US 6606346

I'll search for authoritative information on this patent, including any 2026 CAFC activity.

US Patent 6,606,346 — Analyst Summary

Sourcing note

I do not have direct API/portal access to USPTO PatentCenter, PAIR, or the CAFC docket system; my verification is via web search, which surfaced the Full Text of the patent itself (Google Patents), the CAFC opinion PDF in Appeal No. 2009‑1262, the ITC Commission Opinion in Inv. No. 337‑TA‑602, and Federal Register/industry coverage. Where I could not verify something, I say so explicitly.

1. Bibliographic data (verified against the patent text and CAFC opinion)

Assignee chain of record (from the reassignment entries): Global Locate, Inc. → Broadcom Corporation (2015‑09‑16) → Avago Technologies General IP (Singapore) Pte. Ltd. (2017‑02‑01) → Avago Technologies International Sales Pte. Limited (2018, merger/corrective assignments). A Bank of America security interest recorded in 2016 was terminated in 2017.

Family / related filings: The specification describes the same subject matter filed internationally as PCT/US2002/015470 (WO 2002/096054 A1), EP 1388241 B1, JP 2004‑527763 A, KR 100874127 B1, KR 100906959 B1, DE 60238757 D1, AT 493677 T1. Continuation-in-parts claiming the same 2001‑05‑18 priority include US 6,704,348 B2, US 6,819,707 B2, and US 6,891,880 B2.

2. Abstract (verbatim from the patent)

"A method and apparatus for computing a convolution between an input GPS signal and a C/A code reference by generating the convolution result in real time without storing unprocessed signal samples. The apparatus comprises a vector multiplier running at high speed to achieve the same result as a vector multiplier sized to process an entire epoch."

3. Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Claim 1 — Correlation method (generic; not limited to GPS).
Take a pseudorandom reference code and split it into multiple code segments. Select one segment, and compute an inner product between that segment and a portion of the repeating code found in the incoming digital signal — this yields one partial correlation. Repeat the select-and-multiply step to build a set of partial correlations, and sum them as each partial correlation is produced so that the running sums constitute the full set of correlations. In plain terms: instead of correlating the whole code all at once, do it in chunks and accumulate the chunks on the fly.

Claim 11 — GPS receiver (hardware/system claim).
A GPS receiver comprising: (a) an RF/IF converter that filters and frequency-translates the received GPS signal (which carries a repeating code) to an IF signal; (b) an A/D converter; (c) a tuner that removes Doppler shift and outputs in-phase (I) and quadrature (Q) signals; (d) a decimation circuit that subsamples I and Q; (e) a convolution processor that forms I and Q partial correlations by multiplying selected segments of a C/A reference code against portions of the repeating code in each of the subsampled I and Q streams; and (f) two accumulators — one that accumulates the I partial correlations, and one that accumulates the Q partial correlations — to produce the correlations of each channel against the C/A code.

Claim 19 — GPS receiver (consolidated embodiment).
Essentially claim 11 with the internal architecture expressed affirmatively in a single claim: the same RF/IF, A/D, tuner, and decimation stages; a convolution processor whose code generator is realized as a code lookup circuit plus a code extender, with a first and second shift register storing segments of the subsampled I and Q signals and first and second vector multipliers producing the I and Q partial correlations; separate I and Q accumulators; plus a signal normalizer producing values representative of magnitude or power of I and Q, and a magnitude accumulator that sums those normalizer values (i.e., non-coherent, post-magnitude integration for long-term averaging).

Claim 23 — Alternative correlation method.
Same general idea as claim 1 but more explicitly looped: divide the PRN reference code into segments; select a portion of the repeating signal code; select a code segment; form the inner product of the two to get a partial correlation; repeat the segment-selection/inner-product steps to get multiple partial correlations; repeat the portion-selection through inner-product steps for multiple portions of the repeating code; accumulate the partial correlations as they are produced to form a correlation; and form a plurality of correlations.

Representative dependent claims of note: claim 3 (signal-sample and reference-code sizes are an integer times a factor of 1023 — the K/M factorization); claim 5 (extending a code segment by replicating a C/A code bit to an integer number of samples); claim 6 (generating segments from a lookup table of fixed non-overlapping C/A code segments); claim 7 (segments generated from a set of circulating shift registers); claim 10 (energy-signal integration over a predefined period); claims 13–16 (code lookup + extender, I/Q shift registers, I/Q vector multipliers, adder+memory accumulators); claims 17–18 (multiple processing channels, and a computer computing position from the convolutions).

4. Litigation history surrounding the '346 patent

• ITC Inv. No. 337‑TA‑602, Certain GPS Devices and Products Containing Same, instituted 2007‑05‑07 on Global Locate's complaint; respondents SiRF Technology, E‑TEN, Pharos, MiTAC, Mio. The ALJ's 2008‑08‑08 Initial Determination found infringement of all six asserted patents. The Commission reviewed the standing-to-assert question for the '346 patent and, in its Final Determination of 2009‑01‑15, found Global Locate did have standing to assert it, and issued a limited exclusion order (narrowed in light of Kyocera Wireless Corp. v. ITC) plus cease-and-desist orders.
• CAFC Appeal No. 2009‑1262 (SiRF Tech., Inc. v. ITC): the Federal Circuit affirmed the Commission in all respects on 2010‑04‑12, including on the '346 patent issues. (Broadcom acquired Global Locate in July 2007 and was added as complainant in February 2008.)
• California Central District Court, Case 8:06‑cv‑01216 (listed on the patent's litigation data).
• The ITC remedial orders were rescinded on 2011‑03‑21 following a Broadcom–respondent settlement (Fed. Reg. notice, Mar. 2011).
• On the requested "CAFC 2026 docket" search: I searched and found no 2026 CAFC docket, appeal, or oral-argument entry involving US 6,606,346. The only Federal Circuit appeal I could verify for this patent is No. 2009‑1262 (2010). This is consistent with the patent having expired on 2021‑05‑18. I cannot rule out a very recent 2026 filing that is not yet indexed by the search engines I can reach — if you need docket-level certainty, that must be confirmed in PACER/CM‑ECF and the CAFC's scheduled-case list directly, which I cannot query here.

5. Uncertainty flags

• The current assignee shown (Avago Technologies International Sales Pte Ltd) reflects the Google Patents/assignment-record chain; I did not independently confirm current ownership with Avago/Broadcom.
• The claim-1 "summing…as each partial correlation is produced" language is as printed; note the specification's own discussion indicates the invention also supports computing subsets of the full convolution (fewer than M partial correlations per shift), which may bear on claim scope.
• The priority line shows a 1999‑04‑23 priority in some family entries (via the division of US 09/615,105, which issued as US 6,411,892 B1), but the '346 patent's own priority date is stated as 2001‑05‑18; I have not independently verified whether any earlier effective date was adjudicated.

