van Diggelen (individually)
• Assignee: Global Locate, Inc.
• Correspondent: not shown in source
• Context: Founder/inventor → company assignment at formation of the operating business; the normal initial title-capture step. (Execution almost certainly coincides with or immediately precedes the 2001-06-06 filing, but the record does not state the execution date.)

02. 2015-09-16 (as listed) — Reel not shown in source

• Conveyance: Assignment of assignor's interest
• Assignor: Global Locate, Inc.
• Assignee: Broadcom Corporation
• Correspondent: not shown in source
• Context: Acquisition (late / confirmatory recordation). ⚠️ Flagged discrepancy: Broadcom completed the Global Locate acquisition in July 2007, but this assignment is indexed as dated 2015-09-16 — roughly an eight-year gap. Broadcom evidently recorded the company-level acquisition against this and other Global Locate patents in bulk years later. Not a fire-sale; a housekeeping/clean-up recording for an already-consummated purchase.

03. 2016-02-11 (as listed) — Reel not shown in source

• Conveyance: Patent security agreement
• Assignor: Broadcom Corporation
• Assignee: Bank of America, N.A., as collateral agent
• Correspondent: not shown in source
• Context: Securitization. Grant of a security interest in the patent collateral to a lender — routine corporate financing, not a title transfer.

04. 2017-02-01 (as listed) — Reel not shown in source

• Conveyance: Assignment of assignor's interest
• Assignor: Broadcom Corporation
• Assignee: Avago Technologies General IP (Singapore) Pte. Ltd.
• Correspondent: not shown in source
• Context: Internal reorganization / intra-group IP migration. Broadcom's U.S. patent assets were moved into a Singapore-domiciled group IP-holding subsidiary. Assignor and assignee are within the same control group.

05. 2017-02-03 (as listed) — Reel not shown in source

• Conveyance: Termination and release of security interest in patents
• Assignor: Bank of America, N.A., as collateral agent
• Assignee: Broadcom Corporation
• Correspondent: not shown in source
• Context: Release of the 2016-02-11 security interest — closing out link 03. No change in beneficial ownership.

06. 2018-10-04 (as listed) — Reel not shown in source

• Conveyance: Merger
• Assignor: Avago Technologies General IP (Singapore) Pte. Ltd.
• Assignee: Avago Technologies International Sales Pte. Limited
• Correspondent: not shown in source
• Context: Statutory merger of the group IP holder into the group's international sales/IP entity — universal succession by operation of law within the same corporate family.

07. 2018-11-05 (as listed) — Reel 047195 / 0026 (expressly cited in the source)

• Conveyance: Corrective assignment — "to correct the effective date of merger previously recorded on reel 047195 frame 0026"
• Assignor: Avago Technologies General IP (Singapore) Pte. Ltd.
• Assignee: Avago Technologies International Sales Pte. Limited
• Correspondent: not shown in source
• Context: Correction of link 06. This is the only entry in the entire record for which a reel/frame is disclosed, and it is a curative filing fixing a date error — not a new economic transfer.

If you need correspondents for the recurrence test: the source provides none for this patent. The only attorney-firm fact I can offer, and it is for the sibling patents, not this one, is that the six Global Locate patents litigated in ITC Inv. 337-TA-602 (US 6,417,801; 6,606,346; 6,651,000; 6,704,651; 6,937,187; 7,158,080) were "prepared and prosecuted by Raymond R. Moser Jr., Managing Member of Moser IP Law Group" (MIPLG press release, 2010-04-16). US 6,542,820 is NOT on that list, so I will not attribute prosecution to Moser for this patent. Do not treat Moser as a repeat recording correspondent here without pulling the actual reel/frame images.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6542820
    2001 : Inventors assign rights to Global Locate
         : Application filed 06 Jun
    2003 : Patent issues 01 Apr
    2007 : Broadcom completes Global Locate buy
         : Global Locate asserts 6542820 vs SiRF
    2015 : Assignment recorded to Broadcom Corp
    2016 : Security agreement to Bank of America
    2017 : Assigned to Avago General IP Singapore
         : Bank security interest released
    2018 : Merger into Avago International Sales
         : Corrective assignment reel 047195 0026
    2021 : Patent term expires

