US 6775264

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

Let me search for 2026 CAFC activity specifically involving this patent and for its litigation history.

Let me do one final targeted check for any IPR or 2026 docket activity naming this specific patent.

US Patent 6,775,264 — Analyst Summary

Important scoping note up front

I searched for the exact identifier 6,775,264. Live search results did not surface any 2026 CAFC docket, appeal, or IPR that names U.S. Patent 6,775,264 itself as the patent-in-suit. What 2026 activity exists involving the patent's owner, Parus Holdings, Inc., concerns different patents in the same family (e.g., 6,721,705; 7,881,941; 8,185,402; 9,451,084; 7,076,431). I flag this explicitly rather than attributing that litigation to the '264 patent. Details below.

Bibliographic data (from the authoritative patent text at https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6775264](/patent/US6775264)/en)

Abstract (verbatim)

"A method and apparatus for a computer and telecommunication network which can receive, send and manage information from or to a subscriber of the network, based on the subscriber's configuration. The network is made up of at least one cluster containing voice servers which allow for telephony, speech recognition, text-to-speech and conferencing functions, and is accessible by the subscriber through standard telephone connections or through internet connections. The network also utilizes a database and file server allowing the subscriber to maintain and manage certain contact lists and administrative information. A web server is also connected to the cluster thereby allowing access to all functions through internet connections."

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Claim 1 — The "network" claim (system).
A computer-and-telephone network for two-way, subscriber-controlled messaging. It requires four cooperating pieces:

1. At least one cluster with at least one voice server that includes both telephony and speaker-independent speech command recognition and execution, reachable by the subscriber over a first ordinary telephone line and a first Internet connection;
2. At least one database server connected to the cluster holding contact lists and administrative data the subscriber can manipulate/manage;
3. At least one file server connected to the cluster; and
4. A web server connected to the cluster so the subscriber can reach the network via the first Internet connection.

The network must also receive a first message (inbound) from a second telephone connection and a second Internet connection and either deliver that message to the subscriber's device or send a notification about it, over the first telephone or first Internet connection; and it must accept a second message from the subscriber over the first telephone/Internet connections and transmit it out over the second telephone or second Internet connection based on the subscriber's commands. In short: an integrated voice/data gateway with both PSTN and IP legs, two-way message flow, and subscriber-configured routing.

Claim 5 — The "method" claim (inbound / notification variant).
The method counterpart of Claim 1. It recites the steps of providing the same architecture (cluster with a speech-recognizing voice server accessible by phone and Internet; database server with contact lists and administrative data; file server; web server), then receiving a first message from a second telephone connection and a second message from a second Internet connection and transmitting those messages to the subscriber device — or sending a notification about them — via the first telephone or first Internet connection, based on commands received from the subscriber.

Claim 9 — The "method" claim (outbound / subscriber-originated variant).
Also a method claim reciting the same provisioning steps, but directed at subscriber-originated messaging: receiving a first message from the subscriber via the first telephone connection, receiving a second message from the subscriber via the first Internet connection, and transmitting those messages out via a second telephone connection or second Internet connection based on the subscriber's commands.

Representative dependent claims (context for scope): claims 2/6/10 define the "message" as telephone calls, e-mail, faxes, conference calls or voice-mail; claims 3–4/7–8/11–12 cover creating/modifying contact lists and using them to place calls, send e-mail/voice-mail/faxes and set up conferences; claims 13–17 cover subscriber-issued (speech) commands interpreted by the speaker-independent recognizer, including naturally spoken speech; claims 18–25 are the method analogs; claims 26–28 define the "subscriber communication device" as a cellular phone, pager, personal computer, fax machine, electronic mailbox or voice-mail service.

Note on a literal-reading irregularity: claims 6, 7, 8, 10, 11 and 12 refer to "The computer and telecommunications network described in claim 5/9" even though claims 5 and 9 are drafted as methods. Per the instruction to interpret identifiers literally, this is how the granted text reads; it appears to be a drafting artifact rather than a different claim type.

Family / prosecution context

• The '264 patent is the parent of a large Parus voice-browser family sharing the 1997-03-03 priority. Related filings listed in the record include:
  • US 09/260,279 (continuation-in-part) → US 6,807,257 B1
  • US 10/877,366 (continuation) → publication US 2008/0123623 A1 (abandoned)
  • US 10/877,367 (continuation) → US 7,327,723 B2
  • Later descendants include US 8,098,600; 8,838,074; 8,843,120; 8,843,141; 9,451,084; 10,038,663; 9,912,628; 9,571,445.
• The '264 patent is expressly identified as a "related matter" (application 09/033,335 → Patent 6,775,264) in Parus PTAB filings, e.g., mandatory notices in CBM2015-00151 (PNC Bank / SunTrust petition) — https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/CBM2015-00151/... — alongside 7,327,723 and 6,807,257.

2026 CAFC / litigation check (and why it does NOT name '264)

The 2026 appellate activity involving Parus Holdings concerns other patents in the family, not 6,775,264:

• Google LLC v. Parus Holdings, Inc., No. 24-2381 (Fed. Cir. July 13, 2026, nonprecedential) — vacated and remanded the PTAB's final written decision upholding claims 1 and 2 of U.S. 6,721,705. The court found APA errors: the Board read the Burrows reference in isolation rather than as part of the asserted combination; it construed "unexpected response" without giving Google notice/opportunity to respond; and it failed to address Google's argument that the outcome conflicted with the Board's earlier decisions in the related '941/'402 IPRs. Sources: https://fedcircuitblog.com/2026/07/13/opinions-orders-july-13-2026/ ; https://ipwatchdog.com/2026/07/14/cafc-vacates-ptab-ruling-for-patent-owner-in-google-ipr/ ; opinion PDF at https://cases.justia.com/federal/appellate-courts/cafc/24-2381/24-2381-2026-07-13.pdf
• Earlier Parus v. Google appeals (22-1269, 22-1270, decided 2023; and 23-2297 re U.S. 8,185,402, decided 2025) likewise involved the voice-browser patents, not '264.
• 2026 Parus-related district-court activity is a legal-malpractice dispute with Mintz Levin (Parus Holdings v. Mintz, W.D. Tex. No. 1:25-cv-01722; parallel D. Mass. action) — this concerns IPR work on U.S. 9,451,084 (the "'431/'084" patents), again not 6,775,264.

Uncertainty statement

• I found no authoritative record of 6,775,264 being asserted in district court, being the subject of an IPR/CBM, or appearing on a 2026 CAFC docket. Its record shows it as an expired (2018) family parent, referenced as a "related matter" in the 2015 PTAB filings.
• The '264 patent's very early grant (2004) and 2018 expiration make it an unlikely candidate for current enforcement, which is consistent with the absence of 2026 docket entries specifically naming it.
• Claim-type labeling irregularities (method claims referenced as "network" in dependent claims 6–8, 10–12) are reproduced here as literally written and should not be treated as corrected.
• Search results dated July 2026 appeared in my queries; if your working date is April 2026, note that some surfaced items post-date it. I have reported them verbatim rather than suppressing them.

Primary source cited: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6775264/en (full text, claims, family, and assignment history).

I'll search specifically for litigation naming U.S. Patent 6,775,264.

Let me dig deeper into litigation databases and the patent's enforcement history.

Let me look for whether '264 itself was ever asserted, and check the Web Telephony case and PTAB records.

Bottom line

I could not find any litigation that names U.S. Patent 6,775,264 ("the '264 patent") as a patent-in-suit — in district court, at the PTAB, or on appeal. Searches of patent-litigation aggregators (Unified Patents portal, RPX Insight, Docket Alarm, PTAB dockets, CourtListener, CAFC results) returned the '264 patent only as (a) a genealogy/citation node in the prosecution histories and prior-art listings of later Parus family members, (b) a double-patenting reference cited by examiners against descendants (e.g., claims 1 and 12 of Appl. 13/944,732 rejected over claims 1 and 5 of '264), and (c) a "related matter" in Parus's 2015 CBM mandatory notices. None of those is an assertion of '264.

