US 6810149

I'll verify the patent's current status and check for any litigation or Federal Circuit activity before summarizing.

US Patent 6,810,149 B1 — "Method and system for cataloging images"

Source of truth: full granted text at https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6810149](/patent/US6810149)/en (fetched 2026‑09‑29), cross-checked against the printed Official Gazette entry (Issue 1287‑4) at https://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/virtual_disk_library/index.cgi/[5628977](/patent/5628977)/FID3294/OG/html/1287-4/us06810149-20041026.html

Bibliographic data

Assignee chain (per Google Patents reassignment records): Eastman Kodak → Intellectual Ventures Fund 83 LLC (recorded 2013‑04‑18) → Monument Peak Ventures, LLC (recorded 2017‑03‑09). A release by secured party involving Intellectual Ventures Fund 83 LLC was recorded 2023‑08‑15.

Legal status: "Expired – Lifetime," with an adjusted expiration date of 2022‑02‑01. The EP member is shown as Ceased and the JP member as Withdrawn. The Google Patents record also carries a "Family has litigation — First worldwide family litigation filed" flag (Darts‑IP family ID 24570285). I did not find any authoritative 2026 CAFC docket entry for this patent in my searches; the litigation flag points to a family-level Darts‑IP record, not a verified 2026 appeal, so treat any litigation inference as unconfirmed.

Abstract (as granted)

"A method and computer software product for the categorization and/or retrieving of digital images. At least one selection category having at least one image icon is provided for association with the image to be categorized and/or retrieved. The software product is designed for personalization by the user and allows the formation of personalized image icon."

Technology in plain terms

The patent describes a consumer photo‑cataloging application. A user views a digital image on screen and applies "selection categories" — the specification illustrates five: Who, What, When, Where, Why. Each category presents selectable image icons (thumbnails, e.g., a cropped face of "Mom," a picture of the family home) rather than generic symbols. Selected icons are stored as metadata on the image file for later search, retrieval and regrouping. Users can build new icons on the fly by dragging a box around a region of the displayed photo (dash line 57 / portion 200), or download pre‑built icon libraries from a third‑party URL. FIG. 5A–5B show batch categorization of multiple images at once. A later‑described aspect (col. referencing FIG. 4 steps 166/168) saves the icon at maximum pixel resolution and applies pixel/outline‑pattern analysis to find uncataloged images containing the same subject, then auto‑appends the icon's metadata to them — the face‑recognition‑style auto‑cataloging feature. This aspect cross‑references co‑pending U.S. Ser. No. 09/802,387 (Test et al., "A Product And Method For Organizing And Searching Digital Images"), now abandoned.

Independent claims (7 of 26: claims 1, 9, 17, 18, 19, 21, 23)

I quote the claim language literally, including apparent typographical errors in the granted text (these are in the patent as issued, not transcription artifacts).

• Claim 1 — computer software product (categorization). A program on a storage medium that causes a computer of a "digital image forming device" to: display at least one digital image for categorization; display at least one digital image icon associated with a selection category that can be associated with the displayed image; and select one of the icons "associated and categorization of said at least one digital image." Plain meaning: an on‑screen thumbnail icon tagged to a category is clicked to categorize the displayed image.

• Claim 9 — method of organizing images. Displaying a plurality of digital images, and categorizing at least one of them using at least one digital image icon associated with a selection category. Plain meaning: the method‑form counterpart of claim 1, applied across a multi‑image set.

• Claim 17 — computer software product (retrieval). Displays at least one "distal image icon" [sic — evidently "digital"] associated with a selection category that has been associated with at least one digital image; [displays a] digital image that has been previously categorized; and retrieves that image from a plurality of previously categorized images based on selection of one of the icons. Plain meaning: query‑by‑icon retrieval from an already‑categorized library.

• Claim 18 — method of retrieving. Displays at least one digital image icon associated with a selection category that has been associated with the image, and retrieves the image from a previously categorized plurality of images based on selection of one of the icons. Plain meaning: method‑form counterpart of claim 17.

• Claim 19 — method of automatically organizing. Provides at least one "distal image icon" [sic] associated with a category, and uses "predetermined characteristics of said icon" to identify non‑categorized digital images and associate them with that category. Plain meaning: use visual features of a reference icon (e.g., a face crop) to find and tag matching uncataloged photos automatically.

• Claim 21 — computer software product (auto‑categorization). Same two steps as claim 19, in product form: at least one digital image icon tied to a category, and use of predetermined characteristics of the icon to identify non‑categorized images and associate them with the category.

• Claim 23 — method of personalizing the program. (a) Provide a categorization/retrieval program using categories and digital image icons; (b) select at least one selection category from a plurality of stored categories; and (c) select at least one digital image icon from a plurality of stored icons for use with that category. Plain meaning: user set‑up/configuration of which categories and thumbnail icons appear in the interface.

Notable dependent claims: claim 6 / claim 14 (categories are Who, What, Where, When, Why); claims 4–5 and 12–13 (an "addition selection feature" for customized icons, where the new icon is obtained from the image being categorized); claims 20 and 22 (the "predetermined characteristics" comprise analyzing the pixel content of the icon); claims 24–25 (user‑added personalized categories/icons); claim 26 (automatically adding a new category or icon in response to information provided with a digital image — e.g., camera/film metadata).

Caveats and uncertainties

• The two typographical defects noted above ("distal image icon" in claims 17, 19 and 21; "categorization of" as a verb phrase in claim 1; "digital digital images" in claim 23) are reproduced exactly as they appear in the granted text. I have not auto‑corrected them, and I cannot say how a court would construe them absent a claim-construction record.
• I have no verified record of a 2026 Federal Circuit appeal or docket naming US 6,810,149 or Monument Peak Ventures as to this patent. The only litigation signal in the available record is the Darts‑IP family-level "first worldwide family litigation filed" flag. If you need a docket-confirmed answer, that requires a direct PACER/CAFC docket lookup, which was not available here.
• The "expiration" date of 2022‑02‑01 and the post‑Kodak ownership records (Intellectual Ventures Fund 83 LLC → Monument Peak Ventures, LLC) come from the patent office's reassignment/legal‑status data as mirrored on Google Patents, which itself disclaims that legal status is an assumption rather than a legal conclusion.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 6810149. Let me run several targeted queries.

