US 6678215

I'll search for authoritative information on this specific patent number.

Let me search for the claims text and any litigation specifically on this patent number.

Let me try to locate the actual claim text for this patent.

US 6,678,215 B1 — Summary

Caveat up front: I was able to confirm the bibliographic record and the specification-level disclosure (the full text you supplied is authoritative and matches the Google Patents record). I was not able to retrieve verbatim claim text for this patent — the claim set was not included in the supplied full text (it truncates near the end of the description) and my searches did not surface the claims. The claim overview below is therefore inferred from the abstract/specification and is explicitly flagged as uncertain.

Bibliographic data

Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6678215/en (fetched 2026-09-30)

Abstract (as recorded)

An alarm clock radio is provided that handles downloaded audio files and streaming digital audio files. The alarm clock radio may have buttons and displays that allow the user to adjust various alarm clock radio settings. The user may also adjust settings remotely over the Internet or over an in-home network. The user may customize the audio content that is provided with the alarm clock radio. Advertisements may be provided to the user. The user may be provided with an opportunity to subscribe to a content service. Content such as Internet radio station content, e-mail, news and other audio content may be provided to the user from the service. The user may set reminders for particular times and dates using the alarm clock radio. The alarm clock radio may also have a telephone handset. The alarm clock radio may have buttons and knobs and may provide on-screen options that allow the user to tune to AM and FM and Internet radio stations and to control the operation of the alarm clock radio.

Overview of the disclosed subject matter (basis for the claims)

The specification is a broad enablement-style disclosure built around a single inventive theme: an alarm clock / clock radio that is not limited to over-the-air AM/FM audio, but sources audio over a communications network, and that lets the user configure that sourcing remotely. Key disclosed aspects:

• Networked audio sourcing — audio received over communications network 18 from Internet radio servers (14, 16), news server 22, non-Internet audio sources 20, an alarm-clock service server 24, and clock time server 26 (FIG. 1).
• Downloaded files vs. streaming — MP3 (and "MP-3") files downloaded before wake-up, or real-time streaming/buffered audio; automatic fallback to live AM/FM if a stored file runs out.
• Communications hardware — telephone/ISDN/DSL/cable modems, cellular modem, pager receiver, AM/FM receivers, short-range (HomeRF/Bluetooth, IR) and long-range wireless, in-home networks and residential gateway 45.
• Remote configuration — web-page interfaces (FIGS. 13, 14) for setting wake-up time, content type, segment order/duration, time zone, and favorite Internet stations; also interactive telephone and operator-based remote setup.
• E-mail / voice mail / calendar — device-specific e-mail address, retrieval from a mail server, voice synthesis of messages, message-management buttons, audio calendar reminders.
• Tuning UI — layered menus (region → country → type → station, FIGS. 9a/9b), scan, assignable station buttons, "NET" band display alongside AM/FM.
• Targeted advertising / content customization — preference collection by monitoring user activity and by off-device web behavior (FIG. 18, FIG. 12).

Independent claims — limited-confidence overview

I cannot state the claim language with authority. Based only on the abstract and specification, the independent claims most plausibly fall into roughly these groups (the patent's stated objects are to provide "improved audio devices" and devices that "can handle audio signals other than traditional radio broadcasts"):

1. An audio device / clock radio apparatus that combines clock circuitry (time + alarm/wake-up setting) with a network interface and the ability to play audio received over the communications network — i.e., an alarm clock whose wake-up audio can come from a network source rather than only a broadcast receiver or buzzer.
2. A method of providing/configuring audio at such a device — establishing a communications link with a remote audio source (device-initiated or source-initiated), obtaining the audio (download or stream), and playing it at the alarm/wake-up time.
3. Likely dependent-claim coverage of: automatic fallback to a live broadcast when stored audio ends; snooze; remote (web/telephone) setting of alarm and wake-up content; e-mail/voice-mail playback; and content/station selection via layered menus.

Uncertainty statement: I do not have authoritative claim text, claim numbering, or claim count for US 6,678,215 B1, and I will not fabricate them. To state the independent claims accurately, the claim set must be read directly from the issued patent (column 12 onward in the printed patent, or the "Claims" tab at https://patents.google.com/patent/US6678215/en).

Litigation / CAFC check

• I searched for the exact number 6678215 against litigation and Federal Circuit material. No district-court case or CAFC appeal involving US 6,678,215 was found, and nothing appeared in 2026 CAFC docket material.
• This is consistent with the record: the patent is Expired – Fee Related (anticipated expiration 2020-03-20), and the assertion timeline for a 1999-priority, 2004-issue patent would have been well before 2026.
• Important limitation: absence of results in the searches I ran is not proof that no litigation ever existed. I did not obtain a direct USPTO PatentCenter / PACER / CAFC docket query, so treat the "no litigation" finding as "not found in accessible search results," not as a verified negative.
• What the searches did confirm is prior-art usage of the patent: it is cited as an X-category reference against other applications (e.g., PCT/DO2017/050001 — WO2019114911, claims 1–7; PCT/FR2006/050108 — WO2006085026, claims 1, 2, 5–8, 11), and it is listed as cited prior art in later US patents such as 7,226,260 and 7,506,035.

Literal-identifier note (no auto-correction)

The specification as published uses the string "FireWire (IEEE 1492) cables" in the discussion of wired paths, while elsewhere it uses "IEEE 1394 (FireWire)." Per instruction, I am reporting these exactly as they appear in the patent text and not treating either as a correction of the other.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 6678215. Let me run several targeted searches.

Initial results show the patent document itself but no litigation. Let me search litigation-specific databases.

Let me search more specifically for litigation databases and this patent family.

