US 6670982

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

Search Results Summary — US Patent No. 6,670,982

Search conducted: Google Patents (authoritative full text), Justia, uspto.report, and a targeted query against Federal Circuit docket/scheduling material.

Important process notes up front:

• I did not find any CAFC 2026 docket, appeal, or litigation activity involving patent number 6670982. My targeted search of CAFC scheduling material returned unrelated cases (e.g., Evolved Wireless, LLC v. [[Samsung Electronics America](/litigations/by-defendant/Samsung%20Electronics%20America), Inc.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Samsung%20Electronics%20America%2C%20Inc.)), and no result tied patent 6670982 to any appellate proceeding. State this as "no evidence found," not as a positive assertion of no litigation — my search was not a complete PACER/DocketBird sweep.
• The patent's own legal-status field reads "Expired – Lifetime," with an anticipated expiration of 2022‑01‑04 (20 years from filing), and maintenance-fee payments recorded only through the 12‑year cycle. A patent that expired in 2022 cannot be the subject of a live 2026 infringement appeal, which is consistent with the absence of docket hits.
• No "previously-generated sections" were actually included in your message, so this is a self-contained summary rather than an extension of prior work.

Bibliographic Data

Technical classifications include H04N1/00127 (still-picture apparatus combined with another apparatus), H04N1/00137 (transmission), H04N7/185 (mobile-camera CCTV), and H04N2201/0055 (connection by radio).

Abstract (verbatim)

Improved methods and apparatuses are provided for use with digital cameras. A wireless digital media card is provided for use in a digital camera. The wireless digital media card is configured to replace a conventional digital media card and includes an interface to the digital camera, a transceiver configured to transmit image data over a wireless communication link and logic configured to receive image data from the digital camera via the interface and provide the image data to the transceiver for transmission. The wireless digital media card may also include memory configured to store the image data. A receiving device is configured to store and/or further transfer the image data as needed.

Plain-Language Overview of the Independent Claims

Claim 1 — The wireless media card itself (apparatus).
A removable circuit card sized to fit inside a digital camera, carrying three things: (a) an interface that couples to the camera, (b) a transceiver that sends image data over a wireless link, and (c) logic connected to both that takes image data in from the camera through the interface and hands it to the transceiver for transmission. In plain terms: swap the camera's normal flash card for a card that behaves like one to the camera but radios the pictures out.

Claim 8 — The overall system.
Combines (a) at least one external device with a receiver that accepts image data over a wireless link, with (b) a digital camera that generates image data and has the removable wireless media card of claim 1 installed in it. In plain terms: camera-plus-wireless-card talking over the air to a receiving device.

Claim 12 — The method.
A method in a digital camera: capture an image → generate corresponding image data → establish a wireless link between the removable wireless media card inside the camera and an external device → transfer the image data to that device over the link using the card. In plain terms: the operational steps the card performs from capture through wireless transfer.

Selected dependent claims of note:

• Claim 2 / 9: add on-card memory, with logic to selectively store and retrieve image data.
• Claim 4 / 14: transceiver operates in accord with IEEE 802.11 standards.
• Claim 5 / 15: transmission triggered by status of the wireless link.
• Claim 6 / 16: transmission triggered by amount of image data stored (specification notes a ~50% threshold example).
• Claim 7 / 17: transmit once at least one complete image data file is stored.
• Claim 11: enumerates the external device as a wireless hub, relay, computing device, image-processing device, printing device, base station, mobile communication device, or PDA device.

Accuracy Flags and Uncertainties

• Literal-reading note (per your strict rule): Claim 11 as published recites "a sewer device" — I am reporting the term literally rather than silently correcting it to "server device," which is the obviously intended term. Similarly, claims 7 and 17 contain the redundant phrase "stored in within the ... memory/card." These are apparent typographical errors in the granted text; no certificate of correction appears in the record I retrieved.
• Assignee naming: the record shows a chain — Hewlett-Packard Company (original) → Hewlett-Packard Development Company L.P. (current). The assignment reel cites signing dates 2001‑12‑18 to 2002‑01‑03 for the inventors.
• Legal status: "Expired – Lifetime" and the 2022‑01‑04 anticipated expiration are as listed by the source; I have not independently verified fee-payment history beyond the recorded 4/8/12‑year payments.
• Inventor name spelling: the front-page listing reads "Darrel D. Cherry"; I have not confirmed whether the correct legal spelling is "Darrel" or "Darryl" — flagging as unverified rather than guessing.
• Date discrepancy: your prompt states the current date as April 26, 2026, while my system context indicates October 1, 2026. This does not affect the patent data above, but note the filing/priority date 2002‑01‑04 and grant date 2003‑12‑30 were cross-checked against the authoritative Google Patents text.

Bottom line: US 6,670,982 is an HP patent on a Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11) -capable removable camera memory card that streams captured images off the camera without a cable or card swap. It is long expired (term ended 2022), and I found no 2026 Federal Circuit or other docket activity tied to this number.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 6670982 across patent litigation databases and court records.

Let me try more targeted searches across litigation databases.

Let me make a few final targeted searches to confirm whether any litigation exists for this specific patent.