Given the strict instruction not to conflate similar numbers, I am reporting this as a negative finding with an explicit confidence caveat rather than attributing any Parus case to '264.

What I actually verified, case by case

Note on the Google/Parus line: The patents in Parus's active enforcement/acquisition program are consistently the voice-browser patents ('705, '941, '402, '431, '084) and the later "Computer, Internet and Telecommunications Based Network" continuations ('600, '074, '120, '141, '723). The '264 patent, by contrast, is the 1998-filed parent that expired March 2, 2018 — consistent with its absence from any 2015-2026 assertion.

PTAB: no petition against '264 found

• CBM2015-00151 (PNC Bank / SunTrust) lists application 09/033,335 → Patent 6,775,264 as a "related matter" alongside 7,327,723 and 6,807,257 — https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/CBM2015-00151/. Being a related matter in someone else's petition is not a challenge to '264.
• I found no IPR, CBM, or PGR petition naming 6,775,264 as the challenged patent.

Aggregator pages that exist but did not yield an assertion list

• Unified Patents patent page for the '264 patent: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-6775264-B1 — the content returned to me was patent art/continuity data, not a confirming litigation record for '264.
• Google Patents carries a family-level banner "Family has litigation" (Darts-IP family 32829200): https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6775264](/patent/US6775264)/en. That flag is family-level, not patent-level, and I did not retrieve a Darts-IP case list mapping any specific case to '264. I decline to treat it as proof of a '264 suit.

Contradiction I am obligated to flag

The previously generated section of this analysis (authored under a working date after July 2026) reports the Google LLC v. Parus Holdings, Inc., No. 24-2381 decision and the Parus Holdings v. Mintz malpractice matter (W.D. Tex. No. 1:25-cv-01722). The present task states the current date is April 26, 2026. My own search results also returned documents dated June and July 2026 (e.g., the CAFC opinion of July 13, 2026, and IPWatchdog's July 14, 2026 article).

• I am reporting those items verbatim as surfaced rather than suppressing them, per the instruction to prefer search results over prior assumptions.
• I am flagging that some surfaced material post-dates the stated working date of April 26, 2026. Either the current-date input is stale, or the search index is returning future-dated items. This does not change the substantive finding, because none of those items names '264.

Direct answer to your question

No known litigation involving U.S. Patent 6,775,264 was found. Accordingly, I cannot supply a plaintiff / defendant / jurisdiction / case number / filing date / outcome row for '264, because no such case is evidenced in the records I retrieved. The closest item is the 2006 N.D. Ill. ownership-and-trade-secret action, Parus Holdings, Inc. v. Web Telephony LLC & Robert Swartz, No. 06-cv-01146 — but the sources I retrieved characterize it as an ownership/priority and misappropriation suit, and I could not confirm that '264 was pleaded as an infringed patent in it. I will not present it as a confirmed '264 infringement case.

Confidence and recommended verification (since aggregator coverage of a 2018-expired patent is thin)

1. PACER / Lex Machina / Docket Navigator docket-text query on "6,775,264" and "6775264" across all district courts (1963-2015 data is also in the USPTO OCE Patent Litigation Dataset — https://data.commerce.gov/oce-patent-litigation-cases-api-version-1) to catch any pre-2015 assertion.
2. USPTO PTAB API / PTAB Center for any post-grant proceeding where 6775264 is the challenged patent.
3. Darts-IP family 32829200 to expand the family-level "has litigation" flag into named cases, then filter out the sibling patents.
4. Banner & Witcoff docket (06-cv-01146) to see the complaint exhibits and confirm which patent numbers were pleaded.

I cannot complete those four steps with the tools available in this session, and I would rather leave the '264 question open than misattribute a sibling patent's case to it.

I'll verify the structured-data conclusion against live sources before writing, since the prior sections flagged a CBM in the same family (CBM2015-00151) that referenced '264 only as a "related matter."

Let me resolve one loose end: two of the eight 2015 PNС/SunTrust CBM numbers (‑00110 and ‑00150) aren't accounted for by the three patents I identified, and I want to confirm none targeted '264.

AIA Trial Proceedings — US Patent 6,775,264

Proceedings overview

There are zero (0) AIA trial proceedings on file against U.S. Patent 6,775,264 — no IPR, no PGR, and no CBM has ever been filed, instituted, or decided on this patent — which means the breakdown by status is trivially 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution-denied, and the defensive posture it gives a defendant is neither "hardened" nor "wounded": the '264 claims (1, 5 and 9, and all 28 dependents) are entirely UNTESTED at the Board, so there is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel of any kind attached to them, but also no free kill-shot in the form of a prior FWD canceling claims.

I want to be precise about what "zero" means here, because the '264 patent sits at the head of one of the most heavily-attacked families in PTAB history. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO Open Data Portal) returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent as of the most recent ingest, and my independent search confirms it: every Parus AIA trial I could locate names a different patent in the '264 family as the patent under challenge. The '264 appears in those records only as (a) a "related matter" in mandatory notices under 37 C.F.R. § 42.8(b)(2), and (b) an examiner's obviousness-type double-patenting reference during prosecution of a later family member. Neither creates a proceeding against '264.

Family-adjacent proceedings (NOT proceedings against '264 — do not attribute these outcomes to it)

I include this because the practical question a defendant asks is "what happened when Parus got attacked," and the honest answer is: the attacks all landed on the descendants, never on the '264 itself. These are listed so the record is clear, and each is explicitly flagged as involving a different patent.

Key sources. The four 2015 CBM denials (eight case numbers, four patents) are captioned together in PNC Bank, N.A. v. Parus Holdings, Inc., CBM2015-00109/-00110/-00111/-00112/-00149/-00150/-00151/-00152, Paper 10 (P.T.A.B. 2015-11-09) — https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/CBM2015-00151/Covered_Business_Method_Patent_Review_of_U.S._Pat._8843141/docs/11-09-2015-Board/Institution_Decision-10-Decision_Denying_Institution_of_Covered_Business_Method_Patent_Reviews.pdf. The Board's reasoning was narrow: petitioner failed to show the claims were directed to a "financial product or service" under AIA § 18(a)(1)(E), because the claims recite nothing "addressing financing, commerce, or the movement of money" (CBM2015-00109/-00149 panel reasoning, as summarized at https://natlawreview.com/node/55212/printable/pdf). Panels for the 2015 CBMs were APJs David C. McKone and Bart Gerstenblith (per the 2015-11-05 conference-call transcript, Pet. Ex. 1012).

The two 2020 Google IPRs produced the Parus Holdings, Inc. v. Google LLC, 70 F.4th 1365 (Fed. Cir. 2023-06-12) decision — https://storage.courtlistener.com/pdf/2023/06/12/parus_holdings_inc._v._google_llc_1.pdf — in which the Federal Circuit held the Board properly refused to consider Parus's antedating evidence because it was incorporated by reference in violation of 37 C.F.R. § 42.6(a)(3), and that a patent owner attempting to antedate art assumes a temporary burden of production that "cannot be met simply by throwing mountains of evidence at the Board without explanation." That holding is a family-wide evidentiary lesson, not a '264 holding.

The '705 IPR is the one currently alive on appeal. Google LLC v. Parus Holdings, Inc., No. 24-2381 (Fed. Cir. 2026-07-13, nonprecedential) — https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/[10927201](/patent/10927201)/google-llc-v-parus-holdings-inc/ and opinion PDF at https://cases.justia.com/federal/appellate-courts/cafc/24-2381/24-2381-2026-07-13.pdf. The court vacated the Board's decision upholding claims 1 and 2 of the '705 patent on three APA grounds: the Board read Burrows in isolation rather than as part of the asserted combination; it construed "unexpected response" without giving Google notice or an opportunity to respond; and it failed to address Google's argument that the outcome conflicted with the Board's earlier '941/'402 decisions.

How '264 actually shows up in the PTAB/prosecution record

There are exactly two documented appearances, and neither is a challenge to the patent:

1. Mandatory notice "related matter." Parus listed application 09/033,335 → Patent 6,775,264 as a related matter in its § 42.8(a)(2) notices in the 2015 CBM filings, alongside 7,327,723 and 6,807,257. This is a disclosure obligation, not an attack.

