US 7096016

I'll search for this specific patent number across USPTO and CAFC sources.

Search performed

• USPTO/Google Patents full text for US 7,096,016 (patents.google.com/patent/US7096016/en, uspto.report/patent/grant/7096016)
• CAFC 2026 docket/news sweeps for the literal number "7096016" / "7,096,016"

CAFC 2026 result: nothing found. No 2026 (or any-year) Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit docket, opinion, or Rule 36 affirmance referencing U.S. Patent 7,096,016 was located. The only CAFC activity involving the assignee NEC Corporation that surfaced concerns unrelated patents (NEC Corp. v. Peloton Interactive, Inc., Nos. 25-1636/25-1637, voluntarily dismissed July 10, 2025 — different patents). I cannot rule out a sealed or unindexed filing, but I have no authoritative evidence of any CAFC docket for this patent.

⚠️ Identifier caution (literal reading): Searching "7096016" also returns JP Patent No. 7096016 ("電磁鋼板の製造方法" / method for manufacturing electromagnetic steel sheet, JFE Steel Corp., registered 2022-06-27, issued 2022-07-05) and U.S. Patent No. 7,096,016. These are entirely different documents; do not conflate them.

US 7,096,016 — bibliographic data

Abstract (as granted)

A cellular phone includes a RSSI measurement circuit for measuring power levels of a received baseband signal at divided band portions of the whole band, a band sorting circuit sorting the divided band portions in descending order of the power levels, and a cell search circuit searching the carriers of each divided band portion in the order of the sorting results, to thereby determine a tentative waiting cell.

Technical context (from the specification)

Directed to IMT-2000 / 3GPP W-CDMA. The downlink occupies 60 MHz (2110–2170 MHz) with 200 kHz channel raster → 300 frequency channels ("FID1–FID300"); each W-CDMA carrier is ~5 MHz, so at most 12 carriers fit in the band. The conventional all-band-cell search at 100 ms/carrier could take ~30 s. The invention first does a "simplified" RSSI scan of the 12 divided 5-MHz sub-bands, ranks them by power, then runs the full "ordinary cell search" only on the highest-ranked sub-band's 25 carriers, cutting the example search to ~3.7 s (about 1/8). Embodiments cover: (1) 12 divisions measured at center frequencies; (2) 2.5-MHz measurement at center and boundary frequencies, or 24 divisions; (3) threshold-based selection of multiple sub-bands searched as a bundle; (4) bundled search of selected sub-bands with early exit if a carrier exceeds a threshold RSCP.

Independent claims — plain-language overview

Claim 1 — Cellular phone (two-stage search with overlapping scan windows).
A phone has two search stages:

1. First search section: measures a power-distribution profile across the phone's whole band and, from that profile, selects a band portion that contains several carriers. Critically, the profile is built by measuring individual power levels within frequency-overlapping divided band portions that together define the whole band (i.e., the measurement windows overlap each other).
2. Second search section: runs the "ordinary cell search" over the carriers of that selected band portion to pick a tentative waiting cell.

The claim closes with a definitional limitation: the ordinary cell search includes slot identification, frame timing and PSC group identification, PSC identification, and RSCP measurement as prescribed in "3GPP:Ts25.124 Annex C."

⚠️ Literal-identifier note: the claim text says "3GPP:Ts25.124 Annex C." The specification body instead says the ordinary cell search is the process recommended in "3GPP:TS25.214 Annex C." I am reporting both as written and deliberately not auto-correcting. TS 25.214 is the 3GPP FDD physical-layer-procedures document conventionally associated with the three-step cell search; TS 25.124 is a different 3GPP series document (UE positioning). The discrepancy between the claim and the specification is in the granted text as published.

Claim 10 — Method for determining a waiting cell.
A method with two steps: (a) in a 3GPP system, measure a power-distribution profile of the whole band by measuring power levels of divided band portions using the center frequency of each divided band portion, and from that profile select a band portion containing multiple carriers; (b) search for a tentative waiting cell using an ordinary cell search over the carriers of the selected band portion. (Note: claim 10 does not itself restate the "TS25.124 Annex C" definition; it recites the center-frequency measurement approach expressly.)

Claim 15 — Cellular phone (hardware-block / circuit-oriented).
A phone with an antenna (16), a receiver (11) receiving RF through the antenna, and a band-cell detection block (10) connected to the receiver output and controlling the receiver. The block comprises:

• a band sorting circuit (13);
• a RSSI measurement circuit (12) that measures RSSI level at divided bands of the whole band and delivers them to the sorting circuit;
• a cell search circuit (14) connected to the receiver output and to the sorting circuit output;
• a band cell determination circuit (15).

The sorting circuit sorts the divided bands by RSSI and selects one or more, delivering the selection plus its frequency information to both the receiver and the cell search circuit. The cell search circuit runs the ordinary cell search over the carriers of the selected divided band to determine a tentative waiting cell. This claim repeats the same "slot identification, frame timing and PSC group identification, PSC identification, and RSCP measurement as prescribed in 3GPP:Ts25.124 Annex C" definitional limitation (same literal-identifier caveat as claim 1).

Dependent-claim map (brief)

• Claims 2–9 (on claim 1): RSSI circuit + selecting circuit architecture (2); band sorting (3); priority ordering (4); consecutive search by priority (5); threshold-based selection (6); bundled search of threshold-selected bands (7); selection of the higher-power group (8); bundled search of that group (9).
• Claims 11–14 (on claim 10): overlapping divided bands plus measurement between adjacent center frequencies (11); priority ordering (12); threshold + bundle (13); higher-power group + bundle (14).
• Claims 16–21 (on claim 15): rank carriers by descending received-signal-code power and pick highest as tentative waiting cell (16); on failure, sequentially try next-highest (17); on total failure, move to a newly selected divided band (18); non-overlapping first set of bands (19); first set plus a second overlapping set where each second-set band overlaps two first-set bands (20); select first carrier exceeding a threshold RSCP as tentative waiting cell (21).

Uncertainty / caveats

• No CAFC 2026 docket found for US 7,096,016; the patent is recorded as expired (adjusted expiration 2024-08-16), which is consistent with the absence of recent appellate activity, but I did not have access to PACER directly and cannot state as a certainty that no filing exists.
• The "3GPP:Ts25.124 Annex C" vs. "3GPP:TS25.214 Annex C" mismatch between claims and specification is presented as it appears in the source text; I am not correcting it.
• Claim 16's granted wording reads awkwardly ("The cellular phone of claim 15, an ordinary cell search examines each carrier…"), which I have summarized by substance; I have not independently verified the exact punctuation via the USPTO PatentCenter facsimile.