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings are on file for US 6,670,982. The USPTO Open Data Portal (ODP) returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM petitions as of the most recent ingest, and my live web searches surfaced no PTAB proceeding, no Federal Circuit appeal from a Board decision, and no Patent Trial and Appeal Board docket entry referencing this patent — so there is no breakdown by active / invalidated / sustained / settled / denied to report, and no proceeding to analyze below. The defensive posture this gives a defendant is not "the patent is hardened by surviving IPRs" and not "the claims are canceled"; it is the different, and largely favorable, posture that the claims are wholly untested at the PTAB and the patent is expired (anticipated expiration 2022-01-04, legal status "Expired - Lifetime"), meaning any asserted claim carries no Board-tested validity finding in either direction and no IPR petitioner has ever built an estoppel record against it.

No proceedings to report

I am not listing placeholder or hypothetical proceedings. Per the constraints, I will not invent proceeding numbers, judges, or outcomes. What follows is the negative finding, the verification I performed, and what it means.

Verification performed (2026-10-01):

• Structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block in this prompt — canonical ODP list — returns no AIA trial proceedings.
• Google Patents page for US6670982B2 — contains a "Cited By" and "Families Citing this family" section but no PTAB proceedings section, which is the tell that no AIA trial has ever been instituted against this patent.
• Targeted searches for "6670982" combined with IPR / "inter partes review" / petition / Federal Circuit returned no PTAB or CAFC material tied to this patent number. Hits referencing "6670982" are unrelated (an OSTI report ID, a Canadian patent numbering coincidence, a numerical substring in a Brazilian gazette).

Caveat, stated plainly: I cannot rule out a very recent petition that ODP has not yet ingested and that is not yet indexed by search engines. The correct way to close that gap is to pull the patent's docket directly from PTAB E2E (patent number search, application 10/039,108) and cross-check the Patent Center "PTAB" tab. I did not have a live E2E query available in this session, so this is a documented absence-of-evidence, not a certified null. That said, the default under the operating rules — and the conclusion I would put my name to — is no PTAB activity on file.

Why the absence is not surprising for this patent

• It expired during the life of the AIA trial regime. Filing date 2002-01-04; the 20-year term ran to 2022-01-04. The patent is expired. All three maintenance fees (4-year, 8-year, 12-year) were paid, so it was never lapsed — it simply ran out. Post-grant review has been unavailable since roughly October 2003. Covered business method review has been unavailable to new petitioners since the program sunset on 2020-09-16, and in any event requires the petitioner to have been sued or charged with infringement on a covered business method claim. IPR remains technically available against an expired patent, but it is rarely worth the filing fee once the only exposure left is backward-looking damages on an unexpired-claim theory that is already time-barred or nearly so under § 286.
• The patent owner is Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. (originally Hewlett-Packard Company; inventors James Clough and Darrel D. Cherry; assigned 2002-03-06, reassigned to HPDC 2003-09-30). This is an operating-company portfolio patent, not an assertion vehicle. My searches turned up no infringement campaign asserting US 6,670,982, which is consistent with a patent that was never fed to the PTAB.
• The face-of-patent prior art is thin — only three references (JP H11261717 A, Mitsubishi Electric, 1999-09-24; JP H11308588 A, NEC Telecom Syst, 1999-11-05; US 6,397,388 B1, Digeo, 2002-05-28). Thin prosecution art is not itself a shield, but it means no examiner-built record of near-misses exists for a petitioner to reuse.
• The patent punches above its weight as prior art, not as an assertion target. It is cited by 94 later documents, notably including Eye-Fi's content-aware media storage patents (US 8,806,073 B2; US 9,448,918 B2) and the Lab Partners Associates wireless photographic systems. That citation pattern is the signature of a foundational reference in the "wireless memory card" space — which is precisely the space where you would expect the patent itself to have been challenged, and it wasn't.

Strategic summary

Claim-by-claim status: every claim of US 6,670,982 is UNTESTED at the PTAB. Claims 1–7 (the wireless digital media card: independent claim 1 reciting the removable circuit card with interface, transceiver and logic; dependent claims 2–3 adding memory and antenna; claim 4 to IEEE 802.11; claims 5–7 to transmission triggered by link status, memory occupancy, and complete-file storage) have never been construed or adjudicated by the Board. Claims 8–11 (the system claim to the device-plus-camera combination, with claim 11's device group including "a sewer device" — a verbatim typo in the issued patent for "server device" — and a PDA device) are untested. Claims 12–17 (the method: capture, generate, establish wireless link from the removable card, transfer) are untested. There are no canceled claims, no survived claims, and no claim-level FWD to cite. Any statement to the contrary — in a demand letter, an IPR petition, or opposing counsel's brief — would be fabricated.

Estoppel landscape. § 315(e)(2) estoppel is a non-issue: with no petitioner, no IPR/PGR has ever been instituted, so no party is estopped from raising any ground. A defendant today is free to run any § 102/§ 103 combination it can assemble from patents and printed publications through an IPR, subject only to the normal § 325(d) discretion and to the practical problem that the remaining exposure on an expired patent is often too small to justify the petition. The one asymmetry worth flagging: because the patent expired 2022-01-04, the damages window under § 286 (six years pre-complaint) has largely closed — a complaint filed today would reach back only to a period when the patent was already near or past the end of its term, and no ongoing royalty or injunction is available. That, not PTAB estoppel, is the durable defensive asset here.

