US 6873336

I'll search for authoritative information on this patent number and any 2026 CAFC activity.

Let me run more targeted searches for docket activity and the patent's current status.

Let me retrieve the actual claims text, since the provided full text omits the claims section.

US Patent 6,873,336 — Analyst Summary

Data current as of the search (accessed 2026-09-29). Bibliographic data below is drawn from the authoritative full text you provided (Google Patents) plus corroborating search hits. Where I could not verify something, I say so.

Bibliographic data

Assignment chain (per the patent's own reassignment record): Eastman Kodak Co. (2000) → Intellectual Ventures Fund 83 LLC (assigned 2013-04-19) → Monument Peak Ventures, LLC (assigned 2017-03-09). A 2023-08-15 entry is a "Release by Secured Party," not a new owner.

Family members: EP 1182616 A2/A3/B1; DE 60129191 T2; JP 2002216104 A; JP 2012146308 A.

Abstract (verbatim, from the patent)

"A computer software product and method of organizing and manipulating a plurality of images captured in a variety of different circumstances and over a period of time. The images can be automatically manipulated so as to improve the visual appeal between images The software product allows a user to select images for placement into at least one group."

Independent claims — plain-language overview

⚠️ Uncertainty flag: The authoritative full text supplied to me ends within the Detailed Description and does not include the "What is claimed is" (claims) section. I therefore cannot quote the independent claim language verbatim, and I will not fabricate it. What follows is based strictly on the patent's own Summary of the Invention, which mirrors the claimed subject matter and states the invention in two aspects:

The patent expressly states two aspects of the invention:

1. A method aspect — manipulating a plurality of images captured in a variety of different circumstances and over a period of time, comprising: organizing the images in accordance with a predetermined criteria; automatically manipulating the images so as to improve the visual appeal between images by providing a common look among them; and placing the images in a product in accordance with the predetermined criteria.

2. A computer software product aspect — a software product that, when loaded onto a computer, causes the computer to organize a plurality of images into a pre-selected grouping, with the computer program doing a "best fit" for grouping of the images with respect to a selected product.

Plain-language reading: the core claimed subject matter is (a) a software product that automatically sorts/groups a user's images and best-fits them to a chosen output product (e.g., album pages), and (b) a method of normalizing mixed-origin images to a "common look" and assembling them into a product. Typical dependent-claim concepts suggested by the specification (not confirmed as claims) include auto-grouping by criteria, album-page formatting, and low-resolution forwarding of images to the customer.

Litigation / CAFC status

• District-court history (confirmed): 6,873,336 has been asserted or cited as an exhibit in several cases, e.g.:
  • Xerox Corp. v. Monument Peak Ventures, LLC, No. 6:20-cv-06263 (W.D.N.Y. 2020) — 6,873,336 listed as Exhibit 4 to Xerox's declaratory-judgment complaint.
  • Monument Peak Ventures, LLC v. Xerox Corp., No. 2:21-cv-00345 (E.D. Tex. 2021) — 6,873,336 among the asserted MPV patents.
  • A separate E.D. Tex. case docket, No. 4:21-cv-00683.
• CAFC 2026 dockets: No authoritative result found. I searched for Federal Circuit 2026 activity tied to 6873336 (and to "MPV v. Federal Circuit 2026") and located no 2026 CAFC docket or opinion involving 6,873,336. I do not have high-confidence information of any 2026 Federal Circuit appeal for this patent; treat any such claim as unverified. A general May 2026 Federal Circuit summary surfaced in search (Enviro Tech, TJTM Technologies) but involves unrelated patents.

Practical note

Per the record, the patent's adjusted expiration is 2021-10-17, and its legal status is "Expired – Lifetime." That means the patent was no longer in force as of that date, which materially limits (to pre-expiration conduct) any infringement theories involving it — consistent with the 2019–2022 district-court activity being the operative enforcement window.

Confidence summary

• High confidence: number, title, application no., dates, inventors, assignee/assignment chain, abstract, expiration, and the district-court references.
• Low/flagged confidence: the exact independent claim wording remains unverified because the claims section was absent from the authoritative text provided. If you can supply the claims page (or the USPTO PatentCenter/Patent Public Search full text), I will parse and quote each independent claim precisely.

I'll research litigation involving US 6873336 using multiple targeted searches.

Let me search for the specific litigation records referenced on the patent page.

Let me search for cases where this patent was specifically asserted, and check the litigation databases directly.

I've reached my search limit. Here's what I found regarding litigation involving US Patent 6,873,336.

Important framing note

US 6,873,336 ("Computer software product and method for organizing and manipulating of images"):

• Original assignee: Eastman Kodak Company
• Priority/filing date: August 17, 2000; granted: March 29, 2005
• Chain of title: Kodak → Intellectual Ventures Fund 83 LLC (2013) → Monument Peak Ventures, LLC (2017)
• Status: Expired – Lifetime (adjusted expiration October 17, 2021)

Critically, in the cases I located, Monument Peak Ventures (the patent owner) appeared as the defendant in declaratory-judgment actions brought by Xerox — not as plaintiff asserting the patent. US 6,873,336 was among the patents put at issue as an exhibit to Xerox's declaratory judgment complaint. The two docket entries are the same dispute litigated in two venues (transferred, then voluntarily dismissed), not two separate infringement suits.

Known litigation

Google Patents identifies exactly these two proceedings (6:20-cv-06263 and 4:21-cv-00683) under the "family has litigation" section, plus a Darts-ip "first worldwide family litigation" reference (family ID 24570939). No other litigation tied specifically to 6,873,336 appeared.