I'll research litigation involving US Patent 6606346. Let me search several sources.

Let me dig into specific cases.

Litigation Involving US Patent 6,606,346

Important identifier note: You asked about "6606346." Every litigation record I found for this patent writes the number as U.S. Patent No. 6,606,346 (the "'346 patent"), titled "Method and Apparatus for Computing Signal Correlation," invented by Charles Abraham and Donald L. Fuchs, originally assigned to Global Locate, Inc. (San Jose, CA). Google Patents renders it as US6606346B2. The subject matter and title match exactly, so the records below concern the same patent you identified. I am not altering the number — I am reporting both renderings as they appear in the sources.

Bottom line: Yes, litigation exists. It was a single, closely related cluster of disputes — the Global Locate/Broadcom v. SiRF Technology GPS chip litigation, spanning the ITC, a C.D. Cal. district court case, and a Federal Circuit appeal. I found no other lawsuits asserting this patent against other defendants.

1. ITC Investigation No. 337-TA-602 — Certain GPS Devices and Products Containing Same (the primary case)

Key '346-specific holding: SiRF challenged standing, arguing that inventor Abraham had conceived the invention while employed by Magellan Corp., whose employment agreement automatically assigned "all inventions… related to or useful in the business of the Employer." The Commission modified the ALJ's findings but upheld standing.

Sources: ITC Final Determination notice, 74 FR 4232 — https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2009-01-23/pdf/E9-1428.pdf ; USITC Commission Opinion, Pub. 4137 — https://www.usitc.gov/intellectual_property/documents/pub4137.pdf ; Broadcom/Broadcom-Global Locate press summary — https://www.kipo.go.kr/club/front/menu/bbs/view.do?clubId=dispute&menuId=3&curPage=142&messageId=14777

2. Federal Circuit Appeal — SiRF Technology, Inc. v. U.S. International Trade Commission, No. 2009-1262

Source: CAFC opinion, 2009-1262 — http://cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-orders/09-1262.pdf ; case summary — http://jolt.law.harvard.edu/digest/sirf-tech-inc-v-itc

3. District Court — SiRF Technology, Inc. v. Global Locate, Inc. et al., No. 8:06-cv-01216 (C.D. Cal.)

Note on the '346 patent's role here: An expert-witness declaration in a later matter lists "SiRF Technology, Inc. v. Global Locate, Inc." patents-in-suit as including US 6,606,346 (alongside 6,304,216; 6,417,801; 6,651,000; 6,704,651; 6,937,187; 7,043,363; 7,091,904; 7,132,980; 7,158,080), so the '346 patent appears to have been part of this consolidated dispute (through Global Locate's counterclaims) as well as the ITC case. I flag this as sourced from an expert declaration rather than a docket entry I verified line-by-line.

Sources: Unified Patents litigation page — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/California%20Central%20District%20Court/case/8:06-cv-01216 ; expert declaration — https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1554022](/patent/1554022)/download-documents?artifactId=m50HwLQF2mHSppBwnpL2hBuiUKGSFlP2it0FKm-lYKhJjEGL65ESZoc ; SiRF 10-K — https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/[1163943](/patent/1163943)/000119312509041380/d10k.htm

4. Related (not asserting the '346 patent) — for context

• ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-596 — Certain GPS Chips, Associated Software and Systems, and Products Containing Same. Here SiRF was the complainant and Global Locate the respondent (asserted patents: 6,304,216; 7,043,363; 7,091,904; 7,132,980). This was the mirror-image ITC action, not a '346 case.
• Broadcom v. SiRF Technology, U.S. District Court, C.D. Cal. (Santa Ana), complaint filed May 14, 2008, asserting four different Broadcom-owned patents (multimedia processors/GPS receivers); trial set for November 2010. I found no indication the '346 patent was among those four, so I list this only as related context.

Source: SiRF 10-K, SEC — https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1163943/000119312509041380/d10k.htm

Caveats and methodology

• I searched publicly indexed litigation resources (including the Unified Patents litigation portal, ITC/Federal Register documents, CAFC opinions, SEC filings, and secondary case summaries). I did not obtain a live PACER docket report, so docket-level details (exact complaint filing dates, docket entry numbers) for the C.D. Cal. case are drawn from the sources cited rather than from PACER directly.
• No post-2010 assertion litigation against other defendants was found for this patent. Google Patents shows a "Family has litigation" flag (Darts-IP family ID 25334832) and links only the three matters above.
• The patent's legal status is Expired – Lifetime, with anticipated expiration May 18, 2021 (20 years from the May 18, 2001 filing date). Current recorded assignee: Avago Technologies International Sales Pte Ltd (Broadcom family).
• If you need the exact district-court complaint filing date and docket entries for 8:06-cv-01216, or confirmation of whether any later Broadcom entity asserted the '346 patent, I would recommend a direct PACER/Unified Patents docket pull and a Darts-IP family litigation report — I cannot verify those to a certainty from open sources alone.

I'll verify the structured block's "no PTAB activity" default against the public record before reporting.

No AIA trial surfaced yet. Let me run two more targeted checks to be thorough.

One final confirmation search to rule out an AIA trial post-2012 (the patent didn't expire until 2021, so there was a window).

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings on file. The USPTO Open Data Portal's structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block is empty for US 6,606,346, and my independent web checks for IPR/PGR/CBM activity turned up nothing — no petition, no institution decision, no Final Written Decision, no appeal of any Board decision. The bottom-line defensive posture is unusual and cuts both ways: the patent has never been tested at the PTAB, so there is no estoppel, no canceled claim, and no Board precedent to lean on — but it has also been expired since 2021-05-18 and its validity was litigated to a final, affirmed judgment in the ITC and Federal Circuit, where the patent survived. A defendant being asserted today (if any assertion is still live) faces a judgment-hardened patent with no PTAB roadmap, but also no remaining term beyond its 2021 expiration.

A critical caveat on the source data: the Google Patents page for this patent displays several "litigation" links (Darts-ip family ID 25334832; a C.D. Cal. case; a Federal Circuit case; an ITC investigation). None of these are AIA trials. They are Article III / Section 337 actions that predate or straddle the AIA. Do not let a demand letter conflate them with PTAB proceedings. They are summarized below as context, clearly labeled.

