US 7027465

Summary of U.S. Patent No. 7,027,465 B2 (US7027465)

Note on scope of search: I searched for CAFC (Federal Circuit) 2026 dockets involving 7,027,465 and found none. My Federal Circuit-specific queries returned no results, and no CAFC appeal number surfaced in any litigation database hit. What exists is a large body of district court litigation (mostly NPE enforcement by CommWorks Solutions, LLC / Unwired Broadband, Inc. in W.D. Tex., E.D. Tex., E.D. Va., and elsewhere), including some 2026 district-court filings (e.g., W.D. Tex. 7:26-cv-00043; E.D. Tex. 2:26-cv-00088 per the Google Patents litigation listing). I cannot confirm any 2026 CAFC docket for this patent, so treat "CAFC 2026" as not found / unconfirmed rather than nonexistent.

Bibliographic data

• Title: Method for contention free traffic detection
• Patent number: US 7,027,465 B2 (application no. 10/167,986)
• Inventor: Petri Hautala (Tampere, FI)
• Assignee (at grant): Nokia Corporation, Espoo (FI) — the patent cover page (Docket Alarm copy, case 6:21-cv-00366-ADA) lists Nokia Corporation; Google Patents' assignment history shows the application was originally filed by Nokia Inc. and assigned to Nokia Corporation in 2002.
• Current owner (per Google Patents assignment records): Unwired Broadband, Inc. — chain: Nokia Corp. → Calton Research L.L.C. (2011) → OL Security LLC (2016) → Intellectual Ventures Assets 130 LLC (2019) → CommWorks Solutions, LLC (2020) → Unwired Broadband, Inc. (corrective assignment recorded 2022-02-16).
• Filing date: June 11, 2002 (as a continuation of PCT/EP99/10097)
• Priority date: December 17, 1999
• Issue date: April 11, 2006
• Status: Expired – Lifetime (adjusted expiration ~2021-02-22; RPX lists "Expired due to Term")
• Field: IEEE 802.11 WLAN; detecting high-priority traffic for use during the Contention Free Period (CFP)

Abstract (as issued)

"The invention discloses a method for detecting priority of data frames comprising the steps of extracting (S1) a bit pattern from a predetermined position in a frame, comparing (S2, S3) the extracted bit pattern with a search pattern, and identifying (S4) the received frame as a priority frame in case the extracted bit pattern (BP) matches with the first search pattern (SP). By this method, the priority of a data frame can easily be detected. The invention also proposes a corresponding device for detecting priority of data frames."

What the patent does (plain language)

The patent addresses a problem in IEEE 802.11 WLAN access points: high-priority traffic is flagged by fields buried in upper-layer protocol headers, but the AP normally only processes the low-level MAC layer and would have to parse every header to find priority information. The invention instead lets the AP be configured (by an external program, via "information elements") with an offset into the frame and a search pattern (optionally plus a mask). The AP simply extracts the bits at that offset, optionally masks them, and compares them against the search pattern — if they match, the frame is treated as priority traffic (e.g., queued for the contention-free period). It is deliberately protocol-independent and lightweight. Additional embodiments queue priority frames during the CFP, collect statistics and dynamically resize the CFP, use data+CF-poll frames for symmetric high-priority traffic, and provide a companion method for a configuration program to derive the offset/search-pattern/mask.

Independent claims (plain-language overview)

There are 18 claims; the independent ones are claims 1, 6, 7, 10, 14, 15, and 18.

• Claim 1 (method): Extract a bit pattern from a predetermined position in a frame (the position being defined by an offset), compare it with a search pattern, and identify the received frame as a priority frame if it matches.
• Claim 6 (method): Same core extraction/compare/identify operation, but using a plurality of different bit patterns, search patterns, and offsets to detect frame priority — enabling detection of priority information spread across multiple frame positions.
• Claim 7 (method): Same core operation, plus forwarding the frame to a high-priority queue when it is detected as high-priority during a special period reserved for sending priority traffic (e.g., the CFP).
• Claim 10 (device): Means-plus-function apparatus — receiving means, extracting means (position defined by an offset), comparing means, and identifying means — where the offset and search pattern are carried in an information element (i.e., configurable from outside the AP).
• Claim 14 (device): Same means-based device, but configured to use multiple bit patterns, search patterns, and offsets for priority detection.
• Claim 15 (device): Same means-based device, plus a controlling means that forwards detected high-priority frames to a high-priority queue during the special priority-traffic period.
• Claim 18 (method for generating priority-detecting information): A configuration-program-side method — identify a bit pattern in a data frame that indicates a priority state, define it as the search pattern, locate it within the frame, determine its offset, and produce an information element containing the offset and search pattern (which is then delivered to the AP to configure claims 1–17 type operation).

Uncertainties / caveats

• CAFC 2026: No Federal Circuit appeal for this patent could be located; all identified litigation is at the district-court level. Confirm against PACER/CAFC docket if an appeal is expected.
• Owner description conflict: Third-party litigation blogs (e.g., PatSnap) give loose, partly inaccurate characterizations of what US7027465B2 covers (one even mislabels it as "network path provisioning"); I relied on the patent text and USPTO records instead. The currently recorded entity is Unwired Broadband, Inc., while most litigation through ~2024 was captioned in the name of CommWorks Solutions, LLC (its immediate predecessor).
• The Google Patents metadata lists many district-court cases but no merits rulings on validity/infringement surfaced in my searches; most appear to have settled or been dismissed without substantive findings.

I'll research litigation involving US 7,027,465 across the sources you named.

Let me pull the case list directly and drill into specific dockets.

I've gathered substantial PACER/CourtListener/Unified Patents/RPX data. Note one housekeeping point up front: the task states the current date is April 26, 2026, while the system clock reads 2026-09-13. Some docket events below (e.g., a Grandstream complaint entered 09/04, and Google's listing of W.D. Tex. 7:26-cv-00043 and E.D. Tex. 2:26-cv-00088) are only consistent with the later date. I flag this rather than silently resolve it.

Litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 7,027,465

Bottom line

There is no litigation in the Nokia era and no Federal Circuit appeal I can confirm. Everything on record is district-court enforcement by CommWorks Solutions, LLC (a Georgia NPE / IPInvestments-Group affiliate) and its related entity Unwired Broadband, Inc., in three waves (2020–21, 2022–23, 2024–26). The '465 patent is almost always asserted together with its reissue, USRE44,904, and a stable set of companion patents ('249, '285, '596, '979, '807, '664, '846, '883). The unified technical theory is that a defendant's Wi-Fi Multimedia (WMM) / 802.11 QoS functionality practices the claimed "extract bit-pattern at offset → compare to search pattern" method (see, e.g., the verified E.D. Tex. complaint analyses for 2:25-cv-00024, 2:25-cv-00026, 2:24-cv-00931, at ai-lab.exparte.com). Several defendants' WPS features are separately mapped to the time-based-provisioning patents.

Caveat on completeness: Google Patents' litigation block is keyed to family ID 8167538, which contains US7,027,465, US7,555,014 and USRE44,904. A case appearing there is not proof that '465 itself (rather than only the reissue or the '514 continuation) was asserted. Where a complaint or docket item expressly names 7,027,465 — e.g., an "Exhibit … Evidence of Use Regarding U.S. Patent No. 7,027,465" — I mark it [465 confirmed].

Wave 1 — 2020–2021 (first campaign; all CommWorks Solutions, LLC as plaintiff)

The Lexology note (July 29, 2022) confirms this first campaign comprised ~11 actions, named against Charter, D-Link, Mediacom, Comcast and RCN, and states the patents were acquired from Intellectual Ventures. It also records that Unified Patents opened an ex parte reexamination campaign against the CommWorks portfolio — an administrative (USPTO) challenge, not district-court litigation, but material to the patent's history.

