US 7102494

I'll search for authoritative records on this specific patent number.

US Patent 7,102,494 B2 — Summary

Note on numbering: I have read all identifiers literally, exactly as issued. US 7,102,494 is a real, single patent (not to be confused with any other number). The authoritative full text was retrieved from Google Patents' copy of the USPTO record.

1. Bibliographic data

2. Abstract (as issued)

An apparatus and methods for enhanced data communications and control between a vehicle and a remote data communications terminal are disclosed. The apparatus preferably includes a first protocol converter adapted to be positioned in communication with at least one electronic subsystem of the vehicle, a first transceiver, a first requestor, and a first buffer. The apparatus also preferably includes a second transceiver, a second protocol converter, a second requestor, and a second buffer. The first protocol converter converts data of a vehicle communication protocol to data of an over‑the‑air communication protocol. After the first requestor opens a window in an over‑the‑air communication channel between the vehicle and the remote data communications terminal, the first transceiver in the vehicle wirelessly transmits data over‑the‑air from the vehicle to the second transceiver in the remote data communications terminal preferably not using the over the air communication protocol. When the vehicle is not transmitting data via the first transceiver, data received from the remote data communication terminal and stored in the first buffer is then transferred to the at least one electronic subsystem of the vehicle. Also, when the remote data communication terminal is not transmitting data via the second transceiver, data received from the vehicle and stored in the second buffer is then transferred to other portions of the remote data communication terminal.

3. Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Claim 1 — Vehicle-side apparatus (the base claim). Four elements, all on the vehicle:

1. A first protocol converter wired to at least one vehicle electronic subsystem, converting data from a vehicle bus protocol (the spec names SAE J1708/J1939) into an over‑the‑air protocol.
2. A first requestor on the vehicle that asks for an over‑the‑air communication window to be opened in the vehicle↔remote‑terminal channel.
3. A first transceiver on the vehicle, in communication with the requestor, that both transmits to and receives from the remote terminal wirelessly.
4. A first buffer on the vehicle that temporarily holds data arriving at the transceiver and transfers it onward to the protocol converter and electronic subsystem when the transceiver is not transmitting — i.e., a half‑duplex, listen‑before‑transfer arrangement intended to avoid collisions and compensate for over‑the‑air time delay.

Claim 7 — System-level apparatus (vehicle + remote terminal, "thin" variant). Recites the vehicle-side converter, a vehicle-side requestor, a vehicle-side transceiver, plus (a) a second transceiver at the remote terminal that receives from and transmits to the vehicle, and (b) a second protocol converter at the remote terminal that converts the received over‑the‑air data to a remote‑terminal protocol during the open over‑the‑air window. Notably, claim 7 does not recite the buffers of claim 1/2 or the second requestor — it is the broadest of the independent claims in terms of end‑to‑end architecture, but requires conversion at both ends.

Claim 12 — Method (vehicle→remote direction). Steps: (i) request opening a window in the over‑the‑air channel; (ii) transmit data substantially devoid of an over‑the‑air communication protocol from the vehicle to the remote terminal during the open window; (iii) store the data received at the remote terminal; (iv) transfer that stored data to other portions of the remote terminal only upon an acknowledgment that the remote terminal is not then transmitting to the vehicle.

Claims 13–14 — dependent on claim 12. Claim 13 adds boosting transmit power during the open window. Claim 14 adds receiving the stored data at "the electronic subsystem of the vehicle" and responsively changing a vehicle condition. (Drafting oddity worth flagging: claim 14 depends on claim 12, which is the vehicle‑to‑remote direction, yet its added limitation concerns the vehicle's own electronic subsystem — an apparent antecedent/direction mismatch in the issued text.)

4. Selected dependent claims

• Claim 2 adds the full remote‑terminal side: second transceiver, second protocol converter (converting to remote terminal protocol during the open window), second requestor, second buffer (transferring when not transmitting).
• Claim 3 adds explicit acknowledgment‑driven buffer release at both ends to "compensate for time delay."
• Claims 4 and 9 add first and second signal boosters and narrow to SAE J1708 (vehicle) and RS‑485 (remote terminal).
• Claim 5 / 10 list over‑the‑air options: RF, optical, microwave, satellite, VHF, UHF, infrared.
• Claim 6 / 11 list vehicle protocols (SAE J1708, SAE J1939) and remote protocols (RS‑485, RS‑232, RS‑422, RS‑423).
• Claim 8 requires the remote‑terminal protocol to be "substantially the same as" the vehicle protocol so the converted data is readily recognized.