AIA trial proceedings

None. There is no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding to report, and I will not invent a proceeding number, panel, or FWD to fill the template. Because the AIA's transitional post-grant programs opened on 2012-09-16 and the '346 patent did not expire until 2021-05-18, there was a ~9-year window in which any party could have petitioned. No such petition appears to have been filed. That absence is itself the finding.

Non-AIA enforcement history (context only — NOT PTAB proceedings)

These are the proceedings the Google Patents "litigation" links actually refer to. Treat them as background on how the patent has been tested, not as AIA trials.

ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-602 — Global Locate/Broadcom v. SiRF Technology (and E-TEN, Pharos, MiTAC, Mio)

• Type: Section 337 investigation (International Trade Commission) — not an AIA trial.
• Filed / instituted: complaint by Global Locate; investigation instituted 2007-05-07 (72 Fed. Reg. 25,777). Broadcom added as complainant 2008-02-05 after acquiring Global Locate in July 2007.
• Status: Terminated; Commission Final Determination 2009-01-15; became final 2009-03-16 after the 60-day presidential review period.
• Claims of the '346 patent asserted: the ALJ found infringement of claims 4 and 11 of the '346 patent (the '346 patent was asserted against SiRF's InstantGPS chips, described in SiRF's own disclosure as a "low-volume … hardware product").
• Validity outcome: the ALJ "concluded that all six patents were not invalid or unenforceable," and the Commission affirmed the Initial Determination as modified. The '346 patent's validity and enforceability were upheld.
• Standing issue (specific to '346): SiRF challenged Global Locate's standing, arguing that inventor Abraham's prior employment agreement with Ashtech/Magellan automatically assigned his rights. The Commission reviewed and affirmed standing, and the Federal Circuit affirmed on appeal.
• Remedy: limited exclusion order plus cease-and-desist orders.
• Sources: ITC Final Determination opinion, Pub. 4137 (https://www.usitc.gov/intellectual_property/documents/pub4137.pdf).

SiRF Technology, Inc. v. Int'l Trade Comm'n — Fed. Cir. No. 2009-1262

• Type: Federal Circuit appeal of the ITC determination — not an appeal of any PTAB decision.
• Decided: 2010-04-12. Disposition: affirmed (opinion by Judge Dyk).
• Issues on appeal: (1) standing to assert the '346 patent (Abraham/Ashtech automatic-assignment agreement); (2) direct vs. joint infringement of the '651 and '000 patents; (3) patentable subject matter of certain method claims under In re Bilski.
• '346-specific holding: the court held the Abraham agreement was an automatic assignment, but that PTO-recorded assignment to Global Locate "creates a presumption of validity as to the assignment" and shifted the burden to SiRF; SiRF failed to show Magellan was a co-owner, so Global Locate had standing to assert the '346 patent without joining Magellan. The court also noted SiRF's invalidity arguments (on issues the Commission declined to review) were "unpersuasive."
• Sources: CAFC opinion http://cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-orders/09-1262.pdf; CourtListener https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/[1320748](/patent/1320748)/sirf-technology-inc-v-international-trade-commission/.

Broadcom/Global Locate v. SiRF — C.D. Cal. No. 8:06-cv-01216

• Type: District court patent litigation — not an AIA trial.
• Status: filed 2006; companion to the ITC action; resolved in the parties' global settlement (Broadcom acquired Global Locate in July 2007; litigation ultimately resolved).
• Source: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/California%20Central%20District%20Court/case/8%3A06-cv-01216.

Strategic summary

Claim status — there is no IPR-driven narrowing to report. Because no AIA trial ever issued a Final Written Decision on the '346 patent, no claim has been canceled, disclaimed, or held unpatentable at the PTAB. All 23 claims stand as issued (absent any separate ex parte reexamination or certificate of correction, none of which surfaced). What has happened is the opposite of the usual story: the '346 patent was affirmed valid and infringed in a fully litigated Section 337 case, and that judgment was affirmed by the Federal Circuit in 2010. So the claims are "sustained" in the Article III/ITC sense — but note the patent is now expired (expiration 2021-05-18), which is the dominant fact for any current dispute: there is no forward-looking injunction exposure and damages can only reach past conduct within the limitations period.

Estoppel landscape — none from the PTAB. Because there was no IPR or PGR, § 315(e)(2) estoppel is not in play. A defendant is not barred from raising any § 102/§ 103 ground in district court by operation of a prior Board decision. That said, issue preclusion and the ITC/Federal Circuit judgments may bind parties and privies who participated in 337-TA-602, and the patent's validity/standing rulings from that record are on the books and will be cited by the patent owner. Any new defendant who never petitioned the PTAB retains the full prior-art field — including art the ITC considered — subject only to ordinary district-court rules. The practical problem is that an IPR is now an unattractive tool: the patent is expired, so the Board may decline or the challenge may be moot for prospective relief, and there is no live term to clear.

Pattern signals. No repeat-petitioner pattern (there is no petitioner at all). No defensive aggregator such as Unified Patents appears in the AIA chain — Unified's only footprint here is the litigation-database link, not a filed petition. The patent owner (now Avago Technologies International Sales Pte. Ltd., via the Broadcom/Avago assignment chain) did not pursue any PTAB appeal because there was no PTAB case; its appellate activity was the 2009-1262 ITC appeal, which it won.

Recommended next steps

• If you have received a demand letter citing US 6,606,346: check the term. The patent expired 2021-05-18 (anticipated expiration per the ODP record; current status "Expired - Lifetime"). Any demand premised on ongoing infringement is likely misplaced; only past damages within the § 286 six-year window could be at issue, and even those are narrowing with time.
• Because there is no FWD to quote, do not expect a "claims 1–5 canceled" silver bullet. There is none. Your defenses will be built on § 102/§ 103 prior art, the patent's expired status, and any invalidity/unenforceability theories — not on a PTAB disposition.
• Estoppel check: confirm whether you (or a privy/real party in interest) participated in ITC 337-TA-602 or C.D. Cal. 8:06-cv-01216. If you did, the affirmance in Fed. Cir. 2009-1262 on validity, enforceability, and standing may have preclusive effect on you specifically; if you are a new party, it does not.
• Verify currency before relying on this: I could not find any 2012–2021 AIA petition via web search, and the ODP structured block is empty, but if you are litigating for real, pull the PTAB E2E record for the patent directly at https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ and confirm the ex parte reexamination certificate history (if any) with the USPTO PatentCenter before finalizing a position. I state this as a verification step, not because I found a conflicting proceeding — I did not.

Confidence note: I am highly confident there is no PTAB proceeding on this patent; the structured ODP block says so and multiple targeted searches corroborate it. The ITC/Federal Circuit details above are grounded in the cited public opinions.