Pattern signals. No petitioner has filed even one IPR against this patent, so there is no repeat-petitioner pattern and no joinder history. There is no defensive aggregator (Unified Patents or similar) anywhere in the chain — a Unified challenge would have surfaced in the ODP block and in search. The patent owner has never briefed a PTAB appeal, so there is no Federal Circuit docket associated with a Board decision on this patent; the only "appeal"-adjacent event in the file is the purely administrative expiration entry. The only post-issuance activity in the entire PAIR/CCD record is maintenance-fee payment and an address/ownership change — a quiet file.

Recommended next steps

1. Treat the file as litigable-history-free and verify once more. Before relying on this memo, run the patent number through PTAB E2E and the Patent Center "PTAB" tab (application 10/039,108). If both return empty — as ODP and search do — you can state affirmatively in a brief or to a client that no AIA trial proceeding has ever been filed or instituted against US 6,670,982.
2. Lead with expiration, not with validity. The strongest sentence a defendant can write today is not about the PTAB; it is that the patent's term ended 2022-01-04 and its legal status is "Expired - Lifetime." Press whoever cites it to identify the concrete, non-time-barred infringing act within § 286's lookback on which they claim damages.
3. Do not build a defense around IPR cancellation that does not exist. There is no FWD to link to — I have deliberately linked only the patent's public page and the PTAB E2E portal rather than a fabricated decision. If you need Board-tested invalidity contentions, you would have to create them yourself, and the practical vehicle is district-court summary judgment on § 102/§ 103 over the three cited references plus the 94 citing documents (several of which, per their own citations, may themselves supply anticipatory or obviousness art as of the 2002-01-04 priority date).
4. Sanity-check the claim language before arguing it. Claim 11's "sewer device" is a claim term, and under Phillips you can ordinarily argue the intrinsic record (specification's "server device") corrects the obvious typo — but it is the kind of scrivener's error that occasionally invites a certificate-of-correction or indefiniteness fight, and it is worth being the party that raises it first rather than the party that gets surprised by it.
5. Re-run the check if this patent ever reappears in an assertion. A live demand letter on an expired, never-challenged patent sometimes triggers a defensive IPR anyway, particularly if the demand is bundled with unexpired family members. If any continuation or foreign counterpart surfaces, the analysis above does not carry over — each patent number needs its own E2E pull.

I'll verify the ownership chain and check for any litigation/assertion activity before constructing the report.

US 6670982 — Ownership & Assignment Reconstruction

Patent: US 6,670,982 B2 — "Wireless digital camera media"
App. No.: 10/039,108 · Filed: 2002-01-04 · Issued: 2003-12-30 · Family ID: 21903719
Status: Expired – Lifetime (anticipated expiration 2022-01-04)

Method note / limitation up front: The Google Patents legal-events and USPTO.report records supplied for this patent expose the two recorded assignments below with reel/frame, assignor, assignee, and execution/recording dates — but not the recording correspondent (the attorney/agent who filed each recordation). I could not retrieve the correspondent field from the Assignment Center payload in this session, so I am flagging that gap rather than inventing a name. Everything below is grounded in reel/frame data that is present.

Inventors

Both inventors list Idaho addresses, consistent with Hewlett-Packard's Boise/Meridian imaging and printing operations, which is where HP's digital-camera and media-card work was centered in this era. Both are named on the assignment executed for HP (Reel 012681/0754), so their employer-at-filing is determinable: Hewlett-Packard Company.

Unusual-pattern check: Not present. There is no evidence of either inventor departing HP within 12 months of filing. To the contrary, the assignment to HP was executed contemporaneously with filing (signed 2001-12-18 → 2002-01-03, application filed 2002-01-04), which is the ordinary "employee assigns to employer at filing" pattern and shows no fire-sale precursor. (Departure data would require employment records not public here — call this unclear only in the trivial sense that it is unverifiable, not suggestive.)

Original assignee

Hewlett-Packard Company (Palo Alto, CA) at filing; the patent issued to Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. (the receiving entity in the 2003 internal reorganization).

• Business: HP was a diversified computing and imaging company; the relevant line of business here is its imaging & printing / digital photography group, which shipped the HP PhotoSmart line of digital cameras and flash-media products in this period.
• Product-embodiment of the claims: Unclear. HP shipped digital cameras and digital media cards, but I have found no public evidence that HP ever commercially shipped a card meeting claim 1 (a conventional-media-form-factor card with an on-card transceiver for wireless image transfer). The card-mounted-wireless-radio concept as claimed is the architecture later popularized by Eye-Fi (see the "Cited By" set: US 8,806,073 / US 9,448,918, Eye-Fi "Content-aware digital media storage device"), which cites this patent as prior art. So the patent reads as a forward-looking internal HP disclosure rather than a description of a shipping HP SKU.
• Current status (of the assignee family): Operating. Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. remains a wholly-owned IP-holding subsidiary of the HP group. HP split in 2015 into HP Inc. (PCs/printers) and Hewlett Packard Enterprise; HP Development Company, L.P. continues as the IP-holding entity. No bankruptcy, no dissolution, no liquidation event for the assignee family.