5. Prior art cited on the face of the patent (29–32 references)

Including US 5,488,352 (Lesesky, Vehicle Enhancement Systems); US 6,064,299 (Lesesky); US 6,111,524 (Lesesky); US 5,918,632 / US 5,677,667 (tractor/trailer couplers); US 5,732,074 (Cellport, mobile portable wireless communication); US 5,794,164 (Microsoft vehicle computer); US 6,772,248 (Dearborn Group, protocol adapter for in‑vehicle networks); US 6,532,416 (Siemens); and US 6,430,485 (wireless interface adaptor for remote diagnosis/programming, cited in the family).

6. Litigation / post‑grant proceedings found

• PTAB IPR2020‑00155, Zonar Systems, Inc. v. Innovative Global Systems, LLC, on U.S. Patent 7,102,494 / Application 11/079,926. Petition filed 2019‑11‑19; institution granted 2020‑05‑12; terminated by settlement on 2020‑08‑27 (joint motion to keep confidential and separate, Doc. 19, filed 2020‑07‑31). Petitioner's expert declaration (Ex. 1002, Ray Nettleton) and the exhibit list — WO 01/36234, US 5,440,691 (Carrafiello), US 6,728,603 (Pruzan), IEEE 802.11‑1999/802.11b, UK App. 2,316,583 (Sasson), the 494 patent's own parent US 6,946,953, US 6,064,299, US 7,280,898 (Lesesky), IrLAP/IrDA and Bluetooth specifications — confirm the contested art was the wireless‑protocol / IrDA / Bluetooth / 802.11 family. Sources: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/ptab/case/IPR2020-00155 and https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2020-00155/
• Google Patents flags the family (family ID 29582709) as having first worldwide family litigation (Darts‑ip), but the Darts‑ip link is a paywalled family‑level pointer, not case detail.
• CAFC 2026 dockets: I searched for a Federal Circuit 2026 appeal tied to 7,102,494 (and to the IPR2020‑00155 proceeding) and found no such docket. Searches for "7102494" + Federal Circuit returned unrelated 2026 appeals (tariff/IEEPA, Exafer v. Microsoft, Apple/Masimo ITC). I cannot confirm any 2026 CAFC activity on this patent.

7. Explicit uncertainties / caveats

1. No CAFC 2026 docket verified. Absence of a hit in my searches is not proof that none exists; a docket-only record (no indexed opinion) may not surface in web search.
2. District‑court litigation is not enumerated here. The Darts‑ip family flag indicates litigation exists, but I did not retrieve specific case numbers, venues, or outcomes, so I am not asserting any.
3. Assignee chain. Current assignee of record is Innovative Global Systems, LLC per the recorded 2013‑08‑16 assignment; Google Patents notes the listed assignees may be inaccurate and that it performs no legal analysis.
4. OCR artifacts in the source text. The claims text I read contains transcription errors that are not the patent's own wording as issued (e.g., "convener" for "converter," "teat least one," "ova‑the‑air," "tat," "farther," "requester"/"requestor" inconsistency). Treat any quoted claim language here as subject to verification against the official USPTO/Patent Center PDF. This does not affect the numbering of the patent itself, which is confirmed consistent across sources as 7,102,494.
5. Date discrepancy in my environment. The session metadata shows both 2026‑04‑26 and a 2026‑09‑30 fetch timestamp; the patent's own dates (filed 2005‑03‑14, issued 2006‑09‑05, expired 2022‑05‑30) are taken from the record and are unaffected.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 7102494 across litigation-tracking sources.

Let me dig into the district court litigation underlying the IPR and search litigation trackers.

Let me look at the specific infringement suits and which patents were asserted.

Litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 7,102,494

Bottom line: I found only one true adversarial proceeding in which U.S. 7,102,494 was the subject patent — a PTAB inter partes review (IPR2020‑00155, Zonar Systems v. Innovative Global Systems) that ended in settlement. The only district court case I can confirm that names the '494 patent is a breach‑of‑contract/declaratory judgment action in D.S.C. (not an infringement action). I did not find a district court infringement complaint asserting the '494 patent.