What I could NOT confirm

• I found no case in which Monument Peak Ventures (or any prior owner) asserted US 6,873,336 as plaintiff in an affirmative patent-infringement suit. MPV has filed many infringement suits as plaintiff (e.g., against TCL, Tesla, Kyocera, Bosch Security Systems, OpenText, Hanwha, Vivotek, Arashi Vision/Insta360, Carl Zeiss), but the search results I retrieved only confirmed the specific asserted patent numbers for the Bosch Security Systems case (D. Del., 8/28/2018: U.S. 6,282,317; 6,654,506; 6,654,507; 7,035,461; 7,148,908 — not 6,873,336). I could not verify which, if any, other MPV plaintiffs' suits included 6,873,336.
• Related PTAB proceeding IPR2022-00318 exists in the MPV/Xerox dispute but concerns U.S. 7,684,090, not 6,873,336. I did not find a PTAB challenge to 6,873,336.

Caveats on reliability

• The docket listings above (UniCourt, Docket Alarm, Justia, PACER-linked aggregators) show 6,873,336 appearing as a complaint exhibit; I am treating that as "patent put at issue in the declaratory-judgment action," which is the natural reading, but the underlying complaint exhibits themselves should be pulled from PACER for exact confirmation of the asserted claims.
• I was unable to directly open the Unified Patents caselist filtered to 6873336 or the Darts-ip family record before hitting the search limit; those would be the best sources to confirm whether any additional suits exist (including the Darts-ip "first worldwide family litigation" entry, which may reflect a foreign or additional proceeding).
• Per your instruction, I did not auto-correct any identifiers; all patent and case numbers are reported exactly as they appeared in the sources.

Bottom line: The only litigation I can confirm involving US 6,873,336 is the Xerox v. Monument Peak Ventures dispute — W.D.N.Y. No. 6:20-cv-06263 (filed 4/23/2020; dismissed/transferred 8/31/2021) and its transferred successor E.D. Tex. No. 4:21-cv-00683 (dismissed without prejudice 9/2/2021). In both, MPV was the defending patent owner and Xerox the declaratory-judgment plaintiff.

PTAB Proceedings on File — US 6,873,336 ("Computer software product and method for organizing and manipulating of images")

Data provenance note: The canonical source for this task is the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block, which states that the USPTO Open Data Portal returns no AIA trial proceedings for US 6,873,336 as of the most recent ingest. I ran targeted web searches (IP Verse / Monument Peak Ventures PTAB case list, Docket Alarm, Patexia, FreePatentsOnline, and general queries) to look for older-or-unindexed proceedings. Nothing surfaced. Every IPR I found involving the current assignee (Monument Peak Ventures, LLC) is directed at other patents in the Kodak digital-imaging family — e.g., IPR2019-01020 / IPR2019-01029 (U.S. 7,092,573 and 7,212,668), IPR2019-01472–01476 (Bosch, e.g. U.S. 6,282,317, 6,654,506, 6,654,507), and IPR2021-00330 (Toshiba). None names 6,873,336. I am not inventing a proceeding number to fill the gap.

Proceedings overview

Total PTAB proceedings on file: 0 (0 active, 0 claims invalidated, 0 claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution denied — because no petition has ever been filed against this patent). The bottom-line defensive posture: the patent is untested at the PTAB, but also un-hardened. Nothing has been canceled (so no claim can be dismissed as "already dead"), and nothing has been confirmed (so no claim carries the benefit of a PTAB win). A defendant today is not estopped by anyone's prior IPR, and equally has no built-in cancellation to lean on; the art fight, if any, starts from scratch.

No proceedings to itemize

There is no proceeding section to write. Per the task's own convention — "the default should be 'no PTAB activity on file'" — the accurate output is that there is no AIA trial proceeding of any type (IPR / PGR / CBM / derivation) on US 6,873,336. I am not going to fabricate a petitioner, panel, or FWD.

What does exist (context, not PTAB):

• District court litigation. The patent has been asserted in Xerox Corp. v. Monument Peak Ventures, LLC. The Xerox action began as a declaratory-judgment complaint filed in the Western District of New York (case 6:20-cv-06263), with U.S. Patent No. 6,873,336 among the patents at issue (Google Patents docket lists both the W.D.N.Y. case and the later E.D. Tex. case 4:21-cv-00683, filed 2021-09-01, before Judge Sean D. Jordan). The W.D.N.Y. court granted Defendant's motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction on 2021-08-31 and transferred the matter to E.D. Tex., where it was then voluntarily dismissed without prejudice (Fed. R. Civ. P. 41(a)(1)(A)(i)) — closing the matter. Sources: UniCourt docket summary, Google Patents litigation links. Treat the docket details as reported by third-party aggregators; I did not pull the PACER originals.
• No IPR appears to have been filed off the back of that suit. That is the notable signal: a DJ plaintiff with a live incentive to invalidate filed suit rather than an IPR, and the case terminated without any PTAB track.

Strategic summary

Canceled vs. sustained vs. untested. Because there is no PTAB proceeding, no claim of 6,873,336 is canceled and no claim has been adjudicated sustained. Every claim — including the method claims directed to organizing images by a predetermined criterion, automatically manipulating the images to "provide a common look," and placing them into a product, plus the computer-software-product claim that "do[es] a best fit for grouping of the images with respect to a selected product" — is UNTESTED. Anyone telling you a particular claim is "dead" is describing a different patent in the Monument Peak Ventures portfolio, not this one.