2. '264 as the double-patenting anchor. During prosecution of application 13/944,732 (which issued as US 8,843,141), the examiner rejected claims 1 and 12 under nonstatutory obviousness-type double patenting "as being unpatentable over claims 1 and 5 of U.S. Patent No. 6775264 (Application no. 09/033335)." See the '141 file history reproduced as PNC/SunTrust Exhibit 1002, at https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/CBM2015-00111/Covered_Business_Method_Patent_Review_of_U.S._Pat._8843141/docs/05-01-2015-Petitioner/Exhibit-1002-PNC_SUNTRUST_EXHIBIT_1002.pdf. Applicant responded that "the term for the '264 patent as well as the above-noted pending applications expires 20 years from the effective filing date of March 2, 1998 (expiration date of March 2, 2018)."

That second item is the most probative thing in the whole record for a defendant, for two reasons. First, it confirms that claims 1 and 5 of '264 were treated by the examiner as the family's broad anchor claims — the claims the later continuations had to be distinguished from. Second, it confirms the expiration date of 2018-03-02, which is consistent with the Google Patents record showing anticipated expiration 2018-03-02 and legal status "Expired – Lifetime."

Strategic summary

Claim status. As of 2026-09-25, claims 1–28 of US 6,775,264 are UNTESTED — not canceled, not sustained, not construed by any PTAB panel. Compare the family: the '431 and '084 claims are largely dead (canceled and affirmed on appeal); the '074, '120, '141 and '600 claims were held § 101-ineligible by the District of Delaware in Parus Holdings, Inc. v. Sallie Mae Bank / PNC Bank / SunTrust and those judgments were affirmed without opinion (Fed. Cir. Nos. 2016-1179/-1180/-1181, judgment entered 2017-02-27 per the reference list in US 10,629,206); the '705 claims 1–2 are back before the Board on remand as of 2026-07-13. The '264 itself has never been adjudicated anywhere at the Board.

Estoppel landscape. Because no petition against '264 was ever instituted, there is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel against anyone on '264 — not against Google, Apple, Samsung, LG, PNC, SunTrust, or any privy. Institution denial in the 2015 CBMs (and Apple's pre-institution settlement in IPR2023-00303) means no estoppel attached even for those parties. Consequently, every prior-art ground is still available: the defendant is not limited to grounds "raised or reasonably could have been raised" by an earlier petitioner. The practical corollary is that the family record is fully usable as a road map without estoppel risk — the Kovatch/Wise/Burrows/Kurganov-262 art that killed the '431 and '084 claims, and the § 112 written-description attack on priority that the Board credited in the '431/'084 IPRs, are all on the table for '264.

Pattern signals. The same petitioners have hit this family repeatedly and from multiple directions — PNC/SunTrust with eight coordinated CBMs in 2015, then Google/Samsung/LG with paired IPRs in 2020, then Google again in 2021–2022, and Apple in 2022 — and Parus has litigated hard, appealing to the Federal Circuit at least four times (2023, 2025, 2026, and the 2017 family § 101 appeals). There is no defensive aggregator (e.g., Unified Patents) in the chain that I could identify; the petitioners are all operating companies defending infringement suits that Parus filed in the Western District of Texas in 2019. Notably, despite this sustained assault, no petitioner ever aimed at '264 — consistent with its 2018 expiration making it economically pointless to challenge.

Caveat on a family-record discrepancy. A secondary source (Patsnap) characterizes Fed. Cir. No. 23-2297 as an affirmance of '402 invalidity under § 101, while the Federal Circuit's own summary describes the '941 and '402 Board decisions as obviousness holdings "summarily affirmed" in 2025 (Fed. Cir. Rule 36 judgment in No. 23-2296 posted 2025-03-06, https://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/2025/03/06/page/3/). I flag this as an unresolved conflict in the sources rather than picking a winner — in either event it concerns the '402, not the '264.

Recommended next steps

If you are a defendant being asserted against '264: there is no FWD to quote and no canceled claim to point at, so the "the troll's claims are dead" argument is unavailable. Your leverage lies elsewhere, and you should verify each of these yourself before relying on it:

1. Check whether you can be liable for anything at all. The '264 expired 2018-03-02 (confirmed both by the Google Patents legal-status field and by applicant's own representation in the '141 file history). Under 35 U.S.C. § 286, damages reach back only six years from the filing of a complaint. A complaint filed now could reach back only to roughly 2020 — after expiration. My analysis is that the recoverable-damages window on '264 is effectively closed, but this is my reasoning, not a Board or court holding, and you should confirm it against the specific demand and any pre-issuance notice dates.

2. IPR is technically still available. Nothing in § 311 limits IPR to unexpired patents, and because '264 was (so far as the record shows) never asserted against you, there is no § 315(b) one-year bar and, per the estoppel analysis above, no § 315(e)(2) estoppel from the family proceedings. The real question is whether it is worth the fee to invalidate clams that carry no damages exposure. If the demand letter nonetheless cites '264, an IPR (or an ex parte reexam, which can be filed anonymously and has no estoppel consequence) is a clean, uncontaminated vehicle — you would be the first petitioner ever to test these claims.

3. If the demand letter cites a family member instead, do not conflate them. Confirm the exact patent number on the face of the letter. If it names 7,076,431 or 9,451,084, the FWDs (Paper 31 in IPR2020-00846 and IPR2020-00847, both dated 2021-10-19) are directly dispositive as to the listed claims and the assertion may be sanction-exposed. If it names 6,775,264, none of that transfers.

4. Preserve the § 112/priority argument. PNC and SunTrust's 2015 petition against the '600 patent affirmatively attacked the 60/040,056 provisional as failing to disclose "receiving and transmitting all types of 'messages' over all types of 'internet connection[s]'" and as failing to disclose text-to-speech (Petition, US 8,098,600, https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1458377](/patent/1458377)/download-documents). The '264 claims its priority from that same provisional. If a defendant can push '264's effective date from 1997-03-03 back to its 1998-03-02 filing date, intervening 1997–1998 art becomes available — but the Board's treatment of this argument in the '600 CBM is procedurally muddied because institution was denied. This is a lead to develop with an expert declaration, not a conclusion.

If you are looking for the canonical proceeding list: query PTAB E2E directly at https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptabweb using the application number 09/033,335 (not just the patent number — this patent's family has a dozen members and the case numbers are easy to mix up), and cross-check the Google Patents "Family Applications" table at https://patents.google.com/patent/US6775264/en. Both sources agree: no AIA trial has ever been filed against US 6,775,264.

I'll research the assignment record for this patent. Let me run several targeted searches.

I found several useful data points. Let me dig deeper into the specific reel/frame records and correspondents.

Assignment & Ownership Chain — US 6,775,264 (Kurganov / Webley Systems / Parus Holdings)

Scope note / data limitation (read first). The patent's own record and Google Patents' legal-events table give me the sequence and types of recorded transfers, and one confirmed reel/frame. They do not give me, in the material I could retrieve, the reel/frame for every link or the correspondent of record for the '264 assignments. I flag each such gap below rather than filling it with the nearest available name. In particular, the correspondent I did surface (Steve Z. Szczepanski, Kelly, Drye & Warren LLP, Chicago) appears on a different Parus application (09/777,406), and the Mintz Levin attorneys (Michael J. McNamara / Michael T. Renaud) are Parus litigation counsel in IPRs, not the assignment correspondent for '264. I have not attributed either to the '264 record.

Inventors

Only one inventor is named. This is notable: the family's later patents (e.g., US 7,881,941) add co-inventor Valery Zhukoff, but the '264 patent is sole-inventor Kurganov.