Litigation Search Report — U.S. Patent No. 6,678,215

Patent: U.S. 6,678,215 B1 ("Digital audio devices"), inventors G. Victor Treyz and Susan M. Treyz, application 09/528,814, filed 2000‑03‑20, priority to provisional 60/173,247 (1999‑12‑28), granted 2004‑01‑13. Current assignee listed as "Individual." Legal status per Google Patents: Expired – Fee Related (anticipated expiration 2020‑03‑20).

Bottom line

I found no litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 6,678,215. No district court case, no Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit appeal, and no PTAB proceeding asserting or challenging the '215 patent as an issued patent was identified in my searches. I cannot confirm a single plaintiff/defendant case for this patent number.

Because I could not positively confirm any case, I am not going to present a fabricated case list. Below is what the searches actually returned, followed by the limits of this report.

Searches performed (2026‑04‑26)

• US patent 6678215 litigation
• "6678215" patent lawsuit defendant
• "6,678,215" patent infringement lawsuit Unified Patents
• Treyz "digital audio devices" patent lawsuit iPod
• "6678215" OR "6,678,215" Treyz lawsuit complaint district court
• portal.unifiedpatents.com litigation "6678215"

What was actually returned

1. Patent documents citing the '215 patent as prior art (not litigation). Multiple international search reports (e.g., WO2008047015A1, WO2019114911A1) list "US 6 678 215 B1 (TREYZ G VICTOR)" as a cited reference against other applications. These are office actions / search reports, not infringement suits.

2. Google Patents' own record for US6678215B1 shows the patent family — continuations US 7,333,396 B1; US 7,460,440 B1; US 7,660,207 B1; US 7,916,579 B1 — but no litigation section was populated for the '215 patent.

3. Unrelated Unified Patents / PTAB materials. Searches surfaced Unified Patents litigation/PTAB portal pages and IPR documents (e.g., IPR2016‑01701, Netflix v. Affinity Labs of Texas, U.S. 9,094,802), but none of these lists a case involving the '215 patent as an asserted patent. The "MCOM IP," "SportBrain," "Uniloc," and "Packet Intelligence" cases that appeared are for entirely different patents and parties.

4. One possible incidental use as prior art (unconfirmed). In IPR2016‑01701 (Netflix, Inc. v. Affinity Labs of Texas, LLC, PTAB, U.S. 9,094,802), the Board repeatedly refers to a "Treyz" reference describing "a message comprising a plurality of network locations for different audio segments" and "Internet radio stations on a playlist." That description is consistent with the '215 disclosure, but the IPR documents I retrieved do not explicitly give the Treyz reference's patent number, so I cannot confirm it is U.S. 6,678,215 rather than another Treyz‑family document. Even if it is, that would be third‑party use of the '215 patent as prior art — not litigation involving the '215 patent as an asserted right. I flag it as unverified.

Why "no litigation" is plausible here

• The '215 patent shows an anticipated expiration of 2020‑03‑20 and a legal status of Expired – Fee Related. A patent asserted only after 2020 is unlikely (expired/lapsed rights generally cannot support an ongoing infringement action for post‑expiration conduct).
• The patent is owned by individuals (Treyz), and the family continuations (7,333,396 / 7,460,440 / 7,660,207 / 7,916,579) would more typically be the asserted members if a monetization campaign existed — I did not identify one either, but I did not exhaustively search the family.

Caveats / confidence level

• Confidence that there is no district‑court or CAFC litigation on '215 specifically: moderate. My searches did not reach the subscription/primary sources directly (PACER's case‑locator query interface, Docket Navigator, RPX Empower), which are the definitive records. Web search indexes under‑represent older, short‑lived, or voluntarily dismissed cases.
• Do not treat any number as confirmed. I did not auto‑correct or infer any case number, party, or date; none was confidently attributable to '215.
• Note there is an unrelated later patent titled "Breathable gas apparatus with humidifier" that also displays the number 6678215 in one result (a sequence listing/identifier coincidence on Justia). Do not conflate it with U.S. 6,678,215.

Recommended verification steps (authoritative sources)

1. PACER Case Locator — query "6678215" as a patent number in the "patent" search field (post‑2000 dockets have parsed patent numbers).
2. Unified Patents Portal litigation case list — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist, filter by patent 6678215.
3. PTAB / USPTO Patent Trial & Appeal Board End‑to‑End (https://ptacts.uspto.gov) and the USPTO PatentCenter "Legal Events / Assignment / Litigation" tabs for application 09/528,814.
4. CAFC docket search for "6,678,215."
5. Google Patents → "Litigation" tab for US6678215B1, and same for the family members 7333396 / 7460440 / 7660207 / 7916579.

If you can supply access to a paid docket database (Docket Navigator/RPX) or run the PACER patent‑number query, I can help interpret those results — but on the evidence available, the accurate answer is: no litigation is known for U.S. Patent 6,678,215.

I'll start by checking the structured PTAB data against live sources for any AIA proceedings on this patent.

Proceedings overview

Zero (0) AIA trial proceedings are on file against US 6,678,215 — the canonical USPTO Open Data Portal list is empty, and my independent web searches surfaced no IPR, PGR, or CBM petition naming the '215 patent as the challenged patent. Breakdown: 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denials. Bottom-line defensive posture: the patent has never been battle-tested at the PTAB — but that is largely moot, because the patent expired 2020-03-20 and its exposure window has closed. A defendant today faces a patent with untested but also narrowly-drafted claims (4 claims total, built around a short-range wireless link to an in-home network), no IPR estoppel record to leverage, and no live injunctive threat.

Two important nuances before the detail:

1. Absence of IPRs here is not evidence of strength. The '215 patent is a prior-art workhorse, not a target. It (and its continuation-family siblings US 7,333,396 / 7,460,440 / 7,660,207 / 7,916,579) has been asserted in the PTAB against other people's patents — Samsung v. Affinity Labs (IPR2014-00407/-00408) and Netflix v. Affinity Labs (IPR2016-01701) both relied on Treyz-family disclosures to invalidate claims. The Treyz disclosure invalidates others; nobody has bothered to invalidate the Treyz claims.
2. The patent's status is "Expired – Fee Related." Google Patents records an anticipated expiration of 2020-03-20 (20 years from the 2000-03-20 non-provisional filing). Any remaining assertion value is retrospective only.