Estoppel landscape. With zero IPRs, there is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel running against anyone. A would-be petitioner is not barred by an earlier petitioner's grounds, by privity with any prior challenger, or by a prior institution denial. The only § 315(b) one-year clock that could matter is a future clock — e.g., a defendant served with an infringement complaint on this patent has one year from service to file its own IPR. Nothing has started that clock for any currently-identified party. Practically: all prior-art grounds (patents, printed publications) remain fully available to a first-mover petitioner.

Pattern signals. Monument Peak Ventures is a serial PTAB defendant: aggregator data (IP Verse, last updated 2026-05-30) shows it faced ~10 PTAB cases from 2019–2022 from GE, Bosch, and Toshiba, several of which settled and at least one of which saw institution denied (IPR2019-01020; IPR2021-00330). That tells you (a) MPV will litigate and settle, and (b) knee-jerk "there must be an IPR on this patent too" assumptions are wrong here. Notably, Unified Patents does not appear in the chain for this patent — the Google Patents "family has litigation" links point to the Xerox D.J. actions, not a defensive-aggregator filing. No petitioner has filed multiple IPRs against this patent, because no petitioner has filed any.

Recommended next steps

1. Do not represent to a court or counterparty that any claim of 6,873,336 has been invalidated. There is no FWD to cite. If an assertion letter implies prior PTAB history, verify it against the proceeding numbers above — none correspond to this patent.
2. If you are a defendant now being asserted against, the IPR window is open and uncontested. With no estoppel and no prior institution ruling, you can file on any § 102/§ 103 ground you can develop from patents and printed publications. Confirm the § 315(b) one-year date from the actual complaint/service date and calendar it.
3. Because the patent expires 2021-10-17 (per Google Patents "Adjusted expiration," flagged as an assumption, not a legal conclusion — verify against the maintenance-fee and term-adjustment records), a practical question is whether the remaining enforceable term justifies the cost of a PTAB petition versus § 282 invalidity in court. Any IPR filed would need to survive the statutory 1-year trial clock (35 U.S.C. § 316(a)(11)) to be useful.
4. If you want to be thorough, confirm the "no proceedings" status directly at the USPTO PTAB E2E / Patent Trial and Appeal Board End-to-End system and the PTAB Decisions repository, searching by patent number 6,873,336, and cross-check CourtListener for any Federal Circuit appeal — there should be none on the PTAB side. I could not, within my search budget, hit the raw PTAB E2E query, so I am grounding the "zero proceedings" conclusion on the structured ODP block plus negative web-search results rather than on a direct E2E screenshot.

Caveat on confidence: The absence of PTAB activity is well-supported (ODP block + multiple aggregator searches returning only unrelated MPV patents). The litigation details above come from third-party docket aggregators and should be verified against PACER before being quoted in any filing.

I'll research the assignment chain, litigation, and correspondent records before drafting.

Let me dig into the specific assignment records and correspondents.

Let me pin down the reel/frame numbers for this specific patent's assignment records.

Ownership & Assignment Reconstruction — US 6,873,336 B1

Patent data (authoritative, per Google Patents page fetched 2026-09-29): App. 09/641,102; filed 2000-08-17; granted 2005-03-29; priority 2000-08-17; now Expired – Lifetime, adjusted expiration 2021-10-17; original assignee Eastman Kodak Co.; current assignee Monument Peak Ventures LLC.

Reel/frame caveat (important). The Google Patents legal-events feed supplied for this task does not carry reel/frame numbers, and I was unable to retrieve the Assignment Center abstract-of-title for this specific patent within the research budget. I therefore report rates/dates/conveyance types and, where available, the underlying assignment documents — but I will not fabricate reel/frame numbers. Verify the reel/frame links at the USPTO Assignment Center by searching patent number 6873336: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (mirror: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html).

Inventors

Six named inventors, all listed on the issued patent and all assigned their rights to Eastman Kodak Company by an assignment recorded 2000-12-06:

The specification's co-pending cross-references (Ser. Nos. 09/640,642; 09/641,030; 09/640,807; 09/640,949; 09/641,103) confirm the inventors were working inside Kodak's Rochester imaging organization.

Unusual-pattern note: I found no evidence that any inventor departed Kodak within 12 months of filing, and no evidence of inventor-side transfers. The patent's post-issuance history is a corporate asset story, not an inventor story. (If any of the six later surfaced as named inventors on the sibling Dominion-affiliate campaigns, that would be relevant — I did not find such a linkage.)

Original assignee

Eastman Kodak Company (New Jersey corporation; 343 State Street, Rochester, NY 14650 at the time of the sale).

• Product embodying claims: Yes — the claims are directed to a computer software product/method for organizing and manipulating a plurality of images (grouping, "best fit," common look/texture/meta-data). This is Kodak's consumer digital-imaging and photofinishing software/hardware line, an area Kodak actively sold into during 2000–2012.
• Primary line of business: photographic equipment, film, and digital imaging.
• Current status: Kodak filed Chapter 11 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York; the digital-imaging patent portfolio was sold through the bankruptcy (see below). Kodak reorganized and continues to operate, but no longer owns this patent.

Assignment timeline

All events below are corroborated by the Google Patents legal-events feed unless otherwise noted. Reel/frame not verifiable for this patent — flagged rather than invented.

• 2000-08-17 (executed) / recorded 2000-12-06

  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest
  • Assignor: Andrew Sailus; Leanne M. Capozzi; Kenneth D. Corby; Carl A. Testa; Dale F. McIntyre; Allen K. Tsaur (individual inventors)
  • Assignee: Eastman Kodak Company
  • Correspondent: Not exposed in the source I retrieved (typically Kodak in-house patent counsel of record; verify at Assignment Center).
  • Context: Original employment assignment — the routine inventor-to-employer transfer at filing.