I'll search for litigation records involving US patent 7096016 across patent litigation databases.

Initial searches returned no matching litigation. Let me search more targeted databases.

Let me do a few more targeted checks before concluding.

Litigation Search Results: US Patent No. 7,096,016

Summary: No litigation is known involving US Patent No. 7,096,016.

I searched patent-litigation and related databases (Unified Patents litigation resources, Docket Alarm / Docket Navigator-indexed content, PACER-derived docket aggregators such as Justia Dockets, CourtListener recaps, and general web searches keyed strictly to the number "7096016" and to the patent's title). I found no district court action, ITC Section 337 investigation, CAFC appeal, or other adversarial proceeding in which US 7,096,016 was asserted or challenged.

What the records do show for this patent

Rather than litigation, the public record for US 7,096,016 shows only patent-office and prosecution-related activity (all from the patent's own Google Patents page, https://patents.google.com/patent/US7096016/en):

The only prior-art/prosecution references cited on the face of the patent are:

• US 6,052,590 – Ericsson, "Method for reducing control channel scan time" (1997)
• US 6,807,163 – Ericsson, "Adaptive rate channel scanning method for TDMA wireless communications" (1999)
• WO 2001/033881 – Simoco International, "Method of updating a control channel list"
• US 6,778,827 – Ericsson, "Methods and systems for scanning and locking onto a control channel via a multi-level search"
• US 6,810,251 – Ericsson, "Triggered hyperband scanning"
• US 7,013,140 – Telefonaktiebolaget L.M. Ericsson, "Mobile terminals and methods for performing fast initial frequency scans and cell searches"
• Non-patent: Bill Mitchell, "Variable Bandwidth RSSI Scanning," Motorola Technical Developments (Aug. 1996); and 3GPP TS 25.214

These are cited prior art, not litigation defendants.

Important caveats

1. Do not confuse this with same-numbered records. A literal search for "7096016" also surfaces JP Patent No. 7096016 (a JFE Steel electromagnet steel-sheet manufacturing method, registered 2022) and an unrelated 1963 Rootes/Imp automotive drawing number. These are not US 7,096,016 and were excluded.
2. Family members are distinct patents. EP 1367844 B1, JP 4193417 B2, and CN 1242643 C are counterpart family members; activity on those (also none found for litigation) would not constitute US litigation on the '016 patent.
3. Coverage limits. Free/public litigation databases are not exhaustive. Notably:
   • NEC has historically been a net defendant in US patent suits (e.g., FastVDO LLC v. NEC Corp., S.D. Cal. 3:16-cv-00389; Trustees of Boston University v. NEC Corp., D. Mass. 1:13-cv-12340), and NEC's own assertions of this patent were not identified.
   • Historically, NEC has rarely enforced its US cellular/mobile patents offensively, which is consistent with finding no assertion of the '016 patent.
   • Non-public settlements and demand letters (pre-suit) would not appear in any docket.
4. Given that the patent expired on 2024-08-16, any suit would have had to be filed before that date (plus the 6-year § 286 damages look-back window for past infringement).

Conclusion

There is no known litigation involving US Patent No. 7,096,016. If you need a definitive negative for due diligence, I recommend a direct Docket Navigator or Lex Machina "patent number = 7,096,016" query (both are paywalled and not fully indexed by the free sources available to me), plus a PACER search of all district courts and a USPTO/ITC check — but the free-record evidence available is consistent with this patent never having been litigated.

I'll verify the structured data against live sources before reporting.

Let me run a couple more targeted checks before concluding.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 7,096,016: 0 — no IPRs, no PGRs, no CBMs, whether active, instituted-and-decided, settled, or denied, per the structured USPTO Open Data Portal block ("no AIA trial proceedings for this patent as of the most recent ingest") and confirmed by my own searches of PTAB petition/decision text and patent–litigation aggregators.

Because the count is zero, there is no per-proceeding breakdown to give: 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denials. The defensive posture this creates is genuinely unusual and needs to be stated precisely: this patent has never been tested at the PTAB, so it is neither "hardened" nor "killed" — it is untested, and the absence of PTAB activity is not evidence of strength. It is better explained by the patent's age and, critically, its status:

No proceedings to enumerate

There is no {PROCEEDING_NUMBER} — {Petitioner} v. NEC Corp. entry to write, and I will not manufacture one. Specifically, I found no petitioner, no judge panel, no institution decision, no Final Written Decision, no termination/settlement order, and no Federal Circuit appeal (no CAFC docket number) for this patent. Anyone who tells you a defendant "already knocked this patent out at the PTAB" is misinformed; do not rely on that.

Two caveats on the "zero" finding, stated honestly:

1. Negative search results are weaker than positive ones. The ODP block is authoritative for AIA proceedings as of its ingest date, and my searches of PTAB petition documents surfaced nothing tying 7,096,016 to an IPR/PGR/CBM docket. But a petition that was filed and denied institution pre-2018 may have thin web-index coverage, and I cannot rule that out with certainty from public search alone. If you need a belt-and-suspenders answer, pull the patent's full file wrapper and the PTAB E2E docket directly: https://e2e.uspto.gov/ (search application 10/443,071).
2. "No PTAB activity" ≠ "no disputes." I found no public district-court assertion of this patent either, but I did not exhaustively search PACER/Docket Navigator, and a licensing or litigation history could exist off the public record.

Strategic summary

Claim status: all 21 claims are UNTESTED — none canceled, none sustained by any tribunal. Claims 1–9 are the apparatus claims (claim 1 independent, reciting a "first search section" that measures power distribution using "frequency overlapping divided bands portions" and a "second search section" doing an ordinary cell search including "slot identification, frame timing and PSC group identification, PSC identification, and RSCP measurement as prescribed in 3GPP:Ts25.124 Annex C"); claim 10 is the independent method claim; claims 11–14 depend from it; claims 15–21 form a second independent apparatus family centered on the FIG. 1 architecture (antenna 16, receiver 11, band-cell detection block 10, RSSI measurement circuit 12, band sorting circuit 13, cell search circuit 14, band cell determination circuit 15), with claim 19 (non-overlapping first set of bands) and claim 20 (first set plus an overlapping second set) doing the claim-differentiation work. Note the apparent typo in claims 1 and 15 — the specification's "ordinary cell search" is defined by reference to "3GPP:TS25.214 Annex C," a TS 25.214 physical-layer-procedures section covering the three-step cell search and CPICH RSCP measurement, not "TS25.124." That discrepancy is a real claim-construction hook for an accused infringer.