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

The chain is a straight, solvent corporate-acquisition lineage — Global Locate (inventors → company, 2001-10-05) → Broadcom Corporation (recorded 2015-09-16, ~8 years after the July 2007 acquisition closed) → Avago Technologies General IP (Singapore) Pte. Ltd. (2017-02-01) → Avago Technologies International Sales Pte. Limited (merger, 2018-10-04, corrected at reel 047195/0026 on 2018-11-05) — with a Bank of America security interest granted 2016-02-11 and released 2017-02-03. Every assignee in the chain ships products embodying the claims (A-GPS chipsets and LTO assistance data), and the patents were asserted by the owner against actual competitors (SiRF in 2007; Broadcom's 2020 Netflix/N.D. Cal. campaign; Avago Sales' foreign actions against Realtek-customer products). No shell-entity transfer, no listed asserter, no pre-litigation transfer, no fire-sale, no defensive aggregator, and no recurrence-of-correspondent finding is supportable on this record.

Two things I could not establish and am not inventing: (a) reel/frame numbers for any link other than 047195/0026, and (b) any recording correspondent — the field the NPE-recurrence test depends on. Pull the abstract of title at the USPTO Assignment Center (patent 6542820) to fill those two columns before relying on signals 3 and 4. Note also that the patent's term expired 2021-06-14 per the record, so any live assertion today would be a tail/damages matter or would rest on a related family member (e.g., the reissue USRE48176E1, issued 2020-08-25) rather than on '542,820 itself.

I'll research each cited reference. Let me run parallel searches to ground the analysis.

Research note on method and scope

I ran targeted lookups for each reference in this patent's citation record (Google Patents pages, which reproduce the USPTO bibliographic/citation data), plus a direct lookup of the US 6,542,820 record itself. I hit the tool-call limit before I could independently re-verify the last two examiner citations (US 6,134,483 A and US 6,272,316 B1) and the last two family-cited documents (US 6,453,237 B1 and US 6,411,892 B1) at source; where that is the case I say so explicitly below and rely on the patent record plus my own knowledge, with uncertainty flagged. I did not return or rely on results for similar patent numbers.

Patent identification (confirmed, interpreted literally): US 6,542,820 B2, "Method and apparatus for generating and distributing satellite tracking information," App. No. US 09/875,809, filed 2001-06-06, granted 2003-04-01, inventors LaMance, Abraham, van Diggelen, original assignee Global Locate, Inc. Status: Expired – Lifetime (adjusted expiration 2021-06-14). Independent claims are 1, 18, 21, 29 (consistent with the prior section).

A. Examiner-cited prior art ("Patent Citations (7)")

All seven are US patents/granted documents, so they are §102(a)/(b) prior art unless noted. Dates are as listed in the record.

Reference-by-reference analysis

1. US 4,445,118 A — Taylor et al. (NASA), "Navigation system and method"

• Disclosure: An earth-based remote control station generates an "acquisition-aiding signal" (FSK on a reference channel) that carries GPS satellite position data, satellite identification, and Doppler prediction data, relayed to user terminals via a geostationary satellite/tower to simplify user equipment.
• §102 relevance: This is the canonical "receive/collect satellite data at a station and transmit it to a remote receiver" teaching, and the applicant itself characterized it in the specification as collecting ephemeris at a reference station and transmitting it wirelessly to the remote receiver. It therefore maps to the three-step architecture of claim 1 and the structural versions of claims 21 and 29, and supplies the "information" categories of claim 2 (ephemeris, Doppler) and the wireless/broadcast transmission of claims 12–17. In the abstract (1984) it would destroy novelty only if "long term" in claim 1 is not treated as a separate, durational limitation; the reference relays broadcast-validity ephemeris (a few hours), so it does not reach claim 7 (>4 hours) or claims 5–6 (extending measured data into the future).