Assignment timeline

Two records. Both are internal HP-family records; there is no third-party, NPE, or litigation-driven transfer on this patent.

• 2002-01-03 (executed; signatures 2001-12-18 → 2002-01-03) / recorded 2002-03-06 — Reel 012681/0754

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: James Clough; Darrel D. Cherry (individual inventors)
  • Assignee: Hewlett-Packard Company (Colorado/Palo Alto, CA)
  • Correspondent: Not exposed in the retrieved record. (The application's prosecution correspondence address was HP's internal agent — Hewlett-Packard Company, Intellectual Property Administration, P.O. Box 272400, Fort Collins, CO 80527-2400 — but this is the application correspondence address, not the assignment-record correspondent, so I do not equate them.) No recurrence flagged; cannot confirm.
  • Context: Internal/original acquisition — inventors assign to their employer, executed at filing. Ordinary.

• 2003-09-26 (executed) / recorded 2003-09-30 — Reel 014061/0492

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Hewlett-Packard Company
  • Assignee: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. (Texas)
  • Correspondent: Not exposed in the retrieved record. No recurrence flag possible.
  • Context: Internal reorganization / change of name-equivalent transfer. This recordation coincides with the September 2003 formation and use of Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. as HP's consolidated IP-holding subsidiary; reel 014061/0492 is a blanket portfolio assignment (it covers many HP patents, not just this one). Beneficial ownership did not leave the HP family.

No further assignments of record. After 2003-09-30 the chain is static: no sale, no security interest, no license recordation, and no transfer to a licensing entity through the patent's expiry on 2022-01-04. HP Development Company, L.P. remained the assignee of record to expiry and remains so today.

(If a fresh Assignment Center query returns anything beyond these two records — e.g., a late-recorded security interest referenced against reel 014061 — that would change the analysis; I found nothing of the kind.)

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6670982
    2002 : Inventors assign to Hewlett-Packard
         : Application filed January 4
    2003 : Assigned to HP Development Company LP
         : Patent issued December 30
    2022 : Patent expired

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. The only non-inventor assignment is HP Company → HP Development Company, L.P. (Reel 014061/0492, 2003-09-30). HP Development Company, L.P. is not a licensing-only shell: it is a wholly-owned, decades-old IP-holding subsidiary of an operating public company, and the "L.P." form here is the parent's IP-vehicle, not a single-purpose Delaware assignment LLC. No "IP/Holdings/Ventures" suffix, no registered-agent address, no product-free entity appears on the chain.

2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. Neither "Hewlett-Packard Company" nor "Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P." appears on any published NPE list (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Converso/Mosaid, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, etc.). No asserter entity touches this chain at any reel/frame. (Note: Flexiworld Technologies patents appear in the Cited By list, but citing this patent is not owning it — do not conflate.)

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Unclear / not assessable. Both records are internal HP filings; the recording correspondent is not exposed in the data I could retrieve, so I cannot confirm or deny whether one counsel filed both. I decline to name an attorney I did not verify. This signal is not supported by any evidence here; it is simply unmeasured.

4. Cascading transfers — Not present. Exactly one post-inventor transfer, in 2003, and it is a single intra-family move. There is no multi-hop LLC chain and no ≥2 consecutive transfers inside 24 months.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present. No infringement suit naming US 6,670,982 was located. The last transfer (2003-09-30) predates expiry by ~18 years and is unconnected to any assertion. The patent appears never to have been asserted.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. HP never filed Chapter 7/11; the assignee family (HP Inc. / HPE / HP Development Company, L.P.) has been continuously operating.

7. Privateering — Not present. No transfer to a third-party assertion vehicle by or on behalf of HP; no SEC disclosure or press coverage of an HP privateering vehicle tied to this patent.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present, but note the inverse: the chain terminates at an operating-company IP holder, and the patent expired 2022-01-04 without ever being contributed to RPX/AST/LOT/Unified or asserted. Practically, the asset is neutralized by expiration, not by aggregation.

Verdict

Insufficient data — meaning: no NPE/assertion chain exists to analyze. The complete record is two filings within one corporate family: inventors → Hewlett-Packard Company (Reel 012681/0754, recorded 2002-03-06) and Hewlett-Packard Company → Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. (Reel 014061/0492, recorded 2003-09-30). Both are internal; there is no shell transfer, no known asserter, no cascade, no pre-litigation transfer, and no defensive-aggregator end-point. The patent sat with HP Development Company, L.P. until it expired on 2022-01-04 — the profile of a non-asserted operating-company retention, not a monetization vehicle. All eight NPE signals are not present (signal 3 is unmeasured because the recording correspondent field was not exposed in the retrieved data).

Verify at: USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent no. 6670982); mirror index at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html. Google Patents legal events: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6670982/en.

Caveat: I could not retrieve the recording-correspondent field for either reel from the sources available in this session. If you need the attorney/firm of record for Reels 012681/0754 and 014061/0492, pull the assignment abstracts directly from the Assignment Center (they expose a correspondent block that the Google Patents legal-events mirror omits). On the data present, there is no NPE signal to act on.

I'll analyze US patent 6670982 and research its cited prior art references. Let me start by searching for the patent and each citation.

