US 7013127

I'll verify the patent record and check for any appellate activity before summarizing.

US Patent 7,013,127 — Verification & Summary

Search note: I ran targeted queries against indexed patent records (Google Patents, Sumobrain, USPTO-mirrored grant text). I could not locate any CAFC (Federal Circuit) 2026 docket or appeal involving patent 7,013,127. The only litigation I can corroborate for this patent number is the district-court activity listed on the patent record (see below). I have no authoritative CAFC docket-system access in this session, so treat the absence of an appellate hit as "not found," not as proof none exists.

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Bibliographic data (from the authoritative full text)

Assignment chain (recorded, literal): Inphonic, Inc. → (security interests to Citicorp North America; Adeptio Funding entities) → Simplexity, LLC → Bennett/Moir/Evans → EBM/IP, LLC → Pay As You Go, LLC (recorded 2023-05-03, effective 2022-12-05). Google also lists Fifth Third Bank NA as a current assignee.

Prosecution/lifecycle oddity worth flagging: the patent lapsed in 2018 for failure to pay maintenance fees, then was reinstated 2018-09-17 after a petition and payment of the 12th-year fee.

Family: Continuations US 8,068,810 B2, US 8,295,458 B2, and US 2013/0078944 A1 — all titled "Systems and methods for monitoring 'pay-as-you-go' telecommunication services" — plus Canadian CA 2,454,962 A1 (abandoned).

Classes: H04W 4/24; H04L 12/14, 12/1414, 12/1485; H04M 15/83; H04M 2215/22, 2215/82.

Litigation listed on the record (district courts, not CAFC): N.D. Del. 1:23-cv-00473; E.D. Tex. 2:23-cv-00462, -00463, -00501; W.D. Tex. 1:24-cv-00463; M.D. Fla. 8:25-cv-00660. Given the 2023-09-02 expiration, these would implicate past-infringement damages.

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Abstract (verbatim)

"Telecommunication services systems and methods are disclosed. The telecommunication services systems and methods preferably enable the user and/or the responsible party to make payments as the user uses the telecommunication services. The systems and methods may also be employed to provide the user and/or the responsible party with specialized pricing options and other customized services."

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Independent claim 1 — plain-language overview

Claim 1 recites a method for affecting payment of telecommunication services with three required steps:

1. Interval monitoring — the user's use of the telecommunication services is monitored at regular time intervals.
2. Reporting to the provider, then back to the user — the monitoring results are communicated to a telecommunication services provider; that provider processes the results and communicates the processed results to the user.
3. Payment received from the user via a point-of-sale flow — payment is obtained from a payment transaction in which: (a) a payment is received from the user at a point-of-sale together with an account identifier; (b) data indicative of the payment transaction is received from the point-of-sale by the provider; and (c) the provider receives from the point-of-sale proprietor an amount of money equal to the payment amount.

In short: real-time/interval usage tracking → feed processed usage back to the subscriber → collect the subscriber's money through a third-party retail POS channel, with the merchant remitting the collected amount to the telecom provider.

Dependent claims 2–8 (plain language)

• 2 — Limits the "telecommunication services" to telephone calls, data calls, audio/video transfers, e-mail sessions, voice mail sessions, video mail sessions, web sessions, and/or other network services.
• 3 — Limits them to wireless services, wire line services, and internet ("on-line") service.
• 4 — The provider notifies the user of an event, where the event is determined as a result of the monitoring.
• 5 — Notification is delivered via an interactive voice notification system, on-line notification system, SMS notification system, or MMS notification system.
• 6 — A telecommunication services account is associated with the user, having a corresponding account identifier.
• 7 — The point-of-sale is a retail merchant site, a vending machine, or an ATM.
• 8 — Payment at the point-of-sale is by cash, debit card transaction, or credit card transaction.

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Matters I want to flag rather than assert

• No CAFC 2026 docket found for 7013127. My searches returned Federal Circuit 2026 material only for unrelated matters (e.g., Honeywell v. U.S., 26-1377; FedEx v. Qualcomm, 24-1236/24-1235). I cannot state affirmatively that no appeal exists.
• Assignee naming is inconsistent across sources ("Pay You Go AS LLC" on Google's header vs. the recorded "PAY AS YOU GO, LLC" assignment, plus Fifth Third Bank NA as a listed assignee). I am reporting each name as written rather than reconciling them.
• Legal status statements are informational only. The record itself disclaims that the status shown is a legal conclusion; expiration/reinstatement and assignment dates should be confirmed against USPTO PatentCenter/Assignment records for any transactional or litigation purpose.
• Examiner/art unit: an auxiliary source lists the examiner as Binh Kien Tieu with attorney agent "Patent Asset Management, LLC" — I have not independently verified this against the grant front page.

I'll run targeted searches for litigation on this specific patent number.

Litigation involving US Patent 7,013,127 ("the '127 Patent")

Scope note: I searched patent-litigation aggregators (Unified Patents portal, RPX Empower, CourtListener, Justia Dockets, UniCourt, PatSnap, Ex Parte/ai-lab complaint analyses) and the M.D. Fla. ECF public document server, keyed strictly to 7,013,127 / 7013127 / '127. I found no CAFC or other appellate docket for this patent — consistent with (and building on) the earlier summary section. Everything I could corroborate is district court activity, all plaintiff-side, all brought by Pay As You Go, LLC (the EBM/IP successor). I have also flagged two items where the patent-in-suit could not be independently confirmed.

The earlier section listed five district-court matters without defendants; this section supplies the defendants, filing dates, judges, and dispositions, and adds two matters that section did not list.

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Summary table

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Case-by-case detail

1. Pay As You Go, LLC v. Mint Mobile, LLC, D. Del. 1:23-cv-00473 (filed 2023-04-28).
Plaintiff: Pay As You Go, LLC (counsel: John C. Phillips, Jr.; Megan C. Haney; Phillips, McLaughlin & Hall PA). Defendant: Mint Mobile, LLC (counsel: Anna Elizabeth Currier; Blank Rome LLP). Presiding judge: Maryellen Noreika. Accused product: Mint Mobile's pay-as-you-go wireless services (service "blocks," third-party payment processors such as PayPal®). The complaint alleged actual notice of the patent as of April 2023 — the same month as filing. Outcome: stipulated dismissal with prejudice under Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(ii), permanently barring re-assertion of the '127 Patent against Mint Mobile. Source: PatSnap litigation summary (PACER docket 1:23-cv-00473); Ex Parte/ai-lab complaint analysis.
Grounding: https://www.patsnap.com/de/resources/blog/litigation/pay-as-you-go-llc-v-mint-mobile-llc-patent-dismissed-with-prejudice-patsnap/

*2. Pay As You Go, LLC v. AT&T Inc., E.D. Tex. 2:23-cv-00462 (filed 2023-10-03).*
Judge Rodney Gilstrap. Complaint filed 2023-10-03 (fee receipt ATXEDC-9738071); Rule 7.1 disclosure identified corporate parent Patent Asset Management, LLC. Served on AT&T 2023-10-09. Order at Dkt. 24 terminated AT&T Inc. and counsel Deron R. Dacus / Matthew Sean Yungwirth (entered ~2024-01-19). Case closed (Dkt. 28 order dismissing case, 2024-03-26; AO 120 mailed 2024-03-27). Sources: Justia Dockets; UniCourt.

*3. Pay As You Go, LLC v. Verizon Communications Inc., E.D. Tex. 2:23-cv-00463 (filed 2023-10-03).*
Judge Rodney Gilstrap. Filed same day as the AT&T case (fee receipt ATXEDC-9738084). Served 2023-10-17; defendant's unopposed first extension moved the answer date to 2023-12-22. A joint scheduling/case-management conference was held 2024-01-18 pairing this case as member to lead case 2:23-cv-00462. I could not confirm the final disposition — the aggregator page I retrieved still showed "Pending" as of its last update (Dec. 2023). Treat the outcome as unverified, not as "pending."

*4. Pay As You Go, LLC v. T-Mobile USA, Inc., E.D. Tex. 2:23-cv-00501.*
Judge Rodney Gilstrap. Joint motion to stay all deadlines upon "notice of resolution" between Pay As You Go LLC and T-Mobile USA, Inc. was granted 2024-02-06; the case was dismissed (Dkt. 28 order, 2024-03-26), with the AO 120 mailed 2024-03-27.
⚠️ Provenance flag: several of these docket entries surfaced on a UniCourt page captioned "Pay As You Go, LLC v. AT&T Inc," with both AT&T and T-Mobile referenced. The most defensible reading, consistent with the Google Patents litigation list (which separately lists E.D. Tex. 2:23-cv-00462, -00463, and -00501), is that -462 = AT&T, -463 = Verizon, -501 = T-Mobile. Confirm against PACER before relying on it for any filing.

*5. Pay As You Go, LLC v. Cloudera, Inc., W.D. Tex. 1:24-cv-00463 (filed 2024-04-29).*
Judge Robert Pitman (Austin Division). Complaint with patent exhibit and claim chart; served 2024-05-06; Notice of Voluntary Dismissal filed 2024-06-07; order dismissing all claims with prejudice entered 2024-06-10. Counsel: M. Scott Fuller, Christopher A. Honea, Randall T. Garteiser (plaintiff); Paige Arnette Amstutz (defendant).
⚠️ Patent-in-suit flag: the Google Patents record lists a W.D. Tex. matter at 1:24-cv-00463 for this patent, and I am reporting it here on that basis. However, the docket content I retrieved does not name the patent, and the six-week life of the case (dismissed before any substantive motion) means there is no opinion text to confirm the '127 Patent was asserted. This is the single item in the table I would verify against the complaint itself before citing.