Because the required "for each proceeding" sections have no subject matter, I substitute the adjacent proceedings that actually bear on this patent's defensive value — clearly labeled as not proceedings on the '215 patent.

No proceedings on US 6,678,215 (detailed negative finding)

(none) — No IPR / PGR / CBM captioned against US 6,678,215

• Type: N/A — no petition of any AIA trial type was located.
• Filed: N/A
• Status: Verbatim from the structured data: none returned.
• Judge panel: N/A
• Petition grounds: N/A
• Institution decision: N/A
• Final Written Decision: N/A — no FWD exists, so no claim of the '215 patent has been canceled or sustained at the PTAB.
• Settlement / termination: N/A
• Appeal: N/A — no FWD, therefore no CAFC appeal of a § 318(a) decision.
• Defensive value: You cannot win an IPR-estoppel argument that doesn't exist, and you cannot point to a canceled claim. Your defense must be built on the claim language itself (see Strategic summary) and on the expired status of the patent.

Caveat on completeness (stated plainly): I could not directly enumerate PTAB E2E or the Docket Alarm / Unified Patents dockets in this session (tool step limit reached after the searches above). The finding above rests on (a) the ODP structured list supplied to me, and (b) multiple targeted web searches ("6678215 IPR", "6678215 PTAB proceeding petitioner", "IPR" "U.S. Patent No. 6,678,215", "6678215 patent litigation asserted"). None surfaced a proceeding on this patent number. If you need a belt-and-suspenders confirmation, search PTAB E2E (https://ptab.uspto.gov/) by patent number 6,678,215 and cross-check PatentCenter's "Legal Events" tab at https://patentcenter.uspto.gov/.

Adjacent proceedings where the '215 disclosure was the sword, not the target

These are not proceedings on the '215 patent, but any defendant evaluating the Treyz family should know them.

IPR2014-00408 — Samsung Electronics Co. (and others) v. Affinity Labs of Texas, LLC

• Type: Inter Partes Review (challenged patent: US 8,359,007, not the '215).
• Filed: 2014-01-31 (petition and exhibits dated 2014-01-31).
• Status: Instituted; Treyz relied on as a primary reference in Ground 1.
• Judge panel: Not confirmed from the sources I could reach.
• Petition grounds: Ground 1 — Treyz in view of Fuller under § 103 against claims 1, 2, 5–8, and 10 of the '007 patent.
• Institution decision: Instituted (institution discussion at pp. 10–12 of the Decision, as later cited by Netflix in IPR2016-01701).
• Final Written Decision: The Board found Treyz discloses "a list of network addresses for a plurality of portions of an available media," and later relied on that finding as grounds "resulting in invalidation of the claims of a patent in the same family as the '802 patent" (per Petitioner's reply in IPR2016-01701). Affinity's Patent Owner Response argued Treyz's alarm-clock device is not a "cellular phone" as claimed, and that it was "impossible and would not have been obvious" to modify the Treyz alarm clock with Fuller's Java applet: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2014-00408/Inter_Partes_Review_of_U.S._Pat._8359007/docs/10-31-2014-Patent_Owner/Opposition-28-Patent_Owners_Response.pdf
• Relevance to '215: US 6,678,215 itself was filed as Exhibit 1004 in this IPR: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2014-00408/Inter_Partes_Review_of_U.S._Pat._8359007/docs/01-31-2014-Petitioner/Exhibit-1004-US_Patent_6678215.pdf
• Defensive value: The '215 specification is prior-art-grade material against 2000s-era streaming/alarm-clock claims. If you are a plaintiff trying to assert the Treyz family, expect your own disclosure to be turned against similarly-situated patents; if you are a defendant being asserted against a Treyz-family continuation, the family's own IPR track record (as art, not claim holder) is a realistic road map.

IPR2014-00407 — Samsung Electronics Co. v. Affinity Labs of Texas, LLC

• Type: Inter Partes Review.
• Institution / decision: Slip op. (Paper 48), 2015-07-20, at 22 — as cited in the Netflix reply in IPR2016-01701.
• Final Written Decision: Referenced for the same proposition — a "list of network addresses for a plurality of portions of an available media" limitation was met by Treyz, contributing to invalidation of a patent in the same family as the '802 patent.
• Defensive value: Same as above — Treyz is an established invalidity reference in this technology space, not a hardened patent.

IPR2016-01701 — Netflix, Inc. v. Affinity Labs of Texas, LLC

• Type: Inter Partes Review (challenged US 9,094,802).
• Filed: 2016 (case number series); Patent Owner Preliminary Response filed; FWD issued before the 2018-05-02 Notice of Appeal.
• Status: Final Written Decision issued; appealed to the Federal Circuit (Notice of Appeal dated 2018-05-02, RPX Federal Circuit docket 605776).
• Judge panel: Not confirmed from the sources I could reach.
• Petition grounds: § 103 — (1) Treyz + Fuller over claims 1, 3–5, 14–17; (2) Treyz + Fuller + Glaser over claims 9, 11, 13; (3) Treyz + Fuller + Hild over claim 20. Rehearing was not instituted on claim 10.
• Institution decision: Partially instituted — review instituted on claims 1, 3–5, 9, 11, 13–18, and 20; not instituted on challenged claim 10.
• Final Written Decision: The Board credited Petitioner's expert and held claims 1, 3–5, 14–17 unpatentable over Treyz + Fuller; claims 9, 11, 13 over Treyz + Fuller + Glaser; claim 20 over Treyz + Fuller + Hild. On the Treyz reference, the FWD stated: "Treyz is directed to devices that can receive and process audio and video files," and quoted the passage "An alarm clock radio is provided that handles downloaded audio files and streaming digital audio files" — language that appears verbatim in the '215 patent's abstract. Source: https://insight.rpxcorp.com/federal_circuit/605776/rpx-ptab/IPR2016-01701/IPR2016_01701_Notice_of_Appeal_a5f51b9f52adb7010eeca6c97834a919.pdf
• Settlement / termination: Not a settlement — the FWD issued and the case was appealed.
• Appeal: Notice of Appeal to the Federal Circuit, 2018-05-02, challenging the Board's unpatentability findings (including the finding as to claim 20) and "any other issues decided adversely to Patent Owner." Disposition not confirmed in the sources retrieved.
• Defensive value: Direct proof that the Treyz specification — the same text that supports the '215 claims — reads on generic "internet radio + downloaded audio + scheduling" architectures. A defendant facing a Treyz-family continuation should expect the Board to construe "segment"/"available media"-type terms broadly, as it did here.

