US 6612928

I'll run targeted searches for this specific patent number and for any CAFC 2026 activity.

Let me check for any litigation or CAFC activity specifically tied to this patent.

I have the bibliographic data confirmed. Let me try to retrieve the actual claim text, since the excerpt provided to me cuts off before the claims.

US Patent 6,612,928 — Verification Summary

Source basis: Full patent text retrieved from Google Patents (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6612928](/patent/US6612928)/en); corroborated against uspto.report, Unified Patents portal, and the University of Washington Information Security Database mirror. USPTO assignment records are reflected in the Google Patents reassignment timeline. Caveat up front: the full text supplied to me ends mid‑description in the FIG. 15 discussion, so I do not have the complete claim set in front of me. I retrieved only portions of the claims through search (claims 47–58 and fragments of 65–68). See "Uncertainty" below.

1. Bibliographic data

Note on the inventor name: the assignment record dated 2001-07-17 spells the first inventor "BRADFORD, RUSSELL T.," while the printed patent and secondary databases read "Russel Tower Bradford." A later 2002 assignment lists "BRADFORD, RUSSELL TOWER." I have not auto-corrected this; the printed patent form is "Russel Tower Bradford."

Related family members noted in the record: US 6,758,757 B2 (priority application 09/788,168) and US 6,709,333 B1 (continuation filed 2003-04-14). The specification also expressly incorporates three co‑pending applications: Ser. No. 09/838,457 ("Data Entry System And Method For Gaming Devices"), Ser. No. 09/819,112 ("Anonymous Player Identifiers In A Gaming Environment"), and Ser. No. 09/788,168 ("Method And Apparatus For Maintaining Game State").

2. Abstract (verbatim, as published)

"A system and method for using two authenticators to identify a player in a gaming environment is disclosed, where the second authenticator is based on biometric data. The two authenticators allow a two-level authorization process, where the second authenticator, being based on biometric data, allow a player to quickly and easily authenticate documents while remaining at game machines, authenticate electronically based transfers into and out of accounts at game machines, and further allow casinos and other establishments having age requirements and operating in an open environment to confirm that an underage person is not enabling the game play button (making use of the game machine thereby)."

3. Plain-language overview of the disclosure

The invention is a two-factor, two-level player authentication scheme for casino/gaming environments:

• First authenticator — a low-assurance token: player ID card, voucher ID, PIN/alphanumeric sequence, RFID tag, smart card, handheld IR/RF device, or even a first fingerprint. It is read to look up a record in a player identification database.
• Second authenticator — always biometric, with fingerprint being the preferred embodiment (hand geometry, iris, retina, facial geometry, and body-emission readers are also contemplated).
• The combination yields high assurance via "combinatorics," while remaining fast: once a player is identified at a machine, subsequent authorizations require only a fingertip touch.
• Applications emphasized: automated IRS Form W2G generation (triggered by wins over $1,200), electronic funds transfer (EFT) into and out of electronic funds accounts (EFAs) while seated at the game, and age verification (including via an "Anonymous Legal Age Account," ALAA, especially for remote/Internet play).
• Architecture options: readers external to the cabinet (FIG. 4, reader 410) or inside the cabinet (reader 412), communicating over Ethernet/TCP‑IP separately from the game's legacy serial SMIB link, coordinated by a BDIM (Biometric Device Information Manager) typically resident in a Remote Game Controller (RGC).
• Alternative embodiments: two biometric authenticators (two fingertips), a third "backup" authenticator, local caching of the last N players' second-authenticator data, encrypted biometric transmission, and a combined play-and-authorize button (FIG. 16).

4. Independent claims — plain-language overview

⚠️ Partial retrieval only. The claim text I could retrieve covers claims 47–58 and fragments of 65–68. The lower-numbered independent claims (which would begin at claim 1) were cut off in the source material available to me. I describe only what I can ground.

Claim 47 — Method (electronic transfer authentication using an APID + fingerprint, player at game device)
Steps: (a) player presents their APID as first authenticator, identifying a unique database entry; (b) player requests an electronic transfer; (c) the transfer request is completed; (d) player touches a fingertip to a fingerprint reader associated with the game device, thereby authorizing the completed transfer; (e) steps (b)–(d) repeat while the player remains at that game device, on each occurrence of an electronic account transfer event.

Claim 48 — Method (same two authenticators, different ordering / broader scope)
Steps: (a) player requests an electronic transfer; (b) player then presents the APID as first authenticator to the game device currently in use, identifying a unique database entry; (c/d) fingerprint authorization; (e) repeat "while said player is in the establishment that issued the APID" on each transfer request.

Claim 49 — Gaming system (apparatus)
At least one game device; at least one non-biometric reader associated with and in operable communication with the game device; at least one biometric reader likewise; and a database retrievably containing entries that comprise at least two authenticators — a first authenticator and a second authenticator — where the second authenticator comprises biometric data.

Claim 58 — Multifunction game play button (apparatus)
A game-device play button comprising a fingerprint reader and logic having at least two interfaces connected to that reader. A first interface sends and/or receives signals having substantially the same characteristics as a single-function game device play button; a second interface is configured to carry biometric/authorization signaling (text truncated in my source at this point).

Claims 65–68 (method family, partially retrieved) — Directed to a method in which the first authenticator may be a fingerprint data set or an alpha-numeric sequence, and the second authenticator is fingerprint data.

Likely other independents — The numeral range suggests the patent also contains at least one earlier independent method claim (around claim 1) and possibly further independent claims in the 60s. I cannot describe these authoritatively and am not going to guess at their language.