Estoppel landscape: there is none, which is the single most important defensive fact here. Because no IPR or PGR was ever instituted, § 315(e)(2) estoppel has never attached against anyone. Any defendant today may raise any prior-art ground — § 102 or § 103 — in district court or the ITC without the "raised or reasonably could have raised" bar. Nothing has been "used up." The corollary is that no one has done the invalidity work for you either: there is no FWD to cite, no claim-construction ruling from an APJ panel, and no record of how the Board would read "frequency overlapping divided bands portions" or the "plurality of carriers" limitation.

Pattern signals: none — no serial petitioner, no aggressive NEC PTAB-appeal history on this patent, no defensive aggregator (no Unified Patents or similar) in the chain. The patent's related history is the opposite of a PTAB-fight profile: it is a 2003-era NEC handset implementation patent that was cited on the face of the examiner's prior-art list (US 6,052,590; US 6,807,163; WO 01/33881; US 6,778,827; US 6,810,251; and US 7,013,140) and that was itself cited by later cell-search patents. Its own Japanese family publication, JP2003-348648A, is cited as prior art by later NEC filings (e.g., US 7,599,693) — the family is being used against others, not being attacked. The patent's age, near-twenty-year life, and 2024-08-16 expiration make it an economically unattractive IPR target, which almost certainly explains the empty PTAB docket better than any inference about claim quality.

The real defensive lever is expiration, not invalidity. An expired patent cannot be infringed prospectively, so no injunction, no ongoing royalty, and no design-around obligation. The remaining exposure for a defendant is past damages inside the § 286 six-year lookback from the date the complaint was filed — and that window closes as the years pass past the 2024-08-16 expiration. Any demand letter invoking 7,096,016 today should be read through that lens.

Recommended next steps

• If you have received a demand letter or been named in a suit on 7,096,016, the first move is a damages-timeline audit, not an IPR. Confirm the asserted products' accused activity dates against the § 286 six-year lookback and the 2024-08-16 expiration. Any pre-2018 conduct is time-barred regardless of merit; conduct after expiration cannot infringe. Establish this before spending money on validity.
• Cite the expiration record verbatim. The structured USPTO record reads: "Expired - Lifetime, expires 2024-08-16," with maintenance fees paid at years 4 (2010-01-29), 8 (2014-01-22), and 12 (2018-02-08) — i.e., the patent survived its full statutory term and lapsed by expiration, not by fee non-payment. That distinction matters: a lapsed-for-fee patent has a § 41(c) revival path; an expired patent does not come back. Link: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7096016/en.
• There is no FWD to quote and no PTAB disposition to link. Say so plainly to the other side; do not let an opposing counsel conflate this patent with the real PTAB activity in the NEC v. Peloton / NEC handset-assertion family (different patents entirely, e.g. U.S. 8,005,096-region and NEC's '101/'347 matters), which surfaced in my searches and could confuse the record. This patent has a clean PTAB sheet.
• If your exposure is large enough to justify a validity attack anyway (e.g., a broad pre-2018 damages claim), the untested prior art is available and un-estopped. The examiner-cited references on the patent's face are the natural starting set — Bill Mitchell, "Variable Bandwidth RSSI Scanning," Motorola Technical Developments (Aug. 1996), and 3GPP TS 25.214 v3.4.0 (Sept. 2000) were submitted during prosecution and appear as the patent's two Non-Patent Citations; WO 01/33881 (Simoco, control-channel-list updating by signal level + probability reordering) is remarkably close to the claimed band-sorting step. Verify the prior-art date of US 7,013,140 before relying on it — Google lists it as an examiner citation, but its priority date (2002-09-19) is later than 7,096,016's 2002-05-29 priority, so it can only qualify on an earlier-benefit basis that I could not confirm.
• Milestone note: there are none. No institution-decision deadline, no oral hearing, and no FWD due date exists for this patent, because no trial was ever instituted. Do not forecast a 1-year § 316(a)(11) clock for a proceeding that does not exist.

Bottom line for a defendant: this is not a "hardened by surviving IPRs" patent and it is not a "claims already canceled" patent. It is an expired, never-challenged 2006 NEC patent. Your defense is time, not estoppel — and if a demand rests on pre-expiration conduct, you have a completely fresh § 102/§ 103 arsenal because no estoppel has ever attached.

I'll research the assignment record for US 7,096,016 across USPTO Assignment Center, SEC filings, and NPE directories.

Research note on method and one gap

I retrieved the assignment data from the Google Patents legal-events block for this patent (patents.google.com/patent/US7096016/en) and from uspto.report/patent/grant/7096016. I was not able to load a live Assignment Center result page for this patent number (assignmentcenter.uspto.gov / assignment.uspto.gov did not return an indexed record page in the searches I could run), so the correspondent-of-record field is not recovered in this analysis. Everything below is grounded in the recorded reel/frame and the legal-events entries; where a field is missing I say so rather than inferring it.

Inventors

• Employer determination: The single recorded assignment (Reel 013954/0583, effective 2003-06-03) is an "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST" from HASEGAWA, OSAMU to NEC CORPORATION, recorded by USPTO with owner name "NEC CORPORATION, JAPAN." An inventor assigning to the filing entity at filing is the standard employee-inventor pattern; there is no separate corporate co-assignee and no second inventor.
• Unusual patterns: None detected. There is no evidence of inventor departure, no re-assignment of Hasegawa's interest to a third party, and no inventor-side lien or security interest. Because the case is a 2002–2003 Japanese-origin filing with a single inventor, there is no co-inventor split to track. I have no data on Hasegawa's later employment history, so I cannot test the "all inventors departed within 12 months" heuristic one way or the other — I flag that as a true data gap, not a clean negative.
• Priority document: JP 2002-154888, filed 2002-05-29 (granted as JP 4193417 B2).

Original assignee

NEC Corporation (日本電気株式会社), 7-1, Shiba 5-chome, Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan — listed on the granted patent as original assignee and on the Google Patents page as current assignee.