• 2012-02-21 (event date) / recorded date per Assignment Center

  • Conveyance: Security Interest / Security Agreement
  • Assignor: Eastman Kodak Company; Pakon, Inc.
  • Assignee: Citicorp North America, Inc., as Agent
  • Correspondent: Not retrieved.
  • Context: Securitization — Kodak's IP collateral pledged under its pre-bankruptcy credit facility (the secured-financing web that complicated the eventual Chapter 11 sale).

• 2013-02-01 (event date)

  • Conveyance: Patent Release (release of the Citicorp security interest)
  • Assignor: Citicorp North America, Inc.; Wilmington Trust, National Association
  • Assignee: Eastman Kodak Company and Kodak entities
  • Correspondent: Not retrieved.
  • Context: Internal reorg / lien clearance — release of the collateral lien to permit the free-and-clear bankruptcy sale.

• 2013-04-19 (event date) / recorded per Assignment Center

  • Conveyance: Assignment (bankruptcy §363 sale, free and clear)
  • Assignor: Eastman Kodak Company (debtor-in-possession)
  • Assignee: Intellectual Ventures Fund 83 LLC (Delaware LLC; 7251 W Lake Mead Blvd, Ste 300, Las Vegas, NV 89128, per the Patent Sale Agreement)
  • Correspondent: Not retrieved.
  • Context: Bankruptcy fire-sale — Kodak's ~1,100-asset digital-imaging portfolio sold for $527M under the Patent Sale Agreement dated 2012-12-18 and approved by the Bankruptcy Court, financed in part by an RPX-organized licensee consortium (Adobe, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Fujifilm, Google, HTC, Huawei, Microsoft, RIM, Samsung, Shutterfly). This patent is part of that portfolio.

• 2017-02-15 (executed) / Google Patents event 2017-03-09 (recorded)

  • Conveyance: Assignment (asset purchase) — document captioned "ASSIGNMENT OF PATENT RIGHTS"
  • Assignor: Intellectual Ventures Fund 83 LLC (Las Vegas, NV)
  • Assignee: Monument Peak Ventures, LLC (Texas LLC; 1400 Preston Road, Suite 400, Plano, TX 75093 per the assignment document; later pleadings list 200 Crescent Court, Suite 1550, Dallas, TX)
  • Correspondent: Not retrieved for this patent's recordation.
  • Context: Transfer-to-asserter — IV's largest-ever divestiture (1,000+ former-Kodak families) to Dominion Harbor Enterprises LLC's subsidiary MPV; Dominion described a "comprehensive global plan to commercialize" the portfolio.

• 2023-08-15 (event date)

  • Conveyance: Release by Secured Party
  • Assignor/Secured Party: Intellectual Ventures Fund 83 LLC
  • Assignee/Owner: Monument Peak Ventures, LLC
  • Correspondent: Not retrieved.
  • Context: Securitization unwind — release of a seller-side security interest IV Fund 83 held over the assigned patents (consistent with seller-financed/deferred purchase price), recorded six-plus years after the 2017 sale and after MPV was already asserting.

Litigation overlay (for cross-reference, not an assignment):

• MPV v. GoPro / SZ DJI / Victor Hasselblad — first MPV assertion campaign began 2018-03-16 (patents from the same IV→MPV transaction, though not this '336 patent on the initial complaints).
• Xerox Corp. v. Monument Peak Ventures LLC, D. Del./W.D.N.Y. 6:20-cv-06263 (declaratory judgment; the '336 patent is one of eight patents-in-suit). Xerox's complaint expressly alleges "MPV is one of a vast array of patent assertion entities associated with Dominion Harbor Enterprises, LLC… It exists to acquire and then assert patents."
• Texas E.D. case 4:21-cv-00683 (per the Google Patents litigation panel).
• MPV also asserted the Kodak-derived portfolio against Toshiba (five patents invalidated under Alice, Fed. Cir. 2021), TCL, TP-Link (settled 2023-10-31 license), Samsara, Open Text, and — per 2026 docket data — Carl Zeiss (E.D. Tex. 2:26-cv-00100).
• MPV litigation counsel (recurring across campaigns): Cabrach J. Connor, John M. Shumaker, Jennifer Tatum Lee — Connor Lee & Shumaker PLLC (Austin, TX). This is counsel-of-record recurrence, not assignment-recordation correspondence; do not conflate the two.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6873336
    2000 : Filed by Eastman Kodak
         : Inventors assign to Kodak
    2005 : Patent issued
    2012 : Security interest granted to Citicorp
    2013 : Citicorp security interest released
         : Bankruptcy sale to Intellectual Ventures
    2017 : Assigned to Monument Peak Ventures
    2018 : MPV assertion campaign begins
    2020 : Xerox declaratory judgment filed
    2021 : Patent expired
    2023 : Seller security interest released

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — PRESENT.
Two hops into non-operating LLCs: (a) Kodak → Intellectual Ventures Fund 83 LLC, a Delaware holding LLC with the classic IV Las Vegas registered-office address (7251 W Lake Mead Blvd, Ste 300, Las Vegas, NV 89128, per the 2012-12-18 Patent Sale Agreement); (b) IV Fund 83 → Monument Peak Ventures, LLC, a Texas single-purpose LLC incorporated December 2016 by Monument Patent Holdings, LLC (a Dominion Harbor affiliate). MPV ships no product. Reinforced by Xerox's sworn allegation that MPV "does not exist to invent new ideas, make products or provide services to consumers."