Let me search litigation databases and Monument Peak Ventures-related suits.

Let me query litigation-specific databases for this exact patent number.

Bottom line

US Patent 6,810,149 ("Method and system for cataloging images," filed 2000‑08‑17, issued 2004‑10‑26, original assignee Eastman Kodak Co., now Monument Peak Ventures, LLC) has been asserted in only one litigation campaign that I could confirm — Monument Peak Ventures' suit against Xerox Corporation in the Eastern District of Texas, plus a related Xerox declaratory‑judgment action in the Southern District of New York. The Google Patents record itself carries a "Family has litigation — First worldwide family litigation filed" flag (Darts‑IP family 24570285), confirming the patent has been litigated, though it does not name the parties.

⚠️ Search limitation: I was cut off by a step limit partway through the database checks. Results below are what was retrieved; I could not exhaustively sweep the Unified Patents litigation caselist, Docket Alarm, or PACER for this number. Treat the list as high‑confidence but not certified‑complete.

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Confirmed litigation involving U.S. Patent 6,810,149

1. Monument Peak Ventures, LLC v. Xerox Corporation

Sources:

• UniCourt case summary (case number, filing date, judge, patents, '149 claim lists, and quoted complaint allegations): https://unicourt.com/case/pc-db5-monument-peak-ventures-llc-v-xerox-corporation-[1006267](/patent/1006267)
• PDF of MPV's P.R. 3‑1 Disclosure of Asserted Claims and Infringement Contentions against Xerox: https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1548872](/patent/1548872)/download-documents?artifactId=pYJ-4NKvRQ3K6gkDfOkRawwjA5zIG2KbvZnDy7NE75vUSZ0DA9_7_5o
• Actionable Intelligence litigation‑tracking tag (dismissal/settlement reporting): https://www.action-intell.com/tag/xerox-corporation-v-monument-peak-ventures-2020/

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2. Related proceeding — Xerox Corporation v. Monument Peak Ventures, LLC (declaratory judgment)

Sources:

• https://www.action-intell.com/tag/xerox-corporation-v-monument-peak-ventures-2020/ (series of posts: "Xerox Says Monument Peak Ventures Can't Duck Its Lawsuit in New York"; "Court Issues Mixed Ruling on MPV's Motion to Dismiss Xerox Lawsuit"; "Monument Peak Ventures and Xerox Settle Patent Dispute"; "Monument Peak Ventures' Lawsuit against Xerox Is Dismissed")

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Related matters where the '149 patent was not confirmed asserted

MPV has run a broad, multi‑defendant assertion campaign out of E.D. Tex. and W.D. Tex. against camera, imaging, printing, and software defendants. In the cases where asserted‑patent lists were visible, the '149 patent does not appear, but several listings were truncated ("+N more"), so I cannot fully exclude it:

• MPV v. Toshiba (companion "office‑equipment maker" suit referenced alongside Xerox) — patents not confirmed
• MPV v. GE Healthcare, 3:18‑cv‑01158 (S.D. Cal.) — patents 7,062,085; 7,092,573; 7,212,668; 6,509,910; 8,984,419; dismissed with prejudice Oct. 29, 2019 after IPRs
• MPV v. Johnson Controls, 6:21‑cv‑01009 (W.D. Tex., Albright) — patents not confirmed
• MPV v. TP‑Link, 6:22‑cv‑01250 (W.D. Tex.) — dismissed with prejudice Jan. 25, 2024 under a settlement/license dated Oct. 31, 2023; asserted patents were 8,305,452; 7,106,333; 8,665,345; 8,842,155; 7,483,061
• MPV v. BLU Products, 2:23‑cv‑00169; v. Hanwha Vision, 6:23‑cv‑00539; v. Tesla, 6:23‑cv‑00750; v. TCL, 5:24‑cv‑00011; v. Vivotek, 6:24‑cv‑00361; v. Samsara, 1:23‑cv‑05687; v. OpenText, 2:25‑cv‑00521; v. Arashi Vision, 2:25‑cv‑00956; v. Arnold & Richter Cine Technik, 2:25‑cv‑01159; v. Carl Zeiss, 2:26‑cv‑00100 — asserted patents displayed for each do not include '149, but the listings were partial
• MPV is a Dominion Harbor Enterprises, LLC affiliate (per its Rule 7.1 disclosure)

Source (party docket list): https://ai-lab-cl-prod.azurewebsites.net/party/monument-peak-ventures-llc

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What I could not find

• No ITC Section 337 investigation involving 6,810,149 surfaced.
• No CAFC appeal captioned to 6,810,149 surfaced. (The only CAFC hit in my searches, IDEAHUB INC. v. Unified Patents, LLC, No. 2024‑1684, involves a different patent and Unified Patents, not this patent.)
• No PTAB post‑grant proceeding (IPR/PGR/CBM) against 6,810,149 was confirmed. Note one lead I could not develop before hitting the step limit: a PTAB petition record (ptacts.uspto.gov petition ID 1548872) hosts MPV's Xerox P.R. 3‑1 disclosure as an exhibit, which suggests a third party may have challenged one or more MPV patents in an IPR; I could not confirm whether any such petition names the '149 patent.
• No other district court case naming 6,810,149 as an asserted patent.

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Practical note for the file

The patent's adjusted expiration was 2022‑02‑01, and Google Patents lists its legal status as "Expired – Lifetime." Any campaign asserting the '149 patent would therefore have been confined to the period before February 2022 — which is consistent with the Xerox suit (filed September 2021, terminated the following August) being the sole, and final, assertion of this patent that I could identify.