5. USPTO database & CAFC 2026 docket search — findings

• USPTO: Patent 6,612,928 B1 is confirmed as granted 2003‑09‑02, application 09/908,878, expired for failure to... no — recorded as "Expired – Lifetime" with anticipated expiration 2021‑07‑17 (i.e., it ran its full 20-year term). Assignment records show Sierra Design Group → Bally Gaming, Inc. (2014) with intervening security interests (Bank of America 2013; Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas 2017/2018).
• CAFC 2026 dockets: I found no Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit docket, opinion, or appeal in 2026 involving US 6,612,928. My searches did surface a Federal Circuit matter captioned In re Bally Gaming, Inc. (No. 11‑1132, filed 2011‑03‑18, appellants Bally Gaming, Inc. and Sierra Design Group) — but that is a 2011 appeal, and I have no confirmation that it involved patent 6,612,928. I am therefore not asserting any connection.
• I also found no PTAB IPR/PGR/CBM proceeding, and no district-court or Federal Circuit decision, specifically identifying 6,612,928 as the patent-in-suit. The patent appears in search-result listings only as a cited reference in later patents (e.g., Apple/PayPal card-shuffling and peer-to-peer transfer patents cite "6612928 | September 2, 2003 | Bradford et al.") and in examiner PLUS linguistic search reports.

6. Uncertainty disclosures (explicit)

1. Claim 1 and other low-numbered independent claims: not retrieved. My overview of independent claims is incomplete. A full description requires the actual claim set from the USPTO PatentCenter/Patent Public Search or the granted-PDF claim pages.
2. No CAFC 2026 activity found — but absence of evidence is not proof of absence. Free web search is not a substitute for PACER/CM-ECF or the Federal Circuit's own docket. If you need a litigation-grade confirmation, query PACER Docket Report for "6,612,928" and the CAFC docket for 2026.
3. Assignee naming. Google's "current assignee" field reads LNW Gaming Inc, which reflects post‑2020 corporate renaming of the Bally/Scientific Games-related entities; the U.S. assignment record shows Bally Gaming, Inc. following the 2014 assignment from Sierra Design Group, Inc. These are not contradictory, but I did not verify a recorded assignment instrument to LNW Gaming.
4. Inventor name spelling appears in two variants in the record ("Russel" vs. "Russell"); I have left both as found.
5. Claim 58 is truncated in my source at the second interface's configuration — I cannot state its full scope.
6. The provided full text is truncated mid-specification (mid‑FIG. 15 age-verification discussion), so descriptions of FIG. 16's combined play/authorize button rest on the figure listing and claim 58 only.

If you'd like, I can attempt a targeted retrieval of the complete claim set (claims 1–46 and 59–64) so the independent-claim overview can be completed.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 6612928 across patent litigation databases.

Let me search more targeted litigation databases and the Unified Patents portal.

Litigation Search Results for US Patent 6,612,928

Bottom line: I could not identify any litigation that specifically asserts, or is otherwise specifically identified by case number as involving, US Patent 6,612,928 ("Player identification using biometric data in a gaming environment").

What I searched

• General web searches for "US patent 6612928 litigation," "6612928 patent infringement lawsuit," and the formatted number "6,612,928" combined with "litigation"
• The Unified Patents patent page for US-6612928-B1 (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-6612928-B1)
• Docket Alarm, Justia Dockets, CourtListener, and RPX Insight results surfaced by those queries
• Corporate-assignee context (Sierra Design Group / Bally Gaming / LNW Gaming) as a lead, since the patent's original assignee (Sierra Design Group Inc.) and current assignee (LNW Gaming Inc.) are frequent litigants

What the searches actually returned (and why it is not litigation over the '928 patent)

Every "hit" on the number 6,612,928 in the results was a citation or reference, not an assertion of the patent in a case:

Related corporate litigation found (but NOT involving the '928 patent)

For completeness, the same corporate family was active in litigation during the relevant period, though none of the cases below is tied to the '928 patent in any source I found:

• Bally Gaming, Inc. v. IGT — D. Nev. Case No. 3:06-cv-0483 (appealed, Fed. Cir. 2009-1072; affirmed per curiam Oct. 22, 2009). Sierra Design Group was a third-party defendant.
• IGT v. Bally Gaming International Inc., et al. — D. Del. Case No. 06-282-SLR (filed Apr. 28, 2006).
• Bally Gaming v. Intermix Media / Worldwinner.com — D. Nev. Case Nos. 3:03-cv-0062 and 3:03-cv-0063 (asserting U.S. 5,816,918).

I did not find that the '928 patent was asserted in any of these. Treating the number literally, none of these matches the patent at issue here.

Important caveats

1. The search was not exhaustive. I was unable to complete a full crawl of PACER, the Unified Patents litigation case-list portal (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist), RPX Insight, or Docket Navigator within the available steps. A definitive "no litigation" conclusion would require a targeted, paywalled run in one of those databases.
2. Patent status context: Per the Google Patents record, US 6,612,928 was filed July 17, 2001, granted Sept. 2, 2003, expired (anticipated expiration July 17, 2021), and is now listed as "Expired – Lifetime." Any enforcement litigation would almost certainly predate 2021, and its expiration reduces (but does not eliminate) the likelihood of current assertions.
3. I will not fabricate case numbers, parties, or outcomes. If a specific case exists, I do not have it grounded in a source I can cite, so I am not supplying one.

Conclusion: Based on the sources searched, no litigation is known to me that is specifically tied to US Patent 6,612,928. The only occurrences of the number I found are prior-art citations, prosecution-history references, and a patent-asset schedule — none of which constitute litigation. If you need a certified negative, I'd recommend a direct query of the Unified Patents litigation case list and Docket Navigator for the exact number "6,612,928."

I'll source the proceedings list from the structured ODP block (which reports no AIA trials), then verify against public sources for any PTAB proceedings the ODP ingest may have missed.

Let me run a few more targeted checks for PTAB-related and post-grant activity before finalizing.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 6,612,928: 0. Zero inter partes reviews, zero post-grant reviews, zero covered business method reviews — no active, no claims invalidated, no claims sustained, no settlements, no institution denials. The USPTO Open Data Portal (ODP) returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent, and my independent web/citation checks found no PTAB docket with the '928 patent as subject patent.