2. US 5,506,781 A — Cummiskey et al. (ITT), "RF link control of satellite clocks"

• Disclosure: Maintains a precise time standard among satellites using RF crosslinks, Kalman filtering to form "ensemble clocks," and an earth station computing an offset from Universal Time that is transmitted back to the satellites.
• §102 relevance: Directed to on-orbit clock synchronization, not to a ground server producing long-term orbit/clock data for a remote receiver. It is relevant background for the clock-offset / clock-drift / drift-rate limitations of claims 4, 6, 24, 26 (it expressly deals with clock offsets, drift, and applying a Kalman process), but it does not disclose receiving satellite signals at a tracking station to build a long-term model, so it does not anticipate any independent claim.

3. US 5,963,167 A (Caltech), "Analyzing system for global positioning system and general satellite tracking"

• Disclosure: The GIPSY-OASIS II precise orbit/positioning software: collecting broadcast signals of multiple earth-orbiting satellites with a plurality of earth-fixed receivers, converting to raw data, computing a plurality of forces acting on said satellites (earth/sun/moon gravity, solar pressure, atmospheric drag, thermal radiation, gas leaks), computing orbiting trajectories using an a priori model plus refined data, and updating data with a Kalman-type filter/smoother; global reference-network clock solutions at 30-second intervals.
• §102 relevance: This is the closest cited art to the orbit-determination engine of the invention. It maps to claim 18 (processing signals from multiple stations to produce trajectory and clock data) and to the "generate trajectory for a past period / extend into the future" mechanics of claims 5, 19, 25 (force-model-based propagation of orbits). It does not disclose fitting a compact long-term model and transmitting it to a remote receiver, so it supports §103 combination rather than §102 anticipation of claims 1/21/29.

4. US 6,064,336 A — Krasner (SnapTrack), "GPS receiver utilizing a communication link"

• Disclosure: A basestation transmits satellite data (ephemeris, almanac, and/or Doppler) over a communication link to a remote GPS receiver; the remote receiver uses the aiding data to reduce acquisition time and compute position. The specification of the reference treats "Method 1" (re-transmitting satellite data messages from the basestation to the remote) as known art.
• §102 relevance: Directly supplies the "produce data derived from satellite signals and transmit to a remote receiver" architecture for claims 1, 21, 29, the "information comprises … Doppler/ephemeris" language of claim 2/22, and the communication-link/broadcast transmission of claims 12–17, 27–28, 33–34. As with ref. 1, it is oriented to short-validity aiding data inherited from the satellite signal, so it does not reach claim 7 or the future-extrapolation limitations of claims 5–6.

5. US 6,133,874 A — Krasner (SnapTrack), "Method and apparatus for acquiring satellite positioning system signals"

• Disclosure: A location server (optionally using a reference network of GPS receivers) determines time of day, satellite positions, and estimated pseudoranges, and a cell-based/wireless link delivers this aiding data to a mobile SPS receiver to bound its search.
• §102 relevance: Because it expressly contemplates a reference network of GPS receivers feeding a server that computes satellite position information delivered to a mobile GPS receiver, it is the cited reference most closely aligned with claim 18 (multiple receiving stations → processed trajectory/clock data → transmitted to a remote GPS receiver) and with the GPS-receiver limitations of claims 10–11. It supplies communication-link transmission for claims 12–17. Again, its aiding validity is short (bounded by ephemeris/pseudorange validity), so the "long term / >4 hours" character of the invention is not disclosed.

6. US 6,134,483 A — Vayanos (Qualcomm), "Method and apparatus for efficient GPS assistance in a communication system"

• Disclosure (per record; not re-verified at source this session): Providing GPS assistance data (e.g., ephemeris/almanac and related aiding) over a communication system to reduce acquisition time/processing in a mobile station.
• §102 relevance: Potentially anticipates the transmission-channel dependent claims (12–17 wireless/cellular/network delivery, optionally broadcast) and complements claim 18's "transmit the orbit model to a remote GPS receiver" element. It does not, on the cited description, produce long-term future data, so it does not anticipate an independent claim on its own.

7. US 6,272,316 B1 — Globalstar L.P., "Mobile satellite user information request system and methods"

• Date caveat (literal): The record lists priority/filing 1995-11-17 but publication/grant 2001-08-07, i.e., after this patent's 2001-06-06 filing. It therefore qualifies, if at all, as pre-AIA §102(e) art (effective as of its earlier filing), not §102(a)/(b) art by its grant date.
• Disclosure (per record; not re-verified at source this session): Request/response delivery of satellite-related user information in a mobile satellite system.
• §102 relevance: Weak and only tangential: at most it is a §102(e) reference for the generic "request/transmit information concerning satellites to a remote/user terminal" reading of claim 1 and the transmission-medium claims (12–17). It is not specific to long-term orbit/clock modeling.