Unusual pattern — flagged. Kurganov is an industry-lateral inventor, not a typical lone-founder: his career record shows prior employment at Dytel Corp. (call-processing equipment, Schaumburg, IL), then Vail Systems (VP–Engineering), then Webley. The very first recorded assignment runs inventor → Vail Systems, not inventor → Webley, i.e., the invention-assignment obligation that was honored was the Vail employment agreement. The application was nonetheless filed (1998-03-02) naming Webley Systems, Inc. as applicant. So the first ~5 months of ownership sat with Vail and had to be papered back to Webley in November 1998 (see timeline). That is a title-cleanup artifact, not a fire-sale, but it is the kind of defect that later spawns the malpractice and inventorship litigation noted below. Separately, a 2009 Comcast-related filing records that "Alex Kurganov, the engineer Comcast claims is the rightful inventor of the patents in suit, is a resident of California" — i.e., inventorship of this family was later contested. (Source: https://cases.justia.com/federal/district-courts/texas/txedce/2:2009cv00116/[115836/201](https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/search/patent/reelFrameDetail?reelFrame=115836-0201)/0.pdf)

I found no evidence of inventors departing the assignee within 12 months of filing. Kurganov remained tied to Webley/Parus for decades (Parus' own briefing calls him "Parus' Chief Technology Officer" and "the primary innovator and inventor of the System").

Original assignee

Webley Systems, Inc. (Bannockburn, IL) — named as assignee on the face of the issued patent and as the applicant of record on 1998-03-02.

• Primary line of business: speech-enabled unified messaging / telecommunications — the "Webley Assistant," a follow-me, voice-mail, e-mail, fax and conferencing service. This is not a paper entity; contemporaneous testimony (Hal Poel, SVP Marketing & Product Development, Webley Systems) describes a working beta of the "Webley Assistant" by December 1999 and 1999 demos of voice retrieval of weather via the phone at AOL and investor offices. (Source: Exhibit 2043, IPR2022-00523, https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/[PTAB](/ptab)/IPR2022-00523/...)
• Product embodying the claims: Yes — the Webley Assistant/Webley unified-messaging service practiced the claimed PSTN+IP messaging architecture.
• Current status: Webley Systems, Inc. (Illinois) merged into Webley Systems, Inc. (Delaware) in the 2004 reorganization; the surviving enterprise was renamed/reorganized as Parus Holdings, Inc., which is the current assignee of record. Vail Systems, Inc. remains an independent, operating Illinois telephony-software company (its RACC/Cue platforms are still marketed). Dytel Corp. was acquired by Enghouse Systems in 1992.

Assignment timeline

Chronological, from the Google Patents legal-events record for US 6,775,264 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US6775264/en) and the USPTO corrective-assignment citation that appears in that record. Execution dates are generally not exposed in the material I could retrieve; dates shown are the recording/reassignment dates unless noted.

• 1998-08-03 (recorded — execution date not exposed) — Reel not retrievable from retrieved sources / Frame not retrievable

  • Conveyance: Assignment (of assignors' interest)
  • Assignor: KURGANOV, ALEX
  • Assignee: VAIL SYSTEMS, INC.
  • Correspondent: not available in the sources retrieved — flag as a gap; this is the single most important missing field for NPE-pattern analysis.
  • Context: Inventor-to-employer cleanup — Kurganov was a Vail engineering executive; the filing named Webley, so the Vail interest had to be papered.

• 1998-11-20 (recorded) — Reel/Frame not retrievable

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: VAIL SYSTEMS, INC.
  • Assignee: WEBLEY SYSTEMS, INC.
  • Correspondent: not retrievable
  • Context: Title consolidation into the operating startup that actually built the product — internal, not a sale.

• 2004-08-25 (recorded) — Reel/Frame not retrievable

  • Conveyance: Merger
  • Assignor: WEBLEY SYSTEMS, INC. (ILLINOIS)
  • Assignee: WEBLEY SYSTEMS, INC. (DELAWARE)
  • Correspondent: not retrievable
  • Context: Internal corporate reorganization (Illinois → Delaware redomicile), i.e., change of corporate form, not a change of economic owner.

• 2004-08-25 (recorded) — Reel/Frame not retrievable; anomaly flagged — the record shows a second "VAIL SYSTEMS, INC. → WEBLEY SYSTEMS, INC." assignment entry dated 2004-08-25 in addition to the 1998-11-20 entry. This looks like a re-recording/correction or a data artifact in the legal-events table; I cannot confirm which. It should not be read as a second, later Vail transfer.

• 2004-08-25 (recorded) — Reel 015083 / Frame 0066 (confirmed via the corrective assignment that cites it)

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: WEBLEY SYSTEMS, INC. (DELAWARE)
  • Assignee: PARUS HOLDINGS, INC.
  • Correspondent: not retrievable from retrieved sources
  • Context: Transfer to the licensing/assertion parent. This is the operative hand-off from the operating company to the entity that subsequently asserted the family.

• 2004-09-17 (recorded) — Reel/Frame new recording (correcting Reel 015083 / Frame 0066)

  • Conveyance: Corrective Assignment — "to correct the execution date, previously recorded at Reel 015083, Frame 0066"
  • Assignor: WEBLEY SYSTEMS, INC. (DELAWARE)
  • Assignee: PARUS HOLDINGS, INC.
  • Correspondent: not retrievable
  • Context: Housekeeping to fix the wrong execution date on the Parus transfer — consistent with a rushed 2004 reorganization, not with an arm's-length purchase.

Related-family reel/frame (context only — NOT this patent). A 37 CFR 3.73(c) chain-of-title statement for a different Parus application (12/973,475, "Robust Voice Browser System") shows: Kurganov & Zhukoff → Webley Systems at Reel 033922, Frame 0418, and Webley Systems onward at Reel 033922, Frame 0431. Those reel/frames belong to the later family members and must not be attributed to '264.

Terminus. The recorded chain ends at Parus Holdings, Inc. No further assignment of '264 appears in the record. The patent expired 2018-03-02 (anticipated expiration, per legal-status data).

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6775264
    1997 : Provisional filed
    1998 : Application filed by Webley
         : Inventor assigns to Vail Systems
         : Vail assigns to Webley Systems
    2004 : Illinois Webley merges into Delaware Webley
         : Webley assigns to Parus Holdings
         : Corrective assignment recorded
    2018 : Patent expires

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — UNCLEAR (partial). The chain does move from the operating Webley Systems to a "Holdings"-suffixed entity, Parus Holdings, Inc. (Reel 015083/0066, recorded 2004-08-25; corrected 2004-09-17). But Parus is the corporate successor of the operating company via the Illinois→Delaware merger, carries a fixed principal address (Bannockburn, IL) and a separate real operating history — not an anonymous single-purpose LLC at a registered-agent address. On naming alone I will not call this present; the record supports an internal reorganization, with the assertion-entity posture emerging only later.

2. Known asserter in the chain — PRESENT. The record owner is Parus Holdings, Inc., a high-volume patent plaintiff. Documented campaigns include Parus v. Apple (6:19-cv-00432-ADA), v. Amazon (6:19-cv-00454-ADA), v. Google (6:19-cv-00433-ADA), v. Samsung (6:19-cv-00438-ADA), v. LG (6:19-cv-00437-ADA) (all W.D. Tex.), Parus v. Charles Schwab (E.D. Tex. 2:21-cv-00393, asserting the sibling '723 patent and adding Fidelity and Capital One as co-defendants), plus PTAB proceedings IPR2020-00846/00847 and IPR2022-00523/00805. (Sources: Parus mandatory notices, https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2020-00846/...; Unicourt docket, https://unicourt.com/case/pc-db5-parus-holdings-inc-v-charles-schwab-corporation-[1062931](/patent/1062931).) Caveat, stated plainly: every one of those assertions involves sibling family patents ('723, '705, '431, '084, '941, '402) — I found no assertion of '264 itself, which expired in 2018. The asserter signal attaches to the owner, not to this specific patent's docket.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — INSUFFICIENT DATA. I could not retrieve the correspondent of record for any '264 assignment, so I cannot test for recurrence. I explicitly decline to substitute the two adjacent names I did find — Steve Z. Szczepanski (Kelly, Drye & Warren LLP, Chicago) on application 09/777,406, and Michael J. McNamara / Michael T. Renaud (Mintz Levin) as IPR counsel — neither is established as the '264 recording correspondent.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT. The transfers cluster in two discrete periods (1998 and 2004) and are four-to-six links over ~six years, not consecutive LLC-to-LLC hops inside 24 months. The 2004 events are a merger + a single transfer + a corrective re-record — a reorganization, not an aggregation cascade.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT. The final transfer (2004-08-25) long predates the earliest family assertion I can date (Parus v. Web Telephony LLC & Robert Swartz, N.D. Ill. 06-cv-01146, 2006) and everything after. There is no 6-months-before-suit assignment tied to '264, which is unsurprising since '264 was never asserted.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. No Chapter 7/11 proceeding, sale order, or distressed transfer involving Vail Systems, Webley Systems, or Parus Holdings surfaced in the record or searches.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT (with a nuance). Parus is not an unrelated NPE asserting on a third-party operating company's behalf; it is Webley's corporate successor. The nuance: the family's later, post-operating-business assertion campaign against Apple/Google/Samsung/LG and financial institutions is functionally the kind of monetization privateering describes, but the classic "operating company hires an NPE to hit competitors" fact pattern (SEC disclosure / Patent Progress coverage) is absent.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT. The chain does not terminate at RPX, Allied Security Trust, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. It terminates at an asserting entity.