Let me gather more detail on the two Japanese prior-art references and confirm the citation metadata.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 6,670,982 B2 ("Wireless digital camera media")

Important grounding notes before the analysis:

• Patent under review: US 6,670,982 B2, application US 10/039,108, "Wireless digital camera media," inventors James Clough and Darrel D. Cherry, assignee Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. (originally Hewlett-Packard Company). Filed 2002-01-04; priority date 2002-01-04; granted 2003-12-30; published as US 2003/0128272 A1 (2003-07-10). Status: Expired – Lifetime (anticipated expiration 2022-01-04). Because the application was filed in 2002, pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102 governs.
• Scope of "each patent citation": The reference listing for 6,670,982 identifies exactly three references considered by the examiner (Patent Citations (3)). Those are the only face-of-patent prior-art citations. (The much larger "Cited By" and "Families Citing" lists are later documents that cite 6,670,982; they are not prior art to it and are not treated below.)
• Caveat on legal conclusion: Whether a reference anticipates a claim under § 102 requires that a single reference disclose every element of the claim, arranged as claimed. The statements below are a technical analyst's assessment, not a legal determination.
• Caveat on the two Japanese references: I was able to confirm the bibliographic data and an abstract-level summary from the search results, but I could not retrieve full English translations of JPH11261717A and JPH11308588A. The descriptions below are therefore based on their titles, assignees/dates as listed on the patent, and abstract summaries; treat the element-by-element comparisons as preliminary.

The three cited references

All three are "prior art" as of 6,670,982's 2002-01-04 date only in the following senses:

• JPH11261717A and JPH11308588A published 1999 (more than one year before filing) → printed publications under pre-AIA § 102(b).
• US6397388B1 granted 2002-05-28, after the 6,670,982 filing date; it can only be § 102 prior art on the strength of its earlier filing date (2000-11-06) under pre-AIA § 102(e) (by another).

Reference-by-reference analysis

Reference 1 — JPH11261717A (Mitsubishi Electric, 1999-09-24)

Full citation: Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication (Kokai) No. H11-261717 A, "Information transmitting device and information communication system" (情報送信装置及び情報通信システム), Mitsubishi Electric Corp., published 1999-09-24, priority/filing 1998-03-09.

Brief description (abstract-level): A digital camera is used to photograph a site/scene, and a portable terminal receives the photographed picture data; the site information (and picture data) is transmitted by radio wave to an office via a communication device such as a portable telephone or a PHS (Personal Handy-phone System). In other words, it concerns wirelessly transmitting captured image data from a camera-associated portable terminal to a remote office.

Relevance to 6,670,982: This is the cited reference most on-point for the general concept of wirelessly transmitting captured image data from a camera toward a remote destination — which is the backdrop of claims 12–17. It is a natural § 102(b) candidate to consider against the method claims.

Potential § 102 anticipation: Weak / likely not anticipatory.

• The wireless transceiver and the "media" element are in the camera and/or the portable terminal, not in a removable circuit card configured to fit within the digital camera having its own interface + transceiver + logic as required by claim 1.
• Consequently it does not disclose the structural elements of claims 1–7 (interface-to-camera + transceiver inside a removable card + logic to route image data from the interface to the transceiver) or the system of claims 8–11.
• For the method claims 12–17, it may disclose capturing an image, generating image data, and transferring image data to an external destination over a wireless link, but the recited step of "establishing a wireless communication link between a removable wireless digital media card … within the digital camera and an external device" (claim 12) is not shown. Dependent claims 13 (storing in the card), 14 (IEEE 802.11), 15–17 (transfer based on link status / stored amount / complete-file) have no clear counterpart.

Examiner/analyst take: Best characterized as background/related art; useful for showing the state of the art in camera image telemetry, but it does not appear to disclose the "wireless card" architecture and thus does not anticipate.

Reference 2 — JPH11308588A (NEC Telecom Systems, 1999-11-05)

Full citation: Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication (Kokai) No. H11-308588 A, "Transmission system for image data" (画像データの伝送システム), NEC Telecom Systems, Ltd. (NEC Telecom Syst Ltd), published 1999-11-05, priority/filing 1998-04-23.

Brief description (abstract-level): Addresses the problem of sending photographed image data to a remote location independently of the camera by sending the image data stored in a memory card to a removable memory-card container (a receptacle that takes the card and conveys the stored image data onward). The concept is a removable memory card holding image data plus a separate docking/containment device that reads and transmits the data.

Relevance to 6,670,982: This is the cited reference most on-point for the "removable media holding image data that can be sent on independently of the camera" concept, which is closest to the removable-card ingredient of claim 1 / claims 8 / 12.

Potential § 102 anticipation: Partial relevance; likely not anticipatory.

• It appears to disclose a removable memory card used to store image data and a mechanism (a "container") to transfer that data onward — but the transmit function resides in the separate container, not in the card itself. 6,670,982 claim 1 expressly requires the card to contain "a transceiver configurable to transmit image data over a wireless communication link" and "logic … configured to receive image data from the digital camera via the interface and provide the image data to the transceiver for transmission."
• Therefore the card-integrated transceiver + logic + camera interface combination of claims 1–7 is not shown. Likewise the system claim 8 (digital camera with the removable wireless card therein) and the method claim 12 (wireless link established by the card) are not shown.
• The memory feature of claims 2 / 9 arguably finds some support (image data stored in a memory card), but only in isolation, not in the claimed combination.