• Primary line of business: Diversified IT and networking — telecom network infrastructure, enterprise IT services, supercomputers, semiconductors, displays, and mobile handsets. NEC was one of the principal Japanese W-CDMA / IMT-2000 handset and base-station vendors in exactly the 2002–2006 window of this patent.
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? The claimed subject matter is a cellular phone's band-cell search implementation (RSSI profile scan → rank divided sub-bands → ordinary 3GPP three-step cell search on the selected sub-band). NEC was an active IMT-2000/W-CDMA handset supplier in the relevant period, so NEC handsets are the natural commercial embodiment. However, I have no product-marking or claim-chart evidence tying a specific NEC model to these claims, so I state this as high plausibility, not a verified finding. The patent was never asserted, so no infringement analysis exists in the public record either.
• Current status: Operating. NEC Corporation remains an active, publicly listed global company (Tokyo Stock Exchange, ticker 6701). It has not been acquired, dissolved, or put into Chapter 7/11. Note for the record: NEC did go through a severe financial restructuring around 2011–2012 (losses, capital raise, handset-business joint venture with Lenovo), but that restructuring did not produce a bankruptcy estate or a court-supervised patent sale — and critically, it did not produce any recorded assignment of this patent.

Assignment timeline

The public record for US 7,096,016 contains exactly one recorded assignment — an inbound, at-filing transfer from the inventor to the corporate applicant. There are no post-issuance conveyances of any type (no change of name due to merger, no security agreement, no license recordation, no release, no correction, no transfer to an LLC or aggregator).

• 2003-06-03 (executed) / recorded 2003-09-08 — Reel 013954 / Frame 0583
  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest ("ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS' INTEREST")
  • Assignor: Hasegawa, Osamu (individual inventor, Tokyo, JP)
  • Assignee: NEC Corporation (Japan)
  • Correspondent: Not recovered. The Assignment Center correspondent field for this reel/frame was not exposed in the sources I could reach. I will not name a firm by inference — NEC used multiple outside counsel in that era, and guessing here would fabricate an assertion. This field should be checked directly at the Assignment Center by reel/frame.
  • Context: Routine employee-inventor assignment to the original corporate applicant — not an acquisition, fire-sale, securitization, or reorg. This is the "invention assigned to employer at filing" baseline.
  • Repeat-correspondent flag: Not applicable yet — there is only one link in the chain, so there is no recurrence to detect. A single appearance is explicitly not a signal per the operating rules.

Corroborating negative evidence (why "no further records" is a real finding, not a search failure):

That 2018 large-entity payment is the strongest single datapoint against an NPE transfer: a troll/aggregator shell is almost always a small entity claiming the 60% micro/small-entity discount. NEC (large entity) paid.

If you require a certified negative, the definitive query is:

• Assignment Center: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number 7096016)
• Legacy index: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html (also searchable by patent number; both surface the same underlying records)
• Confirm no further reel/frame entries beyond 013954/0583, and capture the correspondent name from that single entry.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7096016
    2002 : Priority application filed in Japan
    2003 : US application filed
         : Inventor Hasegawa assigns rights to NEC
    2006 : Patent granted to NEC Corporation
    2010 : Maintenance fee paid year 4
    2014 : Maintenance fee paid year 8
    2018 : Large entity fee paid year 12
    2024 : Patent expires

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Summary of the signal vector: 0 present, 7 not present, 1 partial data gap (correspondent of record on the single reel/frame).

Verdict

Insufficient data — under the rubric's own definition ("no records, or only the original assignment"), because the Assignment Center record for US 7,096,016 contains only the single at-filing assignment, Reel 013954/0583, executed 2003-06-03 and recorded 2003-09-08, from inventor Osamu Hasegawa to NEC Corporation.

The label understates the substance, so read it with this qualification: there is no NPE pattern here at all, and that is a positive finding rather than a failure of evidence. There are zero post-issuance conveyances across 21 years; the last recorded fee payment (2018-02-08, event M1553) was made by a large entity, which is affirmative evidence that ownership had not migrated to a discounted-rate shell; and the patent was never litigated before it expired on 2024-08-16. The chain is a single unbroken link: Hasegawa → NEC Corporation, retained to expiration.

Two caveats worth carrying forward:

1. The correspondent of record on Reel 013954/0583 was not recovered from the sources I could reach, and I have deliberately not named a firm by inference. Pull it directly from the Assignment Center by reel/frame if you need it for a repeat-player cross-check across other NEC filings.
2. Consistent with the prior sections: this record is for US 7,096,016 only. The same-numbered JP Patent No. 7096016 (JFE Steel, electromagnetic steel sheet) surfaced repeatedly in searches and is an entirely different document — it was excluded, but a reviewer re-running a bare "7096016" search will keep hitting it.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ · https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html · https://patents.google.com/patent/US7096016/en

I'll verify each cited reference on the face of US 7,096,016 and pull its bibliographic and disclosure details.

Now let me verify the remaining two cited patents and the WO reference.

Bottom line

I searched the USPTO/Google Patents record for the literal number 7,096,016 and pulled each reference listed on the face of the granted patent (the "Patent Citations (6)" table plus the two NPL items). No one of these references anticipates any of claims 1–21 of US 7,096,016. Every claim — including all dependents, which incorporate their parent's limitations — requires (a) a power-distribution profile of the entire band built from divided band portions, (b) selection of a band portion containing a plurality of carriers, and (c)–(e) an "ordinary cell search" defined as the 3GPP W‑CDMA four-step procedure (slot identification; frame timing + PSC group identification; PSC identification; RSCP measurement). The cited art is almost entirely IS‑136 / TDMA / DECT / non-3GPP scanning art; only the 3GPP NPL reference (TS 25.214) supplies element (e), and it supplies nothing else. The citations are therefore § 103 combination art, not § 102 anticipatory art.

Two literal-identifier cautions carried forward from the earlier sections: (i) "7096016" also resolves to JP Patent No. 7096016 (JFE Steel, electromagnetic steel sheet) — a different document, excluded; and (ii) the granted claims recite "3GPP:Ts25.124 Annex C" while the specification body recites "3GPP:TS25.214 Annex C." I report both as written, uncorrected, and this matters below.

1. Legal framework applied (pre‑AIA § 102)

US 7,096,016 was filed 2003‑05‑22 (App. 10/443,071), i.e. pre‑AIA, so pre‑AIA § 102 governs.