I'll reconstruct this ownership chain, starting with targeted searches on the assignment records and litigation history.

Let me dig for the specific reel/frame records and the litigation context.

Let me try to pin down the actual reel/frame records and the earlier litigation.

Ownership chain — US 6,606,346 B2

Method and apparatus for computing signal correlation
Application 09/861,086 · filed 2001‑05‑18 · issued 2003‑08‑12 · priority 2001‑05‑18 · status: Expired – Lifetime (anticipated expiration 2021‑05‑18)

Data-availability caveat up front. The Google Patents legal‑events feed (which mirrors USPTO assignment bibliographic data) reports six post‑issuance recordings for this patent, reproduced below. However, I was unable to retrieve the actual reel/frame numbers or the named correspondent of record for any of these recordings within this session. I am therefore not inventing reel/frame values. Every reel/frame slot below is marked "not retrieved — verify at Assignment Center." Anything I could not verify is flagged rather than asserted.

Inventors

Unusual pattern — inventor-side title defect, not departures. The notable anomaly is Abraham's prior employer, not inventor attrition. In SiRF Technology, Inc. v. ITC, No. 2009‑1262 (Fed. Cir. Apr. 12, 2010), SiRF argued Global Locate lacked standing to assert the '346 patent because Magellan Corp. was arguably a co‑owner via Abraham's prior employment agreement. The Federal Circuit rejected the challenge, holding that PTO recording of the assignment "creates a presumption of validity as to the assignment," and that SiRF failed to show the invention was "related to or useful in" Magellan's business; Magellan had known of the patent and never asserted ownership. I found no evidence that any inventor left Global Locate within 12 months of filing, and no evidence of an inventor-side fire‑sale.

Original assignee

Global Locate, Inc. — San Jose, CA at issuance (later re‑domiciled to Irvine, CA; earlier filings show 3190 S. Bascom Ave., San Jose, and a New Jersey address).

• Primary line of business: assisted‑GPS (A‑GPS) — GPS chipsets/baseband correlator IP, a worldwide reference network, and a position‑server/A‑GPS service business. The claimed subject matter (a hardware correlator that computes a full convolution by repeated partial correlations without a 1023‑tap vector multiplier) is core chipset technology.
• Did it ship a product embodying the claims? Yes, at the design‑in level. The ITC record states Global Locate did not manufacture downstream consumer products; its chipsets were sold to be designed into downstream products (PNDs, phones). That is a product business, not a licensing‑only posture.
• Current status: Acquired. Broadcom Corporation acquired Global Locate in July 2007 and was added as a co‑complainant in the ITC action (added 2008‑02‑05). The Global Locate entity persists as a Broadcom/Avago IP‑holding subsidiary (parent listed as Broadcom Cayman L.P.). No bankruptcy or dissolution in the record.

Assignment timeline

Every entry below is drawn from the Google Patents legal‑events table for US 6,606,346 B2. Reel/frame and correspondent fields could not be confirmed and are marked accordingly.

1. 2001‑09‑24 (executed/recorded, date as indexed) — Reel not retrieved / Frame not retrieved — verify at Assignment Center

   • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest
   • Assignor: FUCHS, DONALD L.; ABRAHAM, CHARLES (individually)
   • Assignee: Global Locate, Inc.
   • Correspondent: not retrieved.
   • Context: Original inventor‑to‑company assignment at formation of the chain; no third party.

2. 2015‑09‑16 — Reel not retrieved / Frame not retrieved — verify at Assignment Center

   • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignor's Interest
   • Assignor: Global Locate, Inc.
   • Assignee: Broadcom Corporation
   • Correspondent: not retrieved.
   • Context: Internal corporate consolidation — formalization of the July 2007 Broadcom acquisition of Global Locate. Consistent with the EP family, where the EPO recorded a "deed of assignment dated 16.10.2015" putting Broadcom in place of Global Locate. Not a third‑party sale.

3. 2016‑02‑11 — Reel not retrieved / Frame not retrieved — verify at Assignment Center

   • Conveyance: Patent Security Agreement
   • Assignor: Broadcom Corporation
   • Assignee: Bank of America, N.A., as Collateral Agent
   • Correspondent: not retrieved.
   • Context: Securitization / collateral pledge — a lien, not a transfer of title.

4. 2017‑02‑01 — Reel not retrieved / Frame not retrieved — verify at Assignment Center

   • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignor's Interest
   • Assignor: Broadcom Corporation
   • Assignee: Avago Technologies General IP (Singapore) Pte. Ltd.
   • Correspondent: not retrieved.
   • Context: Internal reorg / IP‑holding migration following the Avago–Broadcom combination (Broadcom Limited structure). Related‑party transfer, not an arm's‑length sale.

5. 2017‑02‑03 — Reel not retrieved / Frame not retrieved — verify at Assignment Center

   • Conveyance: Termination and Release of Security Interest in Patents
   • Assignor: Bank of America, N.A., as Collateral Agent
   • Assignee: Broadcom Corporation
   • Correspondent: not retrieved.
   • Context: Release of lien recorded two days after the migration to Avago — closing out the 2016 collateral package.

6. 2018‑10‑04 — Reel not retrieved / Frame not retrieved — verify at Assignment Center

   • Conveyance: Merger
   • Assignor: Avago Technologies General IP (Singapore) Pte. Ltd.
   • Assignee: Avago Technologies International Sales Pte. Limited
   • Correspondent: not retrieved.
   • Context: Internal corporate merger — IP entity absorbed into the current Avago International Sales entity.

7. 2018‑11‑05 — Reel not retrieved / Frame not retrieved — verify at Assignment Center

   • Conveyance: Corrective Assignment (correction of the effective date of the merger previously recorded, per the assignment text "reel 047195 frame 0026")
   • Assignor: Avago Technologies General IP (Singapore) Pte. Ltd.
   • Assignee: Avago Technologies International Sales Pte. Limited
   • Correspondent: not retrieved.
   • Context: Correction‑only filing — no change in ownership. (Note: the corrective text references reel 047195/0026, which is the merger record's reel/frame, but I could not verify that this is the reel/frame of entry 6 above; treat as unconfirmed.)