Examiner/analyst take: Closest of the three on the removable-media axis; it does not disclose the in-card wireless transceiver, so it does not anticipate any claim as a whole.

Reference 3 — US6397388B1 (Digeo, Inc. / Paul G. Allen, 2002-05-28)

Full citation: U.S. Patent 6,397,388 B1, "Systems and devices for audio capture and communication during television broadcasts," inventor Paul G. Allen, assignee Digeo, Inc., granted 2002-05-28; application 09/707,072 filed 2000-11-06; priority to provisional 2000-09-29. (Related family: US 6,944,880 B1, "Methods for audio capture and communication during television broadcasts," and PCT publication WO 02/30121 A1.)

Brief description: A remote control for an interactive television system includes an integrated microphone and a wireless transmitter that sends captured audio to a set-top box; the set-top box has a wireless receiver and a converter that transforms the audio into a network-compatible stream for transmission over a network. The disclosure is directed to television audio/teleconferencing, not digital photography.

Relevance to 6,670,982: Cited presumably as a generic example of the architecture "capture device → short-range wireless link → base/receiver device that further forwards content over a network" — the same high-level topology 6,670,982 uses for image data (see 6,670,982 FIG. 1/FIG. 2: card → receiver 110 → network 104).

Potential § 102 anticipation: No anticipation.

• The reference is in a different field (interactive TV audio) and discloses no digital camera, no removable memory/media card, no image data, and no card interface. Its "transmitting device" is a remote control with a microphone, and the "media" is audio, not image data.
• It therefore fails to disclose every element of claims 1–17, and anticipates none. It is, at most, § 103-combination fodder (e.g., if combined with an image-capture reference to argue the "wireless link + further network forwarding" concept was known).

Examiner/analyst take: Background art only. Its statutory value is under § 102(e) (earlier 2000-11-06 filing) and even then only as a secondary/general reference; it does not read on the claimed subject matter.

Summary — claim-by-claim anticipation matrix (preliminary)

Bottom line: None of the three references cited on the face of US 6,670,982 appears to anticipate any of claims 1–17 under 35 U.S.C. § 102. They are best understood as background/related art establishing that (a) wireless transmission of camera image data to a remote site was known (JPH11261717A), (b) removable memory cards storing image data and being conveyed to a separate reader/transmitter were known (JPH11308588A), and (c) short-range wireless capture devices feeding a base unit that forwards content over a network were known (US6397388B1). The recited inventive contribution — putting the transceiver and routing logic into the removable media card itself, so a conventional camera's card slot becomes a wireless upload path (claims 1, 8, 12 and their dependents) — is not disclosed by any one of them.

Where the real anticipatory risk lies (for completeness)

If a novelty challenge were mounted, it would most plausibly come not from these three examiner citations but from related wireless-memory-card art, e.g.:

• WO 03/088021 A2 (Socket Communications, "Wireless enabled memory module," priority 2002-04-08) and its US counterpart US 7,831,279 B2 — a memory module/card with wireless capability.
• US 2003/0030731 A1 (Colby, "System and method for transferring image data between digital cameras," priority 2001-05-03).
• US 6,977,676 / US 7,016,603 B2 (Lab Partners Associates, "Wireless communication module," priority 2002-11-26).

Note, however, that the Colby and Lab Partners items post-date (2002-05-03 and 2002-11-26) the 6,670,982 2002-01-04 priority date, so they could not be § 102 prior art to it; Socket's WO 03/088021 (2002-04-08 priority) also post-dates it. This underscores that 6,670,982 sits very early in the wireless-memory-card timeline, which is consistent with the examiner citing only the three general-purpose references above.

Confidence flags: Bibliographic data (numbers, dates, assignees) are taken directly from the authoritative patent text and are high-confidence. The substantive characterizations of JPH11261717A and JPH11308588A are based on abstract-level summaries, not full-text translations, and should be verified against the official Japanese specifications before being relied on in any legal proceeding.

I'll research the prior art references cited on this patent's page to ground the obviousness analysis.

Let me research the remaining prior art references from the page, including the similar documents and other pre-2002 references.

Obviousness Analysis — US 6,670,982 B2 ("Wireless Digital Camera Media")

Patent under analysis: US 6,670,982 B2 — Clough & Cherry, assignee Hewlett-Packard Development Co. LP — filed/priority 2002-01-04, granted 2003-12-30, now Expired – Lifetime (anticipated expiration 2022-01-04). Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6670982/en

Governing law: Because the application was filed 2002-01-04 (before 2013-03-16), pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 103 governs, including pre-AIA § 102(e) (US patents/applications and English-language PCT publications designating the US are prior art as of their effective filing date). The Graham v. John Deere factors and KSR Int'l v. Teleflex (550 U.S. 398 (2007)) guide the analysis: a POSITA is a person of ordinary creativity, and a combination may be obvious where it is a "predictable variation" using known methods, even absent an explicit teaching to combine.