Unverified lead — IPR2017-01870

A petition in IPR2017-01870 advanced a "Treyz/Ade" combination rendered obvious "Claim 3-4 and 10" and a Treyz/Ade/Kobayashi combination against claim 5, seeking cancellation of "[c]laims 1-12 and 23 of U.S. [patent number not shown in the retrieved snippet]." I could not confirm the challenged patent number from the available fragment and therefore do not attribute this proceeding to the '215 patent. Treat as a lead only.

Strategic summary

Claim status of US 6,678,215: no claim is canceled and no claim is adjudicated. All 4 issued claims are UNTESTED at the PTAB. The '215 patent issued with only 4 claims (official gazette: "4 Claims"; claim 1 is the independent claim — "An alarm clock radio that handles digital audio files that are downloaded to the alarm clock radio from computing equipment over a communications network, comprising: control circuitry and memory; communications circuitry … speakers … and a user interface with which the user sets an alarm time … wherein the communications circuitry comprises short-range wireless communications circuitry that communicates with an in-home network separate from the alarm clock radio over a short-range wireless link."), with claims 2–4 depending from it. There is no FWD to quote, no certificate canceling claims, and no reexamination certificate narrowing them. Contrast this with the rest of the family, which the '215 spawned via continuations — US 7,333,396 (filed 2003-11-07), US 7,460,440, US 7,660,207, and US 7,916,579 — all now expired or expiring, and all covered by terminal disclaimers. Practical takeaway: this is a 4-claim, single-independent-claim patent whose entire scope is tied to "short-range wireless communications circuitry that communicates with an in-home network." Products that reach the internet by wire, or by a built-in long-range link, sit outside the literal claim.

Estoppel landscape. There is nothing to estop. Because no IPR/PGR/CBM trial was ever instituted on the '215, § 315(e)(2) estoppel never attached to any petitioner or privy, and there is no IPR record to mine. Conversely, a defendant being asserted today has more freedom than usual: because the patent expired on 2020-03-20 (status "Expired – Fee Related"), the practical exposure is limited to back damages within the 35 U.S.C. § 286 six-year lookback (roughly 2014-03-20 through 2020-03-20), and IPR is now a poor use of resources — the Board applies Phillips construction to expired claims, amendment is unavailable, and cancellation of claims buys you nothing against an expired patent. The better defenses are § 101/§ 112 and non-infringement on the "short-range wireless … in-home network" limitation, plus § 286 laches-type timing arguments and the fact that any accused product must have been sold during the closed window.

Pattern signals. (i) No serial petitioner: no petitioner has ever filed even one IPR against the '215, let alone multiple — the classic "troll magnet" pattern is absent. (ii) No defensive aggregator: I found no evidence that Unified Patents or any similar aggregator challenged this patent on its public portal. (iii) Patent owner posture: the owners are the individual inventors, G. Victor Treyz and Susan M. Treyz — there is no assignee entity, no litigation-funding signature, and no record of the owner appealing anything to the Federal Circuit, because the owner has never been a party to a PTAB trial on this patent. (iv) The inverted pattern: the asset has been used defensively against others (Ex. 1004 in IPR2014-00408; the "Treyz" ground reference in IPR2014-00407 and IPR2016-01701), and has been cited as prior art in later international filings (e.g., WO2019114911A1, WO2008047015A1, WO2019010535A1). The disclosure is widely treated as anticipating the category; the claims were drafted narrowly enough — tied to short-range wireless and an in-home network — that no petitioner had a business reason to attack them.

Recommended next steps

• Do not build a PTAB strategy — there is no PTAB activity to leverage or respond to. State the negative finding in your invalidity contentions template so the record is clean: "Patent Owner has never been party to an AIA trial on US 6,678,215; no claim has been canceled."
• Confirm the negative independently before relying on it in a filing: search PTAB E2E (https://ptab.uspto.gov/) by patent number 6678215, and pull the PatentCenter prosecution/legal-events history at https://patentcenter.uspto.gov/ — verify there is no reexamination certificate or disclaimer affecting the 4 claims.
• Pivot the defense to expiry + claim scope. The patent expired 2020-03-20 per Google Patents (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6678215B1](/patent/US6678215B1)/en), with status "Expired – Fee Related." Map the plaintiff's demands to the § 286 window; anything outside 2014-2020 is time-barred. Then attack the "short-range wireless communications circuitry that communicates with an in-home network separate from the alarm clock radio over a short-range wireless link" limitation — this is a narrow, structural hook and the likeliest non-infringement winner for any device using wired Ethernet, a built-in cellular/Wi-Fi-to-ISP path, or a long-range link.
• Mine the adjacent PTAB record for claim-construction ammunition. The IPR2016-01701 FWD and the IPR2014-00407/-00408 institution decisions contain the Board's read of the Treyz disclosure — including the broad construction of "segment"/"available media" and the expert testimony of Dr. Mir. Those are useful against a Treyz-family continuation, but note the Board there was construing other patents' claims, not the '215's claim 1; do not overstate their preclusive effect.
• If you discover a recently-filed petition that ODP has not yet indexed (the ODP ingest can lag), treat it as the priority item: check whether it names claims 1–4, whether institution is pending, and calendar the statutory deadlines — institution decision within 6 months of the petition's filing (35 U.S.C. § 314(b)), and the FWD due within 1 year of institution absent good-cause extension (§ 316(a)(11)). Given the patent's expiration, any such petition would be an unusual one and worth a hard look at its real-world utility.
• Flag the caveat in anything you file. I could not exhaustively poll every docket in this session; my negative finding rests on the ODP structured list plus web searches. Say so, and verify at the primary source before representing to a court or client that no proceedings exist.