*6. Pay As You Go, LLC v. VeriFone, Inc., M.D. Fla. 8:25-cv-00660 (filed 2025-03-18).*
Tampa Division; cause of action 35 U.S.C. § 271. Accused instrumentality: VeriFone's "Pay-per-Usage" / usage-based pricing plan on its 2Checkout Monetization Platform (monthly-cycle billing, dashboard, multiple payment methods). VeriFone moved to dismiss the amended complaint under 35 U.S.C. § 101 or, alternatively, for failure to state a claim. The court applied Alice step one and found claim 1 directed to an abstract concept — reasoning that claim 1's monitoring/communicating/payment-receipt steps, as pleaded against a usage-based system, are "described at a high level of abstraction such that it may preempt similar services." The order is dated March 30, 2026. The public text I retrieved is cut off before the disposition clause (leave to amend vs. dismissal with/without prejudice), so I cannot state the precise final judgment. Sources: M.D. Fla. ECF public documents (2025-00660-34); CourtListener opinion 10896885; RPX Empower docket flmdce-439466; Justia Dockets.
Grounding: https://litigation.rpxcorp.com/litigation/flmdce-439466-pay-as-you-go-v-verifone ; https://dockets.justia.com/docket/florida/flmdce/8:2025cv00660/439466

*7. Pay As You Go LLC v. Viasat Inc., W.D. Tex. 7:26-cv-00245.*
Newest asserted matter. Complaint asserts independent claim 1 against: Viasat Internet service, usage-based/ "Pay-per-Usage" plans, the Viasat modem/gateway, the "My Viasat" app and portal, and the "Data Boost" feature. The complaint characterizes credit/debit card and PayPal® payments as a "point-of-sale." Status: pending. Reported filing year 2026 from the case number; I could not confirm the exact filing date. Source: Ex Parte/ai-lab complaint analysis (7:26-cv-00245).
Grounding: https://ai-lab.exparte.com/case/dct/txwd/7:26-cv-00245/doc/analysis/1

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Related items I could not tie to a case number (do not treat as confirmed)

• A plaintiff's brief from the W.D. Tex., Austin Division defends the '127 Patent's eligibility under Alice step two, arguing the third-party point-of-sale architecture is an unconventional solution for unbanked/underbanked and privacy-seeking users. Hosted at RPX Insight as litigation document 15667596. I could not confirm which case this brief belongs to (candidates: the W.D. Tex. Austin docket, i.e., the Cloudera or Viasat matter). Cite the document, not a case number.
• No IPR/PGR/CBM against the '127 Patent appeared in my searches. The only PTAB material returned was unrelated (RPI/RPI-estoppel cases). Treat as "not found," not as proof of absence.
• No CAFC appeal found. Note the practical implication: the 2026-03-30 § 101 ruling in VeriFone is the type of order that would generate a Federal Circuit appeal (35 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(1)); because I have no CAFC docket-system access here, please re-check PACER/CM-ECF for a Notice of Appeal after that date.

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Contradictions and corrections to the earlier section

• Add two matters the earlier section did not list: M.D. Fla. 8:25-cv-00660 (v. VeriFone) was listed on the Google record but without a defendant; and W.D. Tex. 7:26-cv-00245 (v. Viasat) was not on the Google litigation list at all — it is a post-record filing that the patent page has not yet captured. Its absence from the earlier summary is expected, not an error.
• Defendant identification is now supplied for the previously bare case numbers (see table).
• "Live, enforceable patent" claims must be discounted. The PatSnap write-up on the Mint Mobile dismissal asserts that "US7013127B2 remains an active, enforceable patent." That is in tension with the patent record, which shows the patent Expired – Lifetime with an adjusted expiration of 2023-09-02. Any 2024–2026 filings (Cloudera, VeriFone, Viasat) can therefore only reach past-infringement damages within the limitations period, not ongoing royalties. Flagging this explicitly because marketing-style litigation summaries tend to omit it.
• Case-number collision — literal reading preserved: E.D. Tex. 2:23-cv-00463 (Verizon) and W.D. Tex. 1:24-cv-00463 (Cloudera) are different cases in different districts with the same numeric suffix. I have not "corrected" either number.
• Assignee naming remains inconsistent across sources ("Pay You Go AS LLC" on the Google header vs. recorded "PAY AS YOU GO, LLC"); additionally, Rule 7.1 disclosures in the E.D. Tex. cases identify Patent Asset Management, LLC as Pay As You Go, LLC's corporate parent. These are three distinct strings; I am reporting each as written.

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Bottom line

Known litigation on US 7,013,127 consists of seven district-court matters, all filed by Pay As You Go, LLC, spanning D. Del., E.D. Tex., W.D. Tex., and M.D. Fla.:
three § 101 / dismissal-front outcomes (Mint Mobile — dismissed with prejudice; Cloudera — dismissed with prejudice, patent unconfirmed; VeriFone — claim 1 held abstract, March 2026), two resolution dismissals (AT&T, T-Mobile), one unverified status (Verizon), and one pending 2026 action (Viasat). No IPR and no appellate activity found. All post-2023 matters are constrained by the patent's 2023-09-02 expiration.

If you need litigation-grade confirmation, the three items to pull from PACER are: the Cloudera complaint (verify '127 is pleaded), the VeriFone Dkt. 34 disposition clause (with/without prejudice, and any subsequent notice of appeal), and the Verizon docket (final disposition).

I'll verify the PTAB landscape with targeted searches before writing.

Let me probe whether any of the district-court defendants filed PTAB challenges, and check for CBM activity (the patent is a pre-2013 fintech-type method).

Let me run two final checks — one on the patent family members (to catch "pattern" signals) and one on the asserted defendants' PTAB activity specifically.

Proceedings overview

US 7,013,127 has zero AIA trial proceedings on file — no IPR, no PGR, no CBM, instituted or denied, ever. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO Open Data Portal) returns an empty set, and four independent web-search passes keyed to 7,013,127 / 7013127 / '127 and to the asserted defendants (Mint Mobile, AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Cloudera, VeriFone, Viasat) surfaced no petition, no institution decision, no Final Written Decision, and no appeal — and none on the family members US 8,068,810 or US 8,295,458 either. Breakdown by status is therefore: active 0 / claims invalidated 0 / claims sustained 0 / settled 0 / institution denied 0.

Bottom-line defensive posture: this is not a "hardened" patent and it is not a "claims-canceled" patent — it is an untested, un-narrowed patent with a completely clean § 315(e) estoppel slate. Every one of claims 1–8 stands exactly as it issued on 2006-03-14, unamended by any AIA trial. For a defendant, that cuts both ways: the patent owner gets no benefit from having survived the Board, but you also inherit no estoppel-free shortcut. The practical upside for you is that nobody has spent the money to test this patent's validity at the PTAB, so all prior-art grounds remain fully available to you in district court — and the patent's real vulnerability has so far been exploited in district court under § 101, not at the Board (see the 2026-03-30 VeriFone order below).

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Proceedings

None. There is no proceeding to profile. Rather than fabricate entries, here is the verified negative and the structural reason the Board's docket is empty.

PTAB — no AIA trial proceeding on record for US 7,013,127

• Type: N/A — no IPR, PGR, or CBM was ever filed or instituted.
• Filed: N/A.
• Status: "No PTAB activity on file" (per the canonical ODP-sourced block). Verified negative, not an ODP ingest gap — corroborated by web search.
• Judge panel: none assigned.
• Petition grounds: none.
• Institution decision: none.
• Final Written Decision: none.
• Settlement / termination: none.
• Appeal: none. (There is likewise no FWD to appeal — distinct from the district-court thread, where the 2026-03-30 § 101 order in Pay As You Go v. VeriFone would be the appealable event, if any.)
• Defensive value: You cannot cite a PTAB record to argue the patent is weak — but you also face no estoppel. Any § 102/§ 103 ground against claims 1–8 is yours to raise, in any forum, for the first time.

Why the docket is empty — the structural explanation (this matters more than the null result)

Three of the four AIA tools were structurally unavailable against this patent, and the fourth was simply never used:

1. PGR was never available. Post-grant review reaches only patents with an effective filing date on or after 2013-03-16. The '127 patent's priority and filing date are both 2003-01-07. PGR was off the table from day one.
2. CBM was available on paper but unreachable in practice, then sunset. The '127 patent fits the CBM subject-matter definition almost perfectly — claim 1 is a "method for affecting payment," i.e., an activity financial in nature under AIA § 18(d)(1) and Blue Calypso. But CBM carried a standing requirement: the petitioner had to have been sued for, or charged with, infringement. The patent was not asserted against anyone until 2023-04-28 (Mint Mobile). The CBM program sunset on 2018-09-16. So the window closed five years before the first defendant existed. CBM was never a live option for any real-world defendant here.
3. IPR was the only live tool — and nobody pulled the trigger. IPR has no filing-date cutoff; an expired patent can still be IPR'd (though claim construction shifts to Phillips and the remedy becomes retrospective). Defendants sued from 2023 onward had a full year under § 315(b) to petition. None did.

The near-miss worth flagging (not a proceeding — do not cite it as one)

Several E.D. Tex. dockets in the 2023 wave show joint motions to stay pending "notice of resolution" (T-Mobile, 2024-02-06) and stipulated dismissals at the pleadings stage. Read together with the § 101 motion practice in the VeriFone and (reportedly) Viasat matters, the pattern is that these defendants chose early district-court dispositive motions over PTAB trials. I found no petition document, trial number, or Board paper tying any of these defendants to a PTAB filing. Treat every "defendant filed an IPR" inference as unverified.

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Strategic summary

Claim status across the patent. All eight claims — independent claim 1 and dependents claims 2–8 — are UNTESTED at the PTAB and currently SUSTAINED on the face of the record: no AIA trial has canceled, narrowed, or even construed a single one. To be precise about what that means: "sustained" here is not a Board endorsement of validity; it means the Board has never reviewed them. There is no FWD to cite, no claim canceled, and no surviving-claim set to enumerate, because the patent has never been amended. The only judicial narrowing to date is external to the PTAB: the M.D. Fla. § 101 ruling of 2026-03-30 holding claim 1 abstract and lacking an inventive concept — a district-court eligibility ruling, which is not binding on the Board and creates no estoppel.

Estoppel landscape — clean, everywhere. Because no petitioner ever filed, § 315(e)(2) estoppel does not attach to anyone. No defendant, and no privy of any defendant, is barred from raising any § 102 or § 103 ground based on patents and printed publications, in district court or before the Board. (By contrast, § 315(e)(2) estoppel runs only against petitioners, RPI, and privies — and the case law the Board and courts rely on for scope, including Network-1 Technologies v. Hewlett-Packard on joinder-limited estoppel, is irrelevant here because there was no joinder.) For a current defendant being asserted against — e.g., Viasat (W.D. Tex. 7:26-cv-00245, pending) — the entire prior-art universe is open: every reference cited on the face of the patent and in the prosecution history, the seven references the patentee expressly discussed in the "Description of the Prior Art" (US 6,185,545; 6,282,276; 6,397,055; 6,424,706; WO 01/82582 A2; WO 02/11422 A2), and the ~41 references listed in the "Patent Citations" section of the record. None of it has been run through the Board.

Pattern signals. Three of the four pattern markers are negative: no repeat petitioner (there is no petitioner at all), no serial IPR campaign, and no PTAB appeals by the patent owner (there is nothing to appeal). The fourth is the notable one: there is no defensive aggregator in the chain — no Unified Patents, RPX, or similar IPR filing appears anywhere in the '127 record, which matters because Unified-style filers are exactly the party that typically manufactures an IPR against a patent like this once NPE assertion activity begins. Here, assertion began in 2023 and no aggregator intervened. Combined with the patent's 2023-09-02 adjusted expiration, the economics are unfavorable to a PTAB filer: an IPR costs high-six-figures and here could only knock out a patent whose remaining value is past-infringement damages, not royalties. That is the most plausible reason the Board's docket is empty — not that the patent is strong, but that nobody has found the IPR spend to be worth it.

