US 6961560

I'll run several searches to check the USPTO record, the reissue, and any 2026 CAFC activity for this patent number.

Let me check the reissue, the current assignee, and any litigation/CAFC activity specifically tied to this number.

US Patent 6,961,560 — Summary

Sourcing note: The authoritative full text/ bibliographic data below comes from the Google Patents record (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6961560](/patent/US6961560)/en), corroborated by uspto.report's entry for the reissue (https://uspto.report/patent/grant/RE40,985) and PatentLeaderboard. My searches did not return a direct USPTO PatentCenter page or any CAFC docket entry for this number; those are flagged as unverified below.

Bibliographic data

Uncertainty: I did not independently confirm maintenance-fee/expiry status at USPTO PatentCenter, and I did not find a CAFC docket for this number. A CAFC search surfaced only an unrelated case (Yechezkal Evan Spero v. Mercedes-Benz USA, Nos. 2025-1306/1307/1473, Rule 36 judgment, May 14, 2026), which concerns different patents and is not related to 6,961,560. Absence of a 2026 CAFC docket hit is not proof that none exists.

Abstract (as issued)

Methods, system and apparatus are provided for advertising service offerings in a communication system. An example embodiment comprises at least one device. A first device broadcasts a message of a first type, chooses a value for a time limit and listens for a message sent by a second device. If no message has been received before time limit elapse, it again broadcasts a message of a first type. Otherwise, the message received from said second device is analyzed and if said message includes valid information about said first device [it] chooses a value for the time limit. However, if said message received does not include valid service description about said first device, a message of a second type is broadcast. This reduces useless broadcast of a complete service list. Broadcast may be initiated more often and, service discovery for new devices coming into proximity takes less time.

Independent claims in plain language

The patent has 14 claims; the independents are 1, 11, 12, 13, and 14. Claims 2–10 depend, directly or indirectly, on claim 1.

Claim 1 — Method (advertising service offerings in a wireless communication system).
The first device loops through: (a) broadcast a "first-type" message — in the spec, a "ping" carrying a digest D_d of known service descriptions; (b) pick a timeout value T_A; (c) listen for a message from a second device. If the timeout elapses with no message, go back to (a). If a message arrives, analyze it: if it contains valid information about the first device's own service, loop back to choosing a new T_A; if it lacks a valid service description of the first device, broadcast a "second-type" message — a "pong" carrying full service descriptions. Separately and additionally: the first device keeps a counter per service description, increments it each time that description is broadcast, and analyzes the counter values to derive a value indicating distance between the first device and other known devices. (This counter/distance element is a core, mandatory limitation of claim 1, not optional.)

Claim 11 — System.
A system for advertising service offerings comprising at least one device, where the device has means adapted to perform the method of claim 1 (a means-plus-function style system claim tied entirely to claim 1's steps).

Claim 12 — Computer program product.
A computer program product on a computer-usable medium, comprising computer-readable program means for causing a computer to perform the method of claim 1.

Claim 13 — Article of manufacture.
A computer-usable medium with program code for advertising service offerings in a wireless system with at least one device. It restates the full claim-1 sequence (ping / timeout / listen / re-ping or analyze / pong if no valid description of the first device), and likewise recites the per-service counter, its incrementation on broadcast, and derivation of a distance value.

Claim 14 — Program storage device.
A machine-readable program storage device tangibly embodying instructions to perform the same method steps as claims 1 and 13 — again including the counter incrementing and distance derivation. Claims 13 and 14 are essentially claim 1's subject matter recast in Beauregard/statutory-category form.

Practical takeaway

The invention's thrust is a push-model, ping/pong service-discovery protocol for ad-hoc wireless LANs: nodes routinely broadcast only a compact digest of known services (cheap, low-power), and respond with full descriptions only when a peer's digest shows their service is missing or stale. A randomized broadcast race (with shortened back-off when a node's own service is about to expire) arbitrates who transmits. Adjacent embodiments add hop-count H_S per service description (incrementing on relay, with a smoothed average h′_S, e.g. weighted a₁=0.8, a₂=0.2) and a reserved expiry value of "−1" to signal service invocation failure. The claimed distance measure is the counter/hop mechanism, not merely the ping/pong exchange. The primary prior art of record is EP 1 022 876 A1 (IBM), "Service advertisements in wireless local networks" (U.S. counterpart US 6,532,368 B1).

Caveat: the claim-6 dependency on claim 4 and the phrasing of claim 9 ("wherein the step of marking a service to be too far away…") are reproduced as they appear; I have not verified whether the reissue RE40,985 changed any claim scope, so any statement about the scope of the currently enforceable claims should be checked against the reissue's claim set.

If you need the definitive current status, the authoritative sources to pull are the USPTO PatentCenter/Patent Application Information Retrieval entry for US 10/141,050 and 11/981,507, the reissue certificate for US RE40,985 E1, and a CM/ECF docket query — none of which I was able to retrieve directly in this session.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 6961560 using multiple sources.

Let me search more targeted sources for litigation records.

Litigation Search Results: US Patent 6,961,560

Bottom line: I found no evidence of any litigation involving US Patent 6,961,560 in the sources searched. I cannot confirm a single case, and I will not fabricate one.

What I searched

• General web searches for "6961560 patent litigation" and "6961560 patent lawsuit infringement" (including quoted forms "6,961,560").
• Searches correlating the patent with its recorded assignee Wistron Corporation (which acquired the patent from IBM in 2007 per the Google Patents legal-events record) and with its reissue RE40,985.
• Searches aimed at the Unified Patents litigation portal, PACER/CourtListener dockets, and RPX litigation documents.

The searches surfaced many Wistron-related patent matters (Qualcomm v. Compal/FIH/Hon Hai/Pegatron/Wistron, Apple v. Qualcomm, Wistron v. Samsung, various Wiwynn server cases), but none of those identified 6,961,560 as a patent-in-suit. No result tied this specific patent number to any complaint, docket, or judgment.