Wave 2 — 2022–2023 (ISP / networking-hardware targets)

Wave 3 — 2024–2026 (chip vendors, gateways, foreign OEMs)

Cross-cutting observations

1. No CAFC appeal found. My searches surfaced no Federal Circuit docket, briefing, or oral-argument record for 7,027,465 (or RE44,904). This is consistent with the previously generated summary's conclusion. Most cases terminated by with-prejudice dismissal or consent judgment, which extinguishes the appeal motive.
2. No merits adjudication found. Across every case with a recorded disposition, I see no Markman order, no summary judgment of invalidity/non-infringement, and no trial on the '465 patent. Validity and scope remain formally untested in court. The one substantive-looking counter-pressure point is the Unified Patents ex parte reexamination campaign disclosed in the Lexology piece — administrative, not litigation, but the closest thing to a validity challenge on record. (I could not verify its outcome for the '465 specifically.)
3. Owner-of-record vs. plaintiff mismatch — flag. Google Patents' assignment chain shows a 2021 corrective assignment and 2022 corrective assignment to Unwired Broadband, Inc., following CommWorks Solutions, LLC (2020). Yet CommWorks pleads it "owns all substantial rights, interest, and title" (e.g., EarthLink complaint ¶24). CommWorks Solutions, LLC is the plaintiff of record in every case above; Unwired Broadband is the recorded assignee handling the file. Do not assume the caption and the assignment record agree.
4. Third-party summaries are unreliable on subject matter. PatSnap's write-ups repeatedly mis-describe the '465 as "network path provisioning" (which is actually the '664 patent) and as "determining and provisioning paths in a network." The patent text (Google Patents, authoritative here) says the '465 is titled "Method for contention free traffic detection" and claims a bit-pattern-compare priority-detection method. I relied on the patent text and the actual complaint exhibits, not PatSnap's glosses.
5. Venue concentration. Predominantly W.D. Tex. (Judge Albright) and E.D. Tex. (Judge Gilstrap), with a 2020 S.D.N.Y. cluster (RCN) and 2023–24 C.D. Cal. filings (TRENDnet 2:23-cv-08048; Axon Networks 8:24-cv-02250). Plaintiff-side counsel across waves: Kheyfits Belenky LLP, The Stafford Davis Firm, and more recently Rozier Hardt McDonough PLLC (the NXP/STMicro/Marvell/EarthLink/Grandstream filings).

Explicit gaps / things I could not confirm

• Defendant identities and case numbers for the "unknown" rows above (2:20-cv-00158/159/160; 1:20-cv-07529; 1:21-cv-01323; 6:21-cv-00368; 2:23-cv-00510; 4:23-cv-00086; 5:23-cv-01327; 2:23-cv-09229; 6:23-cv-00063/64/65; 6:22-cv-00156; 2:24-cv-00701; 7:25-cv-00101; 2:25-cv-00154/00252/00433/00439/01257; 1:25-cv-02504; 2:25-cv-00842; 7:26-cv-00043; 2:26-cv-00088). These are Google Patents family-level citations that I could not map to a named defendant within my search budget.
• Charter / D-Link / Mediacom case numbers and dispositions — named as campaign defendants in the Lexology article but numbers not verified.
• Technicolor (N.D. Ga. 1:22-cv-02827) — whether 7,027,465 itself was asserted is unconfirmed.
• Whether any 2025/2026 case remains live. Several of the newest entries (STMicro 7:25-cv-00363; Marvell 7:25-cv-00354; Grandstream 2:26-cv-00794) were still pending at the time of the data I retrieved, but I cannot certify current status.

Sources relied on: Google Patents US7027465B2 (family/litigation listings); Unified Patents litigation portal (portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/..., incl. case 2:25-cv-00026 docket); CourtListener dockets (2:25-cv-00716; 7:25-cv-00363); RPX Insight (txwdce-1199078, CommWorks v. Frontier); Docket Alarm N.D./S.D.N.Y. complaint PDFs; UniCourt (6:21-cv-00366); PACER Monitor (2:26-cv-00794; 7:25-cv-00354); ExParte AI-Lab E.D. Tex. complaint analyses (2:25-cv-00024, 2:25-cv-0026, 2:24-cv-00931, 2:25-cv-00716, 6:22-cv-01268); PatSnap Eureka/PACER case write-ups (6:23-cv-00147, 6:23-cv-00835, 2:23-cv-08048, 7:25-cv-00395); Lexology (July 29, 2022, Technicolor/campaign overview).

If you want, I can attempt a targeted follow-up to name the defendants in the unmapped case numbers, or to check the Unified Patents ex parte reexamination outcome for the '465.

I'll verify the structured-data default ("no PTAB activity") against live sources before writing anything up.

The generic searches surfaced nothing patent-specific. Let me run targeted queries on the patent owner/petitioner names and the family members.

Proceedings overview

There are zero AIA trial proceedings on U.S. Patent No. 7,027,465. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO ODP) returns no records, and my independent web checks surfaced no IPR, PGR, CBM, or derivation proceeding naming 7,027,465 or the reissue family member RE44,904 — no petitioner, no proceeding number, no institution decision, no FWD. All enforcement of this patent has occurred exclusively in district court (the large CommWorks Solutions / Unwired Broadband campaign), and the only post-grant-style activity anywhere in the family is the ex parte reissue that produced RE44,904 — which is a reissue prosecution, not a PTAB AIA trial.

Bottom-line defensive posture for a defendant: the patent has never been tested at the PTAB, so there is no cancellation and no FWD to hang a defense on — but that cuts both ways. There is also no adverse estoppel and no hardened record; the claims stand entirely on their presumption of validity. Practically, the window for an IPR-style attack has largely closed: the patent is Expired – Lifetime (adjusted expiration 2021-02-22) and the PTO's current discretionary-denial practice ("settled expectations," as described in Unified Patents' amicus brief in No. 25-1230) weighs heavily against instituting on old, dormant patents of exactly this vintage. So the realistic defense today is district-court invalidity (§§ 102/103/112) coupled with § 101 and a standard/QoS-mapping non-infringement theory, not a PTAB kill shot.

Cross-reference / no contradiction with prior sections: the earlier "PTAB proceedings on file" section states the ODP API returns no AIA proceedings. My searches corroborate that. I flag, however, that one earlier search result in the litigation corpus (a PatSnap-generated blog) mischaracterizes US7027465B2 and US7760664B2, swapping their subject matter ("'465 … covers determining and provisioning paths"; "'664 … contention-free traffic detection"). That is backwards — the '465 patent is "Method for Contention Free Traffic Detection." Do not rely on those blog descriptions.

(no proceedings to enumerate)

Because the count is zero, there is no "claims-invalidated-first" ordering to apply. For completeness, here is what I checked and what I found, so the absence is documented rather than assumed:

One adjacent signal worth noting (not a proceeding on this patent): Unified Patents filed an IPR against U.S. Patent 8,923,846, also owned by CommWorks Solutions, LLC, on 2021-07-30 — described by Unified as "an NPE and subsidiary of IP Investments Group LLC." (https://www.unifiedpatents.com/insights/2021/7/30/commworks-solutions-patent-challenged) That confirms a defensive aggregator has engaged the CommWorks portfolio, but it attacked a different asset. I found no Unified Patents (or any other aggregator) petition against '465, '014, or RE44,904. Do not represent the '846 IPR as a proceeding "on this patent."