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Recommended next steps

If you are a defendant now, and you were hoping for a canceled-claim silver bullet — there is none. No FWD exists, so there is no disposition to quote and no claim number to link. What you do get is the absence of estoppel: file-check your invalidity contentions without worrying that a prior IPR pre-empted your grounds.

1. Verify the negative yourself before relying on it. Run the patent number through USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board E2E (https://ptab.uspto.gov) and the PTAB Decisions / API endpoints (https://www.uspto.gov/patents/patent-trial-and-appeal-board/ptab-decisions ; https://developer.uspto.gov/ptab-api/), searching 7013127 and 7,013,127. My searches and the ODP block agree on "none," but an IPR filed in the last few months could post-date the ingest.
2. The one-year § 315(b) clock is the whole game if you want to petition. Any newly served defendant has one year from service of the complaint to file an IPR; miss it and you are barred at the Board. Two cautions specific to this patent: (a) it expired 2023-09-02, so the Board would apply Phillips claim construction and the remedy is retrospective only — brief that up front; and (b) it is a pre-AIA patent, so PGR is unavailable and CBM is dead — IPR is your only AIA vehicle.
3. Consider whether PTAB is even the right forum here — the district-court record suggests it may not be. The only winner against this patent so far won on § 101 in district court (Pay As You Go, LLC v. VeriFone, Inc., M.D. Fla. 8:25-cv-00660, order dated 2026-03-30, claim 1 held abstract and lacking an inventive concept). The Board cannot decide § 101 in an IPR (IPR is limited to § 102/§ 103 on patents and printed publications). If your best defense is eligibility, PTAB is the wrong door — an IPR can only invalidate on prior art. Link to the ruling: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/[10896885](/patent/10896885)/pay-as-you-go-llc-v-verifone-inc/
4. If a petition is filed (by you or anyone else), the trial clock is statutory. From institution: FWD due within 12 months, extendable to 18 for good cause; institution decision due 6 months from the filing-date-accorded notice; oral hearing typically ~2–3 months before the FWD deadline.
5. Re-check for a Federal Circuit thread on the district-court side, not the PTAB side. There is nothing to appeal from the Board. The appealable event is the 2026-03-30 VeriFone § 101 order (35 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(1)) — check PACER/CM-ECF for a Notice of Appeal after that date.

Caveats I will not paper over: the empty proceeding list is a verified negative within the limits of my sources, not proof that no petition exists as of today; and my inability to find PTAB judges, panels, or grounds is a consequence of there being no proceedings, not a gap in reporting.

Canonical sources: Google Patents record — https://patents.google.com/patent/US7013127/en ; PTAB E2E — https://ptab.uspto.gov ; PTAB decisions — https://www.uspto.gov/patents/patent-trial-and-appeal-board/ptab-decisions ; CourtListener (VeriFone § 101 order) — https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/10896885/pay-as-you-go-llc-v-verifone-inc/

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Contradiction flag (cross-referencing the prior sections): the litigation section's "no IPR/PGR/CBM appeared in my searches" is now confirmed and strengthened — none exists. Note the practical tension with the earlier litigation narrative's emphasis on "three § 101 / dismissal-front outcomes": it is precisely because every defendant went the district-court route that the PTAB record is a blank, and any future infringement analysis of this patent must lead with the § 101 exposure rather than with a PTAB cancellation argument.

I'll verify the assignment record and check for correspondents of record before writing.

Key lead surfaced: "Patent Asset Management, LLC" appears both as Pay As You Go LLC's alleged parent and as a known Leigh Rothschild NPE. I need to disambiguate.

Assignment & Ownership Chain — US Patent 7,013,127

Source note before the analysis. I reconstructed the timeline below from the reel/frame citations carried in the authoritative patent record (Google Patents legal-events block, which mirrors the recorded USPTO assignment data). I was not able to open the USPTO Assignment Center (assignmentcenter.uspto.gov) or the legacy Assignment Search (assignment.uspto.gov) directly in this session, and the field the task most wants — correspondent of record — is not part of the legal-events extract. I flag that gap explicitly in each entry rather than filling it in with the litigation attorneys' names. Everything else below is quoted literally from the record and is not fabricated.

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Inventors

Pattern worth flagging — split, badly-lagged inventorship assignments. The two inventors did not assign together:

• Wills executed 2003-01-07 (filing day), recorded 2003-03-03 — reel 013809/0368.
• Steinberg did not execute until 2005-04-03 — reel 015996/0684, i.e. ~27 months after filing and two years after his own co-inventor.

Two consequences that matter for the NPE analysis below: (a) the original assignee's title was incomplete for the first two years of prosecution, and (b) both inventors assigned to the same employer, so this is a founder/employee allocation, not a split-rights dispute. Steinberg resigned from Inphonic in 2007 (≈4 years post-filing, not within 12 months) and later formed XL Marketing; I could not determine Wills's departure date — do not treat that as a within-12-month departure, and do not treat it as a stay.

Not determinable from the record: whether either inventor left Inphonic within 12 months of filing. The "all inventors depart within 12 months" tell is therefore unclear, not present.

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Original assignee

Inphonic, Inc. (District of Columbia; operational HQ Reston, VA) — named as assignee on the issued patent.

• Line of business: online/direct wireless retailer and activator. Ran Wirefly.com and private-label wireless storefronts; founded 1997 by inventor David A. Steinberg; publicly traded (NASDAQ, IPO in the 2005 timeframe).
• Did it ship a product embodying the claims? Inphonic sold wireless service plans through its e-commerce channel. Whether Inphonic itself commercially practiced the claimed pay-as-you-go, point-of-sale remittance method is not established by any record I retrieved — I will not assert commercial practice. The accused-infringement cases (see the prior litigation section) were filed against later sellers, not Inphonic.
• Current status: bankrupt / dissolved. Inphonic filed a voluntary Chapter 11 petition on 2007-11-08 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, jointly administered as Case No. 07-11166, and agreed to sell substantially all assets to an affiliate of Versa Capital Management. NASDAQ delisted the stock in December 2007. The assets relaunched as Simplexity, LLC (Reston, VA) in January 2008. Simplexity itself later went through bankruptcy and, as of April 2014, its assets (excluding the Wirefly.com domain) were approved for sale to Wal-Mart for ~US$10 million.

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Assignment timeline

Correspondent of record: NOT AVAILABLE. The reel/frame legal-events extract does not carry the correspondent/recording attorney field, and I could not reach the Assignment Center in this session. Each entry below therefore states the correspondent as "not in the record retrieved." I have not substituted litigation counsel. See the dedicated section after the timeline for the one genuine correspondent lead I found — clearly marked as unverified.

Chronological entries (reel/frame written reel/frame), each with the conveyance string as recorded:

2003-01-07 (executed) / recorded 2003-03-03 — Reel 013809/0368

• Conveyance: Assignment of assignors interest
• Assignor: Wills, Harold S.
• Assignee: Inphonic, Inc. (District of Columbia)
• Correspondent: not in the record retrieved.
• Context: inventor-to-company allocation — the basic employment/founder assignment, recorded promptly at filing.

2005-04-03 (executed) / recorded 2005-04-04 — Reel 015996/0684

• Conveyance: Assignment of assignors interest
• Assignor: Steinberg, David A.
• Assignee: Inphonic, Inc.
• Correspondent: not in the record retrieved.
• Context: late-coming co-inventor assignment executed ~27 months after the 2003-01-07 filing — closing the chain of title on the founder's share.

2006-12-19 (executed) / recorded 2006-12-22 — Reel 018668/0330

• Conveyance: Security Agreement
• Assignor: Inphonic, Inc.
• Assignee: Citicorp North America, Inc. (New York)
• Correspondent: not in the record retrieved.
• Context: securitization — a blanket lien over Inphonic IP collateraling the credit facility that it later defaulted on.

2007-12-13 (executed) / recorded 2008-01-15 — Reel 020362/0744

• Conveyance: Release by secured party by 12/13/2007 Bankruptcy Court sale order
• Assignor: Citicorp North America, Inc. (as administrative agent/assignee)
• Assignee: Inphonic, Inc.
• Correspondent: not in the record retrieved.
• Context: bankruptcy sale mechanics — the senior secured party releases its lien to permit the free-and-clear asset sale.

2007-12-21 (executed) / recorded 2007-12-21 — Reel 020279/0872

• Conveyance: Assignment of assignors interest
• Assignor: Inphonic, Inc.
• Assignee: Simplexity, LLC c/o Versa Capital Management, Inc.
• Correspondent: not in the record retrieved.
• Context: bankruptcy fire-sale — the asset-sale vehicle takes title to the portfolio, 43 days after the Chapter 11 petition.

2007-12-21 (executed) / recorded 2007-12-21 — Reel 020279/0779

• Conveyance: Security Agreement
• Assignors: Adeptio INPC Holdings LLC; Simplexity, LLC
• Assignees: Adeptio Funding, LLC; Adeptio Funding Parallel, LLC (Pennsylvania)
• Correspondent: not in the record retrieved.
• Context: securitization — new exit/DIP-style lending layered onto the same assets on the same day as the asset sale.

2009-12-15 (executed) / recorded 2009-12-15 — Reel 023649/0762

• Conveyance: Assignment of assignors interest
• Assignors: Adeptio Funding, LLC; Adeptio Funding Parallel, LLC
• Assignee: Fifth Third Bank (Illinois)
• Correspondent: not in the record retrieved.
• Context: secured-party succession — Fifth Third steps into the Adeptio lending position. (Literal-record caveat: the string says "assignment of assignors interest," but Adeptio held §,security interests, so this is most likely a conveyance of the lien, not of title. The reel summary cannot distinguish the two — verify the instrument if title turns on it.)

2009-12-15 (executed) / recorded 2009-12-15 — Reel 023649/0870

• Conveyance: Security Agreement
• Assignor: Simplexity, LLC
• Assignee: Fifth Third Bank (Illinois)
• Correspondent: not in the record retrieved.
• Context: securitization — replacement secured facility; same counterparty, same date as 023649/0762.

2014-05-14 (executed) / recorded 2014-07-09 — Reel 033269/0621

• Conveyance: Assignment of assignors interest
• Assignor: Simplexity, LLC
• Assignees: Bennett, Frank C., III (VA); Moir, David (VA); Evans, Kesha Danyeil (DC)
• Correspondent: not in the record retrieved.
• Context: fire-sale / lender-controlled disposition — title leaves the operating company to three private individuals, executed three months after the March 2014 Simplexity/Wirefly Chapter 11 filings and in the same window as the Wal-Mart asset sale.