I'll research this patent's ownership record using multiple sources.

Let me dig into whether there was ever a recorded assignment and whether this family was asserted.

Inventors

Source for names/address: the cover sheet of provisional application 60/173,247, filed 1999-12-28, reproduced as Exhibit 1005 in IPR2014-00408 (PDF).

Unusual patterns noted (accurate, but not NPE evidence):

• This is an inventor-owned, self-prosecuted filing. The named inventor is himself a registered patent attorney, and the provisional was executed in his own hand. The "correspondent" of record on the resulting patent is therefore the inventor himself (via Treyz Law Group, P.C.), not an outside filer.
• Both inventors share a single residential address — a family/household inventor pair, not a corporate R&D team.
• Because there was no employer assignee, there is no "inventor departed the assignee within 12 months" signal to evaluate. The classic pre-fire-sale pattern is inapposite here.

Confidence note: I confirmed the Larchmont address and the inventor-as-signer from the provisional exhibit. I could not independently confirm Susan M. Treyz's employment.

Original assignee

None of record — the patent is owned by the two individual inventors (Treyz and Treyz).

• Google Patents lists both Original Assignee: Individual and Current Assignee: Individual, with its own caveat that listed assignees may be inaccurate (US6678215B1).
• The issued patent's front page carries no [73] assignee field; it reads simply "Treyz et al."
• There is no operating company to characterize: no products shipped, no line of business, no acquisition, no bankruptcy. The "assignee" is a natural person.
• The patent's administrative status is Expired – Fee Related, with anticipated expiration 2020-03-20.

Corollary: because term runs 20 years from the earliest non-provisional filing (US 09/528,814, filed 2000-03-20), the entire continuation family — US 7,333,396; US 7,460,440; US 7,660,207; US 7,916,579 — expired on the same date absent PTA. The whole family is dead as of 2020.

Assignment timeline

Provenance / limitation (read this first): I was not able to complete a live query of USPTO Assignment Center within this research session. The findings below rest on (a) Google Patents legal events, which mirror the Assignment Center's post-issuance records, (b) EPO/USPTO bibliographic data, and (c) the original provisional cover sheet filed as a PTAB exhibit. No recorded assignment — to a corporation, LLC, or otherwise — was located for US 6,678,215. The ownership record consists solely of the original filing by the two inventors in their individual capacity. Please verify at the Assignment Center link in the Verdict section.

No entry to report. For completeness, the only "ownership" events in the Google Patents legal-event table are prosecution and family events, not conveyances:

• 1999-12-28 — Provisional 60/173,247 filed (inventors as applicants).
• 2000-03-20 — Non-provisional US 09/528,814 filed.
• 2004-01-13 — Patent US 6,678,215 B1 granted, no assignee.
• 2003-11-07 / 2007-12-19 / 2008-10-21 / 2009-12-08 — Continuation applications filed (US 10/703,323; US 11/960,578; US 12/255,569; US 12/633,771), issuing as US 7,333,396; US 7,460,440; US 7,660,207; US 7,916,579 — all to the same individual inventors.
• 2020-03-20 — Anticipated expiration; status became Expired – Fee Related.

Because there are no reel/frame entries, I cannot report a conveyance type, assignor/assignee pair, or correspondent of record for any transfer. The absence of assignment records is itself the finding: the inventors retained ownership to expiration.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6678215
    1999 : Provisional filed by two inventors
    2000 : Nonprovisional filed and self prosecuted
    2004 : Patent issued with no assignee of record
    2008 : Continuations issue to same inventors
    2020 : Expired for unpaid maintenance fees

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. No assignment to any "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" entity exists in the record. Assignee of record remained the natural persons G. Victor Treyz and Susan M. Treyz from filing to expiration (2020-03-20).

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. The assignee never matched Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Conversant/Mosaid, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, or any Spangenberg entity. There is no assignee other than the inventors to compare.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — not present as an NPE signal, but flag the underlying fact. There are no assignments, hence no recording correspondent to recur. What is present, and unusual, is that the prosecuting attorney of record is the inventor himself: G. Victor Treyz, formerly of Fish & Neave LLP, 1251 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY (confirmed as correspondent on a June 1999-recorded assignment for Tv Guide Magazine Group — Plainsite), later principal of Treyz Law Group, P.C. (listed as the firm of record on later Treyz patents, e.g. a 2016 first-page "Attorney, Agent, or Firm — Treyz Law Group, P.C.; G. Victor Treyz, Michael H. Lyons"). This is inventor-as-counsel on his own portfolio, not a shell-LLC lawyer pattern. Per your own instruction, a single firm appearance is not a finding, and here it is not even a third-party.

4. Cascading transfers — not present. Zero conveyances, therefore no chained-LLC sequence, no shared correspondent address across links, no common principals to trace.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. I located no infringement suit naming US 6,678,215 as a patent-in-suit. The only litigation-adjacent appearances are as prior art: the Treyz provisional 60/173,247 was Exhibit 1005 in IPR2014-00408 (an IPR of Personal Audio's US 8,359,007), and "Treyz" appears as an applied reference in IPR2016-01701 (IPR of US 9,094,802) and in third-party PCT search reports. A reference being cited against others is the opposite of an assertion posture.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. No assignor entity ever existed, so no Chapter 7/11 proceeding could transfer these rights. No Kodak/Nortel/Polaroid-style sale record.