Anticipation under § 102 requires a single reference disclosing every claimed element, arranged as claimed, enabled. Under that standard:

2. Claim-element framework used for the mapping

For each reference below I map against the elements that gate every claim:

• (A) first search section that measures a profile of power distribution of the whole band;
• (B) selection, from that profile, of a band portion containing a plurality of carriers;
• (C) second search section performing an ordinary cell search on the carriers of that band portion to determine a tentative waiting cell;
• (D) (claim 1) the profile is built from frequency-overlapping divided band portions that together define the whole band;
• (E) the ordinary cell search = slot identification + frame timing/PSC group identification + PSC identification + RSCP measurement per the cited 3GPP Annex.

Element (E) is the decisive gap. No cited reference discloses a 3GPP W‑CDMA three-step cell search with CPICH RSCP measurement. That alone prevents anticipation of claims 1 and 15 (which recite it expressly) and of claim 10 (which requires "in a 3GPP system" plus the same ordinary cell search), and derivatively of every dependent claim.

3. Reference-by-reference analysis

3.1 WO 2001/033881 A1 — most conceptually relevant cited reference

• Full citation: WO 01/33881 A1, Method of updating a control channel list in mobile communications system, applicant Simoco International Limited; inventor Mark Wentworth Rayne; international filing 1999‑10‑25; published 2001‑05‑10. Family: GB 2 355 895 A (esp. GB 2355895 A, whose text discloses the method); ES/EP grant, CPC H04W48/16 (corresponding to the '016 patent's own H04W48/16 classification).
• Brief description: The mobile radio unit scans each frequency in a stored target-frequency list, determines the signal level on each frequency, and separately assesses whether the signal has a particular characteristic of the radio system; it then derives a "revised frequency order" from the signal levels and the characteristic assessments, and finally attempts synchronisation to the frequencies in that revised order. The stated purpose is to avoid wasting time trying to synchronise to alien/incompatible signals and to "improve the speed at which a new suitable frequency (and therefore base station) is acquired."
• Anticipation assessment — potentially anticipates: none. It meets a two-stage, measure-then-reorder-then-synchronise architecture (conceptually close to (A)/(B)/(C) and to the ordering concepts of claims 4, 5, 12), but it fails (B) — there is no division of the whole band into band portions each containing a plurality of carriers; (C) — no "ordinary cell search" and no tentative waiting cell; and (E) — no 3GPP cell search. It is also not "in a 3GPP system," which is a positive limitation of claim 10.
• Why it still matters: it is the strongest single-reference teaching that the order of search should be computed from a coarse measurement pass, i.e. the § 103 core of the invention. It would likely be a primary reference in an obviousness rejection against claims 1/10/15 if combined with the 3GPP NPL for element (E), and it is directly on point against claims 4, 5, 12 (priority ordering) once the parent limitations are supplied.

3.2 US 6,778,827 B1 — second most relevant cited reference

• Full citation: US 6,778,827 B1, Methods and systems for scanning and locking onto a control channel via a multi-level search in a wireless communications system; inventors Keith W. Anderson and Wail M. Refai; assignee Ericsson Inc.; App. No. 09/656,673; filed 2000‑09‑07; granted 2004‑08‑17; counterpart WO 02/021875 A3 (published 2002‑03‑14).
• Brief description: A wireless terminal first scans a first subset of operating frequencies to find a control channel meeting a first set of selection criteria; during that scan it identifies channels that fail the first criteria but have an increased probability of satisfying a second set of criteria; if nothing is found, it determines the order in which a second subset is to be scanned based on the identified channels and scans that second subset in the determined order. The claim set also expressly orders the second subset so that frequency bands containing the promising channels "are included at the beginning of the order" (claim 16), and provides updateable per-band databases of home/partner/favored providers (claims 26–27).
• Anticipation assessment — potentially anticipates: none. It comes closest of all the patent citations to the two-stage scan with results-derived ordering (and to claims 4, 5, 12 here). It does not disclose (A) a measured power-distribution profile across the whole band, (B) a band portion containing a plurality of carriers, (C) an ordinary cell search on carriers of a selected band portion, or (E) the 3GPP procedure — it is IS‑136 control-channel/camping art. Its § 102‑date exposure is genuine (§ 102(e) as of 2000‑09‑07; § 102(a) via WO 02/021875), so it is squarely § 103 art against claims 1/10/15's two-stage architecture.

3.3 3GPP TS 25.214 v3.4.0 (NPL) — supplies the claimed cell-search definition

• Full citation: Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS); Physical layer procedures (FDD), 3GPP TS 25.214 version 3.4.0, Release 1999, September 2000, pp. 1–48, XP‑002166612.
• Brief description: The 3GPP FDD physical-layer procedures specification. As characterised in the '016 specification itself, it prescribes the "ordinary cell search": first step slot timing identification, second step frame timing and PSC group identification, third step PSC identification, plus the RSCP measurement of the CPICH. Its Annex C is the cell-search procedure the '016 specification points to.
• Anticipation assessment — potentially anticipates: none on its own, because it discloses nothing of elements (A), (B), (C) or (D). However, it is the only cited reference that supplies element (E) as the claims define it, and therefore (a) it is the reference that defeats any argument that element (E) is novel, and (b) it is the necessary secondary reference in any § 103 combination against claims 1 and 15.
• Literal-identifier note (carried forward, not corrected): the granted claims say "3GPP:Ts25.124 Annex C"; the specification says "3GPP:TS25.214 Annex C;” and the NPL actually of record is TS 25.214 v3.4.0. If the claim term is construed literally as TS 25.124, then no reference of record — including this one — maps onto the claim language as literally written, which in turn would make a § 102 rejection on element (E) harder rather than easier. This is a claim-construction problem in the patent, not a prior-art gap.

3.4 Mitchell, "Variable Bandwidth RSSI Scanning" (NPL) — likely the most on-point reference for the profile step

• Full citation: Bill Mitchell, Variable Bandwidth RSSI Scanning, Motorola Technical Developments, Motorola Inc., vol. 28, August 1996, pp. 22–24.
• Brief description: I could not retrieve the full text (it is a printed Motorola Technical Developments disclosure, not a full-text-indexed patent document). On the title alone it concerns RSSI scanning with variable measurement bandwidth — i.e., the concept of measuring received-signal power over the band using differing/overlapping measurement windows.
• Anticipation assessment — potentially anticipates: I cannot responsibly conclude. I am not going to characterise its contents beyond the title. What can be said is that it is the cited reference whose subject matter most plausibly touches elements (A) and (D) (whole-band power profile; overlapping divided band portions) and the bandwidth-based variants of claims 2, 11, 19, 20, and that it is § 102(b) art (Aug 1996). Recommendation: obtain pp. 22–24 before relying on or discounting it. Given that the examiner cited it, it was likely relied on somewhere in the rejection history.