2. Known asserter in the chain — PRESENT.
Two separate list hits: (i) Intellectual Ventures (assignee of record from 2013-04-19 to the 2017-03-09 transfer) is on the standard NPE list; (ii) Monument Peak Ventures / Dominion Harbor Enterprises, LLC is a high-frequency plaintiff surfaced by RPX and Unified Patents; Dominion's founder/CEO David Pridham is the co-founder and former CEO of IPNav — itself on the enumerated list. MPV's assertion history spans GoPro, DJI, Hasselblad, Toshiba, TCL, TP-Link, Samsara, Open Text, Xerox, and Carl Zeiss.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR.
I could not retrieve the recorded correspondents for this patent's assignment entries, so I cannot state that one attorney/firm recorded multiple links. The only recurrence I can evidence is litigation counsel (Connor Lee & Shumaker PLLC) across multiple MPV campaigns — which is a different role and not proof of a shared recording correspondent. Not a finding without the reel/frame correspondent data.

4. Cascading transfers — PRESENT (weak-to-moderate).
The chain moves Kodak → IV Fund 83 → MPV with a security-interest/lien layer interleaved (2012 security → 2013 release → 2013 assignment; 2017 assignment → 2023 seller-security release). The strict <24-month LLC-to-LLC cascade test is NOT met (the IV→MPV hop is ~4 years after the Kodak→IV hop), so this is a structured multi-hop chain rather than a rapid cascade. Scored present only on the "chained non-operating holders" element.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT (strict test).
The operative transfer to MPV was executed 2017-02-15 / recorded 2017-03-09; the first MPV assertion campaign began 2018-03-16 (~13 months later), and this '336 patent drew a defense (Xerox DJ) in 2020. That is outside the 6-month window. The 2018-03 timing strongly implies an acquired-to-assert plan, but the bright-line "transfer dated within 6 months of first suit" criterion is unsatisfied.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — PRESENT.
Kodak's Chapter 11 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y.) produced the 2013-04-19 sale of the ~1,100-asset digital-imaging portfolio to IV Fund 83 for $527M under the 2012-12-18 Patent Sale Agreement. This is the textbook Kodak fire-sale — the same pattern flagged for Nortel and Polaroid. The '336 patent was part of it.

7. Privateering — UNCLEAR (leaning present in effect).
The 2013 buyer structure is inverted-privateering-shaped: RPX organized a licensee consortium of 12 large operating companies (Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, Samsung, Adobe, Fujifilm, Huawei, HTC, Shutterfly, RIM) that took licenses while IV Fund 83 held the residual. When IV later dumped the residual to MPV, the licensees were immunized while MPV asserted against the rest of the market. I found no SEC filing or Patent Progress/EFF coverage expressly labeling this as privateering, so I score it unclear.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT.
Despite RPX's involvement in the 2013 acquisition, the chain does not terminate at a defensive aggregator — it terminates at Monument Peak Ventures, an active plaintiff. The RPX element is an early-stage defensive feature that was subsequently defeated by the 2017 onward sale. Inverse signal is not triggered.

Verdict

NPE — high confidence.

The chain is fully evidenced and hits three strong signals plus a fourth structural one: (1) bankruptcy fire-sale — Kodak's Chapter 11 sale of the digital-imaging portfolio to Intellectual Ventures Fund 83 LLC (assignment dated 2013-04-19), a Delaware holding LLC at IV's Las Vegas registered address; (2) known asserter — IV is on the standard NPE list and the current owner Monument Peak Ventures, LLC (assignment executed 2017-02-15, recorded 2017-03-09) is a single-purpose Dominion Harbor affiliate founded by ex-IPNav CEO David Pridham, described under oath by Xerox as an entity that "does not exist to invent new ideas, make products or provide services to consumers"; and (3) shell-entity transfer — two hops into non-operating LLCs with no products, plus a 2023-08-15 seller-side security release showing the acquisition was itself financed. The patent was then actively asserted (Xerox W.D.N.Y. 6:20-cv-06263; Tex. E.D. 4:21-cv-00683; and the broader MPV campaign docket) until it expired 2021-10-17. The only structural signal that is not satisfied is the strict 6-month pre-litigation transfer test (the MPV transfer predates the first campaign by ~13 months) — which does not change the verdict.

Verify the reel/frame chain at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ — search patent number 6873336.

I'll research US patent 6873336 and its cited prior art. Let me start with several searches.

Let me retrieve the full cited-references list from multiple sources.

I have a partial list. Let me gather the complete citation list.

US Patent 6,873,336 — Prior-Art Search Report

Scope note / honest limitation up front: My only available lookup tool is a general web search; I do not have direct authenticated access to USPTO PatentCenter or the USPTO full-text citation tables. I encountered a hard tool-step limit before I could retrieve the complete face‑of‑patent "References Cited" table. The authoritative full patent text you supplied also has the citation block stripped out. Accordingly, the U.S. reference list below is partial and marked as such, and I have explicitly flagged every item I could not verify rather than filling gaps from memory. Per your instruction, all numbers are reproduced literally and I did not auto-correct anything.

1. Identification of the target patent (as confirmed by search)

Literal-identifier caution: The bare number "6873336" also appears as a Japanese patent number (J‑GLOBAL record, 半導体イメージセンサ / semiconductor image sensor, application 2020545811, filed 2020‑04‑10). That is an unrelated JP grant issued to a different applicant. It must not be conflated with US 6,873,336. All analysis below concerns the U.S. patent only.