Why the absence of results is plausible (context, not proof)

• The patent is recorded on Google Patents as "Ceased" (adjusted expiration 2023-12-19), with the term otherwise running from a 2001-05-23 priority date and 2002-05-07 filing date.
• It was reassigned to Wistron Corporation in 2007 and reissued as RE40,985 (issued 2009-11-17). If any assertion activity existed, it would most plausibly appear under the reissue number or in Wistron's hand — I found nothing under either.
• IBM-originated wireless service-discovery patents of this era (e.g., the related IBM service-advertisement family) are not commonly seen in the public litigation record.

Required caveats — please read

1. A negative search result is not proof of no litigation. Some cases settle pre-suit, are filed under seal, are arbitrated, or are brought in venues/ITC proceedings that don't surface in the general web index.
2. My tool access was limited and I could not complete a direct, authoritative query of the Unified Patents litigation portal or a full PACER docket search before running out of search steps. Those are the sources that would give a definitive answer.
3. I am not auto-correcting any identifier: 6,961,560 and RE40,985 are treated exactly as printed.

Recommended next steps to get a definitive answer

To close this out properly, a human should check, in order:

• Unified Patents litigation portal — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation (search both 6961560 and RE40985).
• PACER / CourtListener RECAP — search 6,961,560 and RE40,985 as patent-in-suit, and search Wistron Corporation as plaintiff/defendant.
• USPTO Patent Center / Assignment records for any recorded licenses, security interests, or transfers that might hint at assertion (the patent was sold to Wistron, so any assertion likely runs through them).
• ITC EDIS (Section 337 complaints), since an ODM-owned wireless-networking patent would most plausibly be asserted there against importers.

If you'd like, I can run a follow-up pass specifically targeting the Unified Patents portal and CourtListener for RE40985 — that reissue number is the most likely alternative identifier under which any case would be docketed.

I'll verify the structured block's "no PTAB activity" default against live sources before reporting.

No PTAB hits yet. Let me run targeted checks on the reissue patent, litigation, and defensive-aggregator activity.

Let me do a final confirmation pass aimed directly at PTAB dockets and any assertion history.

PTAB / AIA Trial Report — U.S. Patent No. 6,961,560

Patent: Method and device for prompt and efficient service discovery in wireless networks
Patentee / current assignee: Wistron Corporation (assigned from International Business Machines Corp., effective 2007-06-21, recorded 2007-08-14)
Priority: 2001-05-23 · Filed: 2002-05-07 · Granted: 2005-11-01 · Claims: 14 (one independent method claim — claim 1 — plus system/PCP/program-product claims 11–14)
Related reissue: US RE40,985 E1 (from application 11/981,507, filed 2007-10-31; granted 2009-11-17)
Google Patents legal status: Ceased, adjusted expiration 2023-12-19

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Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0. Breakdown: 0 active, 0 with claims invalidated, 0 with claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution-denied. This is not a case where "the patent has survived two IPRs and is hardened" — it is a case where no petitioner ever challenged it at the Board, and the single most important defensive fact is not a PTAB outcome at all: the patent and its reissue expired on 2023-12-19 (Google Patents adjusted-expiration entry, corroborated by the "Ceased" status). A defendant served with a demand letter today is looking at an expired, never-IPR'd patent whose only residual exposure could be pre-expiration damages within the § 286 six-year lookback — not at a hardened IPR survivor.

Note on sourcing. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block states that the USPTO Open Data Portal returns no AIA trial proceedings for US 6,961,560 as of the most recent ingest. That is the canonical list and I have not overridden it. I ran independent web searches for an IPR/PGR/CBM by patent number, by the reissue number (RE40,985), and by party (Wistron, IBM, Unified Patents) and surfaced no proceeding numbers or Board documents of any kind. The patent's Google Patents page likewise shows no PTAB trials, only a "Cited By" list. Consistent with the operating instruction, the default holds: no PTAB activity on file. I cannot prove a negative from search results alone, so treat this as "no proceeding identified in ODP or in public search," not as a certified clearance.

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Proceedings

None. There are no AIA trial proceedings to report. Per the task constraints, I will not manufacture proceeding numbers, panels, or claim-level dispositions that do not exist.

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Related non-PTAB event worth knowing: the 2007–2009 reissue

This is not an AIA proceeding and produced no Board decision, but it is the only event in this patent's file history that touched claim scope, and defense counsel should account for it:

• US RE40,985 E1 was filed 2007-10-31 from application 11/981,507 and granted 2009-11-17. Under 35 U.S.C. § 251, the original patent's claims were surrendered upon reissue grant; the reissue claim set — not original claims 1–14 — is the operative set. Anyone quoting "claims 1–14 of US 6,961,560" in a demand letter as if they were live is at minimum citing a surrendered claim set.
• One date detail worth flagging: the reissue was filed one day before the two-year anniversary of the 2005-11-01 grant. That matters because § 251(d) bars a broadening reissue applied for more than two years after the original patent grants. Filing on 2007-10-31 kept a broadening reissue technically available; whether this reissue actually broadened is not determinable from the record in this prompt, and I am not asserting that it did. Anyone relying on this needs the reissue prosecution history and the RE40,985 claim text, which I did not retrieve and will not guess at.
• A reissue does not extend term. RE40,985 carries the same 2023-12-19 expiration as the original. There is no hidden term extension here.

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Strategic summary

Claim status. Because there is no IPR, PGR, or CBM, no claim of US 6,961,560 has been canceled by the Board and no claim has been sustained by the Board — the ordinary IPR scoreboard simply doesn't apply. The legally relevant narrowing event is the reissue: original claims 1–14 were surrendered in 2009 and replaced by the RE40,985 claim set, which I have not retrieved. The entire family (the original patent and the reissue) expired 2023-12-19. As of 2026-09-29 the patent is not enforceable for prospective conduct.

Estoppel landscape. Section 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches only to a petitioner that reaches a final written decision. There is no petitioner and no FWD, so no § 315(e)(2) estoppel binds anyone. That cuts both ways: no one is barred from raising prior art, but there is also no adverse Board ruling a defendant can borrow. Practical gatekeepers now dominate: PGR is unavailable (the patent's effective filing date long predates 2013-03-16), CBM review is unavailable (the transitional CBM program sunset for new petitions on 2020-09-16, and the patent expired in any event), and an IPR on an expired patent is only worth filing if there is a real past-damages stake and a willing petitioner — there is no indication of either.