B. "Family Cites Families (6)" — prior art cited in the family, not the examiner citations above

These appear in the family-citation table (i.e., cited against related family members) and are not the seven examiner citations; I treat them separately because several are highly material to the same claim set.

C. Synthesis — most relevant prior art, and the §102 gap

Most relevant references (ranked):

1. US 4,445,118 A (Taylor/NASA) — the foundational "collect satellite data at a station and relay it to remote receivers" teaching that the applicant itself acknowledged in the specification. Best §102 candidate against the broad architecture of claims 1 / 21 / 29.
2. US 6,064,336 A and US 6,133,874 A (Krasner/SnapTrack) — server/reference-network generation and communication-link delivery of satellite orbit/clock aiding data to remote GPS receivers; best candidates against claims 1, 18, 21, 29 and the transmission-medium dependent claims (12–17).
3. US 5,963,167 A (Caltech/GIPSY-OASIS) — the orbit-determination and force-model computation, best candidate against claims 5, 18, 19, 25.
4. US 6,411,892 B1 (Global Locate) — wide-area reference network propagating ephemeris; the closest match to the "extend into the future" concept, subject to the unresolved §102(e)/inventorship question.

The §102 gap: The one limitation that none of the cited references discloses is the long-term character of the data — claim 1's "long term satellite tracking data" as further defined by claim 7 ("valid for greater than four hours"), and the past-measurement→future-extrapolation steps of claims 5–6 / 25–26. Every cited reference operates on satellite-signal-derived data whose validity is bounded by the broadcast ephemeris (roughly 2–4 hours) or on general orbit-determination theory. Consequently:

• A pure §102 anticipation of any independent claim (1, 18, 21, 29) as properly construed is unlikely for refs 1–7, because each is missing the "long term" element (or, for ref. 7, is mis-dated as §102(a)/(b) art).
• The cited references are better characterized as §103 base references that the examiner would combine to show the receive/produce/transmit architecture, the GPS-receiver environment, the communication-link delivery, and the orbit/clock modeling were all known — leaving the long-duration extrapolation as the point of novelty.

D. Uncertainty flags and caveats

• Claim-mapping is "potential" only. Section headings use the task's "potentially anticipates" framing; actual anticipation requires every element in a single reference, which I have assessed reference-by-reference above.
• Two examiner citations not re-verified at source: US 6,134,483 A and US 6,272,316 B1 — descriptions are drawn from the patent record and my own knowledge; treat their disclosure characterizations as provisional.
• Two family-cited documents not re-verified: US 6,453,237 B1 and US 6,411,892 B1 — in particular, I could not confirm the inventors of US 6,411,892 B1, which determines whether it is §102(e) prior art or is excluded as same-inventive-entity.
• Date nuance: US 6,272,316 B1's grant date (2001-08-07) postdates this patent's filing; it can only be prior art by its earlier filing/priority under §102(e), not by its publication date.
• "Cited By" is not prior art. The large "Cited By (95)" and "Families Citing this family (36)" tables list documents that cite this patent (i.e., later art). They are not §102 references against US 6,542,820 and are excluded from the analysis above.
• Legal-effect caveat: All status dates and the "Expired – Lifetime / adjusted expiration 2021-06-14" entry are recorded assertions, not legal conclusions.

Sources: Google Patents record for US 6,542,820 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US6542820/en) and the individual reference pages returned in search (e.g., https://patents.google.com/patent/US4445118, /US5506781A, /US5963167A, /US6064336A via uspto.report/patent/grant/6064336, /US6133874).

I'll examine the prior art references cited on this patent's face and verify their disclosures before building the §103 combinations.

Now let me verify the remaining cited references — the two SnapTrack patents and the Globalstar reference.

Obviousness Analysis — US 6,542,820 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)

Pre-AIA § 103(a) governs (application filed 2001-06-06). This section builds on the earlier claim/litigation sections and does not repeat them.