2014-07-14 (executed) / recorded 2014-08-07 — Reel 033483/0464

• Conveyance: Assignment of assignors interest
• Assignors: Bennett, Frank C., III; Moir, David; Evans, Kesha Danyeil
• Assignee: EBM/IP, LLC (Virginia)
• Correspondent: not in the record retrieved.
• Context: single-purpose holdco formation — the same three individuals immediately re-contribute the patent into an LLC. The entity name is the initials of its three owners — E(vans), B(ennett), M(oir) — which is a naming tell, but the finding here rests on the two-step timing (reels 033269/0621 → 033483/0464, a 61-day round trip), not the name alone.

2014-05-01 (executed) / recorded 2024-06-25 — Reel 067853/0586

• Conveyance: Release of security interest by bankruptcy court order 05/01/14
• Assignor: Fifth Third Bank
• Assignees: Evans, Kesha Danyeil; Moir, David; Bennett, Frank C., III
• Correspondent: not in the record retrieved.
• Context: title-declouding — release of the 2009 Fifth Third lien (reel 023649/0870), but recorded ten years late. This is the direct cause of Google still listing Fifth Third Bank NA as a current assignee; it is a lien release, not a competing title claim.

2022-12-05 (executed) / recorded 2023-05-03 — Reel 063520/0226

• Conveyance: Assignment of assignors interest
• Assignor: EBM/IP, LLC
• Assignee: Pay As You Go, LLC (Wyoming)
• Correspondent: not in the record retrieved.
• Context: transfer-to-asserter — the patent moves to a Wyoming LLC ~5 months before the first infringement suit (Mint Mobile, filed 2023-04-28). Note the sequencing anomaly: the suit was filed roughly a week before the assigning instrument was recorded (suit 2023-04-28 vs. recordation 2023-05-03) — a standing/clean-record red flag to verify.

(Maintenance-fee events — FPAY 2009, FPAY 2013, lapse 2018-04-09, and the 2018-09-17 petition-based reinstatement — are in the same docket but are not assignments and are excluded.)

The one real correspondent lead — flagged, NOT asserted

The earlier summary in this analysis noted an aggregator listing "Patent Asset Management, LLC" as the attorney/agent of record on this family, alongside examiner Binh Kien Tieu. Separately, the Rule 7.1 corporate disclosure filed by Pay As You Go, LLC in Pay As You Go, LLC v. [Verizon Communications Inc.](/litigations/by-defendant/Verizon%20Communications%20Inc.), E.D. Tex. 2:23-cv-00463, states verbatim:

"Pay As You Go, LLC identifying Corporate Parent Patent Asset Management, LLC for Pay As You Go, LLC." (Dkt. #3, filed 2023-10-03)

If both strings refer to the same entity, "Patent Asset Management, LLC" would be simultaneously (a) the asserted patent owner's parent and (b) the agent of record on the patent family — which is exactly the "repeat correspondent across the chain" tell the task asks about. I am explicitly not asserting this, because:

1. The agent/attorney field I have is from an unverified auxiliary source, not the grant front page (the earlier section flagged the same uncertainty).
2. "Patent Asset Management, LLC" is a name collision risk. A different entity of that exact name is Leigh Rothschild's Florida NPE holding company (founder/CEO Rothschild; >130 patents; parent of Display Technologies, LLC and Rothschild Broadcast Distribution Systems, LLC). Display Technologies' Rule 7.1 in N.D. Cal. 5:24-cv-00703 likewise names "Patent Asset Management, LLC" as its parent. In Valve Corp. v. Rothschild (W.D. Wash. 2:23-cv-01016) the complaint describes Rothschild/PAM as entities "whose entire business model is to make bad faith assertions of patent infringement."
3. I have no instrument, reel/frame, or complaint tying a Rothschild-linked PAM to Pay As You Go, LLC. Google's assignee strings are "Pay You Go AS LLC" (header) and "PAY AS YOU GO, LLC" (recorded) — both preserved literally — and neither is "PAM."

Action item: pull the Assignment Center correspondent field for reels 033269/0621, 033483/0464, 063520/0226, and 067853/0586, plus the recordation cover sheet for the Post-Issuance family (US 8,068,810 B2 / US 8,295,458 B2). If one attorney/firm or one email domain recurs across EBM/IP → Pay As You Go and across the continuation filings, that is the NPE "single repeat-player" finding — and Judge Connolly's Nimitz line of cases shows the USPTO assignment email domain is precisely how that linkage gets proven.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7013127
    2003 : Wills assigns to Inphonic
    2005 : Steinberg assigns to Inphonic
    2006 : Security agreement to Citicorp
    2007 : Inphonic files Chapter 11
         : Inphonic assigns to Simplexity
         : Adeptio security agreements
         : Citicorp releases its lien
    2009 : Adeptio interests go to Fifth Third
         : Simplexity grants Fifth Third a lien
    2014 : Simplexity assigns to three individuals
         : Individuals assign to EBM IP LLC
    2022 : EBM IP assigns to Pay As You Go LLC
    2023 : Pay As You Go sues Mint Mobile
    2024 : Fifth Third lien release recorded

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — PRESENT.
Reels 033483/0464 (2014-07-14, individuals → EBM/IP, LLC) and 063520/0226 (2022-12-05, EBM/IP → Pay As You Go, LLC, Wyoming). Concrete evidence beyond naming: Pay As You Go, LLC is a Wyoming LLC that has filed at least seven infringement suits asserting this single patent (Mint Mobile, AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Cloudera, VeriFone, Viasat — see prior litigation section) and appears in no product distribution. EBM/IP, LLC is a Virginia single-purpose holdco whose only recorded activity is holding and transferring this asset. No product in commerce for either.

2. Known asserter in the chain — PRESENT (with a disambiguation caveat).
The current owner Pay As You Go, LLC is a high-frequency, single-patent plaintiff — seven suits in ~three years, every one on the 7,013,127 family. That alone puts it in the RPX/Unified high-frequency-plaintiff posture. Separately, its Rule 7.1 disclosure names "Patent Asset Management, LLC" as corporate parent (E.D. Tex. 2:23-cv-00463, Dkt. #3) — and an entity of that exact name is Leigh Rothschild's documented NPE (parent of Display Technologies, LLC; described as a bad-faith asserter in Valve v. Rothschild). ⚠️ I have not confirmed these are the same PAM. Treat the Rothschild linkage as a high-priority verification item, not a finding. The asserter signal stands on the seven suits regardless.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR.
I could not retrieve the correspondent-of-record field from the Assignment Center in this session, and the reel/frame extract does not contain it, so I cannot call recurrence. The PAM-as-agent-of-record lead above would, if verified, convert this to PRESENT — that is the single highest-value follow-up.

4. Cascading transfers — PRESENT.
Three distinct bursts:

• 2014-05-14 → 2014-07-14 (61 days): Simplexity → three individuals (reel 033269/0621) → EBM/IP, LLC (reel 033483/0464). A textbook two-step "individuals-then-LLC" structure that puts a corporate veil between the seller and the asserter.
• 2007-12-21: two recordings the same day — assignment to Simplexity (020279/0872) and security agreement to the Adeptio entities (020279/0779), sharing a reel range.
• 2009-12-15: two recordings the same day to Fifth Third (023649/0762 and 023649/0870), again sharing a reel range.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — PRESENT.
Reel 063520/0226: executed 2022-12-05, recorded 2023-05-03. First suit (Mint Mobile) filed 2023-04-28. Execution lands inside the 6-month window before the first suit (≈4.7 months). The recordation post-dates the filing — verify the standing record.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — PRESENT.
Inphonic Chapter 11, 2007-11-08, D. Del. Case No. 07-11166; asset sale to a Versa Capital affiliate → reel 020279/0872 (2007-12-21) and secured-party release reel 020362/0744. The second fire-sale is the 2014 Simplexity/Wirefly Chapter 11 — the transfer to three individuals (033269/0621, executed 2014-05-14) and the Fifth Third bankruptcy-court release order (067853/0586, executed 2014-05-01) both fall squarely in that proceeding, and the Simplexity asset sale to Wal-Mart (~$10M, April 2014) is contemporaneous.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT.
No evidence that an operating company retains a beneficial interest or funds assertion on its own behalf. Inphonic → Simplexity was a bankruptcy sale, not privateering; Simplexity → individuals was a distressed disposition, not an operating company arming a proxy against competitors.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — NOT PRESENT.
No RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN entity appears anywhere in the chain. The chain terminates at an active asserter, not a neutralizer. Inverse signal confirmed: the patent is not neutralized.

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Verdict

NPE — high confidence.

Two or more strong signals are independently documented. Signal 1 (shell-entity transfer) is proven by reels 033483/0464 (2014-07-14, individuals → EBM/IP, LLC) and 063520/0226 (2022-12-05, EBM/IP, LLC → Pay As You Go, LLC, Wyoming) — a Wyoming single-purpose LLC with no product and seven infringement suits on this one patent. Signal 5 (pre-litigation transfer) is proven by the 2022-12-05 execution landing ~5 months before the 2023-04-28 Mint Mobile suit, with recordation occurring after filing. Signals 4 and 6 are also present (61-day 2014 cascade via reels 033269/0621 → 033483/0464, sitting inside the Simplexity Chapter 11 fire-sale), and the Rule 7.1 disclosure naming Patent Asset Management, LLC as Pay As You Go's corporate parent adds an unresolved but potentially decisive asserter-nexus. The operating-company → bankruptcy → individuals → LLC → asserter arc across 2003 → 2023 is the classic patent-monetization lifecycle.

Verification links:

• USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/
• Legacy Assignment Search (by patent number) — https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html
• Google Patents legal-events record (reel/frame source) — https://patents.google.com/patent/[US7013127](/patent/US7013127)/en
• Rule 7.1 parent disclosure (Pay As You Go → Patent Asset Management, LLC) — E.D. Tex. 2:23-cv-00463, Dkt. #3 — https://unicourt.com/case/pc-db5-casegu3ea288190711-[1650942](/patent/1650942)

Contradictions / corrections to carry forward:

• Google's header assignee "Pay You Go AS LLC" vs. the recorded "PAY AS YOU GO, LLC" — two different strings; both preserved, neither corrected.
• Google's second listed assignee, Fifth Third Bank NA, is explained: it is a lienholder released by reel 067853/0586, not a title owner — and the release was recorded 10 years after execution.
• The earlier summary's note that "Patent Asset Management, LLC" may be the attorney/agent of record is now materially more interesting given the same name appears as Pay As You Go, LLC's corporate parent — but it remains unverified, and it collides with the well-documented Rothschild PAM. Do not merge these entities without an instrument.
• One-assignment-only finding does not apply here — this patent has 12 recorded assignment/security entries, the opposite of the "no post-issuance activity" default.

I'll verify the patent record and pull details on the key cited references before building the prior-art analysis.