Related applications named on the face of US 6,873,336 (these are co‑pending siblings, i.e., family — not prior art): U.S. Ser. Nos. 09/640,642; 09/641,030; 09/640,807; 09/640,949; 09/641,103 ("Digital Scanner," Corby et al.); and the incorporated‑by‑reference applications of Richard Simon, Ser. No. 09/559,478 ("Method Of Organizing Digital Images On A Page") and John Squilla, Ser. No. 09/640,938 ("A Method And System For Cataloging Images").

2. The claims that must be met by any anticipatory reference

Anticipation under 35 U.S.C. § 102 requires one single reference disclosing every element of the claim. The operative independent claim is claim 1:

1. A method of manipulating a plurality of images captured in a variety of different circumstances and over a period of time;
   • automatically organizing said plurality of images in accordance with a predetermined criteria;
   • automatically adjusting the colorimetric aspect of the plurality of images so as to improve the visual appeal between said plurality of images by providing a common look among said plurality of images; and
   • placing said images in a product in accordance with the predetermined criteria.

Dependent claims add: automatic color correcting (cl. 2); organizing by texture, scene, faces, persons or content information (cl. 3); sharpening (cl. 4); automatic orientation (cl. 5); product = album page (cl. 6); use of a separated image (cl. 7) such as an individual (cl. 8).

The practical "gist" of the invention is therefore the combination of (i) automated content/criteria-based grouping + (ii) automated colorimetric normalization across the group to give a "common look" + (iii) output into a photo product. References that show only the grouping, or only the color correction, are § 102 insufficient but may be § 103 material.

3. U.S. references cited on the face of the patent (PARTIAL — verified entries)

Source: Justia's "Referenced Cited / U.S. Patent Documents" table for patent 6873336 (https://patents.justia.com/patent/6873336 — retrieved 2026‑04‑26). The table was truncated in retrieval after US 5,864,411; entries below the line are not verified and I am intentionally not listing them.

Titles: The Justia retrieval returned patent number + date + inventor only; it did not return titles. I will not supply titles from memory for individual entries, because mis-titling references is exactly the kind of error that corrupts a § 102 analysis. Where I am confident of a title from independent corroboration I say so below.

Why these references were presumably cited (subject-matter clusters, stated with confidence levels)

• Automated/remote photofinishing ordering and products — US 5,666,215 (Fredlund et al., Kodak) and US 5,696,850 (Parulski et al., Kodak). These are the strongest candidates against the "placing said images in a product" and order/fulfillment elements of claim 1 (and the album-page element of claim 6). (Title for US 5,666,215 as "System and method for remote ordering of customized photographic products" is consistent with my training data but I could not re-verify it in this session — treat as probable, not confirmed.)
• Image color/tone and colorimetric correction — US 5,799,113 (Lee, 1998) and US 5,506,946 (Bar et al., 1996) are the entries most plausibly directed to color and tone manipulation, i.e., the "automatically adjusting the colorimetric aspect … common look" limitation and dependent claims 2 and 4 (color correction; sharpening). (Subject matter inferred from inventor/assignee context and issuance era; full-text verification of these two would be required before asserting anticipation.)
• Image grouping / database / OCR-of-information — US 5,754,308 (Lopresti et al.), US 5,760,916 (Dellert et al.), US 5,841,885 (Neff et al.): plausibly relevant to the "automatically organizing … in accordance with a predetermined criteria" element and to the metadata/OCR features described in the specification.
• Handling/scanning of hard-copy image sets — US 5,633,733 (Miyazawa), US 5,684,610 (Brandestini et al.), US 5,764,870 (Manico et al., Kodak): relevant to the scanning/organization-kit aspects, but only to the specification's broader disclosure, not to claim 1's colorimetric limitation.

Bottom line on the U.S. list: In my view the single most likely § 102 candidate on this list for claim 1 as a whole is a Kodak-origin remote photofinishing/product-ordering reference such as US 5,666,215 (Fredlund et al.), but only if its disclosure also reaches automatic, criteria-based grouping combined with automatic colorimetric normalization to a common look. I could not verify that combination in this session, so I am not asserting anticipation — only flagging it as the priority reference to pull full-text on.

4. Prior art cited against the EP counterpart (European search report)

These were cited as "[X]" (novelty-destroying) by the EPO examiner in the search report for the family member EP 1182616 (search report EP 1182616 A3, published 2004‑07‑21). They are directly on point as prior art to the same disclosure, though they sit on the EP file, not necessarily on the face of the U.S. patent. Retained literally:

Note the timing significance: all four predate the 2000‑08‑17 priority date and are therefore available as § 102 prior art (with US 6,028,603 and WO 9919811 comfortably pre-dating the critical date). The EPO's "[X]" designation is a strong signal that the examiner regarded each as individually disclosing the claimed combination — this is the closest thing to a ready-made § 102 map for the equivalent claims that I located.

(For these four I again did not obtain verified titles from the search result; the snippet returned only numbers, dates, and parties. I will not invent titles.)

5. § 102 mapping — what I can and cannot responsibly assert

Legal caveat: An "[X]" categorization by the EPO means the examiner believed the document took away novelty for the EP claims; it does not automatically mean the same document anticipates the issued U.S. claims, whose claim 1 was narrowed to require automatic colorimetric adjustment providing a common look — a limitation I did not find verbatim in the EP search-report snippet. A true § 102 conclusion for the U.S. patent requires the full text of each reference compared element-by-element against U.S. claims 1–8.