Pattern signals. None of the usual IPR-cluster indicators are present: no serial petitioner, no defensive aggregator (no Unified Patents involvement appeared in any search), no PTAB appeal to the Federal Circuit, and no PTAB proceeding of any kind. What the record does show is a heavily cited patent — Microsoft, Apple, Qualcomm, and Cisco later filings cite it — so it is meaningful prior art in the service-discovery space, just not a patent that attracted validity challenges. The absence of IPRs is itself mildly informative: this patent appears never to have been asserted in a way that provoked a Board filing.

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Recommended next steps

1. If you have received a demand letter on this patent, the first response is a date check, not an IPR. Quote the Google Patents adjusted-expiration entry — expiration 2023-12-19, status "Ceased" — and note that original claims 1–14 were surrendered on reissue in 2009 in favor of RE40,985. Both the original and the reissue are expired. There is no live patent to infringe.
2. If the letter cites "claims 1–14 of US 6,961,560," it is citing surrendered claims. Request the specific RE40,985 claims asserted and the reissue prosecution history, and compare claim scope before responding on the merits.
3. If a past-infringement theory is floated, the only window is the § 286 six-year lookback measured from the filing date, and it cannot reach conduct after 2023-12-19. Map the asserted products' timelines against that window before engaging.
4. Do not commission an IPR. The patent is expired, there are no live PTAB proceedings to intervene in, and PGR/CBM avenues are closed. An IPR petition here buys no leverage against an expired patent; a validity opinion or a reissue-file-history review is the better spend.
5. Verify independently before relying on the zero-count. The absence of proceedings is drawn from the ODP structured block plus public searching, and while both point the same way, a direct party-name and patent-number query in USPTO PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptabweb/) and a CourtListener district-court docket search would close the loop on whether this patent was ever asserted or challenged.

Sources consulted: Google Patents record for US 6,961,560 B2 (assignments, term, reissue linkage, cited-by list) and the structured USPTO ODP "PTAB proceedings on file" block supplied in the prompt. No PTAB Final Written Decision, institution decision, or Federal Circuit opinion exists to link for this patent.

I'll research the assignment record for US 6,961,560, cross-referencing the legal events in the patent text with live sources.

Let me dig deeper into the recorded assignment details and the correspondent of record.

I've hit my search step limit, so the analysis below is built from the authoritative patent text you provided plus the search results I did retrieve. One important gap is flagged explicitly: I could not retrieve the correspondent of record names from live Assignment Center data, and I will not invent them.

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Inventors

Basis for employer: All four are named authors of the IBM DEAPspace project papers, published with @zurich.ibm.com addresses and the affiliation "IBM Research Division, Zurich Research Laboratory, Säumerstrasse 4, CH-8803 Rüschlikon, Switzerland" (Computer Networks 35 (2001) 411–428, "DEAPspace – Transient ad hoc networking of pervasive devices"; also the earlier DEAPspace overview at https://www4.cs.fau.de/~jklein/GIFG/husemann.pdf). The patent's push-model service-discovery claims map directly onto the DEAPspace algorithm those authors describe.

Unusual patterns — assessment:

• Not a case of "all inventors leaving the original assignee within 12 months." There is no evidence of inventor departures tied to this filing, and I will not infer any. Note that the DEAPspace paper lists six authors (the four inventors plus Christian Rohner and Andreas Schade) — inventors were a subset of the research team, which is ordinary for corporate research patents, not a red flag.
• The same Zurich team generated sibling IBM patents (e.g., US 6,633,757 "Adjacency-bound service discovery," which shares the identical background/technical field). This is a coherent corporate research portfolio, not a scatter of orphan filings.

Original assignee

International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) — named on the face of the issued patent and confirmed as original assignee by the recorded assignment (Reel 013062/0850).

• Product embodying the claims: No commercial product. The subject matter was a research prototype — the DEAPspace discovery framework (Tuareg implementations in C and Java per the team's write-ups). IBM did not ship a DEAPspace product; the value was in the research and the patent estate.
• Primary line of business: Computing hardware, software, and IT services — a large operating enterprise.
• Current status: Operating (publicly traded, solvent). No bankruptcy, no dissolution.

Assignment timeline

Google Patents' legal-events table gives the reel/frame and free-format text for each recorded assignment. The correspondent of record field is not exposed in the data I could retrieve.

• 2002-05-15 (executed) / recorded 2002-07-01 — Reel 013062/0850

  • Conveyance: Assignment (ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS' INTEREST)
  • Assignor: Reto Hermann; Dirk Husemann; Michael Moser; Michael Elton Nidd (all four inventors)
  • Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation (Armonk, NY)
  • Correspondent: ⚠️ NOT RETRIEVED. The Google Patents legal-event entry records the reel/frame and assignor list but not the attorney/firm of record. I could not complete a live Assignment Center query before exhausting my search budget; I will not guess the correspondent name.
  • Context: Standard inventor-to-employer assignment at filing — inventors conveying rights to their corporate employer. Ordinary; not a fire-sale or reorg.

• 2007-06-21 (executed) / recorded 2007-08-14 — Reel 019679/0748

  • Conveyance: Assignment (ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNOR'S INTEREST)
  • Assignor: International Business Machines Corporation
  • Assignee: Wistron Corporation (Taiwan)
  • Correspondent: ⚠️ NOT RETRIEVED. Same data limitation as above. This is precisely the field that would carry the strongest NPE tell, so its absence is material — see caveats.
  • Context: Corporate divestiture / patent sale. IBM sold the patent (with other assets) to Wistron, a large Taiwan-based ODM. IBM has a long history of monetizing non-core patents; Wistron is an operating contract manufacturer, not a licensing shell.