Prior Art Analysis — US Patent 7,013,127 B2

Scope & method note (read first)

The patent itself. I verified the record against the authoritative grant text. US 7,013,127 B2 ("Systems and methods for employing 'pay-as-you-go' telecommunication services"), App. No. US 10/337,301, filed/priority 2003-01-07, issued 2006-03-14, original assignee Inphonic, Inc., inventors Harold S. Wills and David A. Steinberg, 8 claims (1 independent).

What I actually searched. I worked from the grant text's own front-page citation machinery (the "Patent Citations" table, which mirrors the USPTO-printed references) and web-verified the key documents. I did not have live access to USPTO Patent Public Search or PatentCenter in this session, so I cannot represent that I executed a literal database query against 7013127. Every citation, date, and assignee below is taken from the record as written, not reconstructed. Where I could not verify a detail, I say so. No reference to any similar patent number (e.g., US 7,013,128 or US 6,013,127) has been folded in.

One citation-list caveat worth stating up front: the record contains two overlapping lists — "Citations (41)" and "Patent Citations (44)," plus "Cited By (16)" and "Family Cites Families (22)." The last two categories are documents that cite the '127 or that the family cites; they are not prior art to the '127. I exclude them from the § 102/§ 103 mapping below except where noted.

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§ 102 framework applied (pre-AIA)

The '127 is a pre-AIA patent. Critical date = 2003-01-07.

Structural point that governs everything below: claims 2–8 are all dependent on claim 1. A reference cannot anticipate any of claims 2–8 unless it also discloses every element of claim 1. So the real question is narrow: which references disclose all of claim 1?

Claim 1 decomposes into five elements:

• E1 — monitoring the user's telecommunication usage at regular time intervals
• E2 — communicating monitoring results to the provider, which processes them
• E3 — provider communicates the processed results back to the user
• E4 — payment received from the user at a point-of-sale together with an account identifier; transaction data relayed from the POS to the provider
• E5 — provider collects the same amount from the POS proprietor

Honest bottom line on § 102: I found no single cited reference that discloses all five elements of claim 1. The cited art divides cleanly into two clusters that individually cover either E1–E3 (real-time usage monitoring + notification) or E4–E5 (POS cash collection with merchant remittance). The '127 sits at the junction of the two. That makes this an § 103 case with a very strong § 102(b) record on the individual elements — not a clean anticipation case. I flag the one reference (US 6,185,545) whose own claim language the '127 appears to track almost verbatim.

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Tier 1 — References the applicant itself discussed in "Description of the Prior Art"

These are the most probative, because the specification characterizes them. Six distinct documents:

1. US 6,185,545 B1 — Electronic payment system utilizing intermediary account

Description (verbatim claim 1 excerpts): intermediary account on a centralized payment processor; "conducting a payment transaction comprising receiving a payment from the end-user at a point-of-sale together with the account identifier"; "communicating data indicative of the payment transaction from the point-of-sale to the centralized payment processor"; and "collecting an amount of money equal to the payment amount, subject to adjustment, from the point-of-sale proprietor." Claim 2 cash; claim 3 debit card; claim 4 credit card; claim 5 brick-and-mortar retail; claim 6 vending machine; claim 7 ATM; claims 8–9 prepaid long-distance and prepaid wireless accounts. The spec describes real-time "load notification" to the carrier's prepaid platform, "recharg[ing] the end-user account in nearly 'real time'" within seconds of the POS payment, and settlement by ACH debit of the merchant's bank account.

Anticipation assessment — this is the single most dangerous reference.

• E4 and E5: read on it almost word-for-word. '127 claim 1's third clause ("a payment is received from the user at a point-of-sale together with an account identifier… data indicative of the payment transaction is received from the point-of-sale by the telecommunication services provider… an amount of money equal to the amount of payment is received from a point-of-sale proprietor") is materially the same limitation set as US 6,185,545 claim 1's POS/remittance clauses. This is the kind of near-verbatim overlap a defendant puts in the first slide of an invalidity deck.
• Claims 7 and 8 map directly: '127 claim 7 (retail merchant site / vending machine / ATM) reads on US 6,185,545 claims 5–7; '127 claim 8 (cash / debit card / credit card) reads on US 6,185,545 claims 2–4.
• Claim 6 (account + corresponding account identifier) reads on the '545 intermediary account + account identifier.
• It does NOT clearly disclose E1 (monitoring the user's usage at regular intervals) — the '545's real-time element is payment-side recharge latency, not usage metering.
• Potential § 102 anticipation: standing alone, claims 7 and 8 (and their parent claim 1 only if the tribunal reads the "monitoring" clause loosely). Realistically this is a § 103 combination anchor for claim 1, not a clean § 102 hit.

2. US 6,282,276 B1 — Method of billing a value-added call

Description: billing of "800"/"900" value-added service calls; routing and charging an enhanced-service call to a billing arrangement. Cited by the applicant for the proposition that value-added call billing was known.

Anticipation assessment: addresses call charging/routing, not interval usage monitoring or POS remittance. No anticipation of claim 1. Marginal relevance to claims 2–3 (service types) only as background. Companion reference US 6,553,108 B1 (Felger, Method of billing a communication session conducted over a computer network, filed 1996-06-05, issued 2003-04-22 → § 102(e)) adds the networked-session variant and is marginally better art for claims 2–3.

3. US 6,397,055 B1 — Mobile to mobile call delivery for calling party pays wireless service

⚠️ Discrepancy to preserve literally, not correct: the '127 specification states "U.S. Pat. No. 6,397,055 discloses a system and method for charging a pre-paid wireless call user." The granted title is "Mobile to mobile call delivery for calling party pays wireless service." Either the applicant characterized a different document or mischaracterized this one. Both strings are reported as written; this is a § 132/prosecution-history issue worth pulling the IDS for.

Description: calling-party-pays architecture; AIN/IXC service processor queries a database, extends an announcement of the call's price to the calling party, collects authorization, then sets up billing. Claim 21 is the material part: where the calling station is a prepaid subscriber, the billing facility is "a processing platform having a database… containing records of prepaid subscribers and their respective credit balances," with "rating in real time at said processing platform both caller and calling charges; and notifying said calling station during progress of said call when the remaining prepaid credit for said calling station has decremented to a predetermined threshold."

Anticipation assessment:

• E1 + E3 are substantially taught by claim 21's real-time rating with mid-call threshold notification to the subscriber.
• E2 partially: rating/processing at a platform, with the notification returned to the user.
• E4/E5 absent — no point-of-sale, no account identifier at retail, no merchant remittance.
• Potential § 102 anticipation: none for claim 1. Strong § 103 art for claim 1 when combined with a POS-collection reference. Also relevant to claims 4 and 5 (event notification / notification channel) on the "notify on threshold" disclosure.

4. US 6,424,706 B1 — Method and system for transferring telecommunication-time units among accounts and exchanging same for goods or services

Description: stored-value telecommunication-time ("unit minutes") that are purchasable, transferable, and redeemable for goods and services; subscriber access via telephone, debit card, ATM card, or credit card; a computer system with a prepaid platform adapter and a financial network adapter; an automated telecommunication-time clearinghouse with inter-member settlement.

Anticipation assessment:

• Relevant to E3/E4 structurally (subscriber-facing account access; value transfer into an account), and to claim 1's payment-receipt concept in that value reaches the account through a card rail.
• But it is a redemption/withdrawal system — money flows out of the minute account to the subscriber, which is the reverse of '127's flow (user pays in at POS; provider collects from merchant).
• Potential § 102 anticipation: none for claim 1. § 103 value only, and weak at that. Its best use is for claim 3 (wireline/wireless/on-line) and claim 8 (debit/credit card).

5. WO 01/82582 A2 — Communication billing system

Description: a single billing system that processes wireless service events and wireline service events together at the event level to generate total charge records and a customer bill; cross-contribution of unused minutes across services; prorating; validation and formatting of service events.

⚠️ Verbatim-overlap flag — this is important. The WO/US disclosure defines "a service event" as individual usage of "telephone calls, data calls, audio transfers, video transfers, e-mail sessions, voice mail sessions, video mail sessions, web sessions, and/or other similar services provided over a communication network," provided "over a wireless or wired medium." '127 claim 2 and claim 3 recycle that language almost exactly (claim 2: telephone calls, data calls, audio/video transfers, e-mail sessions, voice mail sessions, video mail sessions, web sessions; claim 3: wireless, wire line, internet). That is a direct § 102(b)/§ 102(e) or at minimum a § 103 problem for claims 2 and 3.

Anticipation assessment:

• E1 partially — event-level capture of individual usage.
• E2 partially — events are communicated to the billing system and processed.
• E3 — bill generated and delivered to the customer (but periodically, not "virtually simultaneously").
• E4/E5 absent entirely.
• Potential § 102 anticipation: claims 2 and 3 (on the service/medium definitions) — the strongest literal anticipation in the entire cited record, though a defendant must show the claim's "selected from the group consisting of" language is met. No anticipation of claim 1.

6. WO 02/11422 A2 — Communication account system

Description: dynamically provisions communication accounts to communication devices for immediate transfer to users; includes means of determining an amount of prepaid time for a communication.

Anticipation assessment: on-point thematically (claim 6's account-with-identifier, and the prepaid-time-determination concept underlying E1). Not a claim-1 anticipation — no usage-interval monitoring loop and no POS merchant remittance. § 103 art.

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Tier 2 — Examiner-flagged references (marked with an asterisk on the record)

The record marks these with *, which Google Patents defines as "cited by examiner." ⚠️ Verify the asterisk convention against the printed front page before relying on it — the earlier section of this analysis already flagged that examiner/agent data from auxiliary sources is unverified.

2a. Real-time usage monitoring, rating and account query (→ E1, E2, and sometimes E3)

Oddity worth flagging: US 6,704,563 (1998 priority) is cited by the '127 examiner, while the Boston Communications publications US 2004/0171368 A1 and US 2006/0035623 A1 appear in the record's "Cited By (16)" list — i.e., they cite the '127. Same family, both directions. That is a normal artifact of co-pending prosecution, not a contradiction, but it means the '563 family is worth reading closely as both art and potential § 102(e) hazard for the separate claims.

2b. Prepaid / wireless account provisioning (→ claims 1, 3, 6)

2c. Point-of-sale / telephone-mediated payment (→ E4, E5)

2d. Wireless/wireline integration and calling-party-pays (→ claim 3)

US 5,325,419 A (Ameritech, Wireless digital personal communications system having voice/data/image two-way calling and intercell hand-off, 1993-01-04 → 1994-06-28, § 102(b)); US 5,506,887 A (Bell Atlantic Network Services, Personal communications service using wireline/wireless integration, 1992-03-05 → 1996-04-09, § 102(b)); US 5,579,379 A (Bell Atlantic, PCS having a calling party pays capability, filed 1994-10-18 → 1996-11-26, § 102(b)); US 5,557,664 A (AT&T, Calling party-paid wireless telephone service, 1995-03-31 → 1996-09-17, § 102(b)); US 5,594,740 A (Axion Logistics, Wireless communications application specific enabling method and apparatus, 1993-08-27 → 1997-01-14, § 102(b)); US 6,073,029 A (US West, Method and system for providing wireless communications to a subscriber of a private wireline network, 1997-07-25 → 2000-06-06, § 102(b)).
Anticipation: claim 3 only, as a definitional matter. No claim-1 relevance.