Defensive posture: The patent has never been tested at the PTAB, so there is no claim-level precedent to lean on — no canceled claim you can point to, but also no FWD finding that hardened the claims against you. The realistic defensive levers are not PTAB-based at all: (1) the patent expired on 2021-07-17 (anticipated expiration per the Google Patents legal-status record), which caps the damages tail; and (2) the '928 disclosure is itself heavily used as prior art against other parties' patents (see below), which cuts both ways in any obviousness fight. A 2026 defendant is not facing a "hardened by two IPRs" patent; it is facing an aged, unchallenged, expired patent.

Proceedings on file

None. There is nothing to enumerate — no proceeding number, petitioner, panel, institution decision, FWD, settlement, or appeal exists for US 6,612,928 in the structured ODP data or in any public source I could reach. I will not manufacture an IPR number to fill this section.

Why the number "6,612,928" keeps surfacing in PTAB searches — a trap for search-based research

If you run the '928 number through patent databases, you will get hits that look like proceedings but are not. All of the following are citations or evidence, not assertions of the '928 patent:

Bottom line for a searcher: every "6,612,928" hit in PTAB-adjacent results is the '928 patent being used against someone else or cited, not a challenge to it.

Strategic summary

Claims: CANCELED = none. SUSTAINED = none. UNTESTED = all of them. Per the printed patent front page, US 6,612,928 issued with 68 claims and 16 drawing sheets; not one of those 68 claims has been construed, instituted on, or adjudicated in an AIA trial. There are therefore no surviving claims to map in the usual IPR sense — the entire claim set is untouched by the PTAB. Note also the header "This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer" on the face of the '928 grant, which ties its enforceability to a commonly-owned family member; that wrinkle is now largely moot given expiration on 2021-07-17, but it is a detail worth confirming against the file wrapper if the patent is ever put in issue.

Estoppel landscape: essentially blank, and that is unusual. Because no IPR/PGR/CBM was ever instituted against this patent, no § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches to anyone on these claims. There is no petitioner who has burned prior-art grounds, which means a defendant today who chose to challenge the patent would face no estoppel-based handicap from a prior petitioner — but that door is practically closed from the other direction: the patent expired on 2021-07-17, and the PTO's recent discretionary-denial environment (extended Fintiv-style parallel-litigation and "compelling merits" considerations, plus "settled expectations" doctrine for aged patents) makes institution on a 20+-year-old, expired patent unlikely to be worth the filing fee. Statutory bars also remove two tools: PGR is unavailable (the '928 patent has a 2001 effective filing date, well before the 2013-03-16 first-inventor-to-file cutoff), and CBM review is unavailable (Congress sunset new CBM petitions on 2020-09-16, and the CBM window closed before any challenge to this patent).

Pattern signals. (1) No serial petitioner — nothing filed, so nothing repeated. (2) No patent-owner appeals — Sierra Design Group / Bally / LNW Gaming never had an adverse FWD here to appeal to the Federal Circuit; I found no CAFC docket involving the '928 patent. (3) No defensive aggregator — Unified Patents maintains a database page for the patent but filed no challenge; the only family-level defensive-aggregator activity I can see is the GSN Games CBM attack on the sibling US 5,816,918, which is a different patent. (4) The most telling signal: the assertability pattern ran the other way. Bally Gaming asserted the family's patents (e.g., the '918 patent against WorldWinner/GSN in D. Nev.), and that patent drew CBMs — while the '928 patent, though frequently cited by examiners and petitioners as prior art, was never itself put in front of the Board. Well-asserted patents usually attract IPRs; this one apparently never was asserted hard enough to.

Recommended next steps

1. If you are a defendant today, do not expect a PTAB life raft — and don't be misled into citing one. There is no FWD to quote, no canceled claim, and no institution decision to leverage. Any demand letter or complaint asserting the '928 patent must be met with the expiration fact first: per the Google Patents legal-status record, the patent's anticipated expiration is 2021-07-17 and it is now "Expired – Lifetime." Direct infringement exposure ends there; § 286's six-year damages lookback from a complaint filed in 2026 can only reach infringement occurring on or before 2021-07-17 (practically, a 2020–2021 sliver). Laches is not a defense after SCA Hygiene Products v. First Quality Baby Products (2017), so plead § 286, not laches.

2. If you nevertheless want a PTAB record, confirm the negative through the authoritative portals before relying on it. The ODP block in this analysis is the canonical list, and it says zero. To certify that negative yourself, query USPTO PTAB E2E and the PTAB Decisions search by patent number 6,612,928, and cross-check CourtListener for any CAFC appeal captioned to the patent. The absence of PTAB activity is itself a signal — but for this patent the more decisive signal is the 2021 expiration.

3. If the real target is the family, redirect the analysis. The live PTAB history is on the sibling US 5,816,918 (CBM2015-00154 and CBM2015-00155, petitioner GSN Games / WorldWinner.com successor-in-interest, filed around 2015-07-20, in parallel with Bally Gaming's D. Nev. suits). If a current dispute touches the Sierra Design Group / Bally / LNW Gaming biometric-gaming portfolio, pull those two CBM dockets — they, not anything involving the '928 patent, are where the Board has actually spoken about this patent family.

4. Flag the "prior art" role, not the "subject patent" role. Because the '928 patent is itself cited as prior art in IPR2022-00600 (Apple v. CPC) and in other prosecution histories, the same disclosure you may want to use as a validity weapon could also be used against you if you assert overlapping subject matter. Run a two-way citation analysis on the '928 patent before building any obviousness theory around it.

Caveat: I could not complete a paywalled, definitive PACER / Docket Navigator / Unified Patents litigation-case-list sweep within the available steps. The conclusion above rests on the ODP structured data plus public-source sweeps, and I found no proceeding. If you need a certified negative, run the exact number "6,612,928" directly through PTAB E2E and Docket Navigator.

I'll research the assignment chain for US 6612928, focusing on USPTO assignment records, reel/frame data, and correspondent information.

Let me dig into the specific recorded assignments and the LNW Gaming chain.

Let me try to pull the actual recorded assignment entries (reel/frame and correspondent) for the '928 patent.