1. U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board — IPR2020‑00155 (Zonar Systems, Inc. v. Innovative Global Systems, LLC)

Petition exhibits included WO 01/36234, U.S. 5,440,691 (Carrafiello), U.S. 6,728,603 (Pruzan), IEEE 802.11‑1999/802.11(b), UK App. 2,316,583 (Sasson), the '494's own file history, and the related Lesesky patents '953, '299 and '898.

• Unified Patents PTAB docket: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/ptab/case/IPR2020-00155
• Docket Alarm case page: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2020-00155/
• Google Patents entry for the '494 (lists this PTAB case and "Family has litigation," Darts‑IP family 29582709): https://patents.google.com/patent/[US7102494](/patent/US7102494)/en

2. District court — Innovative Global Systems, LLC v. Zonar Systems, Inc. (contract, not infringement)

• Justia order (Aug. 26, 2019): https://cases.justia.com/federal/district-courts/south-carolina/scdce/0:2018cv03083/[246581](/patent/246581)/37/0.pdf
• Docket: https://dockets.justia.com/docket/south-carolina/scdce/0:2018cv03083/246581
• CourtListener opinion: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/[9955824](/patent/9955824)/innovative-global-systems-llc-v-zonar-systems-inc/

3. Related proceedings that reference the '494 but do not involve it as the patent-in-suit

• IPR2020‑00154, Zonar Systems, Inc. v. Innovative Global Systems, LLC — PTAB IPR on U.S. 6,946,953 (the '494's parent/related patent, same Lesesky family). U.S. 7,102,494 appears there only as Exhibit 1009 (prior art).
• Ineffective/other IGS campaigns (no '494 assertion found):
  • Innovative Global Systems LLC v. Turnpike Global Technologies L.L.C., et al., 6:09‑cv‑00157 (E.D. Tex., filed Apr. 7, 2009; closed Aug. 2, 2010) — asserted the '554, '203, '352, '800 and '993 patents, not the '494.
  • Later E.D. Tex. suits (Teletrac 6:10‑cv‑00040; Volvo CE 6:10‑cv‑00327; OnStar 6:10‑cv‑00574; PeopleNet 6:11‑cv‑00497; Rand McNally) — same five patents.
  • Innovative Global Systems, LLC v. Keep Truckin, Inc., 1:19‑cv‑00641‑MN (D. Del., filed Apr. 8, 2019) and v. Samsara Networks (D. Del.) — asserted U.S. 8,032,277 and U.S. 10,157,384 ("ELD patents"), not the '494. PTAB IPR2020‑00694 and IPR2020‑00690 found those claims unpatentable (Fed. Cir. appeal by IGS, No. 21‑2289, affirmed June 15, 2022 — but that appeal concerns the ELD patents, not the '494).
  • Innovative Global Systems, LLC v. Nextraq LLC, 1:18‑cv‑05241 (N.D. Ga., filed Nov. 14, 2018); v. Blue Tree Systems, Inc., 1:19‑cv‑00642 (D. Del.) — I could not verify from the retrieved records which patents were asserted; neither is confirmed as asserting the '494.

Confidence and verification caveats

• High confidence: IPR2020‑00155 (petitioner Zonar, patent owner IGS, challenged U.S. 7,102,494, filed 11/19/2019, instituted 5/12/2020, terminated 8/27/2020 via settlement) — corroborated across Unified Patents, Docket Alarm, Patexia and the Google Patents "PTAB case" link.
• High confidence: D.S.C. 0:18‑cv‑03083‑JMC as an IGS v. Zonar contract case involving the '953 and '494 patents, filed 11/14/2018, with the 8/26/2019 order denying dismissal and summary judgment.
• Unverified: the final disposition (dismissal entry) of the D.S.C. case; and whether any of the 2018–2019 Delaware/Georgia complaints asserted the '494 (the ones I could read asserted other patents). I did not have direct PACER access, nor a full Docket Navigator/Lex Machina or RPX Insight record pull, so a comprehensive, date-stamped check of PACER (D.S.C., D. Del., E.D. Tex., N.D. Ga., W.D. Wash.) and of RPX Insight/Docket Navigator for "7,102,494" is advisable before treating the above as exhaustive.
• Per your rule, I have not auto-corrected any identifiers; note the source text itself contains typographical variants reproduced above (e.g., "convener" for "converter," "teat least" in claim 3), which I have not altered.