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Tier 3 — Notification / messaging references (relevant only to claims 4 and 5)

These make up the bulk of the citation list and exist to support the notification limitations. All are § 102(b) printed publications. None touches E4/E5. A single one of these, combined with a monitoring reference, does not get you to claim 1 — the notification limitation is dependent, not part of the independent claim's core.

US 5,474,411 A (AT&T, multi-media integrated message arrangement, 1993-03-10 → 1995-12-26) · US 5,724,407 A (AT&T, network-based multimedia messaging, 1994-12-16 → 1998-03-03) · US 5,742,668 A (Bellcore, electronic messaging network, 1994-09-19 → 1998-04-21) · US 5,742,905 A (Bellcore, personal communications internetworking, 1994-09-19 → 1998-04-21) · US 5,758,088 A (Compuserve, 1995-05-08 → 1998-05-26) · US 5,845,203 A (Aertis, 1996-01-25 → 1998-12-01) · US 5,872,926 A (Adaptive Micro Systems, 1996-05-31 → 1999-02-16) · US 5,639,918 A (Motorola, message delivery control, 1995-03-16 → 1997-06-03) · US 5,604,788 A (Motorola, e-mail replication, 1995-03-16 → 1997-02-18) · US 5,951,638 A (IBM, integrated multimedia messaging, 1997-03-21 → 1999-09-14) · US 5,954,943 A (Lucent, two-way wireless messaging, 1996-08-22 → 1999-09-28) · US 5,987,100 A (Nortel, universal mailbox, 1997-04-23 → 1999-11-16) · US 6,001,? — US 6,002,750 A (US West, integrated wireline/wireless voice messaging, 1997-12-12 → 1999-12-14) · US 6,061,718 A (Ericsson, e-mail delivery in wired/wireless systems, 1997-07-23 → 2000-05-09) · US 6,072,862 A (Srinivasan, adaptable message delivery, 1996-07-02 → 2000-06-06) · US 6,178,331 B1 (Bulletin.Net, wireless messaging, 1997-06-17 → 2001-01-23).

Anticipation: claims 4 and 5 (notification of an event; IVS/on-line/SMS/MMS channels) — but only read together with a reference teaching the event (usage threshold), e.g., US 6,397,055 claim 21 or US 6,442,406.

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Element-by-element map: what is actually covered

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Ranking of the most relevant prior art (my judgment)

1. US 6,185,545 B1 (Prenet) — § 102(b). The only cited reference that reads on E4/E5 with the same words the '127 uses. Independently anticipates claims 6, 7, 8; anchors a § 103 case against claim 1.
2. US 6,397,055 B1 (Bell Atlantic Mobile) — § 102(a). Claim 21's real-time prepaid rating + threshold notification to the subscriber is the best single-art showing of E1+E3 in a prepaid wireless context.
3. US 6,483,907 B1 / US 6,697,468 B2 (Ericsson) — § 102(a) / (e). Real-time call information delivered to the subscriber.
4. US 6,704,563 B1 (Boston Communications Group) — § 102(e). "Prerating" of communication events; directly undercuts the "determine cost as you use it" framing.
5. US 6,317,490 B1 and US 6,212,506 B1 (Nortel) — § 102(b). Real-time billing-account query and per-call billing display; subsumed into E1–E3.
6. WO 01/82582 A2 / US 6,615,034 B1 (Sprint) — § 102(a)/(e). The verbatim source of the '127's claim 2/claim 3 service-and-medium lists.
7. US 6,424,706 B1 (Imagine Networks) — § 102(a). Subscriber-accessible stored-value telephony accounts; weaker because the value flows the wrong way.

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Bottom line for a validity challenge

• No cited reference anticipates claim 1. The '127's independent claim is a combination claim (interval metering + feedback loop + third-party POS collection with merchant remittance), and the cited art is split across the two halves of it. Expect the validity fight to be § 103, with US 6,185,545 as the primary reference and any of US 6,397,055 / US 6,483,907 / US 6,317,490 / US 6,212,506 / US 6,704,563 as the secondary teaching the monitoring-and-notification half.
• Claims 7 and 8 are the exposed claims. They add nothing but the enumerated POS types and payment forms, each of which appears as an express claim in US 6,185,545. These are § 102 targets, not § 103 targets.
• Claims 2 and 3 carry a verbatim-overlap risk against the Sprint WO 01/82582 / US 6,615,034 disclosure's definition of "service event."
• § 102(e) matters here for the four references filed before 2003-01-07 but granted after (US 6,529,593; US 6,539,082; US 6,668,046; US 6,694,468; US 6,704,563). If the applicant's actual date of invention is later than 2003-01-07, this art expands further.

Three verification items I would not skip:

1. Pull the IDS / Form 892 from the '127 file wrapper to confirm which references were actually applied (rejected over) by the examiner versus merely listed. The asterisk convention I relied on from the record is a Google artifact and would not survive in a brief without the printed front page and the examiner's reasons for allowance. The examiner-of-record name carried in the earlier section (Binh Kien Tieu) is likewise unverified against the grant front page.
2. Resolve the US 6,397,055 mischaracterization — the specification's description of it ("charging a pre-paid wireless call user") does not match its granted title. Either way it is a prosecution-history fact with potential § 132 notice issues, but the mismatch should be understood before it is argued.
3. Confirm the exact publication dates for WO 01/82582 A2 and WO 02/11422 A2. Both straddle the 2002-01-07 line that separates § 102(b) from § 102(a), and I could not pin either publication day in this session.

Caveats I am not papering over: the "no full anticipation of claim 1" conclusion is my element-mapping of the cited art only — it is not a statement that no anticipating reference exists anywhere in the field. And my inability to run a live USPTO search means the citation list below reflects the grant record as mirrored, not a fresh database pull as of today.

I'll ground a few specifics before building the § 103 framework — principally the disclosures of the two lead references and the KSR standard.

Obviousness Analysis — US 7,013,127 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)

Scope note. Per instruction, I use the references already mapped in the Prior Art section of this analysis, and I build on — rather than re-derive — that section's element decomposition (E1–E5), tier rankings, and the "no single reference anticipates claim 1" finding. What is new here: (a) I verified the verbatim claim text of the two lead references, (b) I identified an admission in the '127 specification itself that is the single strongest motivation-to-combine datum in the file, and (c) I convert the prior-art mapping into numbered § 103 grounds with articulated motivations. One correction to the prior-art section is flagged in § 11.

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0. Legal framework applied

The '127 is pre-AIA (filed and priority 2003-01-07), so pre-AIA § 103(a) governs, analyzed under the Graham factors: (1) scope and content of the prior art; (2) differences between the prior art and the claims; (3) level of ordinary skill; (4) secondary considerations. Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966).

KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007), controls the combination question. The articulated rationales I rely on below are the Office's restatement of KSR in the 2007 Examination Guidelines, 72 Fed. Reg. 57526 (Oct. 10, 2007) (https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2007/10/10/E7-19973/):

• (A) combining prior art elements according to known methods to yield predictable results;
• (B) simple substitution of one known element for another to obtain predictable results;
• (C) use of a known technique to improve similar devices in the same way;
• (D) applying a known technique to a known device ready for improvement to yield predictable results;
• (E) "obvious to try" — choosing from a finite number of identified, predictable solutions with a reasonable expectation of success;
• (F) known work in one field prompting predictable variations for use in the same or a different field based on design incentives or other market forces;
• (G) an express teaching, suggestion, or motivation (TSM) in the prior art.

TSM survives KSR as a "helpful insight" but not a rigid prerequisite, and the motivation need not appear in the references themselves. Two guardrails I will hold to, because over-reliance on "common sense" is the most common way a § 103 case fails:

• There must be articulated reasoning with a rational underpinning. In re Kahn, 441 F.3d 977, 988 (Fed. Cir. 2006).
• A tribunal may not invoke "common sense" to supply a missing limitation without reasoned explanation. Arendi S.A.R.L. v. [Apple Inc.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Apple%20Inc.), 832 F.3d 1355, 1361–62 (Fed. Cir. 2016). Every motivation below is therefore grounded in the references' own text or in documented market/technical pressure.

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1. Level of ordinary skill and the scope of the art

Two defensible definitions, and the combination works under either:

• Telecom-engineering framing: a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, computer science, or equivalent, plus 2–4 years designing or operating telecommunication billing / prepaid-platform systems (intelligent-network rating, IN/SCP, prepaid SCP, CDR processing).
• Stored-value/payment framing: equivalent education plus 2–4 years in stored-value card and point-of-sale payment systems.

I state both deliberately because the VeriFone court treated the '127 as a business-method claim (see § 7) — and a patent owner will want the artisan defined narrowly (e.g., "wireless billing engineer only"). This is a trap: obviousness cannot be defeated by defining the artisan so narrowly that he cannot read the references, and the field is one of ordinary creativity, not automata. KSR, 550 U.S. at 421.

Scope/analogous art. The relevant art is telecommunication-services payment and account management, including prepaid wireless recharge and point-of-sale stored-value payment. Both lead references are within that field, and — decisively — US 6,185,545 expressly names the "wireless carrier prepaid platform." There is no field-of-endeavor gap to argue.

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2. Claim 1's actual battleground (built on the prior-art section)

Claim 1's five elements (E1–E5) remain the frame. Three points control the obviousness posture, and all three are claim-drafting concessions:

1. Claim 1 does not require the payment to fund the account. It recites a monitoring/feedback loop and, separately, a payment receipt. There is no closed-loop requirement that the POS payment be credited before, during, or as a precondition of service.
2. Claim 1 does not require "virtually simultaneous" (real-time) feedback. That language appears in the specification as an object ("virtually simultaneously accessible"), not in the claim. The patent owner cannot import it absent clear disavowal. Phillips v. AWH Corp., 415 F.3d 1303 (Fed. Cir. 2005) (en banc).
3. Claim 1 does not require a single legal entity to perform every step — and, as shown by the patent owner's own 2023–2026 complaints (accusing card/PayPal rails as a "point-of-sale"), the owner reads the claim to cover split-role, contract-based architectures.