• 2007-10-31 (effective) / recorded 2008-01-08 — Reissue application 11/981,507 (not a real-property assignment; a prosecution event that produced RE40,985, issued 2009-11-17). Ownership stayed with Wistron. The grant of a reissue means Wistron invested in prosecuting the patent after acquisition — evidence of active stewardship, not a passive warehousing flip.

• 2023-12-19 — Adjusted expiration; status recorded Ceased. The patent term lapsed. This is a terminal event, not an assignment.

Note on "no records": Assignment Center-style databases do have records for this patent — the two conveyances above. There is no gap where I should have said "no records."

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6961560
    2001 : Priority date EP filing 01112542
    2002 : Inventors assign to IBM reel 013062 0850
    2005 : Patent issued as US 6961560
    2007 : IBM assigns to Wistron reel 019679 0748
         : Reissue application filed
    2009 : Reissue RE40985 granted
    2023 : Adjusted expiration recorded ceased

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. Transferee is Wistron Corporation, a publicly known ODM (contract manufacturer of laptops, servers, handsets) with real products and thousands of patents (Justia assignee pages show an active, product-driven portfolio). No "IP/Holdings/Ventures" suffix, no registered-agent address box, not a single-member LLC. Reel 019679/0748.

2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. Neither assignee (IBM; Wistron) matches the named NPE lists (Acacia, Marathon, IV, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, etc.). Wistron is an operating manufacturer.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Unclear / not determinable. I could not retrieve the correspondent of record for either Reel 013062/0850 or Reel 019679/0748. Because the correspondent is the single most useful tell, this signal cannot be scored. It should be pulled directly from Assignment Center before any adversarial conclusion.

4. Cascading transfers — Not present. Two assignments across ~5 years (2002 → 2007), no chain of LLCs, no <24-month cascade.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present. The prior litigation search found no infringement suit naming 6,961,560 or RE40,985. There is therefore no "suit within 6 months of assignment" to test.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. IBM was not in bankruptcy; this was a voluntary, solvent divestiture.

7. Privateering — Unclear, leaning not present. The 2007 IBM→Wistron conveyance is an outright sale to an operating ODM, not a transfer to an NPE asserting on IBM's behalf. No SEC/8-K or Patent Progress/EFF coverage surfaced tying a shell to this patent. But I could not fully run down Wistron's assertion activity on this specific asset.

8. Defensive aggregator — Not present. Chain terminates at Wistron Corporation, an operating company — not RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. Inverse signal not met.

Verdict

Insufficient data.

Justification: the substantive evidence I could gather affirmatively points away from an NPE pattern — the chain is a two-step corporate path (Reel 013062/0850: inventors → IBM; Reel 019679/0748: IBM → Wistron, an operating ODM), with no shell LLC, no known asserter, no cascading transfers, no bankruptcy, and no litigation found naming US 6,961,560 or RE40,985. However, the pivotal diagnostic field — the correspondent of record on both recordings — could not be retrieved, and the absence of litigation is a negative finding, not proof. Under the rule that I must not manufacture a conclusion from naming alone, the accurate call is "insufficient data," with all affirmative evidence consistent with a benign operating-company divestiture rather than assertion. The patent's term has since Ceased (adjusted expiration 2023-12-19), which moots prospective assertion in any event.

Verification link: USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number 6961560; also cross-check reissue RE40985). To close the correspondent gap, pull the Reel 013062/0850 and Reel 019679/0748 image documents directly, and run Wistron Corporation as assignor/assignee for any downstream transfers after 2007.

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Flagged contradiction / caveat

• Your litigation summary states the patent "was reassigned to Wistron Corporation in 2007 and reissued as RE40,985" and found no litigation. That is consistent with everything in the patent text here — no contradiction.
• Data gap (not a contradiction): the patent text supplies reel/frame numbers and effective/recording dates but does not include the correspondent-of-record names the task requires. I have marked both as "NOT RETRIEVED" rather than substitute a plausible-looking firm.

I'll verify the patent and its cited references before analyzing. Let me run parallel searches.

Let me gather details on the remaining cited references.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 6,961,560 B2

0. Confirmation of the target patent

I did not auto-correct any identifier; 6,961,560 and RE40,985 are treated exactly as printed. The Google Patents record and Justia/FreePatentsOnline copies agree with the authoritative text supplied.

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1. Legal frame used for the § 102 analysis

Three points govern everything below:

1. Critical date = 2001-05-23 (earliest priority; the EP priority application EP 01112542.4 shares this date). Pre-AIA § 102 applies.
   • § 102(a)/(b): reference must be published or patented before 2001-05-23 (or more than one year before filing).
   • § 102(e): a US patent/publication qualifies as of its filing date, provided that date is before the 2001-05-23 priority date. Two references in the list (US 2003/0046100 and US 2003/0112804) were filed after 2001-05-23 and therefore do not qualify as § 102 prior art against this patent.
2. Anticipation requires a single reference to disclose every element. All four independent claims (1, 11, 12, 13, 14 in substance) carry the same distinguishing limitation: "the first device maintains a counter for each service description … incrementing the counter for service descriptions broadcast with a message … analyzing counter values and deriving a value indicating a distance between the first device and any of the other known devices." That counter/hop-count-as-distance element is where the prior art is weakest, so it must be checked against every reference.
3. Verification note. I retrieved and read full/partial text for US 5,555,266, US 6,691,173, US 6,532,368/EP 1 022 876 and the citation tables. For US 5,873,043; US 6,154,745; US 6,026,297; US 6,233,430; US 6,577,849; US 6,484,033; and the two published applications, my descriptions rely on the printed citation table, titles, and available abstracts — I flag where I could not pull full text.

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2. The references cited on the face of US 6,961,560

Source: the "Patent Citations (12)" table in the authoritative record.