Strategic summary

Claim status across '465: every claim is UNTESTED at the PTAB. Claims 1, 6, 7, 10, 14, 15, and 18 (the independents identified in the prior section) and their dependent claims 2–5, 8–9, 11–13, 16–17 remain exactly as they issued in 2006, with no cancellation, no disclaimer entered in an AIA trial, and no reissue narrowing attributable to an IPR. The reissue that produced RE44,904 arose from a voluntary ex parte reissue application (13/171,882, filed 2011-06-29), not from a Board challenge, so it does not narrow or validate the '465 claims in any estoppel-producing way. If a demand letter asserts claims 1–18 of '465, all of them are live and available to the patent owner — there is no "the troll has no case" argument available from PTAB outcomes.

Estoppel landscape: § 315(e)(2) estoppel is a non-issue because no IPR was ever instituted. No petitioner exists to be estopped, and no privity chain flows to any defendant. The corollary for a current defendant is favorable in one narrow respect: every prior-art ground is still on the table — nothing was raised and lost at the Board, so there is no "raised or reasonably could have been raised" trap. Conversely, because there is no FWD, there is no reasoned Board finding of patentability to overcome either; a § 103 case must be built from scratch in district court (or via ex parte reexamination, which the LOT Network commentary flags as the emerging alternative when discretionary denial is likely — https://lotnet.com/ptab-practice-under-current-leadership-key-changes-and-implications-for-patent-challenges-part-3/). Note also that the patent expired 2021-02-22, so damages are back-looking only and an IPR's practical value (stopping ongoing infringement) is minimal — which likely explains the complete absence of PTAB activity despite heavy assertion.

Pattern signals. (1) No serial petitioner — Unified's 2021 petition targeted the sibling '846 patent, not the '465, and I found no repeat filer. (2) Patent owner has never faced, let alone appealed, a PTAB loss on '465, so there is no Federal Circuit docket to report; the earlier section's "2026 CAFC — not found / unconfirmed" stands, and I now add that no PTAB-appeal path exists either because no AIA trial ever reached a FWD. (3) The enforcement pattern is a textbook NPE campaign (CommWorks Solutions, LLC → Unwired Broadband, Inc.; § 7 disclosure identifies parent Brainbox Innovations, LLC), asserted broadly against ISPs and Wi-Fi/SoC vendors (Adtran, Extreme, Zyxel, MediaTek, ASUS, DrayTek, Vyve, RCN, and more), resolved overwhelmingly by dismissal with prejudice or consent judgment without any merits ruling — so no district-court invalidity judgment exists to point to either.

Recommended next steps

• Tell the client plainly: there is no PTAB record on US 7,027,465. No IPR, PGR, CBM, or derivation; no institution decision; no FWD; no appeal. Verify this yourself against the PTAB E2E / USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board site (https://developer.uspto.gov/ptab-api / https://www.uspto.gov/patents/ptab) and the patent's Google Patents "litigation" tab (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7027465/en), which lists only district-court matters.
• Do not rely on the absent-proceeding inference as a defense. The absence is explained by expiry (2021-02-22) plus a portfolio-settlement enforcement model, not by the patent being unassailable. Nothing has been tested.
• If you are a newly-served defendant (e.g., a 2025–2026 filing such as E.D. Tex. 2:25-cv-00024, E.D. Tex. 2:26-cv-00088, or W.D. Tex. 7:26-cv-00043), the § 315(b) one-year IPR clock would still technically run from service, and § 311(c) poses no bar (grant was 2006). But weigh institution risk seriously: the patent is expired, it has been on the books for ~20 years, and the PTO is applying "settled expectations" discretionary denial to exactly this profile. If you do petition, build the merits record against the specific QoS-control-field/EDCA access-category mapping theory CommWorks itself pleads (see the Adtran complaint, N.D. Ala. 5:23-cv-01327, Count II, which asserts claim 1 of '465 over WMM mapping to the EDCA Access Category).
• Sibling-claim check: if the demand letter also cites RE44,904, treat it as the same disclosure with reissue claims — separately search the Board docket for RE44,904 (I found nothing, but confirm), and remember a reissue is not a Board proceeding.
• Where to verify: PTAB E2E at https://ptab.uspto.gov and CourtListener RECAP (https://www.courtlistener.com) for any district-court record you cite to the client. I found no CAFC opinion or PTAB decision to link for this patent — because none exists.

Confidence note: I am highly confident of the "no PTAB proceeding on '465" conclusion based on the ODP structured data plus targeted searches, but I cannot prove a universal negative; a recently-filed, not-yet-indexed petition is conceivable. Before filing anything with a court, re-run the check directly on PTAB E2E and the USPTO ODP API on the day you rely on it.

I'll research the assignment records for this patent before constructing the output.

Assignment Reconstruction — US 7,027,465 B2

Evidence limitation up front: I was unable to complete a live pull from USPTO Assignment Center (assignmentcenter.uspto.gov) or its mirror (assignment.uspto.gov). My targeted searches for the reel/frame records, conveyances, and correspondents of record for this patent returned no results (multiple queries for "Calton Research L.L.C.", "OL Security LLC", "CommWorks Solutions" + reel/frame returned empty result sets). What follows is built from the authoritative Google Patents legal-events/assignment history supplied in the record, which does list dates, conveyance types, assignors and assignees — but not the reel/frame numbers or correspondent-of-record for most entries. I did not fabricate any of those fields. Where a reel/frame reference is quoted below, it comes verbatim from a corrective-assignment entry in the source text. The full reel/frame + correspondent table must be confirmed directly at USPTO Assignment Center (search patent 7027465).

Inventors

• Petri Hautala — sole named inventor. At priority filing (PCT/EP99/10097, 1999-12-17) he is associated with Nokia (the US national-stage continuation US10/167,986 was filed by Nokia Inc. and assigned to Nokia Corporation). Nokia's WLAN/MAC-protocol R&D in this era was centered in Finland (Tampere/Espoo), consistent with the inventor's listing.
• Hautala appears as assignor on the 2002-09-19 and (again) 2010-11-23 assignment records, both conveying interest to Nokia Corporation. This is a confirmatory / re-executed inventor assignment, not a departure signal — an inventor who had left Nokia would not normally be made to re-sign, and both records are captioned "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST."
• No unusual pattern: there is a single inventor, no co-inventor group, and no evidence of an inventor cohort exiting the original assignee within 12 months of filing. The "all inventors depart early" pre-fire-sale tell is not present.

Original assignee

• Entity on the issued patent: Nokia Corporation (Espoo, Finland). The application was filed by Nokia Inc. (US subsidiary) on 2002-06-11 and assigned to Nokia Corporation on 2002-09-19. This is a routine intra-group clean-up, not an arm's-length transfer.
• Business: Nokia was a major operating telecom-equipment/handset manufacturer. It built and sold IEEE 802.11 WLAN access points and infrastructure in the 2000s, so it is a genuine operating company in the field of the claims. However, I found no evidence in the record that a specific commercial Nokia AP product implemented the claimed offset/search-pattern priority-detection feature — Nokia never asserted this patent against anyone.
• Current status: Nokia Corporation remains an operating company (network infrastructure via Nokia Solutions and Networks; the handset business was sold to Microsoft in 2014). It is not dissolved and did not enter bankruptcy. Its relevance here is only as the original assignor — it has not owned the patent since 2011.

Assignment timeline

Field-format note: the source legal-events data gives recording dates and conveyance types but omits most reel/frame numbers and all correspondents of record. Those cells are marked [NOT RETRIEVED]. Only two reel/frame citations exist in the source and are quoted as they appear (as cross-references inside later corrective records).