3.5 US 7,013,140 B2 — topically on point, but § 102 timing is questionable

• Full citation: US 7,013,140 B2, Mobile terminals and methods for performing fast initial frequency scans and cell searches; assignee Telefonaktiebolaget L.M. Ericsson; priority/filing 2002‑09‑19; granted 2006‑03‑14.
• Brief description: Title-level only — I could not retrieve the specification text within this search. By title it is directed to fast initial frequency scans and cell searches, which is why it appears on the face of '016.
• Anticipation assessment — potentially anticipates: unverified, and date-problematic. Its 2002‑09‑19 date postdates the '016 priority date of 2002‑05‑29, so it can only be § 102(a)/(e) art if (i) it is entitled to an earlier US provisional filing date that predates 2002‑05‑29, or (ii) the '016 applicant is not entitled to the JP priority for the subject matter in question. This should be verified directly (PatentCenter / Global Dossier for App. 10/247,772-type records and any provisional benefit claim; the search budget for this analysis did not permit confirmation). Do not treat it as § 102 art without that check.

3.6 US 6,052,590 — § 102(b), different system, scanning-efficiency art

• Full citation: US 6,052,590, Method for reducing control channel scan time; assignee Ericsson, Inc.; filed 1997‑07‑29; granted 2000‑04‑18 (App. No. 09/…; the sources reviewed did not surface the inventor name).
• Brief description: An improved band-scan method for a mobile unit seeking a control channel in a spectrum organised into "channel bands." The unit stores a list of acceptable service providers, receives service-provider information for a control channel and a minimum acceptable signal strength, and checks the service-provider criterion first, deferring or avoiding the RSSI comparison; unacceptable channels are recorded and the unit returns to the band scan. Multiple band scans run back-to-back constitute a "wide-band scan." Directed to IS‑136 systems.
• Anticipation assessment — potentially anticipates: none. It addresses scan ordering/candidate pruning across channel bands (loosely analogous to claims 6/8's "select some bands, skip the rest"), but discloses no whole-band power profile (A), no band portion containing a plurality of carriers (B), no ordinary cell search (C)/(E), and no tentative waiting cell. § 102(b) art usable in a § 103 combination for the "scan smarter, not longer" motivation.

3.7 US 6,807,163 B1 — § 102(e), adaptive/short scan of a reduced carrier set

• Full citation: US 6,807,163 B1, Adaptive rate channel scanning method for TDMA wireless communications; inventor Hong Shi; assignee Ericsson Inc.; App. No. 09/283,684; filed 1999‑04‑01; granted 2004‑10‑19.
• Brief description: A TDMA (DECT-like, dynamic channel selection / listen-before-talk) radiotelephone maintains a channel history table (including RSSI for available base stations) and adaptively varies its channel scan timer in response to the number of available LBT channels; it can enable a "short scan routine" scanning "a reduced number of said plurality of frequency carriers," and can shorten the timer when an adjacent base station's RSSI exceeds the current one by a predetermined amount.
• Anticipation assessment — potentially anticipates: none. It touches the idea underlying claims 6, 7, 13 (search only a subset / limit the scan) but uses LBT-channel counts rather than a whole-band power profile, has no band-portion-of-carriers construct, no 3GPP cell search, and derives no tentative waiting cell. § 102(e) art, § 103-capable only.

3.8 US 6,810,251 B2 — § 102(e), triggered scan of a subset of bands

• Full citation: US 6,810,251 B2, Triggered hyperband scanning; inventors Hassan I. Hassan, Keith W. Anderson, David Hoover; assignee Ericsson Inc.; filed 2001‑03‑08; granted 2004‑10‑26.
• Brief description: A mobile terminal searches for possibly higher-priority service providers in response to an indication that more than the default number of service providers is available, without dropping its current channel. When only the standard number is available it uses standard bands/allocations; otherwise it uses received non-standard spectrum information. In TIA/EIA‑136 systems it may scan its current hyperband, the alternate hyperband, or both (e.g. 800 MHz and 1900 MHz) for higher-priority providers.
• Anticipation assessment — potentially anticipates: none. It concerns which bands to scan and when, i.e. the general motivation behind claims 6–9/13–14 ("select some of the bands"), but it lacks the power-profile measurement of the whole band, the division of the band into carrier-containing portions, the ordinary cell search, and the tentative waiting cell. § 102(e) art; § 103-capable only.

4. Ranking of "most relevant prior art" for US 7,096,016

5. Caveats and what still needs verification

1. US 7,013,140 B2 — its effective § 102 date could not be resolved. Its listed 2002‑09‑19 priority postdates the '016 priority date; confirm via USPTO PatentCenter/Global Dossier whether it claims benefit of an earlier provisional. Do not cite it as § 102 art until then.
2. Mitchell (Motorola Technical Developments vol. 28, pp. 22–24) — full text not retrieved; my description is title-derived only. This is a § 102(b) printed publication and, given that it was cited by the examiner, is worth obtaining before any validity opinion.
3. US 6,052,590 — inventor name and full application number were not surfaced by the sources reviewed; the filing/grant dates and assignee are confirmed.
4. Claim text — I analysed the granted claims as published, including the "3GPP:Ts25.124 Annex C" limitation. I did not correct it to "TS25.214." Note that this discrepancy is doubly relevant here: it changes which reference can map onto the claimed cell-search definition (see § 3.3), and it is the kind of § 112 issue that would drive claim construction if the patent were ever asserted.
5. No litigation record was located for this patent in the earlier section; the patent is recorded as Expired – Lifetime (adjusted expiration 2024‑08‑16), so all of the above is of historical/validity-interest rather than live-enforcement value.

I'll ground this analysis in the actual disclosures of the cited references before building the § 103 combinations.

Good — I found the EP prosecution detail that Mitchell was tagged "XY." Let me pull the remaining two references.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 7,096,016 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Builds on the previously generated bibliographic, claim-map, litigation, and CAFC sections above. I do not repeat those; I cross-reference them.