I'll verify the one PTAB proceeding the patent page hints at (IPR2020-00155, petitioner Unified Patents) and check for any others.

The structured block said "no AIA trial proceedings," but the patent page itself flags IPR2020-00155. Let me dig further — including whether Unified Patents filed separately and any other proceedings or appeals.

Good — I've confirmed one IPR and a same-day companion petition. Let me pull the termination order, the companion IPR, and the Federal Circuit appeal.

I hit the tool-call limit before I could chase the last three leads to ground. Here's the report with what I verified, flagged clearly where verification stopped.

PTAB proceedings on US 7,102,494 — practitioner's read

Proceedings overview

One AIA trial proceeding is on file against US 7,102,494: IPR2020-00155, Zonar Systems, Inc. v. Innovative Global Systems, LLC — instituted on all challenged claims and terminated by settlement 2020-08-27 before any Final Written Decision. Breakdown: 1 total / 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 1 settled / 0 institution denials. The bottom line a defendant needs to hear plainly: neither side has a PTAB merits ruling to stand on. Nothing was cancelled, nothing was confirmed, and because the case never reached an FWD no § 315(e)(2) estoppel attached to anyone. This is not a "hardened" patent (no claim survived an FWD) and not a dead one (a panel found a reasonable likelihood of prevailing on at least one claim of every challenged claim). The record is, instead, a well-funded, institution-tested invalidity blueprint sitting in the public file, un-estoppled and reusable.

Discrepancy flagged: the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block in this prompt reports that the USPTO ODP API returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent. That is wrong on the face of the record — the Google Patents page for US 7,102,494 itself carries a litigation entry "PTAB case IPR2020-00155 filed (Settlement)." Treat the ODP ingest for this patent as incomplete, not as evidence of no PTAB activity.

Second discrepancy flagged: Google Patents labels the IPR2020-00155 petitioner field as "Unified Patents PTAB Data". That is the data provider attribution on the Unified Patents portal, not the petitioner. The petitioner was Zonar Systems, Inc. There is no indication Unified Patents acted as petitioner here. Don't brief it the other way.

IPR2020-00155 — Zonar Systems, Inc. v. Innovative Global Systems, LLC

• Type: Inter Partes Review (35 U.S.C. § 311)
• Filed: 2019-11-19
• Status: "Settlement" (per the Unified Patents PTAB portal; "Terminated-Settled"). Termination date 2020-08-27. Plain English: instituted, then killed by settlement roughly 3.5 months into trial, with no merits decision.
• Judge panel: Administrative Patent Judges Justin T. Arbes, John F. Horvath, and Frederick C. Laney; Judge Laney authored the institution decision.
• Petition grounds: Challenged claims 1, 2, 5–7, 10, and 11 of the '494 patent — i.e., both independent claims (1 and 7) plus dependents 2, 5, 6 (from claim 1) and 10, 11 (from claim 7). The Board's institution decision and its sua sponte order confirm the challenge was pleaded under 35 U.S.C. §§ 102 and 103 (the panel expressly ordered briefing comparing "Petitioner's 35 U.S.C. §§ 102 and 103 allegations of invalidity in Civil Action No. 18-cv-03083-JMC" against the petition grounds). Filed exhibits identify the art: WO 01/36234 (Ex. 1003); US 5,440,691 to Carrafiello (Ex. 1005); US 6,728,603 to Pruzan (Ex. 1006); IEEE Std. 802.11-1999 and 802.11(b) (Ex. 1007); UK App. 2,316,583 to Sasson (Ex. 1008); the patent owner's own earlier US 6,946,953, US 6,064,299 and US 7,280,898 to Lesesky (Exs. 1009–1011); IrLAP / IrDA Principles and Protocols (Exs. 1012, 1014); and the Bluetooth protocol (Ex. 1013); all supported by the Declaration of Ray Nettleton (Ex. 1002). Caveat: the ground-by-ground mapping of each reference to each claim is not in the material I was able to verify — don't quote a specific ground number without pulling the petition from PTAB E2E.
• Institution decision: Instituted 2020-05-12 (Paper 15, "Trial Instituted Document"), granting institution on all grounds raised in the Petition for all challenged claims. The panel held that "Petitioner has shown a reasonable likelihood that it would prevail in showing the unpatentability of at least one of the challenged claims," and — applying SAS Institute v. Iancu — instituted on the full set rather than a subset. Notably, the panel first ordered supplemental briefing on the substantive overlap between the petitioner's parallel district-court invalidity contentions and the petition (37 C.F.R. § 42.104 / discretionary-denial territory) and still instituted — i.e., it declined to walk away on redundancy grounds.
• Final Written Decision: None. No FWD ever issued. I will not characterize any claim as cancelled or sustained, because the Board never ruled. All 14 claims of the '494 patent remained in force throughout and stand unadjudicated at the PTAB today.
• Settlement / termination: Terminated 2020-08-27 on the parties' settlement. The portal records a "Motion to Terminate" and a 2020-08-27 Board paper that the data source labels inconsistently as "Final Decision / Granting Institution." The settlement terms are not public and I have no verified detail on them — treat them as confidential. (Context worth knowing: the same petitioner, Zonar, filed a companion petition the same day — IPR2020-00154 — against the parent patent US 6,946,953, per the Declaration of Joseph A. Schouten, Ex. 2001. So this was a two-petition, two-patent family attack, not a second bite at the '494.)
• Appeal: None from this proceeding — an appeal to the Federal Circuit is legally unavailable because no FWD issued. Separate lead, unverified: a Federal Circuit disposition, Innovative Global Systems, LLC v. Motive Technologies, Inc., No. 2021-2289 (Fed. Cir. June 15, 2022) — per curiam (Lourie, Bryson, Hughes), AFFIRMED — is reported as an appeal from the PTAB "in No. IPR2020-____". The search result truncated the IPR number, so I cannot confirm whether that appeal arises from the '494 or from the '953 family proceeding, and Motive Technologies (not Zonar) is the appellee. Do not assume it is an affirmance of an FWD on the '494. Pull the docket before relying on it.
• Defensive value: Zonar spent real money and the Board bought the theory — it instituted on every challenged claim, including both independents. That is useful evidence of vulnerability. But because there was no FWD, that institution decision binds no one, estops no one, and cancelled nothing; a defendant can (and should) dust off the same art — Nettleton, Pruzan '603, Carrafiello '691, Sasson GB 2,316,583, the 802.11/IrDA/Bluetooth standards materials, and the Lesesky family patents — and plead it fresh without a § 315(e)(2) argument being available against them.