7. Privateering — not present. No operating company transferred the patent to an NPE for assertion; there was no operating company. No SEC 10-K/8-K disclosure was located because there is no public-company assignor.

8. Defensive aggregator — not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. The patent was instead abandoned to lapse in 2020 — a different, cheaper form of neutralization. (Unified Patents does index Treyz-family material as prior art, but that is citation, not acquisition.)

Verdict

Insufficient data — no records, or only the original assignment.

Justification: the entire ownership record for US 6,678,215 is the original filing by the two individual inventors, G. Victor Treyz and Susan M. Treyz, on the 1999-12-28 provisional 60/173,247 and the 2000-03-20 non-provisional US 09/528,814; Google Patents records Original Assignee: Individual and Current Assignee: Individual, with no assignment events, and the patent lapsed Expired – Fee Related on 2020-03-20. There is no reel/frame entry, no conveyance, and no correspondent of record on any transfer to analyze, and no strong NPE signal is present (signals 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 all not present; signal 3 is inapposite because the only "correspondent" is the inventor-attorney himself). Because a verdict of "operating-company assertion" or "defensive aggregator" would require evidence that does not exist, the honest call is insufficient data — with the affirmative finding that this is an inventor-owned, self-prosecuted, never-asserted patent that expired for non-payment of maintenance fees.

Verify: USPTO Assignment Center (search US 6,678,215) · patent text · legacy assignment search

I'll research US 6678215 and its cited prior art. Let me start with searches to confirm the patent and locate its citation list.

Let me search specifically for the "References Cited" section of the patent itself.

I need the "References Cited" list on US6678215 itself. Let me try patent database sources that display that section.

Important preliminary note on what I could and could not verify

Before giving the analysis, I have to be explicit about a gap in the evidence, because the strict rule against fabricating identifiers applies here.

What I confirmed (ground truth):

What I could NOT verify: The "References Cited" / "Patent Citations" (backward citation) section of US 6,678,215 itself. The full text supplied to me is truncated at the end of the Detailed Description ("It may therefore…"), and none of my database searches returned the list of references that the examiner or applicants cited inside US 6,678,215. Every result I obtained showed US 6,678,215 being cited by other documents (forward citations) or cited in third-party search reports — not the list of references cited within it.

I therefore cannot supply the backward-citation list, and I will not invent patent numbers or publication dates to fill it. Doing so would violate the operating rule against fabricating identifiers. Below I give (1) what is verified and usable, (2) the forward-citation data I did retrieve (correctly labeled, since it is not prior art), (3) the third-party search reports that cite US 6,678,215 as prior art, and (4) the exact analytical framework to be applied once the true backward-citation list is obtained.

1. Why the "citations for 6678215" must be split into two directions

This distinction matters for your § 102 question:

• Backward citations = references cited in US 6,678,215 (applicant/examiner citations). These are the only ones that can anticipate its claims under 35 U.S.C. § 102. ← This is the list I could not retrieve.
• Forward citations = later patents that cite US 6,678,215. Because US 6,678,215 has a 1999-12-28 priority date, nothing that cites it can be prior art to it (a reference cannot anticipate an earlier-filed disclosure). These are useful only as evidence of the field and of the patent's perceived scope.

2. Forward citations of US 6,678,215 (verified — NOT prior art)

Retrieved from the Google Patents "Cited By" data. These postdate US 6,678,215 and therefore cannot anticipate any of its claims; listed so you do not mistake them for prior art:

3. Third-party search reports citing US 6,678,215 as prior art (verified)

These show which portions of US 6,678,215 examiners have treated as the inventive core — useful for framing the anticipation analysis in the correct direction:

• WO 2019/114911 A1 (PCT/DO2017/050001) — categories "X" against claims 1–7; pinpoint cites: col. 1 l. 60 – col. 2 l. 35; col. 8 l. 63 – col. 9 l. 2; col. 9 l. 66 – col. 10 l. 65; Figs. 3, 4. (The "X" designation means this reference alone was treated as anticipating/rendering obvious the recited subject matter.)
• WO 2008/047015 A1 — category "A", whole document ("cited in the application").
• EP 1 843 562 A1 — category "Y" against claims 5, 6; cites col. 7 ll. 3–10; col. 24 ll. 13–30.
• EP 1 562 321 A3 — category "[XY]", cited together with US 2002/099550 A1 and US 2002/186618 A1.
• EP 2 754 118 A4 — category "[I]".

4. Framework for the § 102 analysis you asked for (to be completed once the true list is obtained)

US 6,678,215 has a pre-AIA priority date (1999-12-28), so the applicable provisions are pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. §§ 102(a), (b), and (e) (plus § 103 for obviousness). Anticipation under § 102 requires a single reference disclosing every element of a claim, arranged as in the claim.

Based on the patent's own disclosure, the claim elements that a prior-art reference would have to meet to anticipate are drawn from these verified passages:

• Downloaded digital audio file playback at alarm time (MP-3 or other format) — Specification: "Such downloaded audio may be played when an alarm goes off to wake up the user of a clock."
• Automatic switch to a live AM/FM broadcast when stored audio runs out — Specification: "An alarm clock radio may also automatically switch to an alternative audio source such as a live FM or AM broadcast if the stored audio runs out."
• Real-time streaming Internet audio, optionally buffered — Specification: "Streaming audio that is received in real time may be buffered using local memory to improve its quality."
• Remote configuration over the Internet or an in-home network — Spec. and Figs. 13–15 (web pages 216 and 226; product-ID region 218; schedule region 234; submit option 236).
• Voice-synthesized e-mail / voice-mail playback — Spec. and Fig. 6.
• Calendar/reminder recording and playback — Fig. 16 (steps 242, 244).
• Ad targeting based on monitored user preferences — Fig. 18 (steps 256, 258).
• Band-select among AM/FM/Internet (NET) — Figs. 7–11.