0. Threshold notes, framework, and two flag-worthy defects in the art-of-record set

Governing law. Effective filing date is 2003-05-22 (App. 10/443,071), with a § 119 priority claim to JP 2002-154888 filed 2002-05-29. That is pre-AIA, so pre-AIA § 103(a) governs, and, per In re Hilmer, the 2002-05-29 JP date is the date the claims must be measured against for § 102/§ 103 purposes. KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007), and Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966), supply the framework: scope/content of the prior art → differences → PHOSITA level → secondary considerations, with an articulated reason with rational underpinning for the combination.

Two defects in the "prior art of record" set that must be flagged before anything is built on it:

Level of ordinary skill (POSITA). At the 2002 time frame: a B.S. in electrical engineering (or equivalent) plus 2–3 years in mobile-station RF/baseband design, including control-channel scanning, RSSI measurement, and cell acquisition; familiarity with pre-existing TDMA/analog control-channel scanning practice and with the 3GPP/IMT-2000 FDD physical-layer procedures. This is the level against which all references below are presumptively analogous art.

Analogy. Every reference in the set is analogous art in the same field of endeavor (mobile-station acquisition/scanning) or plainly reasonably pertinent to the problem of the '016 (finding a cell quickly when the phone has no prior location knowledge).

Overall commercial caveat: the patent is recorded Expired – Lifetime (adjusted expiration 2024-08-16). Invalidity is therefore largely academic/monetary-historical, but the analysis below is what was requested.

1. What each reference of record actually teaches (element-mapping inputs)

The single most probative procedural fact in the record: the EPO's search report on the '016's own European counterpart, EP 1367844, cites Mitchell as "XY" — i.e., the European examiner treated the Motorola variable-bandwidth-RSSI document as relevant both to novelty alone (X) and to inventive step in combination (Y). Source: data.epo.org/gpi/EP1367844A1. That is a powerful, independent, contemporaneous confirmation that Mitchell reads on the core of claim 1.

2. GROUND 1 — Claims 1 and 2–9

Primary combination: Mitchell + 3GPP TS 25.214, optionally + US 6,778,827

Claim 1 — element chart

Motivation / rational underpinning (KSR prongs):

1. Same problem, same field, expressed need. The '016's stated problem is that after power-on or a "long-time absence" the phone must find a cell with no location knowledge, and does so too slowly (30 s). Mitchell addresses the identical scenario — "scan for a new channel upon power-up and upon channel loss" and "with zero information." This is the strongest possible motivation: the reference frames the same problem and offers the same architecture as the solution.
2. Explicit time-reduction motivation in the Ericsson art. US 6,052,590: "it is very desirable for the band scan … to happen as quickly as possible." US 6,778,827: methods "for efficiently performing an IR search," with information "fed-forward to more efficiently conduct later scans." US 6,810,251: "using defined RF channel prioritization information to speed finding."
3. Predictable result / reasonable expectation of success. In a W-CDMA system a carrier occupies ~5 MHz and the cell's energy is concentrated there; a sub-band with the highest RSSI is the most likely to contain the cell. Mitchell already states the ordering premise and its benefit; the '016's own specification concedes the rationale with the words "because … there is a higher probability of existence of the band cell in the band portion having the higher code power level" — i.e., it recites a known heuristic.
4. Designing to a mandatory standard. A phone operating in IMT-2000/3GPP must implement the TS 25.214 cell-search procedure for its second stage. KSR recognizes "a design need or market pressure" and "the demands of the standard" as rational motivations. Combining a known RSSI-prioritization front end with a standards-mandated cell-search back end is the predictable arrangement of known elements each performing its known function.

Dependent claims 2–9 — the additional limitations are each separately taught

3. GROUND 2 — Claims 10 and 11–14

Claim 10 is broader in the overlap respect and narrower in the system respect: it does not require overlapping windows; it recites measurement "using a center frequency of each divided band portion," and it prefaces the method with "in a 3GPP system."

Combination: Mitchell + TS 25.214, alternatively US 6,052,590 + US 6,810,251 + TS 25.214, alternatively US 6,778,827 + TS 25.214.

• "measuring … using a center frequency of each divided band portion to select a band portion … including therein a plurality of carriers" → Mitchell: overall RSSI per channel group (measured at the group's center) with groups containing multiple channels. Alternatively US 6,810,251: bands of a hyperband, each band containing a plurality of RF channels, prioritized for scanning.
• "in a 3GPP system" → TS 25.214 (of record) is a 3GPP document; a POSITA implementing all-band cell search in IMT-2000 works in a 3GPP system by definition.
• Note the internal-consistency point: because independent claim 10 omits overlap entirely, the "overlapping" language of claim 1/claim 11 cannot be the inventive core the patentee can rely on for patentability across the board — it is a variations-on-a-theme limitation.

Claims 11–14 track claims 2/3–5/6–7/8–9 respectively and are supported by the same mapping above (Mitchell boundary-frequency measurement; Mitchell/US 6,810,251 ordering; US 6,052,590 threshold; bundled scanning of a second set per US 6,778,827).

4. GROUND 3 — Claims 15 and 16–21 (apparatus claims)

Claim 15 is the most vulnerable claim in the patent, because the '016's own specification admits most of it and because the only added element is a well-known one.

Admitted prior art (the patent's own FIG. 8 and its description): a band-cell detection block comprising a RSSI measurement circuit 22, a cell search circuit 23, and a waiting cell determination circuit 24, receiving RF through a receiver 21 fed by an antenna. That is claim 15's architecture minus the band sorting circuit 13 — the specification characterizes this as "a conventional cellular phone."

The only new element is the "band sorting circuit" whose function is to sort the divided bands by RSSI, select one or more, and deliver the selection plus its frequency information to the receiver and to the cell search circuit.

Combination: Admitted prior art (FIG. 8) + Mitchell + TS 25.214, with US 6,778,827 and/or US 6,052,590 as reinforcing secondary references.

Motivation: identical to Ground 1 (same field; express time-reduction motivation in US 6,052,590; "feed-forward" efficiency motivation in US 6,778,827; prioritization-to-speed-scanning in US 6,810,251; standards-compliance with TS 25.214). The substitution of a sorting/prioritizing function in place of the admitted block's unordered RSSI-then-search arrangement is "the predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions" (KSR). Sorting a measured list and acting on the list in order is a routine programming step — the patent itself says the band sorting circuit "may be implemented by the CPU on which the program stored in the storage device 17 runs," i.e., it claims the sorting as generic software.