Ownership Chain and NPE Analysis — US 6,612,928

Data-availability note (read first). I could not retrieve the USPTO Assignment Center records themselves. The Google Patents "legal events" block in the authoritative patent text does not carry reel/frame numbers or a correspondent of record for this patent, and my searches on assignment.uspto.gov / uspto.report / plainsite surfaced no reel/frame entry for US 6,612,928. I am therefore reporting the conveyances as indexed in the Google Patents legal-events chain, and I have marked reel/frame as "not disclosed in retrieved sources" rather than inventing one. The single reel/frame reference that does appear in the '928 record — RF 031745/0183 — is the security interest being released in 2017, not an ownership assignment. Where I use sibling-patent reel/frame data, I label it explicitly as belonging to a different patent.

Inventors

Unusual patterns: (a) inventor-as-prosecuting-attorney (Marsden); (b) one inventor (Bradford) executed a second, solo assignment on 2002-09-09, more than a year after the original three-inventor assignment — consistent with a confirmatory or corrective filing rather than a transfer. I found no evidence that all inventors departed the assignee within 12 months of filing, and I will not infer it.

Flagged discrepancy: priority/data dates disagree across sources — Google Patents header says prior-art date 2001-02-15 and filing 2001-07-17; Unified Patents shows priority 2001-02-14 and application date 2001-07-16; the specification claims priority from provisional 60/300,029 filed 2001-06-20 and from application 09/788,168 (external priority, US6758757B2). Per operating rules I treat these literally and do not reconcile them.

Original assignee

Sierra Design Group, Inc. (Reno, Nevada) — named on the issued patent and listed as original assignee on Google Patents.

• Primary line of business: a Nevada gaming-machine manufacturer/supplier (slot machines and casino player-tracking/marketing systems). It held an Indiana supplier's license (permanent license issued 2003-04-07) and was "a licensee in good standing" alongside Bally (Indiana Gaming Commission Resolution 2004-7).
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? The patent is a system/method patent (two-authenticator biometric player ID, EFA/EFT, W2G generation). I found no product literature tying a shipped Sierra Design SKU to these claims. Related Sierra Design hardware appears in litigation exhibits — e.g., the IGT v. Bally claim charts list "SDSD MC220+" (Exhibit HH) and "ACSC's Slot Marketing System" (Exhibit II) — but these are 2004 IGT v. Bally exhibits, and I cannot tie them to the '928 claims. Treat product-embodiment as unproven.
• Current status: absorbed. Alliance Gaming Corporation (parent of Bally Gaming, Inc.) agreed to acquire 100% of Sierra Design Group's stock, closing March 2, 2004; Sierra Design Group became a wholly owned subsidiary of Bally Gaming, Inc. and an indirect subsidiary of Alliance Gaming Corporation. Sierra Design Group later assigned the '928 patent to Bally Gaming, Inc. The Bally→Scientific Games→Light & Wonder lineage (see below) now holds it through LNW Gaming Inc.

Assignment timeline

Chronological, from the Google Patents legal-events chain for US 6,612,928. Reel/frame is not disclosed for any of these conveyances in the sources I could retrieve.

• 2001-07-17 (executed) / recorded 2001-07-17 — Reel not disclosed in retrieved sources

  • Conveyance: Assignment (initial)
  • Assignor: Bradford, Russell T.; Luciano, Robert A. Jr.; Marsden, Russ F. (as listed)
  • Assignee: Sierra Design Group
  • Correspondent: not disclosed in retrieved sources. (Note: the patent's own prosecution "Attorney, Agent or Firm" is co-inventor Russ F. Marsden — a name that recurs in this record, but he is the prosecution attorney, not a confirmed recording correspondent.)
  • Context: initial inventor-to-employer assignment at filing.

• 2002-09-09 (executed) / recorded 2002-09-09 — Reel not disclosed in retrieved sources

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Bradford, Russel Tower (single inventor only)
  • Assignee: Sierra Design Group
  • Correspondent: not disclosed.
  • Context: confirmatory/corrective re-execution by one inventor, not a third-party transfer.

• 2013-11-30 (executed) / recorded 2013-11-30 — Reel not disclosed

  • Conveyance: Security Agreement ("Amended and Restated Patent Security Agreement")
  • Assignor: Sierra Design Group
  • Assignee: Bank of America, N.A., as Administrative Agent
  • Correspondent: not disclosed. This encumbrance traces to the Credit Agreement dated 2008-09-26 between Bally Technologies, Inc., the lenders, and Bank of America as administrative agent (per the Bally 8-K, Ex-10.1).
  • Context: securitization — collateral pledge, not an ownership transfer.

• 2014-10-27 (executed) / recorded 2014-10-27 — Reel not disclosed

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Sierra Design Group, Inc.
  • Assignee: Bally Gaming, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not disclosed.
  • Context: internal reorganization / post-acquisition consolidation (Sierra Design had been a Bally Gaming subsidiary since the March 2004 stock acquisition). Cross-reference (different patent): for sibling US 5,816,918 the same Sierra Design → Bally Gaming assignment is documented as recorded 2006-08-29, Reel 025315, Frame 0345 (CBM2015-00154 petition). I cannot confirm the '928 rode on that 2006 reel; the '928-specific event is the 2014-10-27 entry.

• 2014-12-01 (executed) / recorded 2014-12-01 — Reel not disclosed

  • Conveyance: Release ("Release of Security Interest")
  • Assignor: Bank of America, N.A.
  • Assignee: Bally Technologies, Inc.; SHFL Entertainment, Inc.; Arcade Planet, Inc.; Bally Gaming, Inc.; Bally Gaming International, Inc.; Sierra Design Group
  • Correspondent: not disclosed.
  • Context: securitization unwind — collateral released.

• 2017-07-25 (executed) / recorded 2017-07-25 — Reel not disclosed (releases RF 031745/0183)

  • Conveyance: Release ("Release of Security Interest in Patents")
  • Assignor: Bank of America, N.A.
  • Assignee: Sierra Design Group
  • Correspondent: not disclosed.
  • Context: securitization unwind. The only reel/frame that appears anywhere in the '928 record is 031745/0183, and it is the security interest being released, not an ownership assignment.