Recommended verification steps (not completed here): pull the full docket for 2:21‑cv‑00345‑JRG‑RSP in PACER, search Docket Alarm / Unified Patents' caselist for 6810149, and check the PTAB Patent Trial Proceedings search (PTAB‑PIS) for the patent number — these would certify whether the list above is complete.

I'll verify the "no PTAB activity" default against public sources before reporting.

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings on file. The canonical structured block — "PTAB proceedings on file," sourced from the USPTO Open Data Portal — returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM involving US 6,810,149. My independent web checks (PTAB-related queries, petitioner/patent-owner name combinations, and the Unified Patents patent profile) surfaced no petition, institution decision, FWD, or appeal naming this patent. There is nothing to break down by status: 0 active, 0 claims invalidated, 0 claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution denials. Bottom-line defensive posture: the patent has never been tested at the PTAB, so every one of the 26 claims is UNTESTED — but it is also an expired patent (adjusted expiration 2022-02-01), which changes the practical calculus more than any PTAB record would. The absence of PTAB activity here is not the usual "small patent nobody bothered with" signal alone; it is better explained by expiration and by the fact that the current owner's recent assertion campaigns have targeted other Kodak-derived patents.

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Proceedings

None. No proceeding numbers exist to report, and I will not invent any.

For completeness, here is what I checked and found:

One flag to be precise about: the Google Patents record carries a Darts-IP family-level "Family has litigation — First worldwide family litigation filed" banner (family ID 24570285), and I separately confirmed that the current assignee, Monument Peak Ventures, LLC, is an active litigant (e.g., E.D. Tex. cases against OpenText, TCL, Vivotek, Vivint, Arashi Vision/Insta360, and a 2026 filing against Carl Zeiss entities, per Docket Alarm/PACER-sourced aggregators). But I found no complaint asserting US 6,810,149 specifically, and the Darts-IP banner is a family-level litigation indicator, not a verified suit on this patent. Treat "this patent has been litigated" as unconfirmed.

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Strategic summary

Claim status: no claim has ever been canceled, held unpatentable, or sustained by the PTAB. All 26 claims — including the seven independents (1, 9, 17, 18, 19, 21, 23) — remain as issued. Because there is no FWD, there is no claim-level validity record to mine. The invalidity story for this patent lives entirely in the district court/reexam world, not the PTAB. Note also that the granted text is riddled with defects (e.g., "distal image icon" in claims 17, 19, 21; "associated and categorization of" in claim 1), which are ordinary § 112/indefiniteness fodder for a district court challenge — but no tribunal has construed them.

Estoppel landscape: there is none. § 315(e)(2) estoppel requires a petitioner who reached a final written decision; there has been none. No party is barred from raising any § 102 or § 103 ground, and no IPR petitioner exists to be estopped. Conversely, no IPR has narrowed the claim set, so a defendant gets no free ride — a full invalidity case must be built from scratch. The good news is that the prior art cited on the face of the patent is a deep § 103 well: Kuchinsky's FotoFile and Davis's "Media Streams" (both NPL-of-record) plus US 5,812,995 (Matsushita, electronic document filing with icons), US 5,943,049 (Casio, face/character image processor), US 5,689,286 (AST, component-based icon construction and customization), and US 5,751,287 (Documagix, organizing document icons). Those five are directly on top of the icon-based categorization concept, and none has been tested in an AIA forum.

Pattern signals. No repeat-petitioner pattern can exist (zero filings). Monument Peak Ventures has not been an aggressive PTAB appellant on this patent because there is nothing to appeal. No Unified Patents IPR appears on the docket despite their portal page. The controlling fact pattern here is expiration, not PTAB attrition: with an adjusted expiration of 2022-02-01, the patent is expired-lifetime, so the only live exposure is past damages inside the § 286 six-year lookback (roughly 2016-08-17 through 2022-02-01), plus any pre-expiration continuations of that conduct.

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Recommended next steps

1. If you are a defendant and want PTAB relief, note the timing reality. This patent expired 2022-02-01. The Board does retain jurisdiction over expired patents (see the Federal Circuit's holding that "the Board has jurisdiction over IPRs concerning expired patents," as recited in the pending Supreme Court amicus discussion of Gesture Technology and cited passages at https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/26/26-198/[424553](/patent/424553)/20260916151122769_26-198%20Amicus%20Brief.pdf), so an IPR is legally available — but the practical value is low and post-expiration challenges increasingly face discretionary-denial headwinds. The better forum is the district court, where expired-patent damages are capped and indefiniteness under § 112(b) is squarely available for the "distal image icon" / "associated and categorization of" claim language.

2. Front-load a § 282 invalidity case on the NPL-of-record and the Face/Icon art. The strongest unlitigated combination targets claims 1-16 (categorization) via FotoFile + Media Streams + US 5,689,286, and claims 19-22 (auto-categorization by "predetermined characteristics") via US 5,943,049 (face image processor) alone or combined. Nothing is estopped, and no PTAB claim construction constrains you.

3. Do not overclaim the litigation flag. If counsel has told you "this patent has been through IPR" or "the patent has a litigation history," correct the record: there is no PTAB proceeding and no confirmed suit on this specific patent. The only confirmed signal is a Darts-IP family-level flag and the owner's general enforcement posture against unrelated Kodak patents (US 8,024,311; US 8,665,345; US 8,643,746; US 9,013,604; US 7,233,684; US 8,836,784).

4. If you need a docket-confirmed answer, do the direct lookups. The sources I could reach do not substitute for a PACER/CAFC docket query or a PTAB E2E party-name pull for "Monument Peak Ventures" and "Intellectual Ventures Fund 83." I flag explicitly that I could not complete those direct lookups here; the "no proceedings" conclusion rests on the USPTO ODP structured data plus the absence of any contradicting public record in my searches.

Uncertainty statement: I could not verify whether any unnumbered or very recently filed petition exists as of 2026-09-29, because the ODP ingest is the authoritative feed I was given and the searches available to me returned nothing. If a petition has been filed in the last few weeks, it may not yet be surfaced. On the evidence I can cite, the answer is: no AIA trial proceedings on US 6,810,149.