Verdict

NPE — moderate confidence.

One strong signal is present: the recorded chain terminates at Parus Holdings, Inc. (Reel 015083/0066, recorded 2004-08-25; corrected 2004-09-17), a court-documented high-volume patent plaintiff that ships no products and has asserted the surrounding family against Apple, Google, Amazon, Samsung, LG, Charles Schwab, Fidelity and Capital One. The shell-transfer indicator is only unclear — the '264 chain itself reads as an internal Illinois→Delaware reorganization of an operating company (Webley) plus a corrective re-record, not a transfer into an anonymous licensing LLC — which is why this lands at moderate rather than high. The decisive caveat: '264 expired 2018-03-02 and shows no assertion history of its own, so the NPE character is inherited from the owner and its sibling patents, not from any '264 enforcement activity. (Cross-reference/consistency check with the prior summary: it likewise found no '264 assertion or IPR and attributed Parus' 2019–2026 campaigns to other family members — consistent; the new detail here is the confirmed Reel 015083/0066 Parus transfer and the 2004 merger/corrective-assignment sequence.)

Verification: USPTO Patent Assignment Search — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search "6775264"; also indexed at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html). Confirm Reel 015083/Frame 0066 and pull the correspondent-of-record fields, which are the one material gap in this reconstruction.

I'll research the prior-art citations for US 6,775,264, since the authoritative text I was given truncates the citation list at US 5,020,095.

I have a partial citation list (truncated at US 5,020,095). Let me retrieve the complete "References Cited" list for this patent.

I found a strong secondary source (Unified Patents' "Patent Art" list for US-6775264-B1). Let me pull the complete "References Cited" list and the Justia record.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 6,775,264 B1

"Computer, internet and telecommunications based network" (Kurganov; Webley Systems / Parus Holdings)

0. Source, scope, and method notes (read first)

USPTO record used. I relied on the authoritative full text of US 6,775,264 B1 at https://patents.google.com/patent/US6775264/en (a mirror of the USPTO/Espacenet record; USPTO PatentCenter and Espacenet links are listed on that page). I did not substitute results for any similar-looking number. A commercial citation record (Unified Patents, "Patent Art (99)": https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-6775264-B1) and the Justia family record were used only to supplement the reference list.

Important truncation caveat. The authoritative text I was given reproduces the "Citations (91)" table only up to US 5,020,095 (roughly item 21 of 91). The remaining ~70 entries were cut off. I have:

• fully verbatim confirmed the first ~21 cited U.S. patents (full number, filing date, issue date, assignee, title), and
• recovered additional cited/related references from the Unified Patents "Patent Art" record and family records, flagged below as ⚠ secondary-source because I could not verify each against the face of the printed patent before my search budget was exhausted.

Legal framework. The '264 patent was filed 1998-03-02 with a 1997-03-03 priority (prov. 60/040,056). It is governed by pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102. The § 102(b) one-year critical date is therefore 1996-03-03; references published before then are § 102(b) art, and earlier-filed U.S. patents/applications that issued later are § 102(e) art. All references below predate the 1997 priority date.

Reality check on "anticipation." Every cited reference predates the commercial Internet/web by design. For a reference to anticipate (not merely be relevant to) independent claims 1, 5, or 9, it must disclose all of: (i) a cluster with a voice server having speaker-independent speech-command recognition; (ii) a database server with subscriber-manipulable contact lists; (iii) a file server; (iv) a web server; and (v) two-way message flow over both PSTN and Internet legs. No cited reference does all of this. The art cited by the examiner is element-level art. I therefore treat each reference as "potentially anticipates [claim] only if the remaining limitations are supplied" and state that qualification explicitly — this is honest rather than overstated.

1. Claim-element map (the yardstick for § 102)

2. TIER 1 — Most relevant cited prior art (best § 102 candidates)

These are the references that come closest to the novelty-bearing elements E2/E7/E8/E9.

2.1 US 4,757,525 — Electronic audio communications system with voice command features

• Full citation: U.S. Patent 4,757,525 (VMX, Inc.); filed 1982-09-29; issued 1988-07-12.
• Description (confirmed from the patent's own text): A message system that stores/forwards voice messages, in which a subscriber controls the system with spoken command words. Crucially, it stores "a set of speaker independent command word templates," compares the caller's audio to those templates, and effects the matched control function (play, store, forward, numeric entry). It also lists the possible control functions to the user audibly.
• § 102 relevance: Directly implicates E2 and the command/control architecture. It is the closest cited art to the speaker-independent limitation that the '264 specification and claims 14–17/20/22 emphasize. Potential § 102(a)/(b) art against claims 14–17, 19–22, 25 — but only for the speech-recognition limitations, not the Internet/web-server elements.

2.2 US 4,761,807 — Electronic audio communications system with voice authentication features

• Full citation: U.S. Patent 4,761,807 (VMX, Inc.); filed 1982-09-29; issued 1988-08-02.
• Description: Companion to 4,757,525; adds voice-template authentication of an authorized user (stored identification code + voice templates) before granting access to stored messages.
• § 102 relevance: Bears on the '264 spec's "security and fraud" and voice-authenticated access. Potential art against claims 13–17, 20, 22 (command issuance/interpretation). Not anticipatory of any independent claim.

2.3 US 4,837,798 — Communication system having unified messaging

• Full citation: U.S. Patent 4,837,798 (AT&T / Bell Telephone Laboratories); filed 1986-06-02; issued 1989-06-06.
• Description: The canonical early unified-messaging patent — integrates voice messages and text/e-mail-like messages into a single mailbox the user can access and manage.
• § 102 relevance: This is the single most probative cited reference for the "unified" messaging concept underlying E9 (message = calls/e-mail/voicemail). Potential art against claims 2, 6, 10, and — combined with other art — the messaging limitations of claims 1, 5, 9. It lacks every network/web element (E3–E6).

2.4 US 4,972,462 — Multimedia mail system

• Full citation: U.S. Patent 4,972,462 (Hitachi, Ltd.); filed 1987-09-29; issued 1990-11-20.
• Description: A multimedia mail system handling voice and text message types in one store-and-forward system.
• § 102 relevance: Reinforces E9 (multiple message types, including non-voice) and E10 ("electronic mailbox"). Potential art against claims 2, 6, 10, 26–28.

2.5 US 6,233,318 B1 — System for accessing multimedia mailboxes and messages over the Internet and via telephone ⚠ secondary-source

• Full citation: U.S. Patent 6,233,318 B1 (Mitel Mobility, Inc.); priority 1996-11-04; issued 2001-05-15.
• Description: A system allowing a user to access unified multimedia mailboxes and messages both over the Internet and via telephone — i.e., the convergent-access concept of the '264 patent.
• § 102 relevance: Potentially the most dangerous reference for claims 1, 5, 9, because it expressly couples Internet and telephone access to multimedia mailboxes. However, its priority date (1996-11-04) is after the § 102(b) critical date, so it can only be § 102(e) art (earlier-filed U.S. patent), and it must still be shown to disclose the cluster/voice-server/file-server/web-server architecture and speaker-independent recognition of the independent claims. On the face of its title/abstract it does not clearly disclose E1/E2/E5. Treat as serious § 102(e)/§ 103 art, not a slam-dunk anticipation.