• 2017-12-15 (executed) / recorded 2017-12-15 — Reel not disclosed

  • Conveyance: Security Agreement
  • Assignor: Bally Gaming, Inc.; Scientific Games International, Inc.
  • Assignee: Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas, as Collateral Agent
  • Correspondent: not disclosed.
  • Context: re-securitization — new collateral agent replacing Bank of America.

• 2018-04-11 (executed) / recorded 2018-04-11 — Reel not disclosed

  • Conveyance: Security Agreement
  • Assignor: Bally Gaming, Inc.; Scientific Games International, Inc.
  • Assignee: Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas, as Collateral Agent
  • Correspondent: not disclosed.
  • Context: supplemental/replacement security agreement — still an encumbrance, not a transfer.

Gap to flag: Google Patents lists the current assignee as LNW Gaming Inc, but the '928 legal-events chain contains no assignment or change-of-name event transferring Bally Gaming, Inc. → SG Gaming, Inc. → LNW Gaming, Inc. LNW Gaming, Inc. is identified in court filings as "f/k/a SG GAMING, INC.," and its parent is Light & Wonder, Inc. f/k/a Scientific Games Corp. That lineage is consistent with a change of name only, which is typically not indexed as a conveyance — but I could not verify the specific recording.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6612928
    2001 : Inventors assign to Sierra Design Group
    2002 : Bradford confirmatory assignment
    2004 : Alliance Gaming acquires Sierra Design
    2013 : Bank of America security interest
    2014 : Sierra Design assigns to Bally Gaming
         : Bank of America releases interest
    2017 : Bank of America security release
         : Deutsche Bank security agreement
    2018 : Deutsche Bank security agreement
    2022 : Owner becomes LNW Gaming

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT. Every assignee in the chain is an operating or institutional entity: Sierra Design Group, Inc. (Reno, NV); Bally Gaming, Inc. (Las Vegas); Bank of America, N.A.; Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas, as Collateral Agent (2017-12-15 and 2018-04-11). There is no "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" LLC anywhere, and no registered-agent-service address. The 2014-10-27 assignee (Bally Gaming, Inc.) is the operating parent of a supplier licensee.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT. No assignee matches the listed NPE rosters (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation, Spangenberg entities). Bally Gaming did assert patents against competitors (e.g., Bally Gaming v. IGT, D. Nev. 3:06-cv-0483; Bally v. Intermix/Worldwinner asserting US 5,816,918), i.e., classic operating-company assertion — not NPE.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR / UNDETERMINED. Correspondent-of-record data was not retrievable for any '928 entry. The one name that does recur is Russ F. Marsden, but in a different capacity: he is a named inventor and the "Attorney, Agent or Firm" of record on the patent. That is a convergence of roles, not a repeat recording correspondent, and I decline to score it as the signal as defined.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT. Transfers are sparse (2001, 2002, 2014) and separated by 12+ years; the 2013→2014→2017→2018 entries are alternating security grants and releases, not chained LLC transfers.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT (vacuous). No litigation naming this patent was identified in the earlier litigation summary, so there is no suit to be within 6 months of. The 2014-10-27 Bally assignment predates nothing relevant.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. No Chapter 7/11 appears anywhere in the chain. The Bank of America and Deutsche Bank filings are ordinary credit-agreement collateral, not insolvency sales.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT. No transfer to an NPE asserting on an operating company's behalf; the chain stays inside the Bally → Scientific Games → Light & Wonder corporate family.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. (Note: Unified Patents merely hosts a bibliographic page for US-6612928-B1 — hosting a page is not ownership.)

Verdict

Operating-company assertion. Justification: the entire chain stays within product-shipping casino-supplier entities — inventors → Sierra Design Group (2001-07-17, 2002-09-09) → Bally Gaming, Inc. (2014-10-27), with the only intervening recordings being creditor security interests and releases (Bank of America 2013-11-30, releases 2014-12-01 and 2017-07-25; Deutsche Bank 2017-12-15 and 2018-04-11), ending at LNW Gaming Inc. (Light & Wonder). No shell LLC, no known NPE, no defensive aggregator, no bankruptcy appear on the record. Caveat: the "suing actual competitors" element is not evidenced for this patent — no suit naming US 6,612,928 was found, and the assignment record lacks reel/frame and correspondent data; if that element is treated as required, the honest alternative label is Insufficient data.

Verification: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search "6612928") and https://patents.google.com/patent/US6612928/en — I recommend confirming the reel/frame and correspondent fields directly there, since those are the two fields I could not retrieve and the two most likely to change this assessment.

I'll research the prior-art citations for US Patent 6,612,928. Let me search authoritative sources.

I have the front-page citation list. Let me now retrieve the actual claims of the '928 patent and verify each reference's details.

I need the actual claims of the '928 patent. Let me search more specifically.

Prior Art Analysis — US Patent 6,612,928 B1

Note on completeness: I exhausted my available search steps while cross-verifying the front-page "References Cited" table and the full claim set. Everything below is grounded in the sources I actually retrieved; where I could not verify something, I say so explicitly rather than filling the gap.

1. The patent at issue (verified identifiers)

Statutory framework. Because the application was filed in 2001, pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. §102 governs. With a §102(b) critical date of 2001-02-15 minus one year = Feb. 15, 2000, and an invention/§102(e) reference date on or about Feb. 15, 2001:

• §102(a)/(b) — references published or patented on or before Feb. 15, 2000 (i.e., date of publication on the face of the reference).
• §102(e) — U.S. patents granted on applications filed before the '928 inventors' date (Feb. 15, 2001), even if granted after that date.

That §102(e) point matters here: three of the cited references were granted after the '928 priority date and can only be prior art as of their filing dates.

2. The examiner-cited references (front page, "References Cited")

Retrieved from the patent's own front page (scanned exhibit at Docket Alarm, Ex. 1004, US_Patent_No_6,612,928_to_Bradford_et_al.pdf) and independently cross-checked against the Unified Patents record for US-6612928-B1. The two sources agree on all sixteen U.S. patent documents.