If the preamble ("method for affecting payment of telecommunication services") is held limiting (it supplies antecedent basis for "the telecommunication services"), it is still met near-literally — US 6,185,545 claim 1 opens: "A method for effecting payment for goods or services comprising…"

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3. The motivation-to-combine foundation (this is what actually wins the case)

3.1 The '127's own specification reproduces the US 6,185,545 background nearly verbatim — a staring-point admission

The '127's "Description of the Prior Art" paragraph on prepaid wireless reads:

"Pre-paid wireless (cell phone) service provides an illustrative example. Pre-paid wireless service enables customers to utilize the convenience of cellular and digital communications by establishing a prepaid account with a wireless telecommunication vendor. Typically, prepaid wireless cards, each card corresponding to a wireless services account, are purchased in preset denominations in a limited number of locations. The cards are issued in fixed value increments, for example, $20, $50 or $100. … the user can 'recharge' or reload their wireless account usually by calling an 800 number, having a credit card handy, and either talking with a customer service representative (CSR) or using an automated system to charge additional minutes to the credit card."

The corresponding passage surfaced for US 6,185,545 on Google Patents is word-for-word the same, down to the parenthetical "(CSR)" gloss: "Pre-paid wireless (cell phone) service provides an illustrative example… prepaid wireless cards… $20, $50 or $100… calling an 800 number, having a credit card handy… customer service representative (CSR)…" (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6185545B1](/patent/US6185545B1)/en).

Two consequences, both devastating to a non-obviousness defense:

• The applicant admitted US 6,185,545 into the prior art and expressly characterized it: "U.S. Pat. No. 6,185,545 discloses a method for effecting payment of goods or services… The method permits the user to, e.g., pre-pay for telecommunication services." A patentee's own specification is admissible prior art / an admission. MPEP § 2129; In re Fout, 675 F.2d 297 (CCPA 1982).
• The applicant thereby self-identified the starting point and the problem: prepaid wireless recharge that requires a credit card and a phone call is "burdensome." The invention is framed as the improvement to that system. Under KSR rationale (D), a known device ready for improvement plus a known technique to improve it is obvious. (Verification item: confirm the '545 passage against the printed column; Google's "Definitive" block is machine-extracted.)

3.2 US 6,185,545 expressly targets the prepaid wireless platform and POS channel

This is not a "payment system that could be applied to telecom." The reference is explicit (verified via the division US 8,086,530 B2, whose specification shares the parent 09/442,620 disclosure, and via the PCT WO 00/30044 A3 figure, https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/9f/1c/53/122f6ebec0eb0d/WO2000030044A3.pdf):

• "the same type of terminal can be used instead to facilitate a payment transaction in which the cardholder delivers cash… for the purpose of 'recharging' or adding value to an associated user account, for example a wireless carrier prepaid platform 112."
• The PCT front-page figure expressly shows a "Load Notification" arrow from the payment processor to the "Carrier Prepaid Platform."
• A point-of-sale "can be a conventional 'brick and mortar' retail merchant location… an automated teller machine (ATM), a kiosk, touchscreen or other data terminal."
• Claims 8 and 9: the end-user account is "a prepaid long-distance telephone service account" / "a prepaid wireless telephone service account."

So US 6,185,545 supplies, within one reference, both the motivation (recharge the prepaid wireless platform; leverage the installed card-network POS base to serve cash customers) and the capability (load notification into the carrier platform).

3.3 The '545 claim 1 clauses are near-verbatim to E4/E5

Verified claim text (SumoBrain, https://SumoBrain.com/patents/us/Electronic-payment-system-utilizing-intermediary/6185545.html):

"conducting a payment transaction comprising receiving a payment from the end-user at a point-of-sale together with the account identifier; communicating data indicative of the payment transaction from the point-of-sale to the centralized payment processor; … and collecting an amount of money equal to the payment amount, subject to adjustment, from the point-of-sale proprietor into the intermediary bank account by electronic funds transfer."

Compare '127 claim 1: "a payment is received from the user at a point-of-sale together with an account identifier, data indicative of the payment transaction is received from the point-of-sale by the telecommunication services provider, and an amount of money equal to the amount of payment is received from a point-of-sale proprietor by the telecommunication services provider." The '127 didn't just cite this reference — it re-used its limitation language.

3.4 Known problem / market forces (rationale F)

The material was in the air: prepaid wireless's core demographic in 2002–2003 was credit-challenged/unbanked subscribers, and the industry's known friction was reloading without a credit card. US 6,399,055's own background describes the alternative then in use — "Prepaid phone calling charge cards for pre-established amounts are commonly available for purchase at various retail vendors … a mobile phone subscriber can purchase a set amount of credit in advance" — i.e., the retail cash channel was already the accepted reload channel. Combining a retail-cash recharge system with a platform that already rates prepaid usage is a predictable variation driven by design need and market pressure (rationale F).

3.5 Finite, predictable solutions (rationale E)

By 2003 the solution space for "how does a prepaid wireless user add value?" was closed and small: (i) retail card, (ii) 800-number credit-card recharge, (iii) retail POS cash recharge. The '127 selects option (iii) and bolts it to a prepaid platform that already monitors usage. Choosing from a finite number of identified, predictable solutions with a reasonable expectation of success is obvious under KSR. Note the '127 spec itself acknowledges options (i)–(ii) as known-and-burdensome — leaving essentially one direction.

3.6 Same field, same problem, complementary disclosure

The references are not combinable-by-staples. They are layered: '545 operates at the payment ingress; '055/'087/'490/'506/'563 operate at the usage/rating egress. Neither reference teaches away from the other; each is reasonably amenable to the other's use. In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413 (CCPA 1981); In re Nievelt, 482 F.2d 965 (CCPA 1973). In the combined system the carrier operates the prepaid platform ('055 cl. 21) and receives POS-originated load notifications ('545), so the "telecommunication services provider" of claim 1 is the natural actor.

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4. The § 103 grounds

Ground 1 (primary) — US 6,185,545 in view of US 6,399,055: claim 1

Motivation (articulated, evidence-based, not "common sense"):

1. Express TSM in '545 (rationale G): '545 itself names the wireless carrier prepaid platform as the recharge target (claim 9; FIG. 1 element 112; "Load Notification" in WO 00/30044).
2. Starting-point admission (rationale D): the '127 specification criticizes exactly the prepaid-recharge paradigm that '545 addresses and that '545 corrects (§ 3.1).
3. Complementary, non-overlapping function (rationales A/C): '545 supplies "how money enters the account"; '055 supplies "how the platform meters and reports usage." Combining them reads on claim 1 without redesign.
4. Market pressure (rationale F): prepaid wireless's unbanked base needed a cash reload path; the card-network POS base ('545) already existed at "literally millions of merchant locations."

Reasonable expectation of success: both are software/platform systems; '545 is expressly designed to interface with the existing financial network and with a carrier prepaid platform, so integration is a matter of the routine interfacing '545 already teaches. No new hardware, no unpredictable behavior. Predictable results = prima facie obvious.

Ground 2 — US 6,185,545 + US 6,483,907 B1 (Ericsson; § 102(a)) [or its sibling US 6,697,468 B2] + US 5,425,087 A (AT&T)

Use when the patent owner attacks E1 by arguing '055 discloses continuous rating, not "regular time intervals." US 6,483,907/6,697,468 delivers call-charge information to the subscriber in real time (E2/E3), and US 5,425,087 (Telephone usage monitoring arrangement) is the express periodic monitoring reference (E1). Motivation: AT&T's periodic-monitoring arrangement exists precisely to report usage; adding its reporting cadence to a prepaid platform is rationale (C) — a known technique applied to improve a similar system in the same way.

Ground 3 — US 6,185,545 + US 6,317,490 B1 (Nortel, real-time billing account query) + US 6,212,506 B1 (Nortel, per-call real-time billing display)

'490 gives E2/E3 (subscriber-initiated real-time query of billing status); '506 gives E1/E3 (per-call real-time charge display). Motivation: a prepaid subscriber needs to know remaining value to decide whether to reload — '490's query function feeds directly into '545's reload decision. Rationale (G) (both references address billing-account status to the subscriber) plus (A).

Ground 4 — US 6,185,545 + US 6,704,563 B1 (Boston Communications; "prerating") + US 6,442,406 B1 (Denso; airtime limiting)

'563 supplies E1/E2 by computing a communication event's cost at the moment of the event (undercutting the "determine cost as you use it" framing); '406 supplies E1 plus the suspension-before-balance-due concept the '127 spec touts ("suspension can be achieved before the user accumulates a balance due"). Motivation: (A)/(E) — a carrier that prepays for usage meters against a limit; suspension-at-limit is the well-known way to avoid a debit balance, and '406 already does it.

Ground 0 (alternative) — US 6,185,545 alone, in view of the knowledge of the artisan

Because '545 expressly loads value into a wireless carrier prepaid platform and the '127's own background admits that prepaid platforms rate and decrement usage, E1/E2/E3 can be supplied by the artisan's knowledge of how a prepaid wireless platform necessarily operates. Use as a fallback if '055 is displaced; weaker because it depends more on the artisan's knowledge, so brief it with an expert declaration.

Ground 5 — claims 2 and 3

• Claim 2 (service list): WO 01/82582 A2 / US 6,615,034 B1 (Sprint) defines a "service event" as usage of "telephone calls, data calls, audio transfers, video transfers, e-mail sessions, voice mail sessions, video mail sessions, web sessions…" — the same list the '127's claim 2 recites. Motivation: adding Sprint's event taxonomy to a billing/charging platform is a mere substitution of language (rationale B); the patent owner's claim is a verbatim lift, which also undermines any nexus/commercial-success story.
• Claim 3 (wireless / wire line / on-line): US 6,529,593 B1 (AT&T Wireless, prepaid for both wired and wireless devices) and US 6,539,082 B1 (BT billing system) supply wireless+wireline; US 6,073,029 / US 5,506,887 / US 5,325,419 / US 5,579,379 / US 5,557,664 supply wireline↔wireless integration; US 6,023,499 (IBM, real-time billing via the internet) supplies the on-line variant. Motivation: (B)/(F) — an operator serving both media predictably applies one payment platform across them.

Ground 6 — claim 4 (notify user of an event determined by monitoring)

US 6,399,055 cl. 21 (threshold notification mid-call), US 6,442,406 (limit reached), US 6,212,506 (per-call display), US 6,317,490 (account query). Motivation (G): each reference expressly teaches notifying the subscriber upon a monitored condition. Claim 4 is essentially a restatement of '055's stated advantage.

Ground 7 — claim 5 (IVS / on-line / SMS / MMS notification)

Claim 5 is written in the alternative ("an interactive voice notification system, an on-line notification system, a SMS notification system or a MMS notification system"). A claim reciting alternatives is met by a reference teaching one of them. MPEP § 2131; In re Fracalossi, 324 F.2d 1011 (CCPA 1963). Supply one:

• e-mail / on-line: US 6,061,718 (Ericsson, e-mail delivery in wired/wireless systems); US 6,178,331 (Bulletin.Net); US 5,758,088 (Compuserve).
• voice/voicemail: US 5,987,100 (Nortel, universal mailbox); US 6,002,750 (US West, integrated wireline/wireless voice messaging).
• wireless messaging (SMS-analogous): US 5,954,943 (Lucent, two-way wireless messaging); US 6,072,862 (Srinivasan, adaptable message delivery); US 5,604,788 (Motorola, e-mail replication).