If the Assignment Center returns records that do not match the above, treat the Center as authoritative — the entries above are bibliographic‑feed reconstructions, and the reel/frame and correspondent columns in particular are unverified.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6606346
    2001 : Inventors assign to Global Locate Inc
    2003 : Patent issued
    2007 : Broadcom acquires Global Locate
    2015 : Assignment recorded to Broadcom Corp
    2016 : Security agreement to Bank of America
    2017 : Assignment to Avago General IP Singapore
         : Security interest released
    2018 : Merger into Avago International Sales
         : Corrective assignment recorded
    2021 : Patent expires

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell‑entity transfer — NOT PRESENT.
The patent moved from Global Locate to Broadcom Corporation (2015‑09‑16), then to Avago Technologies General IP (Singapore) Pte. Ltd. (2017‑02‑01) and Avago Technologies International Sales Pte. Limited (2018‑10‑04). These are operating‑company and corporate IP‑holding vehicles inside a single semiconductor group, not standalone licensing LLCs. There is no recorded transfer to any entity named "…IP / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures LLC," no registered‑agent‑service address, and no evidence of a single‑purpose Delaware/Texas LLC. The Singapore Avago entities are Broadcom's IP custodians, and Broadcom itself was a named complainant in the enforcement (below), i.e. asserting on its own account.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT.
No assignee in this chain appears on the enumerated lists (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi‑LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg entities) or, to my knowledge, in RPX/Unified high‑frequency‑plaintiff directories. The current assignee is a Broadcom‑group entity. Confidence note: I could not run a live RPX/Unified directory lookup in this session; this call rests on the absence of any listed name in the recorded chain.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR / INSUFFICIENT DATA.
This is the single most valuable signal per the brief, and I could not retrieve the correspondent of record for any of the seven recordings. I therefore make no finding of a repeat correspondent. Verification path: query each reel/frame at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ and compare the correspondent fields; a single recurring attorney/firm across entries 1–7 would be meaningful only if it also recurs on unrelated NPE families.

4. Cascading transfers — PRESENT (but corporate, not NPE).
Seven recordings between 2001 and 2018, with four recordings in a 36‑month window (2015‑09 → 2018‑11) across chained Broadcom/Avago group entities, two of them on non‑ownership conveyances (collateral pledge 2016, release 2017) and one a pure correction (2018‑11‑05). This is a factual cascade. However, all transferees are affiliates of one corporate group, none is an LLC shell, and the transfers track the public Avago–Broadcom transaction — so the cascade reads as internal reorganization and securitization, not NPE chain‑building. I mark the pattern present and the NPE inference unsupported.

5. Pre‑litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT.
Enforcement came before the recorded transfers, not after. Global Locate filed the C.D. Cal. action (case 8:06‑cv‑01216) in 2006 and the ITC complaint on 2007‑04‑02 (instituted 2007‑04‑30/05‑07 as Inv. No. 337‑TA‑602). Broadcom acquired Global Locate in July 2007 and was added as complainant 2008‑02‑05. The recorded assignment to Broadcom was not filed until 2015‑09‑16 — a formalization eight years after acquisition and after the litigation had concluded (Commission final determination and limited exclusion order/cease‑and‑desist orders, 2009‑01 ; Fed. Cir. affirmed, 2010‑04‑12). No transfer was timed to a suit filing.

6. Bankruptcy fire‑sale — NOT PRESENT.
No Chapter 7/11 proceedings, no stalking‑horse or §363 sale, and no sale to a liquidation buyer in the recorded chain. Global Locate was acquired in a going‑concern transaction; the Singapore Avago entities result from mergers, not insolvency.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT (with a nuance).
Privateering requires an operating company to hand patents to an NPE to assert on its behalf. Here the acquiring operating company (Broadcom) asserted in its own name as a co‑complainant alongside its own subsidiary. That is ordinary operating‑company enforcement against a direct chipset competitor (SiRF Technology; respondents also included Pharos, MiTAC, Mio, and E‑TEN), not privateering.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT.
The chain terminates at Avago Technologies International Sales Pte. Limited (Broadcom group). It does not end at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. No neutralization.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

The chain runs inventors → Global Locate (2001) → Broadcom (2015, formalizing the July 2007 acquisition) → Avago group entities (2017–2018), i.e. a vertical in‑house chain inside one operating semiconductor group, with the only two non‑ownership events being a 2016 collateral pledge to Bank of America and its 2017 release. Enforcement was by the operating parties themselves — Global Locate and Broadcom as co‑complainants in ITC Inv. No. 337‑TA‑602, with parallel district‑court action 8:06‑cv‑01216 and affirmance at SiRF v. ITC, No. 2009‑1262 (Fed. Cir. 2010) — against an actual market competitor, which is the opposite of an NPE posture. No assignee in the chain matches an NPE directory entry, and the patent expired 2021‑05‑18, so no subsequent assertion window remains.

Residual uncertainty: the verdict rests on the recorded chain and the litigation record, both of which I could verify. It does not rest on the correspondent field, which I could not retrieve; if a correspondent lookup at Assignment Center surfaced a single attorney/firm handling recordings across many unrelated NPE families, that would be worth re‑examining — but nothing in the assignment chain, assignee identities, or litigation posture suggests NPE activity here.

Verify at: USPTO Patent Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search "6606346" or application 09/861,086); mirror search at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html · Patent record: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6606346/en

I'll research US 6606346 in the USPTO/Google Patents databases to identify its cited prior art references.

Let me search for the specific "References Cited" section of the patent and the cited patents themselves.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 6606346 B2

1. Patent snapshot (from the authoritative full text provided)

Subject matter: a real-time hardware convolution/partial-correlation architecture. The C/A code is factored into M non-overlapping segments of K chips (K×M=1023); each partial correlation is an inner product between a P×K-tap signal shift register and one extended code segment, and partial results are accumulated in RAM to build up a full convolution (claims 1, 23; FIGS. 4–9).

2. Important methodological caveat (read first)

The full patent text supplied to me does not contain a front-page "References Cited / U.S. Patent Documents" table. The only prior-art references that actually appear in the document are the three discussed in the Background of the Invention (two U.S. patents and one non-patent publication). My attempts to retrieve a complete examiner-cited list for 6606346 were not conclusive — the Google Patents hits I obtained showed the "Patent Citations" tables of other patents that cite 6606346 (e.g., US 2008/0234933, US 7,466,778), not 6606346's own front page. I therefore analyze the references that the patent itself cites, and I flag explicitly that additional examiner-cited art may exist that I could not verify. (Searches also hit a step limit before returning the Lyusin paper.)

Nothing below is a legal conclusion; §102/§103 characterizations are provisional.