Per-reference detail and § 102 assessment

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1. US 5,555,266 A — "Method for reducing transmission delays in a packet transmission system"

• Full citation: US 5,555,266 A; filed 1993-10-04; granted 1996-09-10; Motorola, Inc.
• Description (verified): A TDMA packet system in which remote units queue access requests and await resource grants from a communications controller; a retry timer governs reissue of requests, and the controller identifies missing fragments and grants resources for retransmission. It is a grant/retry-timer mechanism, not a service-discovery advertisement mechanism.
• § 102 assessment: Relevant only to the generic notion of "choosing a value for a time limit" and "if no message has been received until elapse of said time limit, continuing." It contains no service descriptions, no digest of services, no notion of a first/second message type keyed to a device's own service info, and no counter/hop-distance element. It does not anticipate any claim of 6,961,560. Possible § 103 support for the bare timeout concept only.

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2. US 5,873,043 A — "System for communicating messages via a forward overhead control channel"

• Full citation: US 5,873,043 A; filed 1996-12-18; granted 1999-02-16; Cellemetry LLC.
• Description: Messaging over a cellular control/overhead channel (paging-style transport of short messages). Delivered messages via a forward control channel.
• § 102 assessment: Directed to message transport, not local-network service advertisement/discovery. No claim anticipated. At most incidental background art.

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3. US 6,154,745 A — "Method for transmission of information to the user"

• Full citation: US 6,154,745 A; filed 1996-12-31; granted 2000-11-28; Nokia Mobile Phones Ltd.
• Description: Delivering information to a user (user-information transmission). Not a peer-to-peer service-advertisement protocol.
• § 102 assessment: No claim anticipated.

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4. US 6,026,297 A — "Contemporaneous connectivity to multiple piconets"

• Full citation: US 6,026,297 A; filed 1997-09-17; granted 2000-02-15; Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson.
• Description: Bluetooth-style multi-piconet connectivity (a unit simultaneously participating in more than one piconet).
• § 102 assessment: Establishes only the ad-hoc/short-range-wireless environment. It does not disclose service-discovery broadcasts, digests, dual message types, or counters. No claim anticipated.

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5. US 6,233,430 B1 — "Paging transceivers and methods for selectively retrieving messages"

• Full citation: US 6,233,430 B1; filed 1997-09-19; granted 2001-05-15; Helferich.
• Description: Paging transceiver that stores received messages and later retrieves selected messages on demand.
• § 102 assessment: Overlaps thematically with "selective retrieval / first-type vs. second-type message" ideas, but it is a paging mailbox, not a network service advertisement with a two-message (ping/pong) protocol and a distance counter. No claim anticipated.

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6. EP 1 022 876 A1 — "Service advertisements in wireless local networks" ⭐ closest art

• Full citation: EP 1 022 876 A1; application EP 99101282.4; filed 1999-01-25; published 2000-07-26; International Business Machines Corporation. (Granted as EP 1 022 876 B1, 2006-04-19.)
• Description (verified from EPO/GPI abstract and Google Patents): A scheme for advertising service offerings between two devices in a wireless local network: a first device a) sends service information (about itself and/or known devices), i) chooses a timeout value T_A, ii) listens for up to T_A for service information from another device, iii) if T_A times out, continues with (a); otherwise checks whether the received service information comprises information about itself (local services) — if yes, continue with (i); if no, continue with (a) choosing T_A from an earlier time range. The EPO search report for this document lists WO 9817032 A1 (Motorola), WO 9804734 A1 (IBM), WO 9835453 A1 (Norand), US 5,544,321 A (Theimer), and the Negus HomeRF/SWAP article.
• § 102 assessment: This is, almost verbatim, the "known scheme" reproduced in the Background section of 6,961,560 (the patent text quotes it via US 6,532,368 — same family, see #7). It discloses: broadcasting service information; choosing a time limit; listening; timeout→re-broadcast; and checking whether the received information contains information about the sender's own service. It therefore maps onto the preamble and much of the body of the process recited in claims 1, 13 and 14.
  • Gap: EP 1 022 876 does not appear to disclose (a) the "message of a second type" answer triggered specifically when the sender's own service is missing/outdated in the received message, nor (b) the counter-per-service-description / increment / distance-derivation element. Because every independent claim of 6,961,560 recites the counter-distance element, EP 1 022 876 alone does not strictly anticipate claims 1, 11, 12, 13, or 14; it is nonetheless the single most relevant reference and the natural primary § 103 combination lead.

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7. US 6,532,368 B1 — "Service advertisements in wireless local networks" ⭐ US-granted twin of #6, same assignee

• Full citation: US 6,532,368 B1; filed 2000-01-19 (US 09/487,686); priority EP 99101282.4 dated 1999-01-25; granted 2003-03-11; International Business Machines Corporation. (Later recorded to Wistron Corp.)
• Description (verified): US counterpart of the EP 1 022 876 family. "An advertisement is service information (e.g. a list of entries), identifying services known to the transmitting device… associated with an expiry time or a number that ages out… Each device may, from time to time, send its own service information as an advertisement… The advertisement may include the service of other devices in the network… If a device recognizes that its own local services may timeout within a given time, it may adjust its broadcast delay distribution to make it more likely to transmit soon, thus renewing the expiry time of its local services." No master device or base station is assumed. Non-patent literature cited: Bluetooth Specification (1999) and Mettala, Bluetooth Protocol Architecture v1.0 (Nokia, 1999).
• § 102 assessment: Same disclosure as #6, and expressly acknowledged in the 6,961,560 specification as the prior scheme (the patent's Background quotes this family's "send service information → choose T_A → listen → timeout-or-check" sequence). It is § 102(b)/(e) art (granted 2003-03-11, filed 2000-01-19 — well before the 2001-05-23 priority).
  • Gap: Same as #6 — it teaches re-broadcasting service information from an earlier time range, not the claimed second-message-type response, and it does not disclose the per-service counter incremented on broadcast with a derived distance value. So it is the strongest art for the framing of claims 1, 13, 14 but does not by itself complete the anticipation of any independent claim.

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8. US 6,577,849 B1 — "Method and apparatus for providing additional information about a broadcast"

• Full citation: US 6,577,849 B1; filed 1999-02-03; granted 2003-06-10; Motorola, Inc.
• Description: Delivering supplementary/auxiliary data tied to a broadcast program.
• § 102 assessment: Concerns broadcast-content augmentation (e.g., program-associated data), not wireless local-network service discovery. No claim anticipated.

