US 7006903

I'll search for the specific patent number and any associated litigation.

Summary of US Patent 7006903

Search results on litigation: I found no CAFC docket or USPTO litigation record for patent 7006903 in the results returned. My searches surfaced only the Google Patents page and a Justia citation (a prior-art reference in an unrelated patent), plus noise from similarly-numbered IDs (e.g., JP 7006903 B, KR application 10-2019-7006903). These are different identifiers and I did not treat them as this patent. I cannot confirm any 2026 Federal Circuit activity for 7006903; on the available evidence there is none.

Bibliographic data (from the patent's own front matter)

Note on assignment chain: The record shows a series of security-interest and reassignment entries (Sabre Inc. → Sabre GLBL Inc. → Flight Operations Holdings LLC → CAE Flight Services USA, Inc.). Google's "current assignee" field is expressly a non-legal assumption; ownership should be verified against the USPTO assignment database if this matters.

Abstract (verbatim)

"Methods and systems for routing and scheduling maintenance for aircraft. An aircraft routing and maintenance scheduling system generates an aircraft routing proposal based on information describing a possible flight of an aircraft and a maintenance scheduling proposal that corresponds to the aircraft based on information describing a possible maintenance schedule of the aircraft. The system determines a proposed flight assignment and proposed maintenance scheduling assignment based on the aircraft routing proposal and maintenance scheduling proposal. Thereafter, the system produces a flight assignment plan and maintenance scheduling plan using the proposed flight assignment and proposed maintenance scheduling assignment when the proposed flight assignment and proposed maintenance scheduling assignment meet a decision criterion describing requirements for aircraft routing and maintenance scheduling."

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

The independent claims I can see in the provided text are 1, 19, 20, 21, and 22. Claims 1, 19, and 21 are method claims; claims 20 and 22 are apparatus claims written in means-plus-function form.

• Claim 1 (method — the core claim): A computer-implemented method with these steps: (a) generate an aircraft routing proposal from flight information; (b) generate a maintenance scheduling proposal for the aircraft from maintenance-schedule information, where that information must at least include maintenance station capacity information; (c) determine a "proposed pre-flight assignment" and proposed maintenance scheduling assignment from the two proposals; (d) check whether those proposals meet a decision criterion (the routing/scheduling requirements); (e) if not, optimize the assignments until the criterion is met; and (f) output a pre-flight assignment plan and maintenance scheduling plan. The final clause confirms the generating, determining, and optimizing steps are performed by a processor.

• Claim 19 (method — data-in / model-out variant): Receive flight information and maintenance-schedule information (again, at least including maintenance station capacity information); generate a set of aircraft routing proposals and maintenance scheduling proposals; feed those proposals into an optimization-based model; and produce the pre-flight assignment plan and maintenance scheduling plan by solving that model. Processor-performed.

• Claim 20 (apparatus, means-plus-function): The same four functional blocks as claim 19 — means for receiving, means for generating the proposal set, means for inputting into an optimization-based model, and means for producing the plans by solving the model — with the station-capacity-information limitation and processor language.

• Claim 21 (method — conditional-output variant): Generate the routing proposal and the maintenance scheduling proposal (station-capacity-information limitation again); determine the proposed pre-flight assignment and maintenance scheduling assignment; and produce the assignment plan and maintenance scheduling plan when those proposals meet the decision criterion. Notably, this claim omits the iterative "optimize if criterion not met" step found in claim 1.

• Claim 22 (apparatus, means-plus-function): Mirrors claim 1 in means-plus-function form — means for generating each proposal, means for determining the assignments, means for testing the decision criterion, means for optimizing if the criterion is not met, and means for generating the plans from the proposals that met the criterion.

Recurring essential limitation across all independents: the maintenance-schedule information at least includes maintenance station capacity information. This appears to be the point of novelty emphasized claim-wide (distinguishing over prior tail-assignment approaches that did not model station capacity/capability by time).

Supporting detail worth noting

The specification describes a Dantzig–Wolfe column-generation architecture: an aircraft routing unit 202 and a maintenance scheduling unit 204 (both constraint-programming based) generate proposals that become columns in a master problem solved by revised simplex, with dual variables (aircraftdual, flightdual, maintenancedual) feeding refinement information back to the sub-problems (steps 312–320 of FIGS. 3A/3B), followed by a branch-and-bound solve to integrality (step 322). Claim 7 recites the revised simplex/dual-variable mechanism; claim 18 recites branch-and-bound. Dependent claim 4 lists the constraint classes (aircraft, operational, maintenance, hangar, vehicle, spacial sequence, temporal, vehicle compatibility).

Uncertainty / caveats

1. Truncated claim text. The authoritative text supplied to me stops mid-claim 28, while the patent lists 46 claims. I therefore cannot rule out additional independent claims (e.g., a computer-readable-media claim or further method/apparatus claims) beyond claim 22. My independent-claim enumeration is limited to those visible.
2. No litigation confirmation. I found no CAFC 2026 docket entry for 7006903. My searches were general web searches, not a direct PACER/CAFC query; absence of results is not proof of absence of a docket.
3. Assignee. The "current assignee" designation comes from Google Patents, which disclaims legal accuracy. Verify via USPTO Assignment records if reliance is needed.
4. Expiry. Listed status is "Expired – Lifetime" with adjusted expiration 2022-04-14, so any 2026 enforcement activity would be unusual — though I cannot state as fact that none exists.

If you want, I can attempt a narrower search targeted at Federal Circuit 2026 opinions or PACER-style docket listings for this patent number.