1. Governing framework

Prior-art status of the examiner-cited references (all from the "Citations (7)" list on the face, all retrieved from Google Patents/EveryPatent):

Two family-cited Global Locate patents (US 6,411,892; US 6,453,237) are § 102(e) art but were commonly owned at the relevant time — a patentee would move to disqualify them under pre-AIA § 103(c). They should not anchor any ground.

2. Proposed combinations

Ground 1 — Claim 1 (and 2–17): '118 + '167 + '483

• '118 teaches every structural step of claim 1 except the "long term" character: it receives satellite signals at a reference/control station, derives satellite position (+ predicted Doppler) data from them, and transmits that data to remote receivers over a wireless (geostationary relay) link. The '820 specification itself cites '118 as the archetypal Assisted‑GPS art.
• '167 teaches producing predicted orbit and clock data from ground-receiver measurements — literally "predicting orbits of said satellites with said updated data … to produce updated orbits," plus clock solutions — i.e., the propagation-into-the-future step of claims 5 and 6.
• '483 supplies the missing "long term" element and, more importantly, the express motivation: it frames it as a requirement that the assistance information "must be transmitted in a form that allows the information to be used for a relatively long time after it has been received," and achieves this by transmitting not just positions but rate-of-change terms. That is a direct teaching to extend assistance-data validity — the very object of claim 1.

Motivation: all three are in the same field and address the same problem (getting satellite trajectory/clock data to a receiver over a link in a form that stays useful). KSR rationales (a) and (d) apply: known elements combined to yield predictable results, and an express design incentive in '483. Reasonable expectation of success is buttressed by the '820's own admission that orbit determination/prediction software (GIPSY, GEODYN, MicroCosm) and least-squares/Kalman fitting to the ICD‑200c model were "well known in the art."

Ground 2 — Claim 7 ("valid for greater than four hours")

'483's "long window … valid at a time different from the time when it was transmitted," combined with '167's precise predicted orbits, renders a >4-hour validity an optimization of a result-effective variable (In re Applied Materials; In re Boesch). Decisively, the '820 admits that ICD‑GPS‑200c itself "envisages fit intervals" of 8, 14, 26, 50, 74, 98, 122 and 146 hours; the only reason such models were unavailable was that the broadcast was limited to 4 hours. Supplying a 6-hour (or longer) fit from a ground-derived orbit is therefore a mechanical application of a standardized parameter set, not an inventive act. A petitioner would also invoke KSR's "obvious to try."

Ground 3 — Claim 18 (trajectory + clock → orbit model → remote GPS receiver) and 19–20

Claim 20's "future positions … and future clock offsets" is met by the predicted orbits of '167 and the offset+drift+drift-rate clock model of '781/'483 and the ICD‑GPS‑200c clock terms (af₀/af₁/af₂) — the specification concedes the latter are standard.

Ground 4 — Claims 4/24 (velocity, acceleration, clock drift/drift rate)

'483 claims explicitly recite rate of change of location differences and of the differentially corrected clock value, with the alternative of "higher order differentials with respect to time." '781 discloses drift compensation/steering filters. Obvious combination.

Ground 5 — Claims 21/22 and 29–34 (apparatus, § 112 ¶ 6 and structural)

• Claim 29's receiver → computer → distribution network triad maps onto '118's control station + '167's orbit/clock computation + '118's wireless relay/'874's client-server link, or onto '483's position location server + base station transmission over a control channel.
• Claim 32 (memory/database) reads on '118's "reference storage medium at said basestation" and '483's server storage.
• Claims 12–17/27–28/33–34 (wireless, broadcast, computer network, Internet): '118 (wireless broadcast), '874/'336 (cellular), '483 (control-channel broadcast), '316 (satellite link). "Internet/computer network" is a predictable substitution of a known data-transport medium for distributing the same data — KSR; see also the specification's own statement that distribution "may be by … wireless … or over the Internet … or a combination of both."
• Claims 8–11: '118, '336, '874 are all GPS; '483 notes applicability "to other satellite based location systems such as GLONASS."