I'll research the recorded assignment chain before writing up the analysis.

Now let me look for reel/frame specifics and correspondent attorneys.

Let me try to pin down specific reel/frame numbers and correspondents.

Assignment / Ownership-Chain Analysis — US 6,810,149 B1

Analyst note on sourcing. The USPTO Patent Assignment Center was not directly queryable with the tools available in this session (both assignmentcenter.uspto.gov and assignment.uspto.gov require an interactive lookup that returned no extractable rows). I therefore reconstructed the chain from the Google Patents legal-events table reproduced in the authoritative patent text, and cross-corroborated the 2012–2013 and 2017 links against SEC filings and a recorded assignment document surfaced via Docket Alarm. I could not retrieve reel/frame numbers or correspondent-of-record names for this patent. I have left those fields explicitly unverified rather than guessing. That is the single biggest gap below and it is why signal #3 (repeat correspondent) is called "unclear" instead of "present."

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Inventors

• Employer determination: The application was assigned to Eastman Kodak Company on the filing date (2000‑08‑17), and both inventors are Rochester‑area residents. Kodak's patent prosecution address of record (Patent Legal Staff, 343 State Street, Rochester, New York 14650‑2201) is the standard correspondent block on Kodak filings of this era, e.g. the EP members of this same family (EP 1 154 630; EP 1 093 288). I treat Kodak employment as presumed, not documented for these two individuals specifically.
• Departure pattern: No unusual pattern. There is no evidence that either inventor left Kodak within 12 months of filing, and there is affirmative evidence of the opposite for McIntyre: he is named as the first-listed inventor on US 2011/0025713 A1, a Kodak-network image-management application with a 2001 priority claim that issued 2011 — i.e., a decade of continued Kodak inventorship. This is not a pre‑fire‑sale inventor-departure scenario.

Original assignee

Eastman Kodak Company (New Jersey corporation, 343 State Street, Rochester, NY 14650) is the assignee named on the issued patent.

• Product embodiment: Unclear / no evidence. The specification describes desktop photo-cataloging software (see the previously generated summary), but it names no commercial product. I found no product literature tying a shipped Kodak product to claims 1, 9, 17–19, 21, or 23, and I will not assert one.
• Primary line of business: Consumer and professional imaging — film, cameras, digital cameras, photofinishing, and later commercial printing systems.
• Current status: Operating, but post-bankruptcy reorganizations. Kodak filed Chapter 11 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York in January 2012, sold its digital-imaging patent portfolio out of bankruptcy in a §363 transaction approved in early 2013, and emerged September 1, 2013 applying fresh-start accounting (Kodak Form 8‑K, Dec. 18, 2012; Kodak 2016 Form 10‑K fresh-start disclosure). Kodak still trades (NYSE: KODK) with a commercial-printing focus.

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Assignment timeline

The Google Patents legal-events record for this patent discloses recorded dates and conveyance types only. Reel/frame and correspondent fields were not retrievable in this session and are marked accordingly. No assignment below is invented; each dated event is taken verbatim from the legal-events table in the authoritative patent text, with conveyance characterization corroborated where possible.

1. 2000‑08‑17 (executed) / recorded 2000‑08‑17 — Reel/frame not retrieved

   • Conveyance: Assignment (Assignment of Assignors' Interest)
   • Assignor: John R. Squilla; Dale F. McIntyre
   • Assignee: Eastman Kodak Company
   • Correspondent: not retrieved (Kodak Patent Legal Staff, 343 State Street, Rochester NY, is the likely correspondent of record on the face of the original assignment but I cannot confirm the recorded entry)
   • Context: Original employment/obligation assignment to the operating company.

2. 2012‑02‑21 — Reel/frame not retrieved

   • Conveyance: Security Agreement (grant of security interest)
   • Assignor: Eastman Kodak Company; Pakon, Inc.
   • Assignee: Citicorp North America, Inc., as Agent
   • Correspondent: not retrieved
   • Context: Securitization — this is a lien, not a title transfer. It is the DIP-lender collateral package taken during Kodak's Chapter 11 case (Citicorp North America as Agent / Wells Fargo as Co-Collateral Agent under the DIP Credit Agreement referenced in Kodak's March 2013 8‑K exhibits).

3. 2013‑02‑01 — Reel/frame not retrieved

   • Conveyance: Release (Patent Release)
   • Assignor: Citicorp North America, Inc.; Wilmington Trust, National Association
   • Assignee: Eastman Kodak Company and ~17 Kodak affiliates (Kodak Philippines, NPEC, Kodak Imaging Network, Kodak Realty, Qualex, FPC, Kodak Aviation Leasing, Eastman Kodak International Capital, Pakon, Creo Manufacturing America, Kodak Near East, Far East Development, Laser-Pacific Media, Kodak Americas, Kodak Portuguesa, among others)
   • Correspondent: not retrieved
   • Context: Release of security interest — clears the 2012 lien, a necessary step so the portfolio could be sold free and clear.

4. 2013‑04‑18 — Reel/frame not retrieved

   • Conveyance: Assignment (Assignment of Assignors' Interest)
   • Assignor: Eastman Kodak Company
   • Assignee: Intellectual Ventures Fund 83 LLC (Delaware LLC; principal place of business at 7251 W Lake Mead Blvd, Ste 300, Las Vegas, NV 89128)
   • Correspondent: not retrieved
   • Context: Bankruptcy fire-sale. This is the recording of the §363 sale under the Patent Sale Agreement dated Dec. 18, 2012 between Kodak as debtor-in-possession and IV Fund 83, purchase price $527 million, covering roughly 1,100 digital-imaging patents (sale approved by the Bankruptcy Court following the Jan. 11, 2013 hearing). The Las Vegas address and the "Fund 83" naming are consistent with the recorded Patent Sale Agreement itself, which identifies the buyer's principal place of business at that address.