Strategic summary

Claim status: nothing is cancelled and nothing is sustained; the patent is entirely UNTESTED on the merits at the PTAB. All 14 claims issued and none was ever adjudicated. The claims actually put in issue were 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 10 and 11 (instituted 2020-05-12). The claims never challenged are 3, 4, 8, 9, 12, 13 and 14 — critically, the entire method-claim set 12–14 was left untouched by the Zonar petition, so there is no PTAB record at all on the method claims. Anyone asserting claims 3, 4, 8, 9 or 12–14 is working with claims that have not even been screened for institution.

Estoppel landscape: there is none, and that cuts in the defendant's favor. Section 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches only after a final written decision. IPR2020-00155 settled out before the FWD clock ran (institution 2020-05-12; statutory one-year FWD deadline would have been on or about 2021-05-12; termination came 2020-08-27). No FWD, no estoppel — not against Zonar, not against any privy, and certainly not against an unrelated defendant. Separately, even if an FWD had issued, § 315(e)(2) estoppel would have bound only the petitioner, its real parties in interest, and privies; a defendant that did not fund or control the Zonar petition retains every prior-art ground, including the Nettleton-based §§ 102/103 theories Zonar itself used. The practical corollary: there is no "already-ran" ground set to avoid duplicating, and no estoppel trapdoor to worry about.

Pattern signals. Two on point. First, the patent owner, Innovative Global Systems, LLC (classified on the PTAB portal as an NPE), ran a serial assertion campaign across the vehicle-telematics sector — Innovative Global Systems v. Blue Tree Systems, 1:19-cv-00642 (D. Del.), voluntarily dismissed 2019-08-29, and a South Carolina action against Zonar, Civil Action No. 18-cv-03083-JMC, which the Board itself referenced when ordering supplemental briefing on the overlap between the district-court invalidity contentions and the petition. Second, the respondent pattern is the same petitioner attacking the whole family: Zonar filed IPR2020-00154 ('953 patent) and IPR2020-00155 ('494 patent) on the same day, 2019-11-19. There is no defensive aggregator (Unified Patents et al.) in the petitioner chain — repeat, despite the Google Patents field label. And there is no PTAB appeal by the patent owner from this patent, because there was nothing to appeal; the Motive Technologies appeal lead remains unverified as to which IPR it came from.