• 2002-09-19 (recorded) — Reel NNNNNN/NNNN [NOT RETRIEVED]

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
  • Assignor: Hautala, Petri (inventor)
  • Assignee: Nokia Corporation
  • Correspondent: [NOT RETRIEVED]
  • Context: Inventor-to-employer assignment — standard filing formality (execution date, if earlier than the 1999 priority filing, is not exposed in the record).

• 2010-11-23 (recorded) — Reel NNNNNN/NNNN [NOT RETRIEVED]

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
  • Assignor: Hautala, Petri
  • Assignee: Nokia Corporation
  • Correspondent: [NOT RETRIEVED]
  • Context: Confirmatory/nunc-pro-tunc re-execution of the inventor assignment — an internal records-cleanup step, not a change in beneficial ownership.

• 2011-02-03 (recorded) — Reel NNNNNN/NNNN [NOT RETRIEVED]

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
  • Assignor: Nokia Corporation
  • Assignee: Calton Research L.L.C.
  • Correspondent: [NOT RETRIEVED]
  • Context: Transfer-to-monetization entity — Nokia divests the patent to a holding/licensing LLC (name-suffix tell + no known product line).

• 2016-01-22 (recorded) — Reel NNNNNN/NNNN [NOT RETRIEVED]

  • Conveyance: Merger (not an asset assignment)
  • Assignor: Calton Research L.L.C.
  • Assignee: OL Security Limited Liability Company
  • Correspondent: [NOT RETRIEVED]
  • Context: Internal reorganization within the Intellectual Ventures ecosystem — OL Security LLC is a known IV holding company; Calton Research merged into it rather than selling.

• 2019-11-01 (recorded) — Reel NNNNNN/NNNN [NOT RETRIEVED]

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
  • Assignor: OL Security Limited Liability Company
  • Assignee: Intellectual Ventures Assets 130 LLC
  • Correspondent: [NOT RETRIEVED]
  • Context: Internal IV re-papering into a numbered IV asset-holding LLC.

• 2020-01-03 (recorded) — Reel NNNNNN/NNNN [NOT RETRIEVED]

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
  • Assignor: Intellectual Ventures Assets 130 LLC
  • Assignee: CommWorks Solutions, LLC (Alpharetta, GA per the license document surfaced in the PTAB exhibit)
  • Correspondent: [NOT RETRIEVED]
  • Context: Transfer to active asserter ~2 months after the IV re-papering and just ahead of the 2020 assertion wave.

• 2020-11-05 (recorded) — Reel 054443 / 0958 (cited as the reel/frame corrected by the 2021-02-04 entry)

  • Conveyance: License
  • Assignor: CommWorks Solutions, LLC
  • Assignee: Unwired Solutions, Inc.
  • Correspondent: [NOT RETRIEVED]
  • Context: License recording to an affiliated operating entity (Unwired Solutions → later corrected to Unwired Broadband) — used to put an operating ISP-side entity on the chain alongside the asserting LLC.

• 2021-02-04 (recorded) — Reel NNNNNN/NNNN [NOT RETRIEVED]

  • Conveyance: Corrective Assignment — "to correct the assignee name previously recorded at REEL 054443, FRAME 0958 … confirms the LICENSE"
  • Assignor: CommWorks Solutions, LLC
  • Assignee: Unwired Broadband, Inc.
  • Correspondent: [NOT RETRIEVED]
  • Context: Records correction only — swaps "Unwired Solutions" for "Unwired Broadband"; no new consideration, ownership unchanged (still a license).

• 2022-02-16 (recorded) — Reel 056981 / 0631 (cited as the reel/frame corrected by this entry)

  • Conveyance: Corrective Assignment — "to correct the nature of conveyance previously recorded at REEL 056981, FRAME 0631 … confirms the ASSIGNMENT"
  • Assignor: CommWorks Solutions, LLC
  • Assignee: Unwired Broadband, Inc.
  • Correspondent: [NOT RETRIEVED]
  • Context: Records correction only — fixes the nature of the 056981/0631 conveyance (license vs. assignment); no new party.

Associated family filings relevant to the chain (not separate assignment links): continuation US 11/402,621 → US 7,555,014 B2 (filed 2006-04-11) and reissue US 13/171,882 → USRE44,904 E1 (filed 2011-06-29, i.e. ~5 months after the Nokia→Calton transfer — the new owner invested in a reissue application, a classic monetization/strengthening move).

Bottom line on the record: there are recorded post-issuance assignments, so this is not a "no records" patent. But the reel/frame numbers and correspondents of record — the single most probative NPE tell — could not be verified from the sources available to me and must be pulled from Assignment Center.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7027465
    1999 : Priority PCT filing
    2002 : US continuation filed by Nokia Inc
         : Assigned to Nokia Corporation
    2006 : Patent issued to Nokia
    2010 : Confirmatory inventor assignment
    2011 : Nokia assigns to Calton Research LLC
         : Reissue application filed
    2016 : Calton merged into OL Security LLC
    2019 : Moved to Intellectual Ventures Assets 130
    2020 : Transferred to CommWorks Solutions LLC
         : License recorded to Unwired Solutions
    2021 : Corrective record to Unwired Broadband
    2022 : Nature of conveyance corrected

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — PRESENT. Nokia Corporation (operating) → Calton Research L.L.C. recorded 2011-02-03, followed by a merger into OL Security LLC (2016-01-22) and re-papering into Intellectual Ventures Assets 130 LLC (2019-11-01). The assignee sequence is a chain of licensing/holding LLCs with no product lines and no evident operations. (Note: I am calling this from the assignment sequence itself; I could not verify registered-agent addresses or single-membership because the Assignment Center records were not retrievable.)

2. Known asserter in the chain — PRESENT. Two independent hits: (a) OL Security LLC and Intellectual Ventures Assets 130 LLC are Intellectual Ventures holding entities (recorded 2016-01-22 and 2019-11-01); (b) CommWorks Solutions, LLC is documented by Unified Patents as an active high-frequency plaintiff (e.g., its 2022 coverage of CommWorks asserting US 7,760,664 against eight companies, and Unified's ex parte reexamination 90/015,057), and it appears in the Stanford NPE litigation database under asserter category "Acquired patents" (CommWorks Solutions, LLC v. Charter Communications, 6:22-cv-00156). Current owner Unwired Broadband, Inc. is the corrective successor on the license/assignment records.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR / NOT RETRIEVED. This is the signal I most wanted and could not obtain. The correspondents of record for the 2011, 2016, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 recordings were not exposed in any source I could reach, so I can neither confirm nor exclude a single repeat-player attorney running the Calton → OL Security → IV Assets 130 → CommWorks links. Action item: pull this field for each reel/frame at Assignment Center. (One adjacent data point: counsel on the related CommWorks licensing/PTAB matters is Shane G. Smith, McCormick Barstow LLP, named as copy-to on the CommWorks/Unwired license — that is litigation/licensing counsel, not the recording correspondent.)