5. 2017‑03‑09 — Reel/frame not retrieved (instrument executed 2017‑02‑15)

   • Conveyance: Assignment (Assignment of Patent Rights)
   • Assignor: Intellectual Ventures Fund 83 LLC
   • Assignee: Monument Peak Ventures, LLC (Texas LLC; 1400 Preston Road, Suite 400, Plano, TX 75093)
   • Correspondent: not retrieved
   • Context: Transfer to asserter/monetization vehicle. The instrument language (verified against a recorded "Assignment of Patent Rights" between the same two parties surfaced via Docket Alarm, executed FEBRUARY 15, 2017) conveys the patents together with all "causes of action and enforcement rights of any kind … for past, current and future infringement" — i.e., the transfer expressly bundles the right to sue.

6. 2023‑08‑15 — Reel/frame not retrieved

   • Conveyance: Release (Release by Secured Party)
   • Assignor: Intellectual Ventures Fund 83 LLC
   • Assignee/beneficiary listed: Monument Peak Ventures, LLC
   • Correspondent: not retrieved
   • Context: Lien clearance — a secured party release relating to an encumbrance granted by IV Fund 83, recorded after the 2017 transfer. It is not a transfer of title.

Not found / not claimed: I found no execution of the patent by a third-party verifier of record (e.g., a notary/attorney block) and no correspondent name for any of the six entries. I also found no assignment of this patent to Apple Inc. or to any member of the IV/RPX licensee consortium — Apple took direct title to four other Kodak patents in 2013, not this one.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6810149
    2000 : Filed by Squilla and McIntyre
         : Assigned to Eastman Kodak
    2004 : Patent issued
    2012 : Security interest to Citicorp
    2013 : Kodak bankruptcy sale to IV Fund 83
         : Secured party release recorded
    2017 : Assigned to Monument Peak Ventures
    2023 : Release by secured party recorded

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — PRESENT. Title left an operating company (Kodak) for Intellectual Ventures Fund 83 LLC, a Delaware LLC at 7251 W Lake Mead Blvd, Ste 300, Las Vegas NV 89128 — a registered-agent-style Las Vegas address, an entity whose very name is "Fund," and by definition a licensing vehicle with no products in commerce (recorded 2013‑04‑18, per Google Patents legal events; buyer identity and address confirmed in the recorded Patent Sale Agreement, Justia contract copy). It then moved to Monument Peak Ventures, LLC, a single-purpose Texas LLC in Plano (recorded 2017‑03‑09; Plano address confirmed in the recorded IV Fund 83 → MPV Assignment of Patent Rights executed 2017‑02‑15). Multiple licensing-LLC hops, no products.

2. Known asserter in the chain — PRESENT. Intellectual Ventures is expressly on the comparison list, and it held title from 2013 to 2017 (the IV Fund 83 link). IV's 2017 carve-out of former-Kodak digital-imaging assets into Monument Peak Ventures is the well-documented IV monetization spinout. The 2013 acquisition was also co-organized with RPX Corporation, which assembled the licensee consortium (Adobe, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, FujiFilm, Google, HTC, Huawei, Microsoft, RIM, Samsung, Shutterfly) — see Kodak's Form 8‑K of Dec. 18, 2012.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR. I could not retrieve the correspondent-of-record for any of the six recorded events, so I can neither confirm nor exclude a recurring filing attorney. This is the field the exercise most wants, and it is the field I could not obtain. It should be pulled directly from the Assignment Center (search by patent number, then open each reel/frame's "correspondent" panel) before any final call is made on this signal.

4. Cascading transfers (<24 months) — NOT PRESENT. The two title transfers are separated by roughly four years (2013‑04‑18 → 2017‑03‑09, executed 2017‑02‑15). There is no rapid LLC-to-LLC daisy chain on this patent.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — UNCLEAR. The Google Patents record carries a Darts-IP family-level "first worldwide family litigation filed" flag (family ID 24570285), but I have no docket-confirmed complaint or filing date, so I cannot test whether a transfer landed within 6 months before a first suit. The 2013 and 2017 transfers are both better explained as portfolio-level events than as per-suit venue engineering. Note the 2017 instrument does expressly convey past and future causes of action, which is the drafting posture of an assertion-ready transfer.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — PRESENT. Kodak's Chapter 11 (SDNY), the Dec. 18, 2012 Patent Sale Agreement, Bankruptcy Court approval following the Jan. 11, 2013 hearing, and a $527 million price for ~1,100 digital-imaging patents. This is the textbook example cited in the prompt ("Kodak"). Kodak's own 2012 Form 8‑K describes the sale as necessary "to improve liquidity and fund operations."

7. Privateering — UNCLEAR. The 2013 sale was a bankruptcy monetization rather than a classic "operating company secretly funds an NPE against competitors" arrangement. But the licensee consortium included Kodak's major competitors, and IV/RPX organized it — so the practical effect (competitors funding defensive licenses while IV holds the offensive title) is adjacent to privateering. I do not have SEC or Patent Progress/EFF evidence of a privateering agreement, so I do not call it present.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT. RPX participated as consortium organizer/licensee, not as the terminal assignee; the chain does not end at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. It ends at Monument Peak Ventures, a licensing/assertion-capable entity. (Note the inverse nuance: RPX's involvement here is frequently characterized as a defensive play for the consortium, even though title itself did not neutralize.)

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Verdict

NPE — high confidence.

Three strong signals converge on this patent's recorded chain: (i) a known asserter (Intellectual Ventures Fund 83 LLC) took title in the 2013‑04‑18 recording; (ii) that transfer was a bankruptcy fire-sale out of Kodak's Chapter 11, $527M for the digital-imaging portfolio, court-approved after the Jan. 11, 2013 hearing (Kodak 8‑K); and (iii) title then moved on 2017‑03‑09 (instrument executed 2017‑02‑15) into Monument Peak Ventures, LLC, a single-purpose Plano, Texas licensing LLC, under an instrument that expressly conveys past and future infringement causes of action — with no products in commerce anywhere in the chain after Kodak. Two caveats belong on the face of this verdict: the correspondent-of-record and reel/frame fields for all six events were not retrieved, so signal 3 is unresolved; and the patent is expired (adjusted expiration 2022‑02‑01), so this is a historical NPE chain, not a live assertion exposure. The unresolved Darts-IP litigation flag means I cannot date any first suit.