2.6 US 5,652,789 — Network based knowledgeable assistant ⚠ secondary-source

• Full citation: U.S. Patent 5,652,789 (Orange S.A. / "network based knowledgeable assistant" family; counterpart DE 69531160 T2); priority 1994-09-29; issued 1997-07-29.
• Description: A network-based telephony "assistant" that handles and intelligently routes subscribers' calls/messages — conceptually a hosted, multi-tenant call-managing service.
• § 102 relevance: Bears on E1/E7 (network-hosted call handling and delivery). Potential § 102(e) art (filed 1994, issued after the priority date) against the call-routing/message-delivery limitations of claims 1, 5, 9 — again without the web/server elements.

2.7 US 5,499,288 — Simultaneous voice recognition and verification to allow access to telephone network services ⚠ secondary-source

• Full citation: U.S. Patent 5,499,288 (Hunt et al.; Nuance Communications); priority 1990-05-14; issued 1996-03-12.
• Description: Speaker-verification plus speech recognition over the telephone network to authorize access to services.
• § 102 relevance: Art against E2 and claims 14, 17, 20, 22 (speech recognition/verification). Note: it is speaker verification, so it cuts against rather than for the "speaker-independent" limitation — useful but not anticipatory.

2.8 US 5,497,373 — distributed telephony system ⚠ secondary-source

• Full citation: U.S. Patent 5,497,373 (Hulen et al.); issued 1996-03-05. (⚠ The '264 text shows a "Hulen et al." reference in its citation list; I could not re-verify the exact title from the truncated record.)
• Description: A distributed/hosted telephony platform — relevant to the '264 "cluster of servers" architecture.
• § 102 relevance: Background/structural art for E1/E5 (multi-server cluster). Not anticipatory.

2.9 US 4,313,035 — Method of providing person locator service

• Full citation: U.S. Patent 4,313,035 (Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc.); filed 1980-01-18; issued 1982-01-26.
• Description: Early "follow-me" person-locator service — routes calls to a subscriber's current location.
• § 102 relevance: The seminal art for the '264 "follow me" calling feature and the call-routing limitations of claims 1/5/9 and dependent routing claims. Potential art against the routing-dependent claims; not the independent claims.

2.10 US 4,994,926 — Facsimile telecommunications system and method

• Full citation: U.S. Patent 4,994,926 (F-Mail Associates, L.P.); filed 1988-09-22; issued 1991-02-19.
• Description: Store-and-forward facsimile telecommunications (store, redirect, later forward).
• § 102 relevance: Direct art against the fax limitations of claims 2, 6, 10 ("faxes") and claims 26–28 ("fax machine" as a subscriber device). Not the independent claims.

3. TIER 2 — Element-specific cited art

(⚠ = recovered from the commercial citation record, not yet re-verified against the printed patent face; the last group in particular reads as background rather than anticipatory art.)

4. Key takeaways — § 102 mapping

1. No cited reference anticipates any independent claim (1, 5, 9). Each requires the combination of cluster + speaker-independent voice server + database server + file server + web server + dual PSTN/Internet message flow. The cited art is uniformly pre-web; none discloses E3–E6 together.

2. Best single-reference candidates for a partial § 102 case on dependent claims:

   • US 4,757,525 (and 4,761,807) → claims 14–17, 19–22, 25 (speaker-independent speech command recognition) — the closest thing in the cited record to the "'264 differentiator."
   • US 4,837,798 → claims 2, 6, 10 (unified voice+text messaging).
   • US 4,972,462 → claims 2, 6, 10, 26–28 (multimedia mail/mailbox).
   • US 4,994,926 → claims 2, 6, 10, 26–28 (fax).
   • US 4,313,035 → follow-me routing underpinning claims 1/5/9 routing limitations.

3. Most relevant § 102(e)-only references (earlier-filed, issued later; cannot be § 102(b) because after the 1996-03-03 critical date): US 6,233,318 B1 (Internet + telephone access to multimedia mailboxes), US 5,867,495, US 5,888,862, US 6,012,088, US 6,091,808, US 5,652,789.

4. Practical conclusion. The examiner's citation set is a § 103 obviousness shelf, not a § 102 anticipation set: each reference supplies one or two claim elements (speech recognition; unified messaging; fax store-and-forward; call routing/follow-me; multimedia mail), and the patentability of claims 1/5/9 rested on the integrated ISP-hosted cluster + web server + dual-connection two-way messaging combination. For any validity challenge, expect the art to be combined (e.g., 4,837,798 + 4,757,525 + 4,313,035 + 6,233,318), not asserted singly.

5. Explicit uncertainties / contradictions

• Truncated record: I could not obtain the complete 91-item "References Cited" list; items beyond US 5,020,095 are reconstructed. If a full-face copy of the patent is available, the Tier-2 "⚠" entries should be checked against it.
• Tier-2 dates for the ⚠ references are priority dates, not guaranteed issue dates; exact bibliographic data for a few could not be independently confirmed, and I flag rather than assert them.
• Source conflict to flag: the earlier-generated Patent summary section reported no 2026 CAFC/IPR activity naming '264 itself (correct, and consistent with its 2018 expiration). Nothing in this prior-art analysis contradicts that. Note also that the earlier summary referenced "US 6,721,705" and other family patents — those are different patents and must not be conflated with '264 in any § 102 analysis.
• Two apparently irrelevant citations (US 4,809,328, Sanyo FM radio; US 4,907,079, home-entertainment monitoring) and several software/background patents (US 5,693,187; US 5,793,993; US 5,611,031; US 5,404,234; US 5,809,282) have no apparent claim nexus to US 6,775,264; I list them as literally cited but note they do not support a § 102 argument.

Primary sources cited: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6775264/en ; https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-6775264-B1 ; https://patents.justia.com/patent/[8843120](/patent/8843120) ; https://patents.google.com/patent/[US4757525A](/patent/US4757525A) ; https://patents.google.com/patent/DE69531160T2 .

I'll pull the full prior-art citation list for this patent before doing the §103 mapping, since the page text supplied to me truncates it.

Let me try to retrieve the remaining (truncated) citations and check a few of the visible references' content.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent 6,775,264 (35 U.S.C. § 103)

0. Sources, scope, and an important record limitation

What I was asked to use. The "Prior Art section" of the page supplied to me — i.e., the Citations (91) table on https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6775264](/patent/US6775264)/en. I treated the entries in that table as the authoritative prior-art universe.

The limitation I hit, stated plainly. The text of that Citations (91) table supplied to me is truncated after US 5,020,095 A (Intellicall, 1990-06-12). Only about 21 of the 91 cited references are visible in the provided page text (they run 1980→1988). Seventy entries — very likely including the 1990s Internet/CTI art that matters most to claims 1, 5 and 9 — are not visible to me. I am flagging this rather than papering over it.

How I supplemented (and how much to trust the supplement). I pulled reference metadata for the same specification from sibling family members, where the cited/similar-art lists overlap heavily with the visible '264 citations (e.g., US 4,313,035; 4,761,807; 4,776,016; 4,837,798; 4,907,079; 4,932,? / 4,933,966; 4,950,204; 4,972,462; 4,975,941; 4,994,926; 5,020,095 all appear on both). Sources used for that supplementation:

• US 6,807,257 B1 reference list (same family) — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-[6807257](/patent/6807257)-B1
• US 9,571,445 B2 front page reference list — https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/ad/5b/a4/2326e382bee64e/US9571445.pdf
• US 8,838,074 B2 front page reference list — https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/fd/d3/cb/c623349dfdcc9c/US8838074.pdf
• US 4,837,798 full text (examiner exhibit) — https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/[PTAB](/ptab)/IPR2015-01213/.../Exhibit-1005.pdf and https://patents.searchlight.law/doc/US4837798

⚠️ Caveat: the unifiedpatents "Patent Art (115)" list is on a sibling patent page and appears to be a citation/similarity list, not verified as the '264 examiner citation list. I have labelled every reference's provenance below. For the supplemented references I relied on title, assignee and date metadata and (only where I could retrieve it) abstract/claim text. I did not read most of these specifications in full. Any mapping asserting a specific disclosure should be verified against the reference text before being relied on.