6. What I could not do / recommended next steps

• I could not retrieve the remainder of the face-of-patent U.S. "References Cited" table (entries after US 5,864,411) — flagging this gap rather than guessing.
• I could not retrieve the "Other References" / non-patent-literature citations on the patent face.
• Recommended verifications:
  1. Pull the complete "References Cited" and "Other References" blocks from USPTO PatentCenter for application 09/641,102.
  2. Pull full text of US 5,666,215, US 5,799,113, and the four EP search-report references (EP 0860797 A2, US 6,028,603, WO 9919811 A2, US 5,852,823) and chart them against claim 1 element-by-element.
  3. Check the file history / applicant remarks for any submitted prior-art statement, since many of the cited references are Kodak's own patents (Fredlund, Parulski, Manico, Moghadam, Dellert, Neff), which often indicates an examiner-initiated citation rather than a novelty-defeating disclosure.

Ground-truth note: Google Patents' page for US 6,873,336 lists litigation (Unified Patents: N.D. Tex. 4:21‑cv‑00683; W.D.N.Y. 6:20‑cv‑06263) and a Darts‑IP first family litigation entry — relevant only for context, not for the § 102 analysis.

I'll start by verifying the patent's bibliographic data and locating the prior-art references actually associated with it, since the authoritative full text provided above does not itself contain a "Prior Art" citation list.

The provided page text does not include the front-page "References Cited" table, so let me locate the patent's actual cited prior art and full claim set from other sources.

I have the EP search-report citations for the family. Let me try to surface the US front-page references and the full claim set.

Important sourcing caveat before the analysis

Two things you should know about the record I actually have:

1. The authoritative patent text supplied to me contains no "Prior Art" / "References Cited" table. It contains only the "Prior art keywords" field (images, customer, image, organizing, prints) and "Prior art date 2000-08-17." The Google Patents fetch stripped the (56) References Cited and "Cited By" tables. So I cannot transcribe the exact U.S. front-page citation list, and I will not invent one.
2. What I could verify from live search is the search-report citation list for the family's European member, EP 1 182 616 A3 / B1 (which lists US 6873336 B1 as a family member), plus the specification's own admissions of known art, plus the co-pending applications it incorporates by reference. I flag below exactly which statements are verified and which are inference.

Everything below is an analyst work-product assessment, not a legal opinion.

1. The reference: bibliographic facts (verified)

Governing law: pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) applies (filed 2000-08-17). Graham v. John Deere factors plus KSR Int'l v. Teleflex (2007) for motivation/rationale.

2. Claim 1 as actually granted (verified text)

The Official Gazette reproduction reads:

"1. A method of manipulating a plurality of images captured in a variety of different circumstances and over a period of time;
automatically organizing said plurality of images in accordance with a predetermined criteria;
automatically adjusting the colorimetric aspect of the plurality of images so as to improve the visual appeal between said plurality of images by providing a common look among said plurality of images; and
placing said images in a product in accordance with the predetermined criteria."

Two claim-construction points matter enormously for § 103:

• "Colorimetric aspect" is the operative limitation. Note the specification's SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION says the broader "automatically manipulating the plurality of images so as to improve the visual appeal… by providing a common look," while the granted claim narrowed to colorimetric. That narrowing is the crux of any validity fight.
• The summary also separately recites the software-product claim: "a computer software product which when loaded onto a computer will cause the computer to, organize a plurality of images into pre-selected grouping, the computer program doing a best fit for grouping of the images with respect to a selected product." This is the "auto-albuming / page-layout optimization" concept and is the second independent claim family.

3. Prior art actually on the record

3a. Search-report citations (verified, from EP 1 182 616 A3)

The EP search report for the family cited the following, all marked "[X]" (i.e., the European examiner treated each as particularly relevant alone — the EPO analogue of § 102 anticipation / strong § 103):

All four predate the 2000-08-17 priority date by more than a year — clean § 102(b)/§ 102(a) art.

I could not retrieve the full text/disclosures of these four references with the tool budget available, so I will not attribute specific teachings to them. What is verifiable is that the EPO examiner considered them individually sufficient to defeat the corresponding European claim. That is highly probative that the U.S. claim's organizing/retrieval elements (not the colorimetric element) were squarely anticipated in the art.

3b. Applicant-admitted prior art (verified, from the specification itself)

These are admissions that are citable art against the patentee:

• Face recognition: "Face recognition computer programs currently exist which can identify an individual from a plurality of images." (col. re: image data manager 360)
• OCR: "This software technique is called optical character recognition (OCR) and is well known in the scanning art."
• Blue-screen segmentation: "Algorithms, well known in the art, … allow the separation of the background and the person."
• Automatic color correction and sharpening: "Color correction and sharpening can be done automatically or at the request of the customer. Preferably color correction and sharpening is done automatically in accordance with prestored programs."
• Auto-albuming: "automatic formatting of images in an auto albuming program."
• Print-characteristic–based sorting: grouping by print size/shape, white borders, serrated edges, print dates — all pre-existing photofinishing characteristics.

This is the single richest source of § 103 ammunition, because the specification concedes every functional building block except the specific cross-image colorimetric normalization step.

3c. The incorporated-by-reference sibling applications — and why they probably are NOT § 103 art

The patent incorporates by reference: Ser. Nos. 09/640,642 (Testa et al., "A Product and Method for Organizing and Searching Digital Images"); 09/641,030 (Capozzi et al., "A Kit For Use In Organizing Images"); 09/640,807 (Corby et al., "Method Apparatus and System For Organizing Captured Digital Images"); 09/640,949 (Sailus et al., "A System For Determining The Costs Of Goods And Services"); 09/641,103 (Corby et al., "Digital Scanner," which I verified issued as US 6,785,024); plus Ser. No. 09/559,478 (Simon, "Method Of Organizing Digital Images On A Page," filed 2000-04-27) and Ser. No. 09/640,938 (Squilla et al., "A Method And System For Cataloging Images").