Verify at: USPTO Assignment Center (search patent number 6810149) or the legacy Patent Assignment Search — both surface the same underlying reels. Priority follow-ups when the database is reachable: (a) the correspondent name on the 2013‑04‑18 and 2017‑03‑09 reel/frame entries, to test signal 3; and (b) whether any assignment is recorded within 6 months before the Darts-IP-flagged family litigation, to test signal 5.

I'll verify the patent against USPTO sources and pull details on the cited references before doing the §102 mapping.

Prior Art Analysis — US 6,810,149 B1

0. Patent number verification (USPTO-side records)

Before mapping references, I confirmed the exact number 6810149 and did not return any near-number (e.g., 6,810,148 / 6,810,150) as a substitute:

The references below are the ones of record on the face of the patent (the examiner's IDS / citation listing), plus the two Non‑Patent Literatures. Because the application was filed 2000‑08‑17, it is governed by pre‑AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102, so the operative subsections are § 102(a) (known/used by others before invention), § 102(b) (printed publication or patent more than one year before filing, i.e., before 1999‑08‑17), and § 102(e) (U.S. patent granted on an application filed before the applicant's date of invention — which is why several references that issued in 2002–2003 still count, as of their 1995–1998 U.S. filing dates).

⚠️ Flag on the count. Google Patents renders this record twice, as "Citations (24)" and "Patent Citations (25)." The delta is US 6,137,897 A (Sysmex), which appears only in the 25‑item list and is the U.S. family member of JP H10‑275150 A (Toa Medical Electronics); both are of record and I treat them as one family, giving 25 patent citations + 2 NPL references = 27 items.

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1. Tier 1 — Most relevant references (realistic standalone § 102 candidates)

1.1 NPL‑A — Kuchinsky et al., "FotoFile" (the strongest § 102 reference)

Source retrieved: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/302979.303143 (abstract, publication history, page range confirmed).

1.2 NPL‑B — Davis, "Media Streams"

1.3 US 5,943,049 A — Casio (face images as selectable, message-bearing tokens)

1.4 US 5,689,286 A — AST Research (icon construction/customization)

Source retrieved: https://www.freepatentsonline.com/[5689286](/patent/5689286).html (claims 16–28 and the "human likeness" limitations).

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2. Tier 2 — Moderately relevant references (categorize/retrieve by selecting an icon)

2.1 US 5,812,995 A — Matsushita

2.2 US 6,137,897 A (Sysmex) / JP H10‑275150 A (Toa Medical Electronics)

2.3 US 6,028,603 A — Pictra

2.4 US 5,963,203 A — Obvious Technology

2.5 US 5,751,287 A — Documagix

2.6 US 6,466,241 B1 — Gateway

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3. Tier 3 — Background/§ 103-only references (weakest § 102 footing)

These are all of record but none individually discloses the claimed combination; they are useful as secondary references or as evidence of the state of the GUI/icon art as of 2000:

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4. Consolidated § 102 mapping by claim

The table gives, for each independent claim, the single best standalone § 102 candidate (if any) and the references that would need to be combined under § 103.

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5. Net assessment of "most relevant prior art"

Ranked by actual threat value against the seven independents:

1. FotoFile (Kuchinsky et al., CHI '99, pp. 496–503) — the only reference that plausibly anticipates claim 1/9 and 17/18 and 23, and the only cited item with any "automatic annotation" teaching for claims 19/21.
2. Media Streams (Davis, IEEE VL 1993, pp. 196–202) — best § 102(b) reading for claims 2, 3 and the category-organization concept.
3. US 5,943,049 (Casio) — the anchor for claims 3, 5, 20, 22 and the image-derived-icon concept.
4. US 5,689,286 (AST Research) — direct hit on claims 4/7/23/25, including the express "human likeness" icon limitation.
5. US 5,812,995 (Matsushita), US 6,137,897 / JP H10‑275150 (Sysmex/Toa), US 6,028,603 (Pictra), US 5,963,203 (Obvious Technology) — the image/document filing-and-retrieval cluster supporting claims 1, 9, 17, 18.

Anticipation caution: Two limitations are what keep most of this list out of true § 102 territory — (i) the icon must be a "digital image icon" (i.e., image-derived), and (ii) for claims 19/21/22, the characteristics of that icon must be used to find non-categorized images. Reference (i) is met only by FotoFile and (arguably) Casio; reference (ii) is met by nothing in the cited set except FotoFile's "automatic annotation" language. Claims 5, 8, 19, 21, 22 and 26 are therefore § 103 cases, not clean § 102 cases.

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6. Caveats and explicit unknowns

• I did not retrieve the prosecution file history (IDS forms, examiner's § 102/§ 103 rejections, or the applicant's amendments) in this session. I therefore cannot tell you which of these 27 references the examiner actually applied as anticipation versus merely listed. The asterisk markers in Google's citation table suggest a subset was examiner-cited, but the substantive rejection record was not available. Do not state that a given reference "was a § 102 rejection" without pulling the file wrapper (USPTO PatentCenter for 09/640,938).
• The FotoFile § 102 mapping above is built from the paper's abstract, its DBLP/ACM bibliographic record, and the patent's own characterization in its IDS — I was not able to open the full 8‑page CHI paper text before reaching my tool-step limit. The abstract's "blends human and automatic annotation methods" language is the basis for the claims 19/21 candidacy, and that basis should be confirmed against the full paper (particularly whether its props are image-based and whether it performs category-scoped retrieval).
• The "distal image icon" language in claims 17, 19 and 21 is reproduced literally from the granted text (confirmed identical in the Google Patents text and the Official Gazette text). I have not auto-corrected it, and no construction record constrains it.
• Dates: all 25 patent citations carry priority/U.S. filing dates from 1990 to 1998 — i.e., none post-dates the 2000‑08‑17 filing, so each qualifies as § 102(a)/(b)/(e) art. References that issued after 2000 (US 6,466,241; 6,519,584; 6,622,148; 6,483,525; 6,426,800; 6,477,315) are usable only under § 102(e), as of their 1995–1998 U.S. filing dates.
• One clean miss to note: no cited reference, individually or in the combinations above, reaches claim 26 (auto-adding a category/icon from information supplied with the image). That is the one claim in the set that needs art outside the face of the patent.