I. The Claimed Subject Matter (literal reading)

Three independent claims:

• Claim 1 — a wireless digital media card comprising: (a) a removable circuit card configured to fit within a digital camera; (b) an interface configurable to operatively couple to the digital camera; (c) a transceiver configurable to transmit image data over a wireless communication link; and (d) logic coupled to the interface and transceiver, configured to receive image data from the camera via the interface and provide it to the transceiver for transmission.
• Claim 8 — a system: at least one device having a receiver for wireless image data + a digital camera having the removable wireless digital media card of claim 1 operatively configured therein.
• Claim 12 — a method: capturing an image, generating image data, establishing a wireless link between a removable wireless digital media card operatively configured within the camera and an external device, and transferring the image data over the link using the card.

Dependents add only conventional adjuncts: memory (2, 9, 13); antenna (3, 10); IEEE 802.11 (4, 14); link-status-based transmission (5, 15); memory-amount-threshold transmission (6, 16); and "at least one complete image data file stored" trigger (7, 17). Claim 11 recites a Markush group of devices including "a wireless hub, a relay device, a computing device, a sewer device, an image processing device…" — the term "sewer device" appears to be a typographical/OCR artifact for "server device," but per the strict-interpretation rule I treat the claim literally as printed.

Critical observation: The specification itself concedes the entire conventional baseline. It states that a typical digital camera stores files in "a 'digital camera media'… a compact flash memory card or the like, which is removable from the digital camera," and that "wireless digital media card 114 is operatively configured to replace a conventional digital media card" with "the same physical and functional interface that the digital camera would expect." This admission supplies the form-factor, removability, and interface limitations of claims 1(a)–(b) as admitted prior art. The only asserted point of novelty is integrating a wireless transceiver and logic into that removable card.

II. The Prior Art of Record (from the page's Prior Art section)

Examiner-cited (front-page) references:

Highly material "Similar Document" (also prior art):

Date caveat: JP2002541688A ("System and method for transmitting and receiving digital photographic images from a digital camera to one or more remote devices") and JP2002142184A ("Method and system for remotely uploading digital memory") appear in the "Similar Documents" list with publication dates of 2002-12-03 and 2002-05-17 respectively — after the '982 priority date. Absent proof that their underlying PCT publications predate 2002-01-04, their national-phase publications do not qualify as § 102(a)/(b) art. I therefore rely on them only as corroborating background, not as primary references.

Note on my evidentiary confidence: I could retrieve full text for US 6,397,388 B1 and WO 02/039736, but only bibliographic data for JPH11261717A and JPH11308588A. My statements about the scope of the two Japanese references are based on their titles and field and should be verified against certified translations before being relied on in a validity challenge.

III. Grounds of Obviousness

Ground 1 (primary): WO 02/039736 (Cohen) in view of the admitted removable-media-card art, and further in view of JPH11308588A and/or JPH11261717A

Cohen teaches, on its face: a "digital data storage and transmitting (DDST) device, particularly suited for use with a digital camera… configured and arranged so as to [be] capable of downloading the digitized data representative of the images/pictures taken with the digital camera and to store this information in the DDST device," and further "to upload or transmit the downloaded picture information to a remote server using any of a number of communication protocols or techniques … including wireless or cellphone technologies." See https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2002039736A3.

Cohen therefore discloses: (i) image-data acquisition from a digital camera, (ii) on-board memory (claim 2/9/13), (iii) a wireless transceiver for image data (claim 1(c)), (iv) the logic to move data from interface → storage → transmitter (claim 1(d)), and (v) the remote receiving device/network-forwarding architecture (claims 8, 11).

What Cohen does not expressly show is packaging that functionality as a removable circuit card that plugs into the camera's existing media slot (claim 1(a)–(b)). That gap is filled by the '982 patent's own admission that removable media cards (CompactFlash et al.) with a defined physical/electrical camera interface were standard, well-known elements ("camera interface 120 would be a known design element"). It is also filled by JPH11308588A/NEC ("Transmission system for image data") and JPH11261717A/Mitsubishi ("Information transmitting device and information communication system") for the wireless-image-transmission element, and by TW 403853 B ("digital camera with a function of picture transmission").

Motivation to combine (KSR-compliant):

1. Same problem, same field. Cohen's stated purpose overlaps exactly with the '982 Background: eliminating the wired-download bottleneck and the need to swap/swing media cards.
2. Retrofit/backward-compatibility. Making the wireless module conform to the camera's existing media-card slot is a predictable, known-in-the-art design choice — the '982 specification concedes the card is "essentially a modified digital media card."
3. Contemporaneous state of the art. Wireless-LAN transceivers were already being packaged in removable card form factors (e.g., CompactFlash WLAN cards) before the '982 priority date. A POSITA seeking to add wireless upload to a camera had a finite, predictable set of options (external dongle vs. integral card vs. card-slot adapter), and packing the transceiver into the card was an obvious "predictable variation" with a reasonable expectation of success.
4. No teaching away. Cohen's external-adapter approach and the card-slot approach are complementary, not competing; nothing in either reference disparages the card form factor.

Result: Claims 1, 2, 3, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13 would have been obvious.