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9. US 6,691,173 B2 — "Distributed management of an extended network containing short-range wireless links"

• Full citation: US 6,691,173 B2; filed 1999-07-06 (App. 09/347,894); granted 2004-02-10; Widcomm, Inc. (inventors Morris et al.)
• Description (verified): Internetworking between short-range wireless networks. Wireless nodes transmit advertisements specifying their address and the services they offer; first and second master nodes store the received advertisements in network-resource tables; an internetworking node relays services between networks and advertises them to the extent it has bandwidth to support them.
• § 102 assessment: This is the only cited US reference of substance that squarely discloses nodes broadcasting advertisements that identify services offered, and storing service information from other nodes — i.e., elements of claims 2/3/5. However, it is master/internetworking-node-centric and discloses no timeout-race ("ping/pong") protocol, no digest-vs-full-description distinction, and no counter/hop-count distance element. It does not anticipate claim 1 (or its dependents, which incorporate claim 1). Useful as secondary § 103 art on the "advertise/store service descriptions" concept.

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10. US 6,484,033 B2 — "Wireless communication system for location based schedule management and method therefor"

• Full citation: US 6,484,033 B2; filed 2000-12-04; granted 2002-11-19; Motorola, Inc.
• Description: Location-based scheduling/reminders on wireless devices.
• § 102 assessment: Qualifies as a § 102(e) reference (filed 2000-12-04, before the 2001-05-23 priority). Subject matter (location-based schedule management) is unrelated to service advertisement/discovery. No claim anticipated.

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11. US 2003/0046100 A1 — "View restriction method, view restriction setting method, receiver, and device and programs for setting view restriction"

• Full citation: US 2003/0046100 A1; filed 2001-08-29; published 2003-03-06; Fujitsu Limited.
• Description: Restricting viewable content on a receiver.
• § 102 assessment: ⚠️ Not qualifying prior art. Filed 2001-08-29, after the 2001-05-23 priority date, so it cannot be § 102(a), § 102(b), or § 102(e) art. (It would only matter if the 6,961,560 priority were successfully challenged.) Subject matter is also unrelated. No claim anticipated.

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12. US 2003/0112804 A1 — "Method, system and architecture for service broadcasting over orthogonal frequency division multiplexing using an internet protocol cellular network & session initiated protocol"

• Full citation: US 2003/0112804 A1; filed 2001-12-19; published 2003-06-19; Jouni Kamarainen.
• Description: Service broadcasting over OFDM/IP cellular using SIP.
• § 102 assessment: ⚠️ Not qualifying prior art — filed 2001-12-19, after the 2001-05-23 priority date. Additionally, it is infrastructure/cellular broadcast (SIP/OFDM), not peer-to-peer local-network service advertisement with ping/pong. No claim anticipated.

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3. Additional relevant prior art surfaced from the patent's own family record

These are not on the 6,961,560 face but come from the EPO search report on the parent application (EP 1 022 876) and the family, and they are the references an examiner would likely pull for a 6,961,560 challenge:

• WO 98/17032 A1 (Motorola) — peer-to-peer, capability-addressable network with service-requesting/service-providing/service-relaying peers. Cited in EP 1 022 876's own background as the capability-advertisement prior approach. Directly relevant to the "advertise services" concept.
• WO 98/04734 A1 (IBM) — cited on the EP search report (search report date logic).
• WO 98/35453 A1 (Norand Corp.).
• US 5,544,321 A (Theimer et al., Xerox) — location/mobility-aware computing (cited "A" on the EP search report).
• CA 2,295,397 C / JP 2000-012631 A — national counterparts of the IBM EP 1 022 876 family.
• Non-patent: Negus et al., "HomeRF™ and SWAP: Wireless Networking for the Connected Home," Mobile Computing and Communications Review, Vol. 2, No. 4 (Oct. 1998), pp. 28–36; and the Bluetooth Specification (1999) / Mettala, Bluetooth Protocol Architecture v1.0 (Nokia, 1999) — the environment references on which the disclosure's "broadcast within recurring windows / race mechanism" discussion builds.

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4. Claim-by-claim anticipation matrix

Claims 1, 11, 12, 13, 14 each require the counter/distance element; claims 2–10 depend from claim 1 and thus import it.

Bottom line: On the record as printed, no single cited reference anticipates any independent claim of US 6,961,560, because the per-service-description counter incremented on broadcast with a derived distance value (claim 1, last clause; repeated in claims 13 and 14; carried into claims 2–10) does not appear in the cited art. The strongest § 102/§ 103 springboard is the IBM "Service advertisements in wireless local networks" family — EP 1 022 876 A1 / US 6,532,368 B1 — which the 6,961,560 specification itself identifies and builds on; a § 103 case would pair it with US 6,691,173 B2 (Widcomm) for the broadcast-store-services element and with US 5,555,266 A (Motorola) for the timeout-retransmit element.

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5. Caveats you should carry forward

1. Full-text verification gaps. I could not pull complete specifications for US 5,873,043, US 6,154,745, US 6,026,297, US 6,233,430, US 6,577,849, US 6,484,033, US 2003/0046100, US 2003/0112804 before running out of search budget. Their descriptions rest on the printed citation table, titles, and abstracts. A definitive anticipation opinion must read each full text against each claim element.
2. Family/identity, not auto-correction. EP 1 022 876 A1 and US 6,532,368 B1 are members of the same IBM family (priority 1999-01-25); I treat them as a single disclosure but they are listed separately because both appear in the patent's citation table.
3. "Potentially anticipates" ≠ "invalidity." Anticipation is a factual, element-by-element question that also depends on claim construction of a "message of a first type / second type," "valid information about said first device," and "deriving a value indicating a distance." Those constructions could expand or contract each reference's reach.
4. No litigation confirmed. Consistent with the earlier litigation section, nothing here changes the finding that no assertion of 6,961,560/RE40,985 was identified in public sources; the reissue RE40,985 remains the alternative identifier to search if a case were ever docketed.

I'll ground this analysis in the actual prior-art references of record. Let me pull details on the key ones.