I'll ground the § 103 analysis in the actual prior-art references listed on the patent's face before building combinations.

Now let me verify the remaining face-of-patent references that bear on the independent claims.

Obviousness Analysis — US 6,810,149 B1 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Scope note: This builds on the earlier claim-construction and litigation sections. It does not repeat the claim summaries; it maps the references listed in the patent's own "Cited By / Citations / Non-Patent Citations" blocks (the Prior Art section of the page) onto those claims. All references discussed are on the face of the patent — i.e., of record before the examiner — unless expressly noted as non-prior-art context.

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1. Threshold: which art is actually available

Priority/filing date of the patent: 2000-08-17. Every reference in the table predates it, so all are available as § 103 art (pre-AIA § 103(a) reaches § 102(a), (b), (e), (f) art).

⚠️ Cross-section contradiction to flag: the PTAB section asserted "no confirmed suit on this patent," while the litigation section confirmed Monument Peak Ventures v. Xerox, 2:21-cv-00345-JRG-RSP, asserting '149 claims 1, 2, 3, 7, 9, 10, 11, 15, 17, 18 (narrowed in P.R. 3-1 to 1, 3, 9, 11, 17, 18). The litigation section is the better-supported record. This matters for § 103 because the only claims ever commercially asserted are the icon-mediated categorization and retrieval claims — exactly the subject matter the of-record art hits hardest — and the auto-categorization claims 19–22 were never asserted, consistent with them being the most vulnerable.

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2. Level of ordinary skill (Graham factor 1)

A POSITA here would hold a B.S. in computer science/computer engineering (or equivalent) and roughly 2–4 years designing consumer imaging or document-management software with graphical user interfaces — or an M.S. with less experience. The presumptive knowledge set includes: GUI widget/icon design and customization; metadata (keyword/attribute) image databases; EXIF and APS magnetic-layer capture metadata; bulk tagging of selected thumbnail sets; and, by 1999, the published content-based-image-retrieval literature (color/texture feature extraction) and applied face detection/recognition, which FotoFile itself demonstrates was in the consumer-imaging mainstream.

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3. Ground A — Claims 1–8 (categorization software product)

Primary combination: FotoFile + Media Streams + US 5,943,049 (Casio); secondarily US 5,689,286 (AST).

Motivation to combine (KSR). All three sit in the same field — computer GUIs for annotating/organizing media and files. FotoFile's authors state the design pressure expressly: consumer research found consumers "resistant to the notion of organizing and managing home media, seeing these activities as tedious and error prone," and the paper's stated goal is to "minimize the burden of annotation" by substituting visual selection for typing. That is a textbook market-pressure motivation to replace FotoFile's typed attribute values with the graphical, point-and-click icons of Media Streams/Casio. Media Streams supplies the categorical icon palette and the express teaching that "icons can have attached textual annotations"; Casio supplies a face image as the file's selectable mark; the combination is a predictable substitution of one known selection UI for another with no change in principle of operation. Claims 2, 3, 6, 7 follow.

Claim 3 / 11 (icon associated with corresponding text): Media Streams states icons "can have attached textual annotations"; Matsushita's classification/attribute records store both a name and icon information. Expressly disclosed.

Claims 6 / 14 (Who, What, Where, When, Why): FotoFile's attribute set already supplies Who (people), What (subject), Where (location), When (creation date) — four of the five. Adding the fifth "W" (a free-text reason/event) is a labeling/ergonomic choice within the same attribute framework; Media Streams independently describes a minimal set of annotation categories for content retrieval. Strong § 103; the applicant's own specification treats "Why" as manually typed text, conceding no technical contribution.

Claims 4–5, 7–8, 12–13 (add-feature; icon obtained from the image being categorized): US 5,689,286 discloses exactly the "addition selection feature for adding customized icons" — a CREATE USER dialog producing a stored, customizable icon that can be a "human likeness." Casio teaches composing a face image from selected image parts. However: none of the of-record art cleanly discloses cropping a region of the image currently being categorized to mint the icon (the '149 FIG. 3C dash-line 57 / portion 200). This is the patent's tightest point (see §7).

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4. Ground B — Claims 9–16 (method of organizing a plurality of images)

Same combination, plus FotoFile's bulk annotation: "the user can select multiple media objects in the Image Palette, select several values within the Content Index, and then press the Annotate button," assigning "all selected values to all of the selected media objects." That is claim 9's "displaying a plurality of digital images" + "categorizing at least one" in a single reference. The '149 specification's stated justification for batch mode — "images from a single source will have a number of common themes among the images" — is the same rationale FotoFile gives for scraplets/narrative grouping. Claims 10, 11, 14–16 fall with Ground A.

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5. Ground C — Claims 17–18 (retrieval by icon)

Combination: FotoFile + US 5,812,995 + US 5,943,049.

This is the strongest ground in the case. FotoFile explicitly teaches using the same selection gesture for annotation and search, which is the entire inventive concept of claims 17–18. Notably, claims 17 and 18 were both asserted in the Xerox complaint and P.R. 3-1 — and this ground goes directly to their core.

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6. Ground D — Claims 19–22 (automatic organization by icon characteristics) — the most exposed claims

Assessment: Claims 19–22 read almost verbatim onto FotoFile, and the only additional reference needed is for the "icon" framing (Casio's face images). Media Streams adds nothing here. A POSITA reading FotoFile would arrive at this feature without the '149's disclosure.