Claim-by-claim § 102 mapping cannot be performed responsibly until each backward citation is identified by number, number-family, and date. As soon as you supply US 6,678,215's "References Cited" list (obtainable from USPTO PatentCenter for application 09/528,814, from the printed patent front page under "(56) References Cited," or from the Google Patents "Patent Citations" table), I can produce the requested table with full citation, publication/filing date, brief description, and the specific anticipating claim(s) under § 102.

5. Summary answer

• The patent is confirmed as US 6,678,215 B1, "Digital audio devices," Treyz et al., filed 2000-03-20, priority 1999-12-28, granted 2004-01-13, now expired.
• The list of references cited within US 6,678,215 was not retrievable from the sources available to me, and I am not fabricating it.
• The 12 forward-citing documents I verified are not prior art (they all postdate the 1999 priority date).
• The five third-party search reports above show how US 6,678,215 is used as prior art against later patents — the inverse of what you asked, but the only citation data I can ground with URLs.
• To deliver the requested § 102 claim mapping, I need the patent's (56) References Cited list. That is the single missing input.

I'll research the prior art cited on this patent, since the analysis must be grounded in actual references.

I have the independent claim. Let me pull the full claim set and the patent's cited prior art.

I have the claim text. Now let me find the "References Cited" list from the patent's front page.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 6,678,215 B1 ("Digital Audio Devices")

Analyst note on source discipline. I am treating the fetched Google Patents text as authoritative for the specification and the "Prior Art" header block (Prior art keywords: user, alarm clock, audio, radio, clock radio; prior art date 1999-12-28; classification G04G13/028 — "Producing acoustic time signals at preselected times, e.g. alarm clocks combined with a radio"). The fetched page did not include a "References Cited" list, so I retrieved the front-page reference list from a reproduction of the printed patent (PTAB Ex. 1004 in IPR2014-00408) and from the reference lists of the continuation patents in the same family. Where I could not verify a reference's actual disclosure, I say so rather than characterizing it.

1. The claim to be tested

Per the Official Gazette text, the patent issued with 4 claims total; claim 1 is the only independent claim (OG record).

Claim 1 — an alarm clock radio handling digital audio files downloaded from computing equipment over a communications network, comprising:

1. control circuitry and memory;
2. communications circuitry coupled thereto, "to which the downloaded digital audio files from the computing equipment are provided over the communications network";
3. speakers through which the control circuitry "plays the downloaded digital audio files to a user"; and
4. a user interface for setting an alarm time,
   "wherein the communications circuitry comprises short-range wireless communications circuitry that communicates with an in-home network separate from the alarm clock radio over a short-range wireless link."

Element-by-element, only the last clause is a structural point of novelty. Elements 1–3 are, on the face of the specification, conventional. The specification's own admitted prior art states: "Alarm clocks and clock radios are well known. Such devices allow users to set a wake-up time at which an alarm buzzer is triggered or the radio portion of the clock radio begins to play." The spec then treats as optional/illustrative nearly everything else: AM/FM receivers, band-select switch, snooze button, LCD display, tuning knob, and modem circuitry (telephone/ISDN/DSL/cable) — all expressly described as selectable design choices rather than inventions.

Caveat: I was unable to verify the text of dependent claims 2–4. My analysis of them is therefore conditional (Section 5).

Critical date. Effective priority is 1999-12-28 (provisional 60/173,247). Asserted art must predate that date (or qualify under §102(e)/pre-AIA §103(c)). The patent is expired (anticipated expiration 2020-03-20; "Expired – Fee Related"), so this analysis today matters chiefly for (a) family members still in force at the time and (b) the '215's use as prior art against others.

2. Prior art of record and of the field

A. Applicant-Admitted Prior Art (AAPA) — intrinsic. The conventional clock radio with alarm-set interface, speakers, and AM/FM playback; plus the spec's own statement that an audio device "may be connected (wirelessly or with wire) to an in-home network that is connected to the Internet or other communications network by a computer or by a communications device."

B. Front-page references cited by the examiner (as printed on the '215 face, reproduced at Docket Alarm Ex. 1004):

The continuations add US 5,365,494 (Lynch), US 5,572,442 (Schulhof), US 5,600,711 (Yuen), US 5,835,665 (Grossmeyer), US 5,905,865 (Palmer), US 6,256,378 (Iggulden), US 6,483,782 (Steinbach), US 6,696,972 (Bryans), US 2002/0072326 (Qureshey) (US 7,660,207 face).

C. Short-range wireless home networking — contemporaneous printed publications. Bluetooth Specification v1.0 (published 26 July 1999; ~10 m, 2.4 GHz, explicitly motivated by "cable replacement" in the home/office) and HomeRF SWAP (1998) were both public before the critical date; IEEE 802.11 dates to 1997 with 802.11b ratified Sept. 1999. The '215 specification itself names "HomeRF transmissions, Bluetooth transmissions" as the short-range wireless options for its own FIG. 1–4 in-home paths — i.e., the inventors treated the protocol as a pre-existing off-the-shelf choice.

Disclosure-verification caveat: I have confirmed Levine and Gaskill only by their front-page dates/classes, not by reading them. I therefore rest the grounds below on (i) the AAPA, (ii) Schulhof '442 (downloaded compressed audio to a personal playback device — I state its teaching at a general level), and (iii) the Bluetooth/HomeRF/802.11 printed publications, whose existence and content I can state with confidence.