Let me pull the remaining key references and check the file history reasoning.

Let me check the reissue claim set and the '560 prosecution history.

Obviousness Analysis — US 6,961,560 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Scope note / verification status. This analysis uses the prior-art set of record as listed on the face of US 6,961,560 (the "Patent Citations (12)" list and the EP 1 022 876 A1 search report), the patent's own admitted background, and the claim set of the reissue US RE40,985 E1. I did not retrieve the actual '560 file wrapper (Office actions/applicant remarks), so I cannot confirm which references the examiner actually applied or what the actual rejection rationale was. Where I have hard evidence I say so; where I am reasoning by inference I flag it. I am not auto-correcting any identifier.

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1. Governing framework

• Effective filing / priority: priority asserted to EP 01112542.4, 2001-05-23; US application 10/141,050 filed 2002-05-07. Because the application was filed before 16 March 2013, pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) governs.
• Standard: Graham v. John Deere (scope/content of the prior art; differences; PHOSITA level; secondary considerations), as refined by KSR Int'l v. Teleflex — a combination is obvious where the elements were known, the combination is of familiar elements according to known methods yielding predictable results, and a PHOSITA would have had a reason to combine with a reasonable expectation of success.
• PHOSITA: a worker with a Bachelor's in EE/CS (or equivalent) plus roughly 2–3 years of experience in wireless/ad-hoc networking, service-discovery protocols, and broadcast/medium-access design. Familiarity with ad-hoc routing metrics (hop count / distance vector) is squarely within this level of skill.

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2. Reference set of record (as printed)

Key timing point. EP 1 022 876 A1 published 2000-07-26, which is more than one year before the US filing date (2002-05-07). It therefore qualifies as pre-AIA § 102(b) art (a printed publication more than one year before the U.S. filing), and cannot be disqualified under pre-AIA § 103(c) common-ownership (which reaches only § 102(e)/(f)/(g) art). This matters because the primary reference shares inventors (Husemann, Nidd) and assignee (IBM) with the '560 — but even common ownership does not remove a § 102(b) publication from the § 103 calculus. Nor can applicant "swear behind," because the EP publication (2000-07-26) predates even the asserted invention date (priority 2001-05-23). EP 1 022 876 A1 is, accordingly, solidly available prior art.

The US counterpart US 6,532,368 B1 (filed 2000-01-19, issued 2003-03-11) is primarily § 102(e) art; under pre-AIA § 103(c) its IBM common ownership could make it unavailable for § 103. This is precisely why the EP publication — not the US patent — is the cleaner primary reference.

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3. Claim 1 — element mapping

Claim 1 breaks into:

1. Broadcast a first-type message — EP 1 022 876 teaches "sends service information, comprising information about itself and/or other known devices." ✅ (subject to the "first vs. second type" construction below)
2. Choose a value for a time limit (T_A) — EP 1 022 876, "choose timeout value T_A." ✅
3. Listen/wait for a message from a second device — EP 1 022 876, "listen for up to maximum time T_A for service information sent by another device." ✅
4. If no message before T_A elapses, repeat the first-type broadcast — EP 1 022 876, "if T_A timed out, continue with step a." ✅
5. Else analyze the message; if it contains valid information about the first device, re-choose T_A — EP 1 022 876, "check whether said service information… comprises information about itself (local services); if yes, then continue with step i." ✅
6. Else broadcast a second-type message if the received message lacks a valid service description about the first device — EP 1 022 876, "if no, then continue with step a" (re-send). ⚠️ Contested — EP '876 re-sends the same information; the '560 contemplates a distinct "second type" (the spec's "pong" carrying full descriptions vs. the "ping" digest). Whether a repeated same-format send is a "message of a second type" is a claim-construction issue (§ 112(b)).
7. Maintain a counter per service description; increment on broadcast; analyze counters to derive a distance value — Not taught by EP 1 022 876. This is the '560's stated contribution (the spec's hop-count H_S, incremented whenever a node includes a service description in its digest D_d or list L_d). ❌

Consequence: EP 1 022 876 A1 does not, on its face, anticipate claim 1 (the counter/distance element is missing), but it discloses the great bulk of claim 1. Claim 1 therefore rises or falls on § 103, with the counter/distance element supplied by a secondary teaching.

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4. Grounds of rejection (§ 103(a))

Ground I — Claim 1 obvious over EP 1 022 876 A1 in view of a hop-count/distance teaching (e.g., US 6,691,173 B2, plus the general ad-hoc-routing knowledge)

Rationale.

• EP 1 022 876 supplies every "loop" element (broadcast → T_A → listen → repeat-or-analyze → re-choose-T_A / re-broadcast), as mapped above.
• US 6,691,173 B2 teaches exactly the condition that creates the need for a distance metric: an extended network in which nodes relay and advertise services learned from other nodes ("each of the first plurality of wireless nodes transmits an advertisement… specifying its address and services offered thereby"; the internetworking node relays the first network's service information into the second). This produces second-hand service announcements for nodes that may be out of range, matching the '560's stated problem: it "reduce[s] or prevent[s] propagation of services of nodes that are announced via second or third hand but that are in fact not reachable."
• A PHOSITA in ad-hoc networking knows that a counter incremented on each relay (i.e., a hop count) is the standard, predictable way to express distance/reachability between nodes. Applying it to a relayed service advertisement — increment when re-broadcasting, and compare to a threshold — is the routine use of a known technique to improve a known system (KSR).

Motivation / expectation of success. (i) Both references are in the same field (wireless local/ad-hoc networks) and address the same technical problem — advertising services so remote peers can find them; (ii) forwarding service advertisements (Widcomm) creates the unreachable-service problem the counter solves, so the two are naturally complementary; (iii) hop-count/distance metrics were a mature, predictable tool, so there is a reasonable expectation that adding a broadcast counter yields a usable distance estimate; (iv) the improvement yields predictable benefits (suppressing unreachable services, reducing failed invocations, cutting traffic).

Result. Claim 1 would have been obvious; its only departure from the admitted base scheme (EP 1 022 876) is a well-known measurement applied for a known purpose.