1. Legal standard

The '264 application was filed 1998-03-02 and claims pre-AIA priority to provisional 60/040,056, filed 1997-03-03. AIA § 3(n)(1) therefore does not apply. The governing provision is pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 103(a): whether "the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art."

Factual underpinnings: Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 17–18 (1966) — (1) scope/content of prior art, (2) differences, (3) level of skill, (4) secondary considerations. Governing obviousness law: KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007); the "mere duplication of parts," "predictable variation," "known technique/known result," and "design incentive/market force" rationales at 550 U.S. at 415–421; MPEP §§ 2141–2144.

2. Critical dates — which listed art actually qualifies

Because the § 102(b) grace period is measured from the 1997-03-03 provisional/filing-1998-03-02 sequence, the practical cut-off for printed-publication art is on or about 1997-03-02, and § 102(e) art must have been US-filed before the 1997-03-03 invention date. Every visible entry in the '264 Citations table (1980–1988) is comfortably § 102(b) art. Watch-outs I found when supplementing from the siblings:

Analytic point worth stating explicitly: the references in the page's "Cited By (33)" and "Families Citing this family (55)" tables are later developments and are not available as § 103 art against '264. Only the Citations (91) table is the prior-art universe. (Verified example: the Helferich/Wireless Science paging family carries a 1997-09-19 priority.)

3. Level of ordinary skill (POSITA)

Consistent with In re GPAC, 57 F.3d 1573, 1579 (Fed. Cir. 1995), a reasonable POSITA as of March 1997 would hold a B.S. in EE or CS (or equivalent) plus 1–2 years' experience, or an M.S. with less experience, in computer-telephony integration, with working knowledge of: PBX/ACD and voicemail systems; call routing, caller-ID/ANI and follow-me/personal-locator services; store-and-forward fax; speech recognition (template and phoneme/HMM-based); and TCP/IP, HTTP/HTML, CGI and server-client data networking. The specification itself corroborates this skill level by listing the 1996-era toolkit it used (see §4.G below).

4. The prior art of record, organized into the five clusters the claims implicate

(A) Unified / multimedia messaging — the core of claims 1, 5, 9.

• US 4,837,798 A — Cohen et al., AT&T Bell Laboratories, filed 1986-06-02, issued 1989-06-06, "Communication system having unified messaging." Abstract, verbatim: "Unified messaging is a concept that provides for a single electronic mailbox for different types of messages. … Messages can be translated from one media to another for reception, and a single message may be composed of parts that use different native media. The message recipient has a single controllable point of contact where all messages can be scanned and/or viewed." Its claims add: designation of a "prime message receptor" with notification of arrival of either a voice or a data message (claim 1); conversion of data messages into voice message equivalents (claim 5); and retrieval "responsive to a set of commands which are uniform for all said control services" (claim 13/7). Its FIG. 14 discussion states recipients "can now retrieve all their voice and text messages through one system." (Sources above.)
• US 4,972,462 A — Hitachi, "Multimedia mail system" (visible in the '264 table).

(B) Voice command / speech recognition in telephony.

• US 4,757,525 A — Matthews et al., VMX, "Electronic audio communications system with voice command features" (visible).
• US 4,761,807 A — VMX, "…with voice authentication features" (visible).
• US 4,776,016 A — Position Orientation Systems, "Voice control system" (visible).
• NPL: "A PABX that Listens and Talks," Speech Technology, Jan./Feb. 1984, pp. 74–79 (appears in the family front pages) — § 102(b) printed publication on PBX speech command recognition.
• US 5,475,791 A — "Method for recognizing a spoken word in the presence of interfering speech" (family list) — evidence that robust ASR on telephone-band speech was known.
• US 5,517,558 A — "Voice-controlled account access over a telephone network" (family list).
• Foundational ASR: US 4,100,377 (Flanagan); US 4,158,750 (Sakoe); US 4,327,251 (Fomenko) — all in the family front-page lists.

(C) Call routing, screening, "follow-me," caller ID, ACD.

• US 4,313,035 A — Jordan et al., Bell Telephone Laboratories, "Method of providing person locator service" (visible in the '264 table; note the '264 page shows prior-art date 1980-01-18 while the sibling page shows 1980-01-17 — a minor record discrepancy I am not auto-correcting).
• US 4,873,719 A — Reese, "Enhanced calling number delivery service system" (visible; caller ID/ANI).
• US 4,953,204 A — AT&T Bell Laboratories, "Multilocation queuing for telephone calls" (visible).
• US 4,696,028; 4,850,012; 4,922,526; 4,935,958; 4,955,047; 4,975,941 — Dytel Corp. automated-attendant / call-completion family (visible).
• US 4,933,966 A — Intellicall, automated collect call (visible).
• Family-list additions: US 5,327,486 ("Method and system for managing telecommunications such as telephone calls," 1993) and the Aspect "Automated call screening" series (US 5,724,408; 5,029,196; 5,109,405; 5,347,574) and US 5,375,161 ("Telephone control system with branch routing").

(D) Fax store-and-forward (claims 2/6/10).

• US 4,994,926 A — F-Mail Associates, "Facsimile telecommunications system and method" (visible). Family list adds US 5,555,100 and US 5,559,611 (Xpedite, fax store-and-forward with DTMF local interface).

(E) Conferencing (claims 2/6/10).

• US 5,408,526 A — AT&T, "Conference calling system" (family list); US 4,953,204 for queuing.

(F) Internet / server-side (claims 1, 5, 9 web-server and Internet-limitations).

• US 6,243,373 ("Method and apparatus for implementing a computer network/internet telephone system"); US 5,884,262 ("Computer network audio access and conversion system"); US 5,915,001 ("…universally accessible voice and speech data files"); US 5,999,525 ("Method for video telephony over a hybrid network"); US 5,873,080 (IBM, "Using multiple search engines to search multimedia data"); US 6,018,710 (Siemens, "Web-based interactive radio environment"). All from the family reference lists; titles verified, disclosures not read by me.

(G) The applicant's own admissions (usable as evidence of the state of the art). The '264 specification concedes the background ("internet, on-line networks and corporate intranets … now host a variety of services such as e-mail, database searching, conferencing …") and concedes that the implementation used pre-existing commercial components: Dialogic SCSA/voice boards and Antares cards, Purespeech ASR, Sybase System 10/11, Java/JavaScript, Netscape SSL, and Vosaic streaming audio. Under In re Nomiya / MPEP § 2129, these admissions help establish what a POSITA already had in hand.

5. Grounds of rejection

Ground I — Claims 1, 5, 9 (and 13–16, 18–21, 23, 24) over US 4,837,798 in view of US 4,757,525 and US 6,243,373/5,884,262/5,915,001

Claims 5 and 9 are the method mirrors of Claim 1 and fall with it: claim 5 tracks the inbound/notification flow, claim 9 the subscriber-originated outbound flow. Claims 13–16, 18–21, 23, 24 (subscriber-issued commands, speech commands, placing calls/sending mail/fax and setting up conferences by voice) map to '798's uniform-command retrieval plus '525/'807/'016 plus US 5,652,789 ("Network based knowledgeable assistant," filed 1994-09-29) and US 5,517,558.

Ground II — Alternative primary: US 4,972,462 (Multimedia mail) in view of US 6,243,373 and US 4,757,525

Serves as a hedge if the '798 disclosure is found to lack the "second Internet connection" leg. '462 supplies the multi-media mail architecture; the Internet-server cluster supplies the IP legs; '525 supplies the voice-command layer.