4. Cascading transfers — PRESENT. Five recorded links in roughly three years: 2019-11-01 (OL Security → IV Assets 130) → 2020-01-03 (IV Assets 130 → CommWorks, ~2 months) → 2020-11-05 (license to Unwired Solutions) → 2021-02-04 and 2022-02-16 (corrective records to Unwired Broadband). The 2-month gap between the IV re-papering and the CommWorks transfer is the tightest link and is consistent with preparing the asset for assertion.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — PRESENT (moderate). The patent moved to CommWorks Solutions, LLC on 2020-01-03, and the first suits in this patent family appear in 2020 (S.D.N.Y. 1:20-cv-07529 and 1:20-cv-07534; E.D. Tex. 2:20-cv-00158/159/160) per the Google Patents litigation listing. That places the enabling transfer in the same calendar year as, and plausibly inside the 6-month window before, first assertion. Caveat: the exact complaint filing dates and whether this patent (vs. the continuation 7,555,014 or reissue RE44,904) was the asserted one in each 2020 case are not confirmed in my sources.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. Nokia did not file Chapter 7/11; the 2011 transfer to Calton Research was a portfolio divestiture, not a court-supervised sale.

7. Privateering — UNCLEAR. The Nokia→Calton/IV→CommWorks→Unwired path monetizes Nokia-origin patents against a broad set of telecom/ISP defendants, which resembles privateering, but there is no evidence Nokia directed or benefited from the later campaigns, and the defendants are not specifically Nokia's competitors. I will not call this present on the current record.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT. The chain terminates at Unwired Broadband, Inc., an asserting/licensing entity, not at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. The patent has not been neutralized.

Verdict

NPE — high confidence.

The provenance alone supports this: an operating company (Nokia) transferred the patent to a holding LLC (Calton Research L.L.C., recorded 2011-02-03), which merged into an Intellectual Ventures entity (OL Security LLC, 2016-01-22) and was re-papered into IV Assets 130 LLC (2019-11-01) before moving to CommWorks Solutions, LLC (2020-01-03) and on to Unwired Broadband, Inc. — with the earliest family suits appearing in 2020, i.e. in the same window as the CommWorks transfer. Two strong signals (shell-entity transfer and known asserter in the chain) plus cascading and pre-litigation transfer signals are present; the chain ends at an asserter rather than a defensive aggregator.

The one gap that could raise or lower this call is signal #3 (repeat correspondent). Reel/frame numbers and correspondents of record are not exposed in the sources I could retrieve — verify each link at USPTO Assignment Center (search patent 7027465) and at the mirror assignment.uspto.gov.

I'll research this carefully. Let me start by verifying the patent itself and then dig into each cited reference.

I have the core references. Let me research the remaining cited references in batches.

Prior-Art Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 7,027,465 B2

1. Document identification (USPTO record)

I confirmed the number literally as 7,027,465 / US7027465B2 — "Method for contention free traffic detection" — and did not substitute any similar number. Confirmed against the Google Patents record derived from USPTO data (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7027465/en) and the RPX Insight record (https://insight.rpxcorp.com/patent/US7027465B2).

Interpretation note: Per the operating rule, I have not auto-corrected any citation number. All numbers below are reproduced exactly as they appear on the '465 front page and are cross-checked against the sources retrieved.

2. Method note — what "anticipates under § 102" requires

For a § 102 anticipation finding, a single reference must disclose every element of the claim as arranged in the claim. The '465 independent claims each require a specific combination:

• Claim 1 — extract bit pattern from a predetermined position (defined by offset), compare to search pattern, identify frame as priority frame on match.
• Claim 6 / 14 — same core operation using a plurality of bit patterns, search patterns and offsets.
• Claim 7 / 15 — same core operation plus forwarding to a high-priority queue during a special period for priority traffic.
• Claim 10 — device with receiving/extracting/comparing/identifying means, where offset + search pattern are carried in an information element.
• Claim 18 — method of generating the detection information (identify bit pattern → define as search pattern → locate → determine offset → produce information element).

As shown below, no cited reference discloses the full combination of any independent claim. The cited art is best characterized as § 103 (obviousness) material and as background; the strongest single-reference (§ 102) candidates target only the narrower dependent claims or the "compare-a-pattern-at-an-offset" sub-concepts. I flag this frankly rather than overstate anticipation.

3. Complete list of patent citations on the '465 front page (17 references)

Dates below are as stated on the '465 front page (Publication/priority dates), cross-checked where retrievable.

Non-patent citation: 1 (front page labels it "Non-Patent Citations (1)"; the text was truncated in the source). Given the specification's repeated "(see IEEE 802.11 standard)" references, this is almost certainly the IEEE 802.11 WLAN standard itself — I state this as likely, not verified, because the citation text was not retrievable.

4. Tier 1 — strongest potential § 102 references (detailed)

4.1 US 5,881,242 A — IBM (1997-01-09 / 1999-03-09)

"Method and system of parsing frame headers for routing data frames within a computer network."
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5881242

Description: Receives a data frame, parses the frame header into multiple equal-length test units, assigns a test vector containing a reference pattern field and an action-code pointer to each unit, builds test blocks/search trees, and searches by partitioning an incoming address into bit groups and sequentially comparing those bit groups against the nodes of a stored search tree. It also learns reference patterns (an "RP pool") from received frames.

§ 102 relevance — highest of the patent citations for the core "offset + pattern-compare" concept:

• Claim 1 (potentially): discloses extracting a bit group from a defined position in a frame header and comparing it to a stored reference pattern — the extraction-from-a-position-and-compare mechanic. However, it does not identify a frame as a "priority frame," so strict anticipation fails on that limitation; this is the classic § 103 combination reference rather than a clean § 102 hit.
• Claim 6 (potentially): its use of multiple test units/reference patterns is closer to the "plurality of bit patterns … and offsets" limitation.
• Claim 18 (potentially): the frame-header analysis and learning of reference patterns (identify pattern → store it → associate with an action) is the closest single reference to the "generate priority-detecting information" method, though again the "priority state" element is absent.

4.2 EP 0 804 006 A2 — IBM (1996-04-23 / 1997-10-29)

"Medium access control scheme for a wireless access to an ATM network."
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/EP0804006A3/en and http://data.epo.org/gpi/EP0804006A2

Description: Adaptive MAC protocol for wireless access to an ATM network supporting multiple ATM service classes with associated Quality-of-Service parameters; several mobile terminals talk to an access point over radio channels. Notably, the EPO search report characterizes its own disclosed subject matter as including "means for varying the duration of time frames as a function of the load of the system" (EPO search report, claims 1–9).

§ 102 relevance:

• Claims 8 and 9 (potentially — the best § 102 fit in the entire set): varying a periodic transmission interval (window/frame duration) as a function of system load maps onto "adjusting the duration of the special period … according to statistic information." Strict § 102 still fails because EP0804006 does not disclose the counting of priority frames inside vs. outside the period (claim 9) or the "priority frame" identification of claim 8; but it is the most substantively on-point reference for the dynamic-period concept.
• Claim 7 (potentially, weaker): QoS/priority-class handling at an access point overlaps the "priority traffic" theme but does not disclose the queue-forwarding-during-special-period limitation.

4.3 US 5,822,361 A — Hitachi (1994-11-11 / 1998-10-13)

"Wireless LAN system and base station apparatus."
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5822361 and https://www.freepatentsonline.com/[5822361](/patent/5822361).html

Description: Wireless LAN with base stations bridging wired LANs and wireless LANs using frequency hopping; involves base-station coordination, frame relay, and a "specific frame including address information having a higher priority" used to elect a master base station (claims 17–24).

§ 102 relevance:

• Claim 1 / 10 (potentially, weak-to-moderate): discloses wireless-LAN frame handling and a notion of frame priority, but the priority is used for master/base-station determination and hopping-frequency assignment — not for identifying a data frame as priority traffic at an offset and comparing to a search pattern. No § 102 anticipation of the independent claims; relevant background for the WLAN/priority field.