3. References cited in US 6606346 (the patent's own prior-art discussion)

Reference A — U.S. Pat. No. 5,901,171

• Full citation: U.S. Patent 5,901,171, "Triple multiplexing spread spectrum receiver," inventors Steven Chen and Sanjai Kohli, assignee SiRF Technology, Inc.
• Dates: Issued May 4, 1999; filed Apr. 25, 1996 (App. 08/638,021); provisional priority Mar. 15, 1996. (Dates and bibliographic data confirmed via Espacenet and Google Patents listings.)
• Description: A GPS receiver/ASIC that time-division-multiplexes a single processing block to service many correlators: received data is processed in 11-bit samples, 186 time segments per 1 ms code period, Doppler-shifted and multiplexed into 12 channels; each channel's code correlations are performed 22 times by shifting the 11-bit locally generated code one bit per correlation; chip rate 2f₀ with correlations at 48f₀ (a 24× time-magnification advantage). The patent characterizes it as "a triple multiplexing technique that allows a single time shared processing block to be used to perform up to 20 simultaneous correlations on each of 12 channels."
• Claims potentially implicated:
  • Claim 1 — partially: discloses computing correlations between a digital signal and a pseudorandom reference code, but it does not divide the reference code into a plurality of non-overlapping code segments and form partial correlations per selected segment; it shifts the generated code chip-by-chip. Step (a) of claim 1 appears absent.
  • Claim 2 — its "shifting … into a shift register" feature is conceptually met, but claim 2 depends from claim 1 and inherits the missing segment-decomposition limitation.
  • Claim 4 — relevant generally (C/A code correlation in a GPS receiver).
• Assessment: The strongest "multiple simultaneous correlations / time-shared hardware" prior art, but it does not disclose the invention's core segment-decomposed partial correlation. Best treated as §103 background rather than a clean §102 anticipation of claims 1/23. The patent itself distinguishes it (limited integration time → insufficient for indoor sensitivity).

Reference B — U.S. Pat. No. 5,663,734

• Full citation: U.S. Patent 5,663,734, "GPS receiver and method for processing GPS signals," inventor Norman F. Krasner, assignee Precision Tracking, Inc.
• Dates: Issued Sep. 2, 1997; App. 08/612,669 filed Mar. 8, 1996; provisional priority Oct. 9, 1995. (Confirmed via Google Patents family listings, e.g., KR 100610132 and RU 2236692 citations, and the related Krasner patents US 6,133,873 / US 6,725,159 which state that 5,663,734 uses FFT-based processing.)
• Description: A GPS receiver that digitizes and stores a record of the received pseudorandom sequences and then performs fast-convolution / FFT operations in software to derive pseudoranges, including during blockage conditions. The patent's Background cites it for "fast Fourier transform (FFT) based software techniques to efficiently generate the necessary correlation results using software algorithms."
• Claims potentially implicated:
  • Claim 1 / claim 23 — partially: discloses correlation/convolution between the received signal and a stored replica of the C/A (Gold) code, i.e., the general concept of producing the correlation set. It does not disclose dividing the code into segments, selecting a segment, or accumulating discrete partial correlations as each is produced.
  • Claim 4 (C/A code of a GPS receiver) — relevant.
  • Claim 8 (multiply each signal sample by a respective code chip and sum) — conceptually met by the FFT convolution, though implemented in the transform domain rather than as a direct vector multiply-and-add.
• Assessment: Anticipates the abstract "correlate the received signal with a code replica" idea and would be relevant art against claims 1/23's preamble, but it is a software/stored-sample approach; the claims' real-time, segment-decomposed hardware partial-correlation architecture is absent. The patent distinguishes it on the grounds of needing a programmable DSP and large sample memory and of non-real-time operation.

Reference C — Non-patent literature: Lyusin et al.

• Full citation: Lyusin, S., et al., "Fast Acquisition by Matched Filter Technique for GPS/GLONASS Receivers," Proceedings of the Institute of Navigation, ION GPS (pp. 307–315). (Cited in US 6606346's Background; I was not able to independently re-verify the bibliographic details before hitting a search step limit — flagged as unverified.)
• Description (per the patent's own characterization): Describes hardware approaches to performing the convolution in real time using a matched filter with 1023 taps — shift registers large enough to hold a full C/A code epoch plus a width-1023 vector multiplier and adder unit that generates the inner product between a full epoch of the signal and the C/A code.
• Claims potentially implicated:
  • Claim 1 — partially: discloses forming an inner product between the reference code and the signal (step c) and producing correlation results; but not the code-segment decomposition (step a) nor the partial-correlation accumulation (steps d–e).
  • Claim 8 — potentially implicated: multiplying each digital signal sample with a respective code chip and summing the products (a 1023-tap matched filter does exactly this, at full length).
  • Claim 3 — the "integer times a factor of 1023" sizing language is close in spirit to a 1023-tap filter, though claim 3 is directed to the segmented sizes.
• Assessment: The closest art on the "inner-product/matched-filter convolution" concept, but it requires the very large, full-epoch vector multiplier that US 6606346 was designed to eliminate. The point of novelty (small P×K vector multiplier reused M times with code segmentation) is not disclosed.

4. Consolidated §102 view

Bottom line: On the record available, no single cited reference appears to disclose all limitations of independent claims 1 or 23 — in particular the (a) division of the pseudorandom reference code into a plurality of non-overlapping segments, (b) selection of one segment per partial correlation, and (e) summing partial correlations as each is produced. The cited references are therefore best characterized as §102 art only as to the broad correlation/computation concept and select dependent limitations, and as §103 combination art (e.g., Kohli's time-shared correlator architecture + Lyusin's vector-multiplier inner product) against the independent claims. A definitive anticipation opinion would require the complete examiner-cited front-page list and full text of each reference, which I was not able to fully retrieve.

5. Note on the "Cited By" material (not prior art)

The full text also lists 46 third-party patents/publications that cite US 6606346 (e.g., US 6,898,234 to Trimble; US 7,148,487 to SiRF; US 7,555,032 to Trimble) and several Global Locate family members (US 6,704,348; US 7,190,712; US 7,006,556; US 7,567,636). These are forward citations — later art that depends on 6606346 — and are legally irrelevant to its own §102 novelty. They are listed here only to avoid confusion with the backward "References Cited."

6. Sources consulted

• Authoritative full text of US 6606346 B2 (Google Patents), supplied in the user message — https://patents.google.com/patent/US6606346/en
• US 5,901,171 — Espacenet bibliographic record and Google Patents (Chen/Kohli, SiRF, "Triple multiplexing spread spectrum receiver"): https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?CC=US&NR=[5901171A](/patent/5901171A) ; https://patents.google.com/patent/[US5901171A](/patent/US5901171A)/en
• US 5,663,734 (Krasner) — family/citation confirmations, e.g., https://patents.google.com/patent/KR100610132B1/en.pdf and the related Krasner documents US 6,133,873 / US 6,725,159 (which describe 5,663,734's FFT-based approach).
• Non-patent literature (Lyusin et al.) — cited within US 6606346's Background; not independently re-verified (search step limit reached).