3. Grounds of rejection under §103

Ground I — AAPA (clock radio + alarm-set UI + speakers) + Schulhof '442 + Bluetooth/HomeRF short-range wireless networking

Where each element reads:

• Alarm clock radio, speakers, control circuitry/memory, alarm-time user interface → AAPA (specification Background; all spec-described as conventional).
• Digital audio files downloaded from computing equipment over a communications network, stored in memory, played to the user on demand → Schulhof '442 (system distributing selected compressed audio to a personal/portable playback device for later playback). If Schulhof's teaching is disputed, the same element is reached by Lopes '862 / Qureshey 2002/0072326 as networked audio delivery to a consumer playback appliance.
• Short-range wireless circuitry communicating with a separate in-home network over a short-range wireless link → Bluetooth 1.0 / HomeRF SWAP / 802.11.

Motivation (KSR, 550 U.S. 398):

1. Same field / analogous art. All three strands are consumer-electronics and home-networking art directed to the same problem — getting content to a household appliance.
2. Known technique replacing a known technique. The AAPA clock radio already obtained audio via a wired link (phone jack / coax / USB). Bluetooth and HomeRF were created to eliminate exactly that cabling. Substituting a known short-range wireless link for a known wired link is "the mere substitution of one element for another known in the field," producing only a predictable result — the classic KSR case.
3. Design incentive / market demand. A bedside clock radio must sit on a nightstand, typically far from a phone or cable outlet. Wireless placement is the recognized, advertised benefit of HomeRF/Bluetooth.
4. The inventors' own framing concedes it. The spec touts wireless in-home placement as a convenience ("Because device 12d is wireless, it is relatively easy to place device 12d in a convenient location within the home") — an advantage inherent in the pre-existing standard, not a discovered result.
5. No bandwidth barrier. Bluetooth 1.0 (~721 kbps) and HomeRF could transfer the "few minutes of play time from a downloaded file" the spec says suffices; the specification supplies no data suggesting otherwise.

Ground II — AAPA + Gaskill '559 (wireless packet communications) + Schulhof '442

Substantively identical to Ground I with Gaskill substituted for the Bluetooth/HomeRF publications. Gaskill is classified in 370/95.1 (wireless/packet transmission) and is of record as examiner-cited art, evidencing that wireless data delivery was known and available to combine. I have not verified Gaskill's specific disclosure, so this ground is stated at a correspondingly general level.

Ground III — White '952 and/or Mankovitz '895 in view of Schulhof '442 and Bluetooth/HomeRF

Both White and Mankovitz are classified in 368/10, the exact class/subclass of the '215 (U.S. Cl. 368—10 per the Official Gazette), i.e., clock radios. They provide the "alarm clock radio" platform element; the remaining elements are supplied as in Ground I. Their presence on the face of the patent means they were considered and overcome only on the wireless-link clause.

4. Rebuttal of likely counter-arguments

• Teaching away: None apparent. Neither the AAPA nor the wireless-networking publications discourage wireless audio delivery to an appliance; they promote it.
• Unexpected results: the specification reports no comparative or performance data, and the asserted benefits (no rewiring, arbitrary placement) are the expected benefits of the known wireless link. No nexus to any secondary consideration (In re GPAC).
• Industry success of Bluetooth/HomeRF: attributable to the standards bodies' ecosystems, not to the claimed combination.
• Breadth of the disclosure: the specification's enormous feature list (e-mail retrieval, voice synthesis, web-page configuration, targeted advertising, calendar reminders, e-commerce ordering) does not narrow claim 1. Functional/speculative disclosure without commensurate claim structure cannot supply patentability.
• Claim 1 is nonetheless narrow: it recites no protocol, no data rate, no content type, no remote-configuration feature. It is, in substance, "an ordinary clock radio with a wireless network card."

Corroborating record. The '215 has itself been used as a prior-art base reference: in IPR2016-01701 the Board found claims 3–5 and 15–17 of US 9,094,802 obvious over Treyz ('215) + Fuller (record); in IPR2014-00407/00408 the Patent Owner characterized "the alarm clock audio device in Treyz" as a known device to be modified; and WO2019114911A1's search report cites US 6,678,215 as X (novelty-destroying) art against claims 1–7 of another application (report). In each instance the '215 was treated as disclosing the alarm-clock/audio-download platform — consistent with the conclusion that its only candidate point of novelty is the short-range wireless link.

5. Dependent claims 2–4 — conditional assessment

The OG record confirms 4 claims total, but I could not verify the text of claims 2–4 from the material provided; I will not guess at their limitations. Conditionally:

• If they add a specific short-range protocol (HomeRF, Bluetooth, IR), the limitation is met by the very publications that supply the wireless element, and adds nothing beyond a known design choice among enumerated alternatives (spec itself lists "HomeRF or Bluetooth or other short-range wireless RF circuitry, IR circuitry").
• If they add AM/FM receivers, band-select switches, snooze, display or tuning controls, those are AAPA per the specification's own admissions.
• If they add remote/web configuration, content scheduling, advertisements or messaging, those features are, at minimum, well-documented in concurrent art and would require independent §102/§103 analysis on verified reference texts; I have not performed that here.

6. Conclusion

On the record available, claim 1 of US 6,678,215 would have been obvious under 35 U.S.C. §103 over the applicant's admitted prior-art clock radio in view of (a) a system for downloading selected digital audio to a personal playback device (Schulhof '442, or Lopes '862 / Qureshey), and (b) contemporaneous short-range wireless home-networking technology (Bluetooth 1.0 / HomeRF SWAP / 802.11; cf. Gaskill '559 and the spec's own enumeration of these protocols). Every element is disclosed or is a predictable substitution of a known wireless link for a known wired one, with a clear, articulated motivation. The dependent claims require the additional reference texts to assess definitively.

Data-quality note (literal reading preserved): the source page renders "FireWire (IEEE 1492)"; I have quoted it as-is and flag it only as an apparent typographical inconsistency in the source, not as a correction.