✱ In the OCR'd front page, only entries 4 and 16 carry a classification code (382/115 and 713/186) and an asterisk, and the legend at the foot reads "* cited by examiner." I read that as: entries 4 and 16 are the two the OCR explicitly ties to the examiner. I could not cleanly resolve, from the sources retrieved, which of the remaining fourteen were applicant-cited versus examiner-cited — treat the star attribution as ambiguous.

Not verified: I was unable to retrieve the Foreign Patent Documents and Other References blocks of the '928 front page. I therefore cannot report foreign prior art or non-patent literature citations. That is a real gap, not an absence.

3. Potential §102 relevance, reference by reference

Methodological caveat — read this before using the mapping. I confirmed the text of only the tail of the claim set (claims ~47–60). The independent claims I can quote are claim 47 (APID + electronic-transfer method), claim 48 (same, APID/fingerprint), claim 49 (gaming system: non-biometric reader + biometric reader + database storing two authenticators), and claim 58 (multifunction game play button comprising a fingerprint reader plus interfacing logic). The earlier claims (1–46) were not retrievable within my step budget. The mappings below are therefore claim-family mappings, flagged by confidence. A §102 rejection requires every element of an independent claim to be disclosed in a single reference (element-by-element, arranged as claimed); I have not performed that element-by-element comparison.

Ranking — the references most likely to matter

1. US 5,802,199 A (Pare, Jr. et al.) — issued Sept. 1998, i.e., squarely §102(b). Titled and classified (382/115) as a use-sensitive identification system. This is the closest single reference to the '928's core concept of authenticating the use of a device biometrically, and is the reference I would expect to be the primary rejection vehicle if one exists.
2. US 6,234,900 B1 (Cumbers) — player tracking/identification in a casino, filed Aug. 1997. Directly on the gaming-environment element that distinguishes the '928 from generic biometric art.
3. US 6,363,485 B1 (Adams) — explicitly a multi-factor biometric authenticating device; the two-factor architecture.
4. US 6,099,408 A / US 6,264,557 B1 (Schneier) — securing electronic games; relevant to the authorization tie-in.
5. US 6,149,055 A (Gatto) — EFT transaction system; relevant to the electronic-transfer claim family.

4. References that are not prior art on their face

Three cited patents were granted after the '928 priority date of 2001-02-15 and can only be §102(e) art as of their earlier application filing dates (all of which do precede Feb. 2001): 6,296,101 (filed 2000-01-31), 6,307,956 (filed 1998-04-06), and 6,363,485 (filed 1998-09-08). 6,234,900 and 6,264,557 are also post-priority grants. Any rejection built on these must expressly rest on §102(e) and the filing date, not the grant date.

5. Cross-reference to the earlier litigation section (no contradiction — a refinement)

The earlier section concluded that no litigation specifically asserting the '928 was identifiable, and that every occurrence of the number was a citation. My searches corroborate and sharpen that: the '928 (referred to in the record as "Bradford") has appeared in PTAB proceedings as prior art asserted against other patents, not as an asserted patent:

• IPR2022-00600, Apple Inc. v. CPC Patent Technologies Pty Ltd — the '928 specification/front page is filed as Exhibit 1004, and the Board's analysis discusses "Bradford" extensively (enrollment, first/second authenticator data fields, memory locations). Source: Docket Alarm document 02-23-2022-Petitioner/Exhibit-1004-EX1004_US_Patent_No_6,612,928_to_Bradford_et_al.pdf.
• IPR2019-00320, William Hill US Holdco Inc. v. CG Technology Development LLC — Bradford (Patent 6,612,928) was the anticipation reference asserted against claims 1–5, 8, 11–17, 20, 23–24 of a "gaming kiosk" patent.

This does not contradict the earlier "no litigation asserting '928" finding — it confirms the number appears in the record as cited art, exactly as the prior section described. It does add a strong practical signal: the '928 has been treated by petitioners and the Board as an enabling, anticipatory reference on two-factor gaming authentication, which is consistent with my ranking of its own prior art above.

Also worth flagging: the '928 has a same-title sibling, US 6,709,333 B1 (Sierra Design Group; continued from application 10/411,914, filed 2003-04-14, attorney docket SYS-01-003-CON.1). It should be screened for a double-patenting / same-family relationship, and its own citation list should be checked — the '928 and '333 are frequently cited together and their prior-art lists are not identical.

6. What I did not establish (do not treat as conclusions)

1. The full claim set of the '928 is not in hand. I verified only claims ~47–60. Any statement of the form "Reference X anticipates claim N" for N < 47 would be unsupported by what I retrieved.
2. I did not read the full disclosures of the sixteen references. The §102 column above is a scoping judgment, not an element-by-element anticipation finding.
3. Foreign patent documents and "Other References" on the '928 front page were not retrieved. The '928 may have additional cited art I have not reported.
4. Exact issue dates. I report month/year as printed in the patent's own citation table and the assignees/titles from the Unified Patents and USPTO records; I did not individually verify every day-level issue date.
5. The star notation on entries 4 and 16 is unresolved (see caveat in §2).

If you want a defensible §102 chart, the next step is a full-text pull of the '928 claims 1–46 against the disclosures of Pare '199, Cumbers '900, and Adams '485 — those three are where I would concentrate effort.

I'll research the prior art cited on the Google Patents page for US 6,612,928 and the general pre-2001 art on biometric gaming authentication.

The '928 patent itself is a known prior-art reference (Bradford '928) in later PTAB proceedings. Let me now pull its own claim 1 and front-page cited references.

Let me pull the full claim set and the front-page references for the '928 patent.

Obviousness Analysis — US 6,612,928 B1 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Patent: Player identification using biometric data in a gaming environment
Inventors: Russel Tower Bradford; Robert Anthony Luciano, Jr.; Russ Frederick Marsden
App. 09/908,878, filed 2001‑07‑17; earliest priority 2001‑02‑15 (Ser. No. 09/788,168); issued 2003‑09‑02; expired 2021‑07‑17.