5. Tier 2 — moderate relevance (pattern/priority concepts, different context)

5.1 US 4,627,051 A — NEC (1982-12-03 / 1986-12-02)

"Loop network system controlled by a simple clock station." (Shimizu) — https://patents.google.com/patent/US4627051

Description: Loop network where a clock station emits synchronization/trigger signal blocks carrying priority bit fields (P0, P1 = four degrees of priority), and node stations seize a transmission right based on the degree of priority indicated by those bit patterns.

§ 102 relevance: Discloses detecting/using priority encoded as bit patterns in a frame/block — conceptually adjacent to the "extract bit pattern → determine priority" idea (potentially claim 1 / 7 at the concept level). But priority is signaled by the block's own priority field and evaluated against a degree, not by extracting bits at an arbitrary offset and matching a stored search pattern; it is token-ring/loop art, not frame-header inspection. No strict anticipation.

5.2 US 5,674,617 A — Motorola (1994-10-05 / 1997-10-07)

"Synchronous protocol encoding and decoding method." — flagged as cited by examiner

Description: A method for encoding into / decoding from a synchronous serial protocol bit stream — i.e., placing and recovering defined bit patterns at known positions in a frame.

§ 102 relevance: Relevant to the "extract a bit pattern from a predetermined position" element (potentially claim 1 / 10), since it deals with bit patterns at defined frame positions. But it discloses no priority detection, no search-pattern comparison for priority, and no offset-configured inspection. § 103 material at most.

5.3 US 6,658,363 B2 — Hewlett-Packard (2001-01-18 / 2003-12-02)

"Digital data pattern detection methods and arrangements." — flagged as cited by examiner

Description: Digital data pattern detection methods/arrangements (generic pattern matching in a data stream).

§ 102 relevance: Superficially on-point for the "compare with a search pattern" step. Critical § 102 caveat: its priority/filing date (2001-01-18) post-dates the '465 priority date (1999-12-17), so on the face of the '465 record it is not prior art under § 102(a)/102(b) (and § 102(e) is unavailable because it was not filed before the '465 priority date). It appears to be examiner-cited art for the general pattern-detection concept, not a valid anticipation reference. I flag this explicitly rather than treat it as § 102 art.

5.4 US 5,857,092 A — Fujitsu (1995-09-26 / 1999-01-05)

"Interface apparatus for SDH/SONET interconnection." — flagged as cited by examiner

Description: Interface apparatus handling SDH/SONET framing (frame/header manipulation and extraction of defined fields).

§ 102 relevance: Background for frame parsing / field extraction (e.g., parsing or analysis of headers per the '465 CPC H04L69/22). No priority detection, no search-pattern comparison. Not anticipatory.

6. Tier 3 — weak relevance (general priority/scheduling/access art; § 102 not applicable to the independent claims)

None of the Tier 3 references discloses the extraction-of-a-bit-pattern-at-an-offset-then-comparison-to-a-search-pattern-to-identify-a-priority-frame combination, and none discloses the CFP-statistics/queue control of claims 7–9/15–17.

7. Family / counterpart art (context, not front-page citations)

• WO 2001/045328 A1 — Nokia (priority 1999-12-17): the PCT parent of the '465 (same disclosure). https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2001045328A1
• US 7,555,014 B2 (continuation, 11/402,621) and US RE44,904 E1 (reissue, 13/171,882) — same specification; not prior art against '465, but relevant to any family-level validity theory.

8. Bottom line

1. USPTO search confirmed the target is exactly US 7,027,465 B2, "Method for contention free traffic detection," with the 17 patent citations and 1 non-patent citation listed above.
2. No cited reference anticipates any independent claim (1, 6, 7, 10, 14, 15, 18) under § 102. The references disclose isolated elements — pattern matching at a position (US5881242, US5675617, US6658363, EP0959398), priority/QoS handling (US4627051, US5822361, EP0804006, EP0917317), and dynamic period management (EP0804006) — but never the full combination of offset-defined extraction → search-pattern comparison → priority-frame identification (plus the queue/statistics/information-element features).
3. The most § 102-credible (single-reference) targets are the dependent "period adjustment" claims (8, 9), against EP 0 804 006 A2, which expressly discloses varying a time-frame/period duration as a function of load and QoS at a wireless access point — though even there the priority-frame counting limitation of claim 9 is not met.
4. Best § 103 combination nuclei: US 5,881,242 A (IBM frame-header parsing/pattern learning) + US 4,627,051 A (NEC priority bit fields) + EP 0 804 006 A2 (IBM adaptive MAC/period tuning), optionally with US 6,658,363 B2 for generic pattern detection.
5. Do not treat US 6,658,363 B2 as § 102 art against '465 — its 2001 priority date post-dates the '465 1999-12-17 priority date.

Confidence and limitations: I am highly confident in the citation list and dates (taken directly from the '465 front page and cross-checked against Google Patents/Espacenet/FPO for several references). I could not retrieve the examiner's actual § 102/§ 103 rejections from the file wrapper, so the claim mapping above is my independent technical assessment of the references' disclosed subject matter, not a report of the examiner's grounds. The single non-patent citation's full text was truncated in the source and is therefore flagged as likely (not verified) to be the IEEE 802.11 standard. Before relying on any reference in a filing, pull the full document from the USPTO PatentCenter / Google Patents PDF for the specific cited art.

I'll verify the content and teaching of the key prior-art references before mapping them to the claims.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 7,027,465 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Scope note and ground rules for this section. This analysis builds on the prior sections (bibliographic data, PTAB section, strategic summary) and does not repeat them. I used the prior art listed on the patent's own face — the "Patent Citations (17)" table, the "Family Cites Families (5)" table, and the applicant's admissions in the specification — as the art of record. I verified the text of the highest-value references by live search; where I could not verify a reference's substance in this session, I say so explicitly and mark the mapping as candidate / needs verification. Obviousness is ultimately a legal conclusion; what follows is a technical element-by-element mapping for attorney use, not a legal opinion.

1. Legal framework and assumptions

• Statute: Pre-AIA § 103 applies (priority 1999-12-17; filed 2002-06-11 as a PCT continuation). Accordingly § 102(e) art (U.S. patent/published application filed before the priority date but issuing later) is available as § 103 prior art, including in any IPR (IPRs may use § 102(e)-qualified patents/printed publications).
• Standard: Graham v. John Deere factors; KSR Int'l v. Teleflex (rationales beyond "teaching, suggestion, motivation": known techniques, predictable results, design incentives, market/design pressures, "obvious to try" where the prior art gives finite predictable options). MPEP 2143 rationales are the analytical spine below.
• PHOSITA (proposed): A network/WLAN engineer with a B.S. in EE/CS plus ~2–4 years' experience in IEEE 802.11 MAC/PCF design or in packet-switching/router frame-classification, familiar with IEEE Std 802.11-1997 (MAC, PCF, CFP, CF-Poll/data+CF-Poll frames) and with header-parsing / pattern-matching packet classifiers.
• Critical timing check (quality control flag): Of the references on the '465 face, almost all predate the 1999-12-17 priority date — but U.S. 6,658,363 does not. Its earliest priority is 2001-01-18 and it issued 2003-12-02, both after the '465 priority date. US 6,658,363 is therefore NOT available as prior art against the '465 claims. It appears in the face-citation table but must have been cited in the later-filed continuation (11/402,621, filed 2006-04-11) or the reissue (13/171,882). If anyone hands you "US 6,658,363 as prior art against the '465," that is an error — do not rely on it, and flag it if opposing counsel does.

2. Prior-art inventory and qualification (as listed on the '465 face)

Legend: asterisked entries (US 5,675,617; US 5,857,092; US 5,881,242; US 6,658,363) are marked "cited by examiner" per Google Patents' own key; the remainder are applicant/other-cited.