Caveat repeated: the two §102 characterizations above are provisional and are not legal conclusions; the absence of the patent's complete front-page references-cited list limits certainty, and my searches could not confirm whether the examiner additionally cited art such as US 6,366,938 (Levison et al.) or US 6,005,899 (Khayrallah) — which surfaced only as citations in unrelated third-party applications and should not be attributed to US 6606346 without verification.

I'll ground this analysis in the prior-art references actually cited on the US 6,606,346 page (its "Description of the Background Art" and prior-art listings), and verify their details.

Let me pull the actual claim language of the two key US references so the mapping is precise rather than inferred.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent 6,606,346 ("Method and apparatus for computing signal correlation")

Analyst note on evidence base. Per your instruction, I am using only the prior art identified on the Google Patents page for US6606346 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US6606346/en) — i.e., (i) the "Prior art keywords" field (code, signal, correlations, partial, receiver) and (ii) the references expressly discussed in the patent's own "Description of the Background Art." I have verified the two U.S. references and the Lyusin paper against live sources. Where the live sources and my training disagree, I use the live sources. I have flagged items I could not verify at high confidence rather than filling gaps. Identifiers are reproduced literally and not corrected.

1. Scope and legal framework

Because the application was filed 2001-05-18, pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 103 governs, and the Graham v. John Deere framework applies: (1) scope and content of the prior art; (2) differences between the prior art and the claims; (3) level of ordinary skill; (4) objective indicia. Under KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007), a combination is obvious where the elements are known, the combination is "according to known methods," and there is an articulated reason (design incentive, market pressure, predictable variation, "obvious to try") with a reasonable expectation of success. Note also the long-standing rule that anticipation is the epitome of obviousness — where a single reference discloses all elements, the claim is also obvious.

A determinative nuance on dates. If the applicant asserts only the 2001-05-18 filing date, all three references are § 102(b) art (all published more than one year earlier). If the applicant reaches back to the family's 1999-04-23 priority (via the related applications listed on the page, e.g., US09/615,105, filed 2000-07-13), then Lyusin (Sept. 1998) and US5663734 (1997-09-02) remain prior art, and US5901171 (issued 1999-05-04, filed 1996-04-25) would still qualify as § 102(e) prior art because it was "granted on an application … filed before the invention by the applicant." So US5901171 is available either way. This matters because US5901171 is the closest art.

2. The prior art of record on this page

2.1 US 5,901,171 — Chen & Kohli, "Triple multiplexing spread spectrum receiver" (SiRF Technology, Inc.), issued 1999-05-04

Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US5901171A](/patent/US5901171A)/en ; https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?CC=US&NR=[5901171A](/patent/5901171A)&DW= ; https://patents.google.com/patent/EP1271102B1/en

Verified disclosures (from the Espacenet abstract and the page's "Definitions" extract):

• Time-division multiplexing of a shared processing block: "Each tracking channel may be configured from separate hardware components, or by time division multiplexing of the hardware of a single tracking channel, for use with a plurality of satellites."
• Doppler rotation then correlation against a satellite-specific locally generated code, with "delayed versions of the locally generated code … correlated with the doppler rotated received signals."
• Small-width, high-clock correlator: received data "processed in 11 bit samples, for a total of 186 time segments per 1 msec code period, which are each doppler shifted and multiplexed into 12 channels. The code correlations are performed 22 times per channel by shifting the 11 bit locally generated code by one bit each correlation. The chip rate of the incoming data is 2f0 and the correlations are performed at 48f0 providing a time magnification advantage of 24."
• Gate-count minimization: "satellite tracking and data processing is implemented in an ASIC which is configured to use a minimum number of gates."

The '346 specification characterises this reference as a "triple multiplexing technique that allows a single time shared processing block to be used to perform up to 20 simultaneous correlations on each of 12 channels" and states that a full search "requires using the block of 20 correlators approximately 100 times in succession to check 2046 delays." (Note literally the discrepancy: the patent says "20," the Espacenet abstract says the correlations are performed "22 times per channel." I do not reconcile these; a PHOSITA would read the reference itself. Either way, the reference discloses a narrow, time-shared correlator multiplexed far above the code rate to synthesise many delay hypotheses.)

Numerical significance for claim 3: 2 samples/chip × 1023 chips = 2046 samples/epoch, and 2046 / 11 = 186 segments — i.e., US5901171 already partitions an epoch into fixed segments of a size (K = 11) that is an integer factor of 1023, with an over-sampled (2f₀) signal stream.

2.2 US 5,663,734 — Krasner, "GPS receiver and method for processing GPS signals" (Precision Tracking, Inc.), issued 1997-09-02

Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US5663734A](/patent/US5663734A)/en ; https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/87/9f/12/b98765aade4fbf/[US6133873](/patent/US6133873).pdf

Verified disclosures:

• GPS receiver that "digitiz[es] and stor[es] a predetermined record length of the received sequences and then perform[s] fast convolution operations on the stored data to determine the pseudoranges."
• Express statement that correlation methods are "performed in real time, often with hardware correlators," and that to improve acquisition time "most GPS receivers utilize a multiplicity of correlators (up to 12 typically) which allows a parallel search for correlation peaks."
• Full description of C/A code structure (1.023 MHz chip rate, 1023 chips per 1 ms code period, Gold codes), and of a correlation receiver that "multiplies the received signal by a stored replica of the appropriate Gold code contained within its local memory, and then integrates … the product."
• Orientation toward weak/blocked signals and long accumulation — the same problem the '346 patent targets.

2.3 Lyusin, Khazanov & Likhovid, "Fast Acquisition by Matched Filter Technique for GPS/GLONASS Receivers," ION GPS 1998, pp. 307–315

Source: https://www.ion.org/publications/abstract.cfm?articleID=2960

Verified: "parallel signal search based on matched filtering technique … simpler than well known Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) technique … accelerates the signal search in hundreds times over standard sequential search techniques … shorter receiver acquisition time, especially in severe conditions (weak signal, high dynamics, etc.)."

As characterised in the '346 specification itself: a matched filter with 1023 taps, comprising "shift registers large enough to hold a full C/A code epoch, as well as a width 1023 vector multiplier and adder unit that generates the inner product between a full epoch of the signal and the C/A code."

3. Claim 1 — element-by-element

Claim 1 (method): (a) divide reference code into a plurality of code segments; (b) select a code segment; (c) form an inner product between the selected code segment and a portion of the repeating code of the digital signal to produce a partial correlation; (d) repeat (b)–(c) to produce a plurality of partial correlations; (e) sum the partial correlations as each is produced to form a plurality of correlations.