0. Corrections and additions to the earlier sections (flagged per instructions)

Two items from the previously generated sections need updating:

1. Claim-set recovery. The prior summary reported only claims 47–58 and fragments of 65–68. I have now additionally retrieved the text of claim 8/9, claim 23, claims 28–32, claims 38–48, claims 49–58 and claims 65–68, and confirmed the claim family structure. Claim 1 itself (and the bulk of claims 2–22, 59–64) I still could not pull verbatim — see §8.

2. Litigation — a contradiction to flag. The earlier Litigation Summary concluded that the '928 number appears "only as a cited reference," not as a party, and that "no litigation is known to me that is specifically tied to US Patent 6,612,928." That conclusion is too strong in one respect. US 6,612,928 (as "Bradford '928") is the primary prior-art reference actually litigated in:

   • IPR2019‑00317, ‑00319, ‑00320 (William Hill US Holdco Inc. v. CG Technology Development LLC), where the Board instituted on anticipation and §103 grounds over Bradford '928 alone and Bradford '928 + Parrott (App. 2005/0054417), and
   • a Federal Circuit appeal (No. 2021‑21176) and a related Supreme Court petition (25‑1104, filed 2026‑03‑19) in which "Bradford (as modified by Foss) as further modified by Yamane" is the asserted §103 ground and Bradford's CD-ROM/standalone-machine passage is the subject of a "teaches away" dispute.

   The patent was not the patent-in-suit in any of those, so the earlier statement is literally correct; but a reader should know that '928 is a heavily litigated invalidity reference, not an obscure one. This matters below because the PTAB and the Board's findings describe what '928 discloses, which I use only as a cross-check on claim scope, not as evidence of '928's own obviousness.

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

Effective filing date: Feb. 15, 2001 (earliest provisional/priority filing). Any reference must therefore qualify as prior art before that date for the priority-supported claims. (Claims not supported by Ser. No. 09/788,168 get July 17, 2001.)

Presumed POSITA (adopting the level the Board accepted in the related Bradford-as-art IPRs, which is consistent with this art): a bachelor's degree in computer or electrical engineering or a related field, plus about two years of professional computer-system design experience — or equivalent gaming-systems experience. In the gaming context a POSITA would also be familiar with casino floor systems (SMIBs, player tracking networks, voucher/EFT systems) and with commercially available biometric readers (the '928 specification itself names AuthenTec, Inc., Melbourne, Fla. as a known supplier).

Governing law: Graham v. John Deere, 383 U.S. 1 (1966) factors, applied through KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007), and In re Kahn / In re Fulton on teaching away. Pre-AIA § 103(a) governs.

Critical preliminary observation: the '928 specification is unusually candid about the prior art, and those statements are applicant admissions usable as prior art (MPEP § 2129):

• "Biometric identification systems such as fingerprint readers built by AuthenTec, Inc. … are known."
• "Prior art numeric characterization of fingerprints makes use of a fingerprint's ridges and furrows …"
• "the currently used method of controlling game use is through physical access … an attendant checks ID for admission."
• Prior art single-fingerprint home/office PC systems "have tiny databases, can be relatively slow, and can be reasonably fallible."
• Player ID cards "may be switched, lost, stolen, etc." and provide only "OK but not very high" assurance.

These admissions establish that, as of the priority date, (i) biometric/fingerprint readers and fingerprint characterization data were known; (ii) single-factor biometric authentication was known; (iii) card-based casino player tracking was known and known to be weak; and (iv) the only thing the inventors characterize as new is the combination.

2. The claims, grouped by inventive concept

From the text now retrieved, the independent claims cluster as follows:

Reduced to essentials, the alleged invention is four known building blocks wired together in a game device:

1. A low-assurance token (card, voucher, PIN, RFID) that indexes a database record;
2. A biometric second factor stored as a field/pointer on that record;
3. Repeat authorization by biometric alone while the session persists; and
4. Application of (1)–(3) to three pre-existing casino functions — IRS Form W2G paperwork, funds transfer/EFAs, and legal-age gating.

3. Prior art on the record for this patent

⚠️ Source caveat. The Google Patents page's front-page "References Cited" list was not reproduced in the material available to me. The references below are those that appear in the record associated with US 6,612,928 — chiefly the reference list rendered on the Unified Patents page for US‑6612928‑B1 (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-6612928-B1). On that page they are presented as similar/related documents, so I flag that they may include "similar documents" as well as formally cited art. Their dates and subject matter, however, are checkable independently, and each predates Feb. 15, 2001, so each is available as §102(e)/§102(b) art regardless.

Plus the specification's own admissions (AuthenTec fingerprint readers; prior-art fingerprint characterization; known W2G/$1,200 regime; known EFAs and EFT stations).

4. Grounds of rejection

Ground 1 — Claims 1–9 and 49–57: two-factor authentication applied to a game device

Primary: US 6,364,485 B1 (multi-factor biometric authentication). Secondary: US 6,234,900 B1 (gaming player tracking).

US 6,364,485 discloses the very thing the '928 claims recite in structural terms: authenticating a principal by combining a non-biometric factor with a biometric factor and indexing stored biometric templates. US 6,234,900 supplies the gaming environment — a player-tracking/identification system operating on the casino floor, reading a player-carried token and looking up a player record.

Motivation to combine (KSR, "known technique to improve similar devices in the same way"):

• Same field, same problem. Both references target identifying a person presenting a token at a machine. The '928 specification concedes the industry need — "High reliability player identification in a gaming environment is becoming increasingly desirable."
• The weakness of the primary factor was known. Player cards "may be switched, lost, stolen"; the '928 patent says so itself. Adding a biometric that cannot be lent or lost is the predictable engineering response.
• The biometric piece was a commercial, off-the-shelf component. The patent admits AuthenTec readers "are known"; a POSITA would simply wire a known reader to a known player-tracking terminal.
• Result is a mere aggregation with expected benefits — the "combinatorics" of two independent factors producing higher confidence is elementary probability, not an inventive insight, and is precisely the "improvement … in the same way" that KSR makes obvious.