This raises a serious of-record problem for the patent owner: FotoFile was the examiner's own NPL citation, yet claims 19–22 issued anyway. Two readings: (a) the examiner read FotoFile's "names/faces" narrowly as not meeting "predetermined characteristics of said icon," or (b) the applicant distinguished on the icon-as-exemplar framing. Either way, the Board in an IPR is not bound by the examiner's allowance, and would decide obviousness afresh on the same record. There is no § 315(e) estoppel against anyone because no AIA trial exists (consistent with the earlier PTAB section).

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7. Ground E — Claims 23–26 (personalizing the program)

Combination: Media Streams + US 5,689,286 + FotoFile.

• Claim 23 (select stored categories and stored icons): Media Streams is nearly anticipatory — "the user creates iconic descriptors by cascading down hierarchies of icons in order to select or compound iconic primitives," which then "accumulate on one or more Icon Palettes." That is selecting categories and icons from stored pluralities. US 5,689,286 adds the icon-customization/storage step ("storing said modified icon as a new icon in a memory").
• Claim 25 (adding a personalized icon): US 5,689,286's CREATE USER button and its stated application — icons "constructed or customized to resemble particular users" — directly meet it. Casio's part-based face construction is a second route.
• Claim 26 (automatically adding a new category or icon in response to information provided with a digital image): The weakest link. FotoFile's keyframe extraction and automatic face-derived Content Index entries are derived from the image, not from metadata provided with the image. The face-of-patent art is thin here; a defendant would likely need additional art on capture-side metadata (EXIF/APS magnetic-layer systems — which the '149 specification itself discusses as known) plus an auto-populating taxonomy. I would not count this claim as invalidable on the of-record art alone.

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8. Where the § 103 case is genuinely weak

1. Claims 5, 8, 13 — icon obtained from the image being categorized (crop-to-icon). AST builds icons from pre-stored component objects; Casio composes faces from stored part images; FotoFile's face system outputs identified names into a Content Index, not a croppable icon exemplar. The best counter-argument is architectural: FotoFile's face detector necessarily localizes a face region within the photo and recognition matches on that region, then propagates the identity to later photos — i.e., the same "region-derived exemplar reused for later matching" pipeline the '149 claims at steps 166/168. That is a respectable § 103 argument but is inferential, not a clean express disclosure.
2. Claim 26, as above.
3. The "digital image forming device" limitation (claims 1, 17, 21) — a term of art for printers/copiers; the specification describes a personal computer plus scanner. This is a § 112/construction vulnerability more than a § 103 one, but it gives a defendant a foothold to argue the art lacks the element as construed.
4. The granted-text defects ("distal image icon" in claims 17, 19, 21; "associated and categorization of" and the orphan clause in claim 17; "digital digital images" in claim 23). These make element-by-element mapping contestable — an accused infringer cannot be said to meet a limitation that has no ascertainable scope. No tribunal has construed them (per the earlier PTAB section).

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9. Objective indicia / secondary considerations

• No known nexus evidence. No commercial-success, copying, or long-felt-need record was located. The patent's enforcement history is NPE-driven licensing, not product-market success; the earlier sections also note the patent expired 2022-02-01, which strongly suggests the absence of any enduring market signal.
• Trajectory evidence, not prior art. The cited-by art — Adobe's US 8,259,995 "Designating a tag icon" and US 2011/0267368 "Indicating a correspondence between an image and an object"; Microsoft's US 7,837,913 "Selection-based item tagging"; Applied Recognition's US 9,721,148 "Face detection and recognition" — shows multiple independent actors later patenting the same genus (icon-mediated image tagging; face-based auto-annotation). These post-date the 2000 filing and are not § 102 art, but they are corroborative of the KSR "predictable variation" narrative and cut against any claim of unexpected results.
• Skepticism/teaching-away: none found in any reference; Media Streams and FotoFile each encourage the icon/metadata direction rather than discouraging it.

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10. Bottom line for the file

Strongest grounds (high confidence on the of-record art):

• Claims 17–18 — FotoFile's express annotation/search symmetry + Matsushita's icon-keyed registration/retrieval. These were the asserted retrieval claims.
• Claims 19–22 — FotoFile's face-recognition + propagate-annotation-to-subsequent-photos disclosure, using an icon/face-image reference (Casio) for the "icon" element. Not asserted in the Xerox case.
• Claims 1, 2, 3, 6, 9, 10, 11, 14 — FotoFile + Media Streams (+ Casio for the image-icon element); the five-W set is a labeling choice over FotoFile's own attribute list.

Contested grounds (require inference or art beyond the face of the patent):

• Claims 5, 8, 13 (crop-the-displayed-image-to-make-the-icon) — the patent's narrowest surviving element; attack via the localized-face-region reading of FotoFile, or bring in additional image-cropping/exemplar art.
• Claims 26 and, to a lesser extent, 23–25 as a personalization method.
• Claims 4, 7, 12, 15 (add-a-new-icon feature) — cleanly met by US 5,689,286, but the "addition selection feature" wording invites a § 112 fight.

Procedural posture: because FotoFile and Media Streams are the examiner's own two NPL references, this is an "of-record art" § 103 case — persuasive for a district court under § 282, and available for an IPR on essentially the same record with no petitioner estoppel outstanding (zero AIA trials, per the earlier section). The practical constraint remains the 2022-02-01 expiration: any value is limited to past damages inside the § 286 lookback, which is why the of-record-art § 103 case is worth building now rather than the PTAB route.

Unresolved verification items (search budget exhausted): the precise claim text of US 5,751,287 (Documagix), US 6,028,603 (Pictra) and US 5,202,828 (Apple); whether any of them expressly discloses cropping a displayed image to mint a selection icon (which would close Ground A's and §7's remaining gap); and Media Streams' exact enumerated annotation category names (my sources confirmed "minimal annotation categories" and multi-dimensional annotation — time, space, characters, actions — but I could not confirm a literal Who/What/Where/When list).