Ground III — Claims 2, 6, 10 (fax) over US 4,994,926 in view of US 4,837,798, further in view of US 5,555,100 / US 5,559,611

F-Mail '926 teaches facsimile store-and-forward on the subscriber's line; Xpedite '100/'611 add store-and-forward with a local interface that translates DTMF signals into system commands; '798 teaches converting messages from one medium to another (claim 5; claim 12: "converting data messages into voice message equivalents"). Receiving a fax on the same number as voice calls and redirecting it as an e-mail attachment is a predictable application of '798's media translation to '926's store-and-forward fax, with a reasonable expectation of success.

Ground IV — Claims 2, 6, 10 (conference calls) over US 5,408,526 in view of US 4,837,798 and US 4,953,204

'526 ("Conference calling system") supplies multi-party bridging; '204 supplies queuing/participant handling. The '264 specification's own description of "inbound conference calls … 32 people … participants then call in and ask to 'join the conference'" is a conventional bridge-plus-roll-call arrangement.

Ground V — Claims 3, 4, 7, 8, 11, 12 (contact-list creation/editing; using the list to place calls, send mail/voicemail/fax, set up conferences) over US 4,837,798 in view of US 5,327,486 and US 5,652,789

'798's "control services" and unified directory, plus '486's personalized call management and '789's network-based assistant maintaining an address book, render the contact-list limitations routine. Note the literal-reading irregularity we previously flagged — dependent claims 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12 recite "The computer and telecommunications network described in claim 5/9" although 5 and 9 are methods. For § 103 purposes they take the claim type of the claim they depend from; the irregularity is reproduced, not corrected.

Ground VI — Claims 26, 27, 28 (device = cellular phone, pager, PC, fax, mailbox, voicemail service) over US 4,313,035 and US 4,953,204 and US 5,375,161 in view of US 4,837,798

'035 (person-locator/notification) plus '204 (multilocation queuing) and '161 (branch routing) disclose notifying and reaching a subscriber across multiple, dissimilar terminals — precisely the enumerated list. Do not use the Helferich paging family here (1997-09-19 priority; not prior art to '264).

Ground VII — Claims 17, 22, 25 ("naturally spoken" / speaker-independent speech) over US 5,475,791 and the "PABX that Listens and Talks" NPL in view of US 4,757,525

Speaker-independent, telephone-band recognition was an established field by 1997 (see the ASR papers and products cited in the record). "Naturally spoken" is a degree-of-performance functional limitation, and the '264 specification gives no numeric or algorithmic boundary distinguishing it from the admitted phoneme-based prior art. Under KSR, "a predictable variation … of a known technique" falls.

6. Motivation to combine (KSR rationales, tied to the record)

1. The primary reference itself frames the invention as a convergence engine. '798's stated goal is "a single controllable point of contact where all messages can be scanned and/or viewed." Once a system is defined by its point of contact, adding a further access channel (a web server/browser) and a further command modality (voice) is the same design step the reference already endorses — not a new principle of operation. KSR, 550 U.S. at 417 ("use of a known technique to improve [a] similar device[] in the same way").
2. Explicit market/design incentive in the field. The '264 Background section itself describes the acute problem for "mobile business professionals" carrying a cell phone, pager, PC, fax, mailbox and voicemail service. Identical market pressure is recited as the driver in the record's later, related art. A POSITA had a concrete incentive to consolidate access — the classic KSR "design incentive … market forces" rationale.
3. Predictable result, no bodily incorporation required. The combination only requires that the web server and the voice server sit in the same cluster and share the database. '798 already teaches a mailbox "on a user's host computer, PBX, PC," so co-locating a data-network front end with the message server is a deployment choice, not a redesign. In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 425 (CCPA 1981) (no requirement to bodily incorporate every feature of each reference).
4. Reasonable expectation of success — from the patentee's own words. The specification admits the system was built from off-the-shelf Dialogic boards, Purespeech ASR, Sybase, Java/JavaScript, Netscape SSL and Vosaic streaming audio. When the asserted novelty consists of assembling pre-existing commercial components, that admission strongly supports a finding of predictability (MPEP § 2144.04; In re Nomiya).
5. Federal Circuit precedent in this very family. In Parus Holdings, Inc. v. Google LLC, Nos. 2022-1269/1270 (Fed. Cir. June 12, 2023), the court affirmed obviousness holdings against Parus's sibling '431 and '084 patents — including acceptance of motivations "in the interest of speed, convenience, and robustness" supplied by the petitioner's expert and of the proposition that "a motivation to combine the references does not need to come from the references themselves." Those holdings concern a different claim set, but they establish that this applicant's family does not survive § 103 challenges of this style.

7. Anticipated Patent Owner argument, and its strength

The best non-obviousness argument available: no single reference, and arguably no combination on this record, expressly teaches (a) a web server as an access path to the same mailbox the PSTN path serves, together with (b) speaker-independent, naturally spoken command control of that mailbox. The examiner allowed the claims in 2004 over the cited art, which is at least prima facie evidence the art of record did not teach the whole combination.

Why that argument is weak on this record — and how to test it:

• The independent claims are architecture/functional claims; they recite that speech recognition exists and is speaker-independent, not how it achieves accuracy. Under In re Schreiber, 128 F.3d 1473 (Fed. Cir. 1997), and the "configured to" line of cases, a reference disclosing speech-command control of a messaging system will ordinarily read on such functional language absent evidence that the field was incapable of speaker-independent operation.
• The prosecution-history question that decides everything here: which of the 91 cited references were actually applied to the '264 claims, and were the Internet-leg references (US 6,243,373; 5,884,262; 5,915,001; 5,873,080; 6,018,710) among them? Those entries sit in the truncated portion of the table and I cannot confirm their status on the '264 record. If they are not "examiner-considered," they are available in a later § 103 challenge notwithstanding the 2004 allowance. This is the single highest-value item to verify against the file wrapper (USPTO PatentCenter, application 09/033,335).

Secondary considerations (Graham factor 4): I find no objective evidence of non-obviousness in the record before me — no commercial-success, long-felt-need, failure-of-others, or licensing evidence with a nexus to these claims. In the sibling IPRs, Parus's antedating and teaching-away arguments were rejected (the Federal Circuit affirmed on the Rule 42.6(a)(3) waiver issue in 2023). The family's heavy assertion history is evidence of perceived value but is not itself a § 103 secondary consideration.

Cross-cutting note (not § 103): independent claims 5 and 9 recite method steps that are almost entirely "providing … providing … providing," with the operative acts expressed as "receiving" and "transmitting." Whether those "providing" recitations are active method steps is a live § 101 question (cf. In re Kollar; Epicor Software v. Autotote). Also flag obviousness-type double patenting as a family-wide exposure, given the chain of continuations (09/260,279 → 6,807,257; 10/877,367 → 7,327,723; 11/824,376 → 9,571,445; etc.).

8. Bottom line

Overall: on the art visible to me plus the family-record supplementation, the dependent claims are, in my assessment, plainly obvious, and independent claims 1, 5 and 9 are obvious if (and only if) the 1990s Internet/web-server references were not considered by the examiner. The claims' substantive breadth — functional architecture language plus a speaker-independent-recognition limitation with no disclosed performance boundary — is what makes them vulnerable, and the applicant's own admissions about off-the-shelf Dialogic/Purespeech/Sybase/Netscape components remove most of the room for a "surprising combination" argument.

Uncertainty I will not paper over: (i) 70 of the 91 citations are not visible in the supplied page text; (ii) I did not read the full specifications of the supplemented references and have characterized several of them from title/assignee/date metadata only; (iii) I did not retrieve the 09/033,335 file wrapper, so I cannot say what the examiner did or did not consider; (iv) no secondary-considerations evidence was located. Any final § 103 opinion should be built from the complete record — the full 91-reference list, the 2004 Notice of Allowance and reasons for allowance, and expert declaration evidence on the 1997 level of skill.

(One housekeeping note: the previously generated sections referenced items dated July 2026, which post-date the April 26, 2026 working date for this section. I have not relied on those items, and none of them name US 6,775,264 in any event.)