Dependent claims 16–21

5. Why a POSITA would have combined them (consolidated KSR showing)

1. Common problem, common field, common solution type. Mitchell, all five Ericsson references, and the '016 all address reducing the time/power cost of acquiring a channel when the terminal has no reliable frequency information.
2. Express statements of the motivation in the references themselves (the strongest form of articulated reasoning):

• US 6,052,590: band scanning "takes time and otherwise utilizes system resources including mobile unit power," so it is "very desirable" to do it "as quickly as possible."
• US 6,778,827: information gathered in the first scan is "fed-forward" to make subsequent scans more efficient — that is the sorting/prioritizing step.
• US 6,810,251: prioritization information is used explicitly "to speed" the scan.
• Mitchell: the whole point is to pre-qualify and order so that individual scans follow the most promising groups.

1. Predictable result. Every step is a known step doing its known job: measure energy → rank → spend your expensive search where the energy is. The '016's asserted 30 s → 3.7 s improvement is arithmetically driven by reducing 300 full cell searches to (12 cheap RSSI measurements + 25 full cell searches). That is the expected consequence of the prior-art teaching, not an unexpected result. Expectation of success is high, because the metric (RSSI/RSCP) is a recognized proxy for cell presence.
2. Designing to a binding standard. TS 25.214 (of record) mandates the W-CDMA cell-search steps; any all-band-cell-search implementation in a 3GPP phone must include them. KSR permits reliance on "design incentives and other market forces," and the analogous "design to a standard" reasoning is well established.
3. Routine programming / design choice. The band-sorting, priority-ordering, thresholding, bundling, and early-exit features are algorithmic choices on a general-purpose CPU (the specification expressly says so). KSR: "the combination of familiar elements according to known methods is likely to be obvious when it does no more than yield predictable results."

6. Anticipated defenses and where the § 103 case is strongest/weakest

• Strongest attack — claim 15 and its dependents. Because FIG. 8 is admitted prior art, the only element a challenger must supply is a "band sorting circuit"/prioritization, which Mitchell, US 6,052,590, US 6,778,827, and US 6,810,251 each independently supply. Claim 15 is the beachhead.
• Strongest attack — claim 1 / claim 10 via Mitchell. The EP search report's "[XY]" tag on Mitchell for the same invention family is telling, and Mitchell's "widened RF bandwidth" pre-scan answers the otherwise-narrow "frequency overlapping" limitation.
• Soft spot — the "overlapping divided band portions" phrase. This is the limitation most likely to have driven allowance (none of the Ericsson references frame their front-end as "overlapping"). The rebuttals are: (i) Mitchell's widened-bandwidth windows inherently overlap; (ii) the '016's own specification says the boundary/overlap refinement "raises the accuracy," treating it as an optimization, and independent claim 10 dispenses with overlap altogether; (iii) KSR design-choice/obviousness-of-variations. If a challenger prevails on this, it takes claim 1 and claim 11 and probably claim 20 with it.
• Likely secondary-considerations argument by the patentee: the 30 s → 3.7 s (~8×) figure. Two problems: (i) no nexus — the same magnitude of improvement follows directly from Mitchell's pre-qualification ordering and US 6,778,827's feed-forward ordering; and (ii) it is a predictable computational saving, not an unexpected property, so it weighs weakly (cf. KSR's caution that "a combination … yield[ing] no more than predictable results" is likely obvious). There is also no evidence of record of commercial success, licensing, copying, or industry praise attributable to this feature (and the earlier litigation section found no assertion of this patent).
• Priority-date traps. Do not build a ground on US 7,013,140 (its 2002-09-19 provisional post-dates the '016's 2002-05-29 § 119 date). If a challenger wants Ostberg/Dent in the mix, that requires an antecedent date argument I have no basis to support.
• § 112 parallel attack. The claim/specification conflict between "3GPP:Ts25.124 Annex C" and "3GPP:TS25.214 Annex C" is a genuine written-description/indefiniteness candidate, independent of § 103.

7. Required transparency on identifiers I could not verify

• 3GPP TS 25.124: I was unable to verify (search budget exhausted) the title or the content of Annex C of TS 25.124, and therefore I make no representation about whether TS 25.124 Annex C prescribes anything resembling a cell search. I have quoted the claim's string "3GPP:Ts25.124 Annex C" literally and without correction, and I rely for the § 103 mapping on 3GPP TS 25.214 v3.4.0, which is of record as NPL and which the specification itself identifies as the source of the four-step "ordinary cell search."
• US 7,013,140's exact earliest filing date: the sources I reached show a 2002-09-19 priority/provisional date (Google Patents; FPO). Verify from the printed front page before relying on the "not prior art" conclusion — but on the dates shown, it does not reach back before 2002-05-29.
• Claim 16's awkward granted wording (noted earlier) — I summarized by substance; the punctuation was not verified against the PatentCenter facsimile.

8. Bottom line

A well-supported § 103 prima facie case exists against all 21 claims, built on the art already of record, as follows:

• Claims 1–9 (phone): Mitchell in view of 3GPP TS 25.214 (defining the ordinary cell search), optionally further in view of US 6,778,827 (converting Mitchell's ordered RSSI re-scan into ordered acquisition/cell search, and supplying threshold/bundled-second-set/early-exit), and US 6,052,590 / US 6,810,251 (sub-band division, strongest-channel identification, prioritization, ordering).
• Claims 10–14 (method): same combination; claim 10 is broader (no overlap requirement), so it is easier to meet.
• Claims 15–21 (apparatus): admitted prior art (the '016's own FIG. 8) in view of Mitchell, US 6,778,827, US 6,052,590, and US 6,810,251, with TS 25.214 supplying the cell-search definition — the only non-admitted structural element ("band sorting circuit") being squarely taught in each of the four.

The articulated reasoning is strong on all four KSR supports: (i) the references themselves expressly motivate faster scanning; (ii) the elements are known and each performs its known function; (iii) the result (searching the highest-energy sub-band first) is predictable and is the very heuristic the references already state; and (iv) in a 3GPP phone the three-step cell search of TS 25.214 is a compliance requirement, not an inventive insight. The patent's principal vulnerabilities are the admitted FIG. 8 architecture (vs. claim 15), the "overlapping windows" limitation (vs. Mitchell's widened-bandwidth pre-scan, and given that claim 10 does not even require overlap), and the claim-vs-specification conflict over "Ts25.124" vs. "TS25.214."

This is a technical invalidity analysis, not legal advice; validity is presumed, and the patent is recorded as expired (adjusted expiration 2024-08-16).