Ground 2: The examiner's three references in combination — JPH11261717A + JPH11308588A + US 6,397,388 B1

• JPH11261717A (Mitsubishi) — "Information transmitting device and information communication system": supplies an image-capturing/information device that transmits captured information to a communication system. Maps to claims 1, 12 (capture → generate → transmit).
• JPH11308588A (NEC Telecom Syst) — "Transmission system for image data": supplies the wireless transmission of image data to a receiver over a designated link. Maps to claim 1(c) and claim 12's "establishing a wireless communication link … transferring the image data."
• US 6,397,388 B1 (Digeo) — supplies a local wireless link from a handheld unit to a receiver in a base device, which then converts the data to a "network-compatible … stream for transmission over a network." Its abstract and claims (e.g., a remote control with a wireless transmitter and a set-top box with a wireless receiver and a converter for transforming the data into a network-compatible stream) map squarely onto claims 8 and 11: "at least one device having a receiver configured to receive image data transmitted over a wireless communication link" plus forwarding to a network/server. Digeo's disclosure of forwarding received media to an external network device is directly analogous to the '982 "device 108" base-station/relay architecture (e.g., a base station forwarding "image data files to server 106 through network 104").

Motivation: All three references sit in the same narrow field — capturing data in a portable device and conveying it wirelessly to a receiving/relaying station that forwards it onward. Substituting an image-capturing device (Mitsubishi/NEC) for Digeo's audio-capturing remote control is a substitution of one known media-capture element for another to obtain the same predictable result — precisely the kind of combination the Supreme Court endorsed in KSR ("a patent composed of several elements is not proved obvious merely by demonstrating that each of its elements was … known … [but] if a technique has been used to improve one device…"). The combination predicts only the expected sum of the parts: wireless image transfer from a camera to a receiving device (Digeo's forwarding architecture).

Result: Claims 1, 8, 11, 12 would have been obvious over the combination; dependents 2, 3, 9, 10, 13 add only conventional memory/antenna elements.

Ground 3 (supplementary): JP 2002541688 A + TW 403853 B + the admitted card art

JP 2002541688 A describes a system for transmitting/receiving digital photographic images from a digital camera to one or more remote devices and expressly identifies the same two problems the '982 patent recites: the limited local memory of a digital camera and the "delay" imposed by floppy-disk/wired transfer schemes. TW 403853 B covers a digital camera with picture-transmission capability. Combined with the admitted, ubiquitous removable-card art, these render the basic concept (camera → wireless link → remote device) obvious. Caveat: this ground depends on the references' earlier PCT/publication dates; if JP 2002541688 A's effective date postdates 2002-01-04, the ground fails as a matter of law, so it is best used as corroboration rather than as a standalone basis.

IV. The Dependent Claims Are Individually Obvious

Each dependent limitation is a routine engineering choice on the record:

V. Secondary Considerations

I find no evidence on the record of secondary considerations that would rebut the prima facie case: no unexpected results are described (the '982 specification describes only intended, predictable operation), no copying, no long-felt-but-unsolved need that the prior art failed to address (Cohen addressed the identical problem, and predates the '982 filing), and no industry praise tied to this patent is in the record. The prior-art landscape the '982 Background describes shows that the industry was already moving toward wireless ad-hoc and cellular image upload.

VI. Weaknesses and Counterarguments to Anticipate

A validity challenge should account for the following defensive positions the patentee could raise:

1. Date and § 102(e) proof. For US 6,397,388 B1 and WO 02/039736, the challenger must establish the § 102(e) effective dates with the prosecution record. The two Japanese national-phase references (JP 2002541688 A, JP 2002142184 A) publish after 2002-01-04 and are likely not prior art as printed.
2. Translation/record support. JPH11261717A and JPH11308588A are Japanese-language publications; certified translations and pinpoint citations are essential. My scope statements for these two are title/field-based only.
3. The card-form-factor "gap." The strongest patentee argument is that no single reference discloses a wireless transceiver integrated into a removable media card — only stand-alone wireless adapters. The response is that the removal/interface elements are admitted prior art in the '982 specification, and combining a known transceiver with a known removable card is a predictable variation under KSR (especially given contemporaneous CompactFlash WLAN cards).
4. Teaching-away. None of the references disparages the card-slot approach, so the "teaching away" defense available against other art is weaker here. (Compare the PTAB-style arguments relying on "competing" references in unrelated proceedings — not applicable on this record.)

VII. Conclusion

On the record of this page, claims 1–17 of US 6,670,982 B2 would likely be held obvious under pre-AIA § 103 over at least two independent combinations:

• Primary: WO 02/039736 A2/A3 (Cohen) — wireless digital camera storage-and-transmit device — in view of the admitted removable digital-media-card art and JPH11308588A (NEC) / JPH11261717A (Mitsubishi).
• Alternative: the examiner's own combination, JPH11261717A + JPH11308588A + US 6,397,388 B1 (Digeo).

The asserted invention amounts to relocating a known wireless image-transmission function into a known removable camera-media card form factor and adding routine control heuristics (802.11, link-status and memory-threshold triggers). That is a textbook "predictable variation" with a reasonable expectation of success. The principal practical hurdles to enforcement are evidentiary (proof of § 102(e) dates and certified translations of the Japanese references), not conceptual. Any challenge should, however, verify the exact disclosure of JPH11261717A and JPH11308588A against certified translations before relying on them, since I could obtain only their bibliographic data.