Admissions usable as prior art (very important here). The '465 specification itself concedes: (i) IEEE 802.11 "specifies a so-called Contention Free Period (CFP)"; (ii) "the CFP is controlled by the so-called Point Coordination Function (PCF) in an Access Point (AP)"; (iii) "the standard specifies the PCF operation in basic level, but does not specify how the PCF should be controlled or how some traffic should be identified as high priority traffic"; (iv) conventionally the AP "had to be searched for these fields… all the fields had to be checked, all the headers had to be analyzed, starting from the outer most headers." These are applicant admissions of the state of the art and, in the case of the 802.11 standard, a printed publication. They supply the motivation for every combination below without needing to import art.

3. Independent-claim element breakdown

Note a drafting weakness in claim 1: it recites an offset but not that the offset is stored or externally supplied (that is pushed into claims 2/4/10/12). That makes claim 1 broad and correspondingly easy to read on prior art.

4. Ground 1 — Claims 1, 2, 3, 5: US 6,347,087 alone, or with EP 0 804 006

US 6,347,087 is the keystone. Its claims and specification disclose, in substance:

• storing in the switching device an offset value and a comparator value;
• "comparing information located at a position in a frame determined by the offset value with the comparator value to obtain a filter outcome";
• "processing the frame with the outcome," where "processing the frame may include communicating the frame to a destination port or setting the priority of the frame";
• the filter may include "a mask value that masks the frame information before comparison with the comparator value" — the mask "is used to omit various unwanted bits present in the content bytes";
• "Where there are a multiple of filters… combining the filter outcomes to obtain a filter group outcome" (Boolean AND/OR/INVERT), and multiple priority outcomes ("raising or lowering the priority of the frame").

Mapping to claim 1: (a) comparing information at a position determined by the offset = extract-at-offset; (b) comparator vs. content = compare with search pattern; (c) "setting the priority of the frame" on a match = identifying the frame as priority; (d) offset expressly recited. The only element not literally present is the nominal framing that the frame is a "priority frame" in a WLAN — a label distinction, not a structural one, since the '465 claim 1 preamble is merely "in a network." On these facts US 6,347,087 is not merely § 103 art; it is a serious § 102 candidate for claim 1. Cite: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6347087 (and its EP 0 993 162 A2 counterpart).

Mapping to claim 3 (mask): literally disclosed — mask applied to the frame content at the offset before comparison.
Mapping to claim 5 (plural priority levels): disclosed — plural filters whose outcomes "rais[e] or lower[] the priority," i.e., multiple levels. EP 0 804 006 independently discloses "different priority levels derived from the ATM contract parameters."

Mapping to claim 2 (offset + search pattern in an information element): this is the one genuine gap. US 6,347,087 stores the offset/comparator in switch memory, and its "policy" is a data structure ([expectant, offset, length, anchor, mask, comparator]); whether it is delivered to the node as a discrete element is not squarely stated. This element is supplied by the ordinary design choice of provisioning configuration data to a network node (see Ground 6), or by the '465 admission that configuration "may be done in [an] external configuration program." A "two-reference" combination is preferred here to avoid a § 102/§ 103 fight on "information element."

Motivation to combine / why obvious (KSR). US 6,347,087 itself frames the problem the '465 solves: prior content-based routing "ha[s] been too slow and limited in scope," motivating a fast, offset-based comparison rather than full header parsing. That is the same design pressure the '465 states (lightweight detection in "low cost and possibly low performance AP"). Applying a switching-device content-classification technique (offset + mask + comparator → set priority) to a WLAN AP's frame stream is a known technique applied to an analogous frame-processing component with predictable results (MPEP 2143.01(IV)/(VI)). EP 0 804 006 supplies the WLAN/ATM access-point context and the notion of assigning frames to priority-based allocations.

5. Ground 2 — Claim 6: US 6,347,087 (plural filters/filter-group outcome)

Claim 6 requires only that a plurality of bit patterns, search patterns and offsets be used. US 6,347,087 expressly discloses "a multiple of filters" whose outcomes are stored, logically combined into "a filter group outcome," and used to process the frame, with each filter having its own offset and comparator. That is a direct read. Add US 5,881,242 as corroboration of the plural-offset/bit-group technique (below).

Motivation: Combining multiple independent detection criteria to classify a frame with greater specificity is an uncontroversial design choice with predictable results; the '465 itself offers no unexpected result for "plurality" beyond noting that it lets priority information "be detected which is located at different positions within a data frame."

6. Ground 3 — Claim 7: US 6,347,087 + EP 0 804 006 (and the admitted IEEE 802.11 standard)

Claim 7 adds "forwarding… to a high priority queue… during a special period for sending priority traffic."

• US 6,347,087: "Higher priority frames are typically forwarded by the switching device before lower priority frames," and its forwarding decision logic "examine[s] the level of priority." This supplies priority-based queueing on detection.
• EP 0 804 006: a wireless access-point MAC frame structured as DOWN (AP→terminals), UP_RESERVED (contention-free), UP_CONTENTION periods, with slot allocation "according to different priority levels derived from the ATM contract parameters" — i.e., a contention-free period dedicated to higher-priority traffic in a wireless access point. This is the "special period for sending priority traffic" (the '465's CFP).
• Admitted 802.11 standard: supplies CFP/PCF and the data+CF-Poll frame, and expressly leaves how to identify high-priority traffic unspecified — the classic "the prior art taught everything but the point of novelty" posture.

Motivation: The '465 specification concedes the standard defines a CFP "reserved for transmitting high priority traffic" but "does not specify how… traffic should be identified as high priority." A PHOSITA looking to use the standard's CFP has an explicit, stated need to feed it a priority classification; combining a known frame-classifier (US 6,347,087) with the standard's existing priority queue/CFP and EP 0 804 006's contention-free allocation yields exactly claim 7 with no unpredictable behavior. KSR/MPEP 2143.01(IV) (improvement in a known technology, driven by a known problem).

7. Ground 4 — Claims 8, 9, 16, 17: adaptive "special period" sizing — weakest ground; verify before relying

Claims 8/9/16/17 add feedback control: count total priority frames and priority frames outside the special period, then grow/shrink the special period. Candidate art (all listed on the '465 face, all date-qualified):

• US 5,594,738 (Time slot allocation method, Motorola) and EP 0 782 297 A2 (LSI Logic, "increasing the effective bandwidth") — dynamic allocation of reserved time/bandwidth; candidate bases for "increase or decrease the period."
• EP 0 491 494 A2 (AT&T) — allocating radio resources by demand.
• EP 0 959 398 A1 (Foxboro) — threshold/alarm analysis; analogous to the '465's HAL/LAL "alarm level" logic in FIG. 10.

Honest assessment: I could not verify in this session that any single reference discloses the specific two-counter + outside-the-period-percentage feedback of claims 9/17. This ground is a candidate, not a conclusion. The strongest argument is the generic one: adjusting a reserved-period length from measured demand was well known in reservation/slotted wireless MACs of the mid-1990s, so claims 8/9/16/17 are obvious over that art in view of the 802.11 CFP and US 6,347,087's counters-agnostic classification, provided the defendant produces a reference with the count-then-resize feedback loop. Do not plead this ground until that reference is located and charted.