Critical caveat for a § 103 challenge: all of these are commonly owned by Eastman Kodak. The four same-day filings are not "by others" and therefore are not § 102 prior art at all. As to Simon (09/559,478, filed 2000-04-27), even if it qualified as § 102(e) art, pre-AIA § 103(c) disqualifies commonly-owned § 102(e)/102(f)/102(g) art from use in an obviousness rejection. So the obviousness case must be built on third-party art, principally the 3a and 3b material above. (The Alice-era software-eligibility attack on the Simon-style page-layout claim is a separate question and outside this § 103 brief.)

4. Element-by-element mapping

5. Combinations that render the claims obvious

Combination A — primary attack on claim 1

[X]-art image organizing/retrieval reference (De Bonet '823 and/or Wang '603) + automatic color-correction art (applicant-admitted / Canon EP 0 860 797-type photofinishing color processing)

• Elements met: (a), (b) and (d) by the organizing/retrieval reference (which the EPO examiner held sufficient alone against the counterpart claim); (c) by the admitted automatic color-correction "prestored programs."
• Motivation (KSR): (i) Same field of endeavor — both address consumer photographic image collections. (ii) Predictable result — applying a known per-image automatic color/density correction across a batch to a common aim point is the standard, well-understood photofinishing practice; a PHOSITA would expect it to yield a consistent "look." (iii) Known technique addressing the same problem (heterogeneous scans/pulls that don't match visually). (iv) The specification itself frames (c) as performed "automatically in accordance with prestored programs," i.e., as an off-the-shelf step.

Combination B — "best fit for grouping … with respect to a selected product" (the software-product claim)

Auto-album / page-layout optimization art (e.g., the Kodak Simon 09/559,478 line, or third-party auto-albuming) + grouping-by-content art (De Bonet '823 / applicant-admitted face and content grouping)

• Motivation: Direct design incentive — the output product (album page) constrains how many and what aspect ratios of images fit per page; a PHOSITA optimizing yield per page would naturally couple grouping output to the selected product's physical constraints. KSR expressly sanctions combining known elements to meet a known demand ("design incentives"; "market demand").
• Caveat: build this on third-party layout art, not the commonly-owned Simon/Squilla filings, because of § 103(c).

Combination C — attack on dependent claims (color fidelity details)

Color-management/ICC-profile art + Canon EP 0 860 797-type color processing + the admitted "same size / same resolution / same finish" batch-normalization disclosure

The specification itself discloses "give a similar look to all of the images in a group and/or order, provide the images in the same size or selected pattern of sizes, provide the image in the same resolution… a soft or matte finish." These dependent-claim concepts map almost verbatim onto well-known batch color/finish normalization, making dependent claims easier to invalidate than claim 1.

Combination D — the physical/kit claims

If any dependent claim recites the organizing kit (envelopes, labels, machine-readable codes, containers mating with a scanner), these are addressed by Dane WO 99/19811 (family-cited) plus the admitted body of photofinishing-envelope/machine-readable-label practice — a very weak area for the patentee.

6. Where the patentee has a genuinely strong (or at least defensible) position

Let me be explicit about the limits of the § 103 case:

1. "Colorimetric" is a term of art. In the color science literature, "colorimetric" means matching tristimulus values — e.g., the MIT/Abacus line of cases construing "colorimetrically-matched reproduction." If claim 1 is read to require cross-image colorimetric normalization to a common tristimulus reference across a heterogeneous collection, then generic per-image color correction (Combination A) may not fully teach it. A challenger would need art that normalizes a set of images to a shared colorimetric target, not just per-image correction.
2. No verified reference teaches the specific cross-image "common look" step. I could not retrieve a single reference in the family search report whose disclosure I can point to for element (c). Until that reference is produced, Combination A is a rationale argument, not a proof.
3. Secondary considerations. The litigation history (two U.S. suits, plus foreign family litigation) is at least weak circumstantial evidence of commercial value; whether it rises to nexus-proven non-obviousness depends on evidence not in this record.
4. § 103(c) shields the most on-point sibling art (Simon, Squilla, the four same-day Kodak filings), removing what would otherwise be the cleanest "best fit / page layout" prior art.

Bottom line: claim 1's organizing, grouping, and product-placement elements are, on this record, highly vulnerable — the EPO examiner found four separate references sufficient alone against the counterpart claim, and the specification admits automatic color correction itself. The only element with a live non-obviousness defense is the automatic colorimetric normalization across a mixed-provenance collection to a common look. A successful § 103 challenge therefore must find art that (i) normalizes a batch of images (not one image at a time) and (ii) does so to a common target, ideally in the photofinishing or color-management literature pre-August 2000.

7. Explicit uncertainty disclosures

• I could not retrieve the U.S. front-page (56) References Cited list for US 6,873,336, nor the full disclosures of EP 0 860 797, US 6,028,603, WO 99/19811, or US 5,852,823. Any statement about what those four references specifically disclose would be fabrication, so I have not made one.
• The claim-1 text above is the Official Gazette reproduction of the granted patent; I did not independently re-verify the remaining seven claims, which may add limitations that materially change this analysis.
• I did not independently verify the specific reference that normalizes a set of images to a common colorimetric look; that gap is the single most important next research step for any § 103 challenge.