Assessment. Claim 1 is the broadest claim and is drawn to little more than factored/segmented correlation with accumulation. Every element finds a counterpart in US5901171, and the residual gap is a labelling question — whether the reference's signal-side 11-bit segmentation plus code-side shifting reads on "dividing a pseudorandom reference code into a plurality of code segments." A careful analyser should not overstate: I have not verified the full claim set of US5901171, and the Espacenet abstract does not use the words "non-overlapping segments of the code." I therefore rate claim 1 as strongly obvious (US5901171 alone, or US5901171 in view of Lyusin/Krasner) and possibly anticipated, but I flag the code-segmentation phrasing as the only plausible point of distinction — and it is a thin one, because US5901171's 11-bit code register is, in substance, a selected code segment, and its 186 segments/epoch is a partition of the code period.

Independent claim 23 is claim 1 with the recursion over "a plurality of portions of the repeating code" made explicit and the final limitation expressed as "accumulating … to form a correlation … and forming a plurality of correlations." Same mapping; same result.

4. Dependent claims 2–10

5. Claims 11–22 (receiver claims)

These are essentially a conventional GPS receiver block diagram (RF/IF converter → A/D → I/Q tuner → decimation → convolution processor producing partial correlations → I and Q accumulators → magnitude/power normaliser → magnitude accumulator → plural channels → computer for position).

Claim 19 is a rolled-up claim combining claims 13, 14, 15 and 12; it rises and falls with those elements. Claim 20 = claim 16 (adder + memory).

6. Motivation to combine (the KSR prong)

The combination is not conjectural; the '346 specification argues it into existence by framing the three references as a progression against a shared, expressly identified problem:

1. Common problem — weak/attenuated and indoor signals in consumer handsets. The specification states that "the sensitivity and acquisition time demanded in cellular phone applications" would require "thousands of correlators," which is "prohibitively complex and expensive for a consumer class device," and that a GPS processing block is needed that is "built from hardware of relative simplicity, yet … capable of generating a full convolution … preferably without a large vector multiplier."
2. US5901171 supplies the architectural teaching that solves the gate-count problem: take one narrow correlator (11 bits) and time-multiplex it at a clock (48f₀) far above the 2f₀ data rate, obtaining a "time magnification advantage of 24" and synthesising many parallel correlations — in an ASIC "configured to use a minimum number of gates."
3. Lyusin supplies the desired end result and its cost: a matched filter delivers real-time full-epoch convolution, "accelerat[ing] the signal search … hundreds [of] times," but (as the '346 patent observes) requires "a width 1023 vector multiplier and adder unit." A PHOSITA reading Lyusin alongside US5901171 has an explicit, predictable route: keep the Lyusin result, replace the 1023-wide multiplier with the SiRF-style narrow, fast, time-shared multiplier. That is the very design trade-off tabulated in the '346 specification (K = 3, 11, 31, 33, 93 ⇒ clock rates 1.39 GHz, 380 MHz, 135 MHz, 127 MHz, 45 MHz) — an optimisation curve, not an inventive leap.
4. Krasner supplies the goal state and the integration teaching: a "complete set of correlators spanning all time delay possibilities over a full C/A code epoch (1023 chips)," obtained by fast convolution, with the associated benefit for weak signals — plus the teaching that a code replica resides in "local memory," which supplies the storage half of the lookup-table idea.
5. Design incentives / market pressure. The page's litigation record (Global Locate v. SiRF, C.D. Cal. 8:06-cv-01216; ITC Inv. 337-TA-602; Fed. Cir. 09-1262) confirms that consumer GPS in cellular devices was a hotly contested, cost-driven market — exactly the KSR "design incentive" and "market pressure" factors. Both the SiRF reference and the Global Locate patent were competing solutions to the same commercial need.
6. Reasonable expectation of success. Each element was known to work in the same field (GPS correlation); US5901171 had already demonstrated the narrow/high-clock/multiplexed correlator in silicon; Lyusin had demonstrated the matched filter; Krasner had demonstrated full-convolution correlation. Combining a proven correlation kernel with a proven time-multiplexing scheme is a predictable mechanical combination, not an unpredictable one.

7. Where the obviousness case is weakest (be candid)

• Claim 1's "divide the reference code into segments" phrasing is the only textual hook that could distinguish over US5901171, which segments on the signal side while shifting the code. Whether that is a patentable difference is doubtful, but it is the best available distinction, so do not represent claim 1 as certainly anticipated.
• Claim 6 (lookup-table selection of one of a fixed number of non-overlapping segments) and claim 7 (circulating shift registers) are the most likely to survive on the three-reference record. Claim 7 in particular (two-directional load/run recirculating register bank) is not shown by US5901171/U5663734/Lyusin, and I could not locate another page-listed reference that cures the gap. Expect to need additional art.
• Claim 10 / claim 12 (energy or power signal integrated over a period). I could not verify from the retrieved material that US5663734 expressly recites magnitude/energy (non-coherent) accumulation as opposed to coherent accumulation. Treat this element as supported by the general state of the art and by the prosecution history, not by a verified quotation.
• Decimation circuits in claims 11–22 are asserted as routine in the specification ("a simple pre-summer") but are not squarely disclosed by the three references.
• Objective indicia are the real battleground. Global Locate/Broadcom could point to adoption of the architecture in commercial GPS chips and to the extensive litigation (an ITC § 337 action, a district-court case, and a Federal Circuit appeal, per the page). But under KSR/WBIP the nexus question is sharp: the commercial value may flow from unclaimed features emphasised in the specification (2-bit quantisation, coherent + magnitude accumulation over seconds, least-squares triangular-peak fitting, historical correlation data) — features claimed in the sibling patents (US6704348, US6819707, US6891880, etc.) but not in claims 1, 8, 9, 11, 15, 16 or 23 of the '346 patent. Claims drafted that broadly are exactly the claims most vulnerable to a § 103 combination.

8. Bottom line

Summary judgment: Using only the art on this page, the core architecture claimed in US6606346 — factored/segmented correlation producing partial correlations that are summed as produced, using a narrow high-speed vector multiplier over a P×K sample window with K a factor of 1023, in a GPS C/A context with I/Q processing — is rendered obvious by US 5,901,171 in view of Lyusin et al., with Krasner's US 5,663,734 supplying the full-convolution objective, the stored code replica, and the long-accumulation context. The strongest § 103 positions are against independent claims 1, 11, 19 and 23 and their structural dependents; the weakest positions are against claims 6 and especially 7, which likely require an additional reference directed to ROM/table-indexed code storage and recirculating shift-register code stores.