3. Why the combination is not defeated by the '820's stated point of novelty

The '820 asserts it departs from the art because "the orbit model provided to the GPS device is not the ephemeris data broadcast by the GPS satellites… the broadcast ephemeris data is not required at any stage." That distinction is met by '167, which computes orbits and clocks from raw ground-receiver measurements and force models without depending on broadcast ephemeris content. A petitioner therefore argues: '167 supplies independently derived precise orbits and clocks; '118/'336/'874 supply the distribution channel and remote-receiver format; '483 supplies the express reason to make the distributed data long-lived. The asserted novelty resides in the problem recognition and its obvious solution, which is not a patentable distinction after KSR.

Teaching away? None identified. '483's Table 1 (almanac degrading 900 m → 3,600 m over two weeks) does not teach away from long-validity data; it teaches toward higher-accuracy, longer-validity assistance — precisely '167's precise orbits.

4. Where a patentee would push back (honest weaknesses in the grounds)

1. The >4-hour quantification (claim 7 / "long term" in claim 1). '483's "relatively long time"/"long window" is qualitative. If the Board reads "long term" as a structural limitation requiring a defined horizon, a petitioner must rely on inherency or result-effective-variable optimization. This is the single most contestable point.
2. '483 computes from satellite-broadcast almanac/ephemeris, arguably the "current art" the '820 distinguishes. The ground therefore depends on the motivation teaching of '483 rather than its data source — an argument a PTAB panel could view as hindsight-tinged unless the '167 + '483 pairing is framed as complementary (data source + validity driver).
3. § 102(e)/§ 103(c) exposure for '874, '483 and the family-cited Global Locate patents if the 2000-11-17 priority is perfected; the commonly-owned references must be excluded.
4. No objective indicia for '820 specifically. As the litigation section established, '820 was never adjudicated — its only assertion (Global Locate's 2007-01-08 counterclaim in C.D. Cal. 8:06‑cv‑01216) was stayed 2007-10-03 and dismissed without prejudice 2011-01-18, and it was not among the six patents in ITC 337‑TA‑602 or the Fed. Cir. appeal No. 2009‑1262. So there are no Graham-factor findings (commercial success, long-felt need, industry praise) with a proven nexus for this patent. The dense forward-citation count (95 examiner/third-party citing families; 228 "cited by") evidences technical significance, not nexus to the claims, and cuts little weight against a strong § 103 case.

5. Bottom line

Under § 103(a), claims 1–34 are, on the record cited by the examiner, vulnerable to a strong obviousness challenge, most cleanly on:

US 4,445,118 (Taylor/NASA) in view of US 5,963,167 (Lichten/Caltech) and US 6,134,483 (Vayanos/Qualcomm) — and, for claim 18's "orbit model," further in view of ICD‑GPS‑200c and US 6,064,336 (Krasner/SnapTrack).

The motivation is not merely generic: '483 expressly states that satellite assistance information must be usable long after transmission and supplies rate-of-change terms to accomplish that; the '820's own background admits that no long-validity source existed and that the orbit-determination and ephemeris-fitting tools were conventional. The remaining differentiators (a 6-hour/longer fit to a standardized parameter set, and the choice of wireless/network/Internet transport) are predictable applications of known techniques to known elements.

Uncertainty flags

• The Federated claim chart above is an analytic construction from the reference disclosures retrieved; I have not verified every column-and-line cite of '118/'167/'781/'336/'874 against the issued patent PDFs (the tool-call budget was exhausted mid-verification for '874, '316 and '336's full specification).
• US 6,272,316's issue date (2001-08-07) postdates the '820 filing; it is usable only as § 102(e) art and its 1995 priority must be confirmed from the file wrapper.
• Contradiction check with earlier sections: none. The earlier sections correctly note the 2001-06-06 vs. 2000-11-17 priority discrepancy; I have analyzed both and the conclusion is unchanged. The earlier litigation finding (no merits ruling on '820) is consistent with the absence of any Graham-factor record for this patent.

Sources: Google Patents — US6542820B2, US4445118A, US5963167A, US5506781A, US6134483A; US6064336 (EveryPatent); US5963167 (RPX Insight); uspto.report/patent/grant/4445118; US5506781 PDF; Unified Patents litigation portal, case 8:06‑cv‑01216.