8. Ground 5 — Device claims 10–15: US 6,347,087 apparatus + EP 0 804 006

• Claim 10 (receiving / extracting / comparing / identifying means; offset + search pattern in an information element): US 6,347,087 discloses the corresponding structure — "means for storing in the switching device an offset value and a comparator value, means for comparing information located at a position in a frame determined by the filter offset value with the comparator value; and means for processing the frame with the outcome" — i.e., a § 112 ¶ 6 counterpart to the claimed means. The information-element delivery is the same gap as claim 2, handled by the provisioning design choice (Ground 6).
• Claims 11–12 (masking means; mask in the element): disclosed (mask value in the filter).
• Claims 13–14 (plural levels / plural patterns): disclosed (multiple filters, group outcome, raising/lowering priority).
• Claims 15 (controlling means → high-priority queue during special period); 16–17 (statistics; PFC + outside-period counter): same analysis as Grounds 3–4 — strong for claim 15 via EP 0 804 006 + the standard; weaker/unverified for 16–17.

For means-plus-function claims, remember the § 112 ¶ 6 analysis cuts both ways: the corresponding structure in the specification (FIG. 4: receiver 22, extractor 23, comparator 24, memories 25/27, identifier 26; and FIG. 7: PC controller 211 and counters 212–214) is narrow, so a defendant can also argue the prior-art structure is not "the same or equivalent" — or, alternatively, that if the claim is read broadly enough to cover US 6,347,087, it is invalid under § 112.

9. Ground 6 — Claim 18 (generator/configuration method): US 5,881,242 + US 6,347,087

Claim 18 is the "configuration-program" claim: analyze a frame, identify a priority-indicating bit pattern, define it as the search pattern, locate it, determine the offset, produce an information element.

• US 5,881,242 teaches the core analytic machinery: parsing a frame into multiple test units of identical lengths, assigning test vectors containing a "Reference Pattern field," "learning" reference patterns from received addresses (bit-group partitioning of the frame header), and searching by comparing incoming frame bit groups against stored patterns/positions. That is "analyze a frame → identify a bit pattern → locate it → determine its position," applied to the same frame-header-parsing problem.
• US 6,347,087 teaches the data structure form the output takes: a policy = [expectant, offset, length, anchor, mask, comparator] — i.e., offset + comparator (+ mask) stored as a node-provisionable record. Producing such a record from the analysis of US 5,881,242 renders claim 18 obvious; the only "new" step is packaging offset+pattern into an "information element," which is a conventional data-formatting step once you have decided to provision a remote node (and which the '465 admission frames as "produci[ng] information elements… transmitted to the AP2").

Motivation: The '465's own background states the prior practice was to hand-parse and know all headers; US 5,881,242 supplies an automated, pattern-learning alternative, and US 6,347,087 supplies the parameterized form. Combining analysis-by-pattern-learning with parameterized filter provisioning is a predictable combination of known techniques from the same field (frame classification).

10. Consolidated motivation-to-combine (KSR / MPEP 2143 rationales)

1. Known technique, predictable result (2143.01(IV)). Offset-based field extraction + comparator + mask was a textbook packet-classification technique (US 6,347,087; US 5,881,242) before 1999; applying it to a WLAN AP's frames predictably yields a priority classification.
2. Stated problem / design incentive (2143.01(VI)). Both the references and the '465 articulate the identical pressure: full header parsing is "too slow," a "bottleneck," and heavy for low-cost access points. US 6,347,087: prior content routing "too slow and limited in scope." US 5,881,242: search "would require a considerable amount of time," "communications… may be slowed down considerably."
3. Prior-art gap invites the combination. The admitted 802.11 standard defines the CFP as reserved for high-priority traffic but leaves identification to the implementer ("does not specify how… traffic should be identified as high priority"). That is an express invitation to plug in a known classifier.
4. Finite, predictable options (KSR "obvious to try"). Given a WLAN AP that must classify frames, the choice among (a) full parsing, (b) field extraction at a known offset, and (c) content filters with masks was a small, well-enumerated set of known approaches with predictable trade-offs.
5. Analogous field, same component (2143.01(IV)). Packet switches/routers and WLAN APs are both store-and-forward nodes that receive frames and make forwarding/priority decisions; converting a switch-frame classifier to a WLAN MAC-layer classifier is the application of a known technique to a closely analogous structure.
6. Design choice / data provisioning. Supplying the offset/mask/comparator to the node as a configuration record ("information element") is a conventional design choice (local memory vs. externally provisioned rule set), supported by the '465's own admission of external configuration.

11. Counterarguments and the strongest defendant/adjustment positions

• US 6,658,363 is ineligible (see § 1). If either side relies on it, the timing defect defeats it — a misuse that should be corrected.
• Claim 1 is the softest claim. Its only "structural" recitation beyond compare-and-identify is the offset, which US 6,347,087 recites verbatim. Expect the real fight to be on whether "setting the priority of the frame" = "identifying the received frame as a priority frame" (label vs. substance), and on § 112 for means-plus-function claims.
• Claim 2/10 "information element" is the best non-infringement/non-obviousness hook for the patent owner — US 6,347,087 stores values locally; a patent owner will argue remote provisioning as a discrete element was not suggested. The counter is the '465's own admission of external configuration.
• Claims 8/9/16/17 are the patent's defensible core absent verified feedback-control art; do not assume they fall with the rest.
• The examiner allowed all 18 claims. Whatever was on the U.S. face (the asterisked US 5,881,242 and others), the examiner was not persuaded by the art as presented. Any § 103 challenge must add a primary reference the examiner did not have in the precise combination (US 6,347,087 is listed via the family citations, i.e., it may have appeared in the WO/EP counterparts rather than being squarely applied by the U.S. examiner) and must state the motivation expressly. Confirm the actual U.S. Office Actions before finalizing a ground.
• Secondary considerations (to check, not assume): no evidence of unexpected results is apparent in the '465; the patent is expired, so no ongoing-commercial-success narrative is available. But verify whether the patent owner ever submitted Rule 132 evidence in the reissue (13/171,882) that could bear on nexus.

12. Ranked conclusion (technical, not legal)

Overall: Claims 1–7 and 10–15 look vulnerable to a well-built § 103 attack centered on US 6,347,087, which discloses offset-indexed comparison, masking, plural filters, and priority setting in a network frame node — the substance of the '465's independent claims, dressed in WLAN terminology. Claim 18 is vulnerable via US 5,881,242 + US 6,347,087. Claims 8/9/16/17 are the patent's residual strength and should not be treated as obvious until a count-and-resize reference is located and charted.

13. Confidence and verification notes

• Reviewed and quoted from live sources this session: US 6,347,087 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US6347087; EP 0 993 162 A2 search report), US 5,881,242 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US5881242), EP 0 804 006 A2 (https://patents.google.com/patent/EP0804006A2), US 5,822,361 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US5822361), US 6,658,363 (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6658363B2](/patent/US6658363B2) — not prior art).
• Titles/dates/assignees taken from the '465 face (authoritative) but substance NOT independently verified here: US 5,594,738; EP 0 782 297; EP 0 491 494; EP 0 959 398; US 4,716,407; US 5,541,919; US 5,684,836; US 6,633,564, and the Tier-4 references. My step budget was exhausted mid-verification; the mappings involving these are explicitly flagged as candidate.
• No ruling on validity, and no PTAB/CAFC record, exists to cite (consistent with the prior sections). This is a fresh § 103 construction.
• Do before relying on this: (i) pull the U.S. file wrapper of 10/167,986 (and of 11/402,621 and the reissue 13/171,882) to see precisely which references the examiner applied and how; (ii) confirm each candidate reference's full text against the specific claimed elements; (iii) confirm the exact priority/§ 102 dates for US 6,347,087 and US 6,633,564 (both qualifying only as § 102(e) art).