One more fact a defendant must price in: this patent is expired. Google Patents records an anticipated expiration of 2022-05-30, and current status "Expired – Lifetime." That eliminates prospective injunctive exposure and post-2022-05-30 infringement entirely. Live exposure, if any, is confined to pre-expiration conduct within the 35 U.S.C. § 286 six-year damages lookback from the date a suit is filed.

Recommended next steps

• If you are a defendant facing the '494: ask for the demand letter's claim chart to identify claims and dates. If the assertion rests solely on pre-2022-05-30 conduct, push immediately on the § 286 lookback and the 2022-05-30 expiration. If it rests on claims 3, 4, 8, 9 or 12–14, note that those claims have never been screened by the PTAB at all — not even institution.
• Lead with IPR2020-00155's institution decision as your invalidity roadmap. Paper 15 (2020-05-12) is public and free to cite; it found a reasonable likelihood of prevailing on at least one claim of every claim challenged — claims 1, 2, 5–7, 10 and 11. Get it from PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts) or the mirrored public copies at https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2020-00155/Inter_Partes_Review_of_U.S._Pat._7102494/. Quote the disposition exactly as the Board wrote it — institute the trial, not cancel the claims. Do not tell a court or a jury that any claim was invalidated; it was not, and that misstatement is sanction-bait in the other direction.
• No estoppel means you can re-assert the Zonar art yourself. The prior-art set (Nettleton declaration plus Exs. 1003, 1005–1008, 1012–1014) is available for a fresh IPR, an IPR-style invalidity contention set, or a district-court § 282 defense. But check § 315(b): any defendant served with a complaint more than one year ago is time-barred from petitioning.
• If you are contemplating an IPR today: the patent is expired, so the ROI calculus is usually negative, and the FWD timeline milestones from IPR2020-00155 (institution 2020-05-12, statutory FWD deadline ≈2021-05-12, termination 2020-08-27) are historical only — there is no active proceeding with pending trial-stage milestones on this patent.
• Verify the one open lead before relying on it. Confirm the full PTAB proceeding number behind Innovative Global Systems, LLC v. Motive Technologies, Inc., No. 2021-2289 (Fed. Cir. June 15, 2022), per curiam AFFIRMED (Lourie, Bryson, Hughes) — https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/[6477826](/patent/6477826)/innovative-global-systems-llc-v-motive-technologies-inc/ — and whether it is a '494 or '953 appeal. I could not complete that check and am not asserting either way.
• Bottom line framing: there is no PTAB activity on file that invalidated or sustained any claim of US 7,102,494. The single IPR instituted on all challenged claims and settled out with zero estoppel and zero claim-level adjudication. That is a weaker-than-ideal record for the patent owner on the merits (a panel liked the invalid case) and a strong record for a defendant on procedure (nothing binds you, nothing is cancelled, and the entire Nettleton art set is yours to reuse).

I'll search for the actual USPTO assignment records and related ownership evidence for this patent.

Good — I found a key ownership fact in the Zonar complaint. Let me dig for the specific reel/frame records and the IGS/VES relationship.

Let me try to pin down the specific reel/frame records and any correspondent data.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US 7,102,494 B2

Verification sources used: Google Patents legal events (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7102494/en); USPTO Assignment Center (https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/); PTAB IPR2020‑00155 record (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/ptab/case/IPR2020-00155); IGS v. Zonar, No. 0:18‑cv‑03083 (D.S.C.) pleadings and opinions (https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/[9955824](/patent/9955824)/innovative-global-systems-llc-v-zonar-systems-inc/ and https://cases.justia.com/federal/district-courts/south-carolina/scdce/0:2018cv03083/[246581](/patent/246581)/37/0.pdf); Zonar's Answer to Interrogatory No. 1 in the parallel IPR (https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2020-00155/); and a 2010 Taiwanese STPI/iKnow litigation report on IGS's first assertion campaign (https://iknow.stpi.niar.org.tw/post/Read.aspx?PostID=5718).

Up-front evidentiary caveat, stated plainly: I could confirm that two post‑issuance recordings exist and what they convey, but my searches did not surface the reel/frame numbers or the correspondent of record for either recording. I am not filling those fields with guesses. Where a field is unavailable I mark it [not retrieved] and say so. This matters for signal #3 below, which cannot be assessed without the correspondent data.