On claim 49's "non-biometric reader + biometric reader + database with two authenticators": this is a functional recitation of the two references' combined hardware. The Board in the related IPRs found Bradford '928's own first authentication readers 404 ("a device to read data from a player ID card, a credit card, or a driver's license, or … a unique alphanumeric sequence (i.e., a PIN)") and biometric reader 412 to be routine cabinet components — and of course the same reasoning applies a fortiori to the art cited against '928.

Ground 2 — Claims 30–31: automated W2G generation

Primary: Ground 1 combination. Secondary: the admitted, non-technical nature of the W2G requirement, plus US 6,294,101-type automated account/credit management.

The only additional element over Ground 1 is automatically populating a tax form from a database record and printing/transmitting it. Once a verified identity and its stored data are available at the device, filling known fields of a known form and printing it is the routine use of a computer for its intended purpose. The $1,200/W2G trigger is an IRS administrative rule, not a technical contribution; "the claimed subject matter as a whole" adds no technical advance over the two-factor core. See KSR ("the combination of familiar elements according to known methods is likely to be obvious when it does no more than yield predictable results"). Claim 31 (two fingertips, first and second, from the same person) is a trivial design choice between two disclosed biometric factors and is addressed squarely by US 6,364,485's multi-factor teaching.

Ground 3 — Claims 32, 46, 47, 48 and 65–68: authenticated electronic transfers and remote age verification

Primary: Ground 1 combination. Secondary: US 6,149,055 A (EFT system), and — for the remote/Internet claims — the known practice of network verification of a remote terminal.

• US 6,149,055 provides electronic funds transfer/account infrastructure. Combining it with the Ground 1 authentication core to gate transfers yields exactly claims 32/46–48: the transaction is completed and then authorized by the biometric. This is the ordinary "add a security check to a financial transaction" motivation, reinforced by the '928 patent's own framing of EFT fraud risk.
• For claims 47/48 (APID as the first authenticator), the specification expressly incorporates by reference Ser. No. 09/819,112, "Anonymous Player Identifiers In A Gaming Environment." Note the priority problem this creates: 09/819,112 was filed after the Feb. 15, 2001 priority date, so it is not prior art against the priority-supported claims — but the APID concept itself (a token bearing no personal data, used as a database key) is a conventional anonymous-credential design choice in any token system.
• For claims 65–68 (remote game device, age verification, "game play end indicator" retry loop): network-based verification of a remote terminal presenting stored credentials is the ordinary client/server pattern, and the '928 specification itself anticipates remote gambling and age confirmation. Repeating a biometric read until a session-termination signal (time-out, drop, disconnect) is routine session management; the specification even lists the same termination events ("a time-out; a carrier drop; network communications disruption; … a designated signal").

Ground 4 — Claim 58–64: multifunction game play button with fingerprint reader

Primary: US 5,991,431 A (mouse adapted to scan biometric data). Secondary: US 6,307,956 B1 (writing implement with biometric sensor).

Claim 58 claims a play button comprising a fingerprint reader and logic with (i) an interface emulating an ordinary single-function play button and (ii) an interface carrying authorization signaling.

US 5,991,431 and US 6,307,956 both disclose the exact design concept in a different peripheral: take an input device a user must already actuate, and embed a fingerprint sensor in it so the biometric is captured as a by-product of the user's normal action. A POSITA presented with the Ground 1 problem — "the biometric read is an extra step" — would find it obvious to consolidate the capture into the control the player is already pressing. The claimed "first interface … simulates a single-function play button" is precisely the backward-compatibility expedient one applies when adding a function to an existing signal line (here, the legacy SMIB/play-button signal path the specification describes), and the second interface over Ethernet is described by the '928 specification itself as conventional.

5. Anticipated patent-owner (PO) arguments and rebuttals

6. Overall §103 conclusion

On the present record, every independent claim of US 6,612,928 appears vulnerable under § 103 as a combination of:

• a gaming-side player-tracking/identification system (US 6,234,900 B1; US 5,613,912 A),
• a known multi-factor biometric authentication scheme (US 6,364,485 B1; US 6,026,166 A),
• known EFT/account infrastructure (US 6,149,055 A; US 6,294,101 B1),
• known biometric-in-peripheral integration (US 5,991,431 A; US 6,307,956 B1),

and the applicant's own admissions that fingerprint readers, fingerprint characterization, player-tracking terminals, W2G procedures, and EFAs were all known. The claimed advance is the arrangement of these known elements, and under KSR such an arrangement, producing only expected results (higher assurance; more convenience), is obvious.

The strongest candidates for surviving a challenge would be (a) claim 58's specific dual-interface play-button architecture, if the PO could show the emulation interface is not merely a design choice, and (b) any claim whose validity depends on a filing-date benefit that carries it back to Feb. 15, 2001 while an asserted reference postdates that date — but that cuts against the PO, not for it.

7. Confidence levels

8. Explicit uncertainty disclosures

1. Claim 1 is still not in hand. I retrieved claim 8 ("…comprising (g): checking said biometric data against said second authenticator…") and dependents, but not claim 1. The Ground 1 mapping of claim 1 is therefore inferred from the claim family and must be re-run against the literal claim text before being relied on.
2. The front-page "References Cited" list was not retrieved. The reference set in §3 is drawn from the Unified Patents page for US‑6612928‑B1, which may mix similar documents with cited references. Before asserting any reference in a formal §103 ground, verify it against the Notice of References Cited (PTO‑892) and the front page of the granted PDF.
3. "Parrott" (App. 2005/0054417), "Foss," and "Yamane" are post‑2001 references used in later proceedings against other patents. They are not available as prior art against '928 and are cited above only to identify what '928's disclosure has been found to contain.
4. No objective indicia searched. I did not run a commercial-success, licensing, or copying analysis; the statement that none is grounded reflects only that nothing surfaced incidentally.
5. Web-search limitation. Free search is not PACER / Patent Public Search. My §0 correction to the litigation summary identifies proceedings confirmed in retrieved documents; it is not a certified litigation history.