Ground II — Claims 2–7 (digest vs. full service description)

• Claim 2 (first-type message = digest of first device's own service) and claim 4 (second-type = full description of first device): EP 1 022 876 already distinguishes an advertised service list with expiry entries from the underlying service itself, and Widcomm's advertisements enumerate "address and services offered." Truncated/compressed advertisements versus full descriptions is a routine message-format design trade (bandwidth/power vs. completeness) that a PHOSITA would adopt to serve the '560's stated aim of "broadcasting only a minimum amount of data." Obvious.
• Claims 3, 5 (digest / full descriptions of other devices held in memory): EP 1 022 876 expressly advertises "information about itself and/or other known devices" (i.e., a maintained service table), and Widcomm's relay nodes advertise services learned from other nodes. Obvious.
• Claim 6 (only a digest for devices whose received information is valid): direct corollary of the ping/pong differentiation; predictable optimization. Obvious. Note the claim-6 dependency on claim 4 is reproduced as printed; on its face it makes the "only digest" rule apply to the second-type message, which is odd but does not change the obviousness result.
• Claim 7 (received information = description or digest): mere alternative recitation. Obvious.

Ground III — Claims 8–10 (threshold, too-far marking, counters in messages)

• Claim 8 (filter out devices whose counter exceeds a predetermined threshold): thresholding a hop count is the textbook use of a hop-count metric; EP 1 022 876's expiry/threshold handling is the same genus. Obvious.
• Claim 10 (messages include counter values): once the counter exists (Ground I), embedding it in the advertisement is the necessary enabler of the distance estimate. Obvious.
• Claim 9 (marking a service "too far away" in response to a message from a service deemed near): plausible over the "distance metric" combination, but weaker — I did not find a cited reference expressly disclosing this propagated "too-far" signal. Treat claim 9 as the most vulnerable to a § 103 attack only if the secondary reference (or the '560's own disclosure of the smoothed hop average h′_S and the "−1" invocation-failure signalling) is shown to suggest it; otherwise it is the strongest of the dependent claims. Flagged as unverified.

Ground IV — Claims 11–14 (system / computer-program / article / storage-medium claims)

These restate claim 1's method in different statutory categories:

• Claim 11 is effectively means-plus-function ("means adapted to perform the method according to claim 1") — construed under § 112(f) to cover the corresponding structure in the specification; it adds no patentable weight over claim 1. Obvious for the same reasons.
• Claims 13–14 (article of manufacture / program storage device) are Beauregard/statutory-category recasts of claim 1's steps, including the counter and distance derivation. Reciting a known method on a generic computer-readable medium is obvious (In re Beauregard; Alice-era practice notwithstanding, eligibility ≠ non-obviousness). Obvious.
• Claim 12 (computer program product): same reasoning.

The reissue US RE40,985 E1 added claims

The reissue adds claims 15–18, which re-express the discovery method with the counter element made explicit in the message flow ("the first, second, and corresponding message carry service descriptions and counters associated with the service descriptions," and dependents distinguishing (a) an unchanged second time limit when valid info is received and (b) a shorter second time limit when valid info is absent). These dependents map onto EP 1 022 876's own teaching that a device re-broadcasts sooner (earlier time range) when its local service is at risk — so the reissue's added claims are, if anything, more exposed to a § 103 attack over EP 1 022 876 than the original claims, since the added limitations recite precisely the "shorter time limit when invalid" behavior EP '876 already describes. Caveat: I have the reissue claim text (from uspto.report / Justia) but not the reissue file history, so I cannot confirm what art was considered, if any, during reissue.

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5. Motivation-to-combine summary (KSR checklist)

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6. Secondary considerations

I found no evidence of commercial success, long-felt need, failure of others, licensing (the patent was reassigned to Wistron in 2007), or copying tied to the claims with a nexus to the counter/distance feature. Absent such a record, there is no rebuttal to the prima facie case. (If secondary evidence exists, it would have to be tied specifically to the counter/distance limitation, not to the ping/pong scheme that predates the invention.)

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7. Caveats and what would change the answer

1. The file wrapper is the missing piece. I could not retrieve the actual Office actions for US 10/141,050 or the reissue 11/981,507. My element mapping is derived from the EP '876 abstract/family record and the '560's own background; a real rejection may have used different art (e.g., different combinations) or different rationale. Do not treat the above as the historical record — it is an independent § 103 assessment.
2. Claim construction drives claim 1. If "message of a second type" is construed broadly to include EP '876's same-format re-send, claim 1 collapses to EP '876 + hop count — a narrow gap. If construed to require a structurally distinct pong (full descriptions), the gap widens, but is still bridged by the digest/full design-choice argument.
3. The counter/distance teaching is the fulcrum. I did not verify a single cited reference that expressly teaches "maintain a counter per service description, increment it on each broadcast, and derive a distance." The strongest supportable combination pairs EP 1 022 876 A1 with US 6,691,173 B2 (relayed service advertisements across an extended network) plus the ordinary knowledge that hop counts measure distance. If a PHOSITA would not have viewed the counter as the known way to measure reachability here, claim 1's non-obviousness argument gets stronger.
4. Claim 9 is the weakest link in my case and should be examined against the secondary references specifically before asserting it is obvious.
5. Section 102 vs. 103. EP 1 022 876 A1 does not appear to anticipate claim 1 (the counter element is absent), so this is properly a § 103 case; a § 102 rejection of claim 1 would require reading the counter limitation out of the claim.
6. Change in law/date. The current-task date (April 26, 2026) and the earlier section's date (2026-09-29) are inconsistent; neither affects the analysis, which turns on the 2001 priority date and pre-AIA law.

Bottom line: Under pre-AIA § 103(a), independent claim 1 — and derivatively claims 2–8 and 10–14 — would likely have been obvious over EP 1 022 876 A1 in view of the ad-hoc distance/hop-count art (US 6,691,173 B2 and ordinary routing knowledge), with claim 9 the most contestable. The single most important limitation to litigate is the per-service counter / derived distance value, which is the only element of claim 1 not disclosed by the admitted base reference.