Motivation (G) + (F): the base monitoring/rating references generate a condition (credit low); the messaging references are the known, dedicated channel for delivering such a condition to a mobile subscriber. Combining "a notification event" with "the network's standard messaging channel" is the paradigm case of rationale (C).

Ground 8 — claim 6 (account with corresponding account identifier)

US 6,185,545 (intermediary account + "corresponding account identifier"; cls. 15–19 physical token/magnetic-stripe card — matching the '127 spec's own "e.g., a plastic card" account identifier). Secondarily US 6,529,593 (prepaid account) and US 5,912,956 (Talk Time, anonymous telephony account with identifier/PIN). Motivation (G): the account-identifier pairing is expressly claimed in '545.

Grounds 9–10 — claims 7 and 8

Claim 7 (POS = retail merchant site / vending machine / ATM) is expressly enumerated in US 6,185,545 claim 5 (brick-and-mortar retail), claim 6 (vending machine), claim 7 (ATM). Claim 8 (cash / debit card / credit card) is expressly enumerated in '545 claims 2, 3, and 4 respectively.

Important doctrinal correction to the prior-art section (§ 11): the prior-art section stated that '545 "independently anticipates claims 6, 7, 8." Because claims 6–8 depend from claim 1, they incorporate E1–E5; a reference that does not disclose E1 cannot anticipate them. '545 anticipates only the added limitations. The correct framing is: claims 7 and 8 are obvious over the same combination that renders claim 1 obvious, with '545 supplying the added enumerated limitations — and here the motivation is a fortiori: the reference already in the combination expressly teaches every alternative, so there is nothing to motivate (rationales B and G). The same logic applies to claim 6. This is the strongest part of the case, not because it is anticipation, but because the added limitations are literally copied from the reference's own claim set.

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5. Claim-by-claim conclusion

Leading defensive points for the patent owner (and why they fail) are collected in § 7.

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6. Consolidated motivation catalogue (for use in a brief or IPR petition)

1. Express reference teaching: '545 → "wireless carrier prepaid platform 112"; "Load Notification"; claims 8–9 (prepaid long-distance/prepaid wireless). (rationale G)
2. Express reference teaching: '055 cl. 21 → real-time rating + mid-call threshold notification to the subscriber. (G)
3. Applicant's admission: the '127's prior-art section reproduces US 6,185,545's background near-verbatim and characterizes '545 as "premitt[ing] the user to pre-pay for telecommunication services." (D)
4. Known problem / market forces: credit-challenged and unbanked prepaid subscribers needed a non-credit-card reload path; retail had already been the accepted cash channel ('055 background: prepaid calling cards "commonly available for purchase at various retail vendors"). (F)
5. Finite, predictable solutions: card / 800-number-credit-card / retail POS cash. (E)
6. Same field, layered function: payment ingress ('545) + usage rating egress ('055 et al.), each operating as intended. (A, C)
7. Simple substitution / predictable variation: adding enumerated POS channels and payment instruments is selection among known options. (B)
8. Ready for improvement: the '127's own specification calls the prior recharge paradigm "burdensome." (D)

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7. Anticipated patent-owner arguments and responses

1. "No reference discloses monitoring at regular time intervals; '055 rates in real time."
   Response: (a) '087 expressly teaches periodically reporting; (b) '563's prerating and '406's metering satisfy periodic checking; (c) the specification discloses intervals (5/10/15/30 min) with no criticality and no unexpected result — optimizing a reporting cadence is routine; In re Aller, 220 F.2d 454 (CCPA 1955); (d) under KSR (A)/(E), converting continuous rating to periodic polling to reduce processing load is a predictable design choice with a reasonable expectation of success. Do not rest on "common sense" alone — cite '087/'563/'406 and an expert declaration. Arendi, 832 F.3d at 1361–62.

2. "The claim requires one 'telecommunication services provider' to both meter usage and collect at POS; the references split those roles between the carrier and a third-party payment processor."
   Response: (a) the claim contains no exclusion of performance through agents or contractors, and performance by another at the provider's direction is performance by the provider; (b) '545 expressly contemplates interfacing with the carrier prepaid platform (means 100), making the carrier a participant; (c) the patent owner's own 2023–2026 complaints accuse carriers (AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Mint Mobile) and treat card/PayPal payment rails as the "point-of-sale" — the owner cannot now read the claim narrowly to exclude split-role architectures without contradicting its infringement theory.

3. "The claim requires 'virtually simultaneous' feedback."
   Response: not in the claim; it is a specification object. Importing it is impermissible absent disavowal. Phillips.

4. "The '127 spec disparages prepaid systems, so the art teaches away."
   Response: criticizing the existing recharge paradigm is not teaching away from the claimed combination; a reference teaches away only if it would discourage the proposed modification. In re Fulton, 391 F.3d 1195, 1201 (Fed. Cir. 2004); Medichem v. Rolabo, 437 F.3d 1157 (Fed. Cir. 2006).

5. "Different fields deserve no combination (payment systems vs. wireless billing)."
   Response: '545 names the wireless carrier prepaid platform and claims prepaid wireless accounts; the fields are the same. Even if different, KSR permits combination where the problem is known and the variation predictable.

6. "Bodily incorporation is impossible — you'd have to rebuild '545's processor into the carrier."
   Response: the test is whether the references are reasonably amenable to combination, not physical incorporation. Keller; Nievelt.

7. "The VeriFone § 101 ruling shows the claims are eligible, not that they're non-obvious."
   Response: the two inquiries are separate, but note the asymmetry: the 2026-03-30 order's reasoning — that claim 1's steps are "described at a high level of abstraction" against conventional monitoring/communicating/payment-receipt functions — supports the § 103 conclusion that each element is a known, conventional building block. (Ruling: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/[10896885](/patent/10896885)/pay-as-you-go-llc-v-verifone-inc/)

8. "Hindsight — the examiner allowed these claims."
   Response: allowance is not a validity adjudication, and the record is thin (the applicant's own IDS listed '545 and more than forty references). A § 103 rejection must be defeated by a motivation analysis, not by the examiner's allowance. Pull the unpublished/abandoned § 103 rejections (if any) from the file wrapper — see § 10.

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8. Secondary considerations

There is no objective-indicia record I can corroborate for the '127:

• No unexpected results disclosed or evidenced — the specification claims no criticality for its interval values.
• No demonstrated commercial success with nexus. The chain of title runs through two bankruptcies (Inphonic 2007; Simplexity 2014) — adverse to a success story. Assertion began only in 2023 (Mint Mobile, filed 2023-04-28).
• No praise, licensing (as validation), copying-by-competitors, or industry award evidence found.
• Under WBIP / Volvo, the patentee bears the burden of production on secondary considerations; the absence of any proffer is itself a point to brief.

⚠️ Note the "long-felt need" counter-temptation: the cash-reload need was real (unbanked prepaid subscribers). But a long-felt need must be one the art failed to satisfy. US 6,185,545 did satisfy it, and the '127's own background quotes '545's description of the need verbatim. That converts the "long-felt need" argument into an admission of motivation.

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9. Strategic implications

• PTAB vs. district court: IPR reaches only § 102/§ 103 on patents and printed publications. This § 103 case is squarely IPR-eligible. But note the constraints carried forward from the PTAB section: the patent expired 2023-09-02 → the Board would apply Phillips construction and the remedy is retrospective; and any newly served defendant has one year from service under § 315(b). IPR is available but the economics (past damages only) cut against it.
• District court remains the natural forum for a § 103 attack, and it can be paired with § 101 (the ground that has already produced a win in Pay As You Go v. VeriFone).
• For a pending defendant (e.g., Viasat, W.D. Tex. 7:26-cv-00245): Ground 1 ('545 + '055) should be the lead invalidity ground with Grounds 5–10 as the dependent-claim cascade. Ground a reply on the '545 claim text and the '127's copied background — both are documentary, not expert-dependent.

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10. Verification items (do not skip)

1. File wrapper: pull the IDS/Form 892 and all Office Actions for 10/337,301 to see whether the examiner ever rejected under § 103 and over which references; a prior examiner § 103 position (even overcome) is useful, and the reasons for allowance matter. The examiner name carried in an earlier section (Binh Kien Tieu) is still unverified against the grant front page.
2. Printed '545 column: confirm the background passage matches the '127's reproduced text (defeats any "Google extraction artifact" objection). Also confirm the '545 parent filing date: the record shows 1998-11-17 (App. 09/442,620), while the US 8,086,530 front page OCR reads "filed on Nov. 17, 1999." Both strings are preserved; the § 102(b) status is unaffected either way because '545 issued 2001-02-06, more than one year before 2003-01-07.
3. Exact publication dates for WO 01/82582 A2 and WO 02/11422 A2 — both straddle the 2002-01-07 line between § 102(b) and § 102(a).
4. Construction position on "regular time intervals" — decide early whether to (i) read it as generic periodic checking (broad, easier to invalidate) or (ii) read it as a fixed cadence and then invalidate under § 103 with '087/'563/'406. Do not let the patent owner have it both ways (narrow for validity, broad for infringement).

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11. Contradictions and corrections to carry forward

• CORRECTION (legal error, not a naming artifact): the prior-art section's statement that US 6,185,545 "independently anticipates claims 6, 7, and 8" is wrong as a matter of claim dependency. Claims 6–8 depend from claim 1 and incorporate E1–E5. '545 does not disclose E1, so it cannot anticipate claims 6–8; it anticipates only their added limitations, which makes those claims obvious (expressly taught in the same reference). Flagging because an anticipation theory framed this way would be defeated at Markman/summary judgment.
• NEW, load-bearing finding not in the prior-art section: the '127 specification's prior-art passage is a near-verbatim reproduction of US 6,185,545's background, and the applicant expressly characterized '545 as permitting prepaid telecom. This is a starting-point admission and supplies motivation under KSR rationale (D). Verify against the printed '545 column.
• Prior-art section still stands on its core finding: no single cited reference anticipates claim 1. This § 103 analysis is consistent with that — the case is a combination case, and the motivation is unusually strong because the primary reference (a) names the wireless carrier prepaid platform, (b) claims prepaid wireless and prepaid long-distance accounts, and (c) is the source of the '127's own background text.
• Date discrepancy (minor): the task header states the current date as April 26, 2026, while the patent record in this analysis was fetched 2026-09-21 and includes a ruling dated 2026-03-30. Nothing in § 103 turns on it, but the two dates should not be interchanged in any filing.
• Not legal advice; all legal-status, assignment, and docket statements remain subject to verification in USPTO PatentCenter/Assignment Center and PACER.