Inventors

Unusual-pattern check — NOT present. The classic fire‑sale precursor (all inventors leaving the original assignee within 12 months of filing, severing the human link to the portfolio) does not appear here. The opposite occurred: the lead inventor became the principal of the transferee entity (IGS) and remains its CEO through at least the 2018–2019 litigation. Inventor continuity across the transfer is the single most important structural fact in this chain — it reframes the VES→IGS transfer as founder‑driven monetization rather than an arm's‑length sell‑off.

Original assignee

Vehicle Enhancement Systems, Inc. (VES) — a South Carolina corporation/company; original assignee on the issued face of US 7,102,494 and on the entire Lesesky/Weant tractor‑trailer portfolio.

• Primary line of business: developer of tractor‑trailer electronic subsystems and vehicle data‑communications hardware — i.e., an operating company, not a holding vehicle. Its own prior patents (US 5,488,352; US 5,677,667; US 5,918,632; US 5,798,577; US 6,064,299; US 6,111,524; US 6,025,563, all cited in this family) are directed to physical couplers, lenses, connector covers (USD403659, USD404170, USD434006), cranking management, and load‑weight sensing — design patents and hardware patents of the kind only a product company files.
• Shipped product embodying the claims? Substantially yes for the underlying VES technology base: the patents above describe apparatus actually deployed in tractor/trailer electrical environments (pneumatic‑coupler data links, seven‑pin/six‑pin Deutch connectors, ABS and trailer power subsystems). The '494's own spec is written around commercial tractor‑trailer wiring and J1708/J1939 buses. I found no evidence of product sales of the specific '494 over‑the‑air hardware by VES, and I am not asserting any.
• Current status: VES transferred essentially its entire patent estate to IGS ("In 2009, after IGS was formed, VES transferred ownership of much of VES's intellectual property and patent rights to IGS" — IGS's own complaint, ¶48, filed 2018‑11‑14). After that transfer VES appears to have wound down as an IP owner; I found no evidence of an acquisition, merger, or bankruptcy filing for VES. Status: effectively an IP‑divested, non‑asserting legacy entity — evidence incomplete. I did not confirm a formal dissolution or Chapter 7/11 filing and do not assert one.

Assignment timeline

Two recorded USPTO assignments are visible in the public legal‑events record. Reel/frame and correspondent were not retrievable in my searches; I flag each rather than fabricate.

• 2005‑03‑14 (recorded 2005‑03‑14) — Reel [not retrieved]/Frame [not retrieved]

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest ("ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)")
  • Assignor: Lesesky, Alan; Weant, Bobby Ray
  • Assignee: Vehicle Enhancement Systems, Inc. (South Carolina)
  • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
  • Context: Founding‑era inventor→company assignment, recorded contemporaneously with the 2005‑03‑14 filing of continuation application 11/079,926; standard employment/obligation assignment — not a monetization event.

• 2013‑08‑16 (recorded 2013‑08‑16; execution date [not retrieved]) — Reel [not retrieved]/Frame [not retrieved]

  • Conveyance: Assignment (recorded as "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)")
  • Assignor: Vehicle Enhancement Systems, Inc.
  • Assignee: Innovative Global Systems, LLC (South Carolina LLC; principal place of business Rock Hill, SC; members citizens of SC and NC — per IGS's own jurisdictional allegation in 0:18‑cv‑03083)
  • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
  • Context: Transfer of the operating company's patent estate to a licensing‑only affiliate — i.e., transfer‑to‑asserter / inventor‑controlled monetization entity. IGS was formed in 2009 per the litigation record; the recording followed in 2013. The '494 expired 2022‑05‑30, so no further transfers have occurred.

Contradiction to flag explicitly against the prior generated section. The prior summary lists the VES→IGS assignment as recorded 2013‑08‑16, citing Google Patents. IGS's own complaint (¶48) states the transfer happened in 2009. Both can be true only if execution (2009) preceded USPTO recordation (2013) by roughly four years — a long recording gap. The executed‑before‑recorded sequence is the reading I favor, but I could not retrieve the execution date from the assignment record itself, so I am reporting the gap as an open item rather than resolving it. This is the only substantive contradiction I found between the earlier section and the live records.

Post‑asset events relevant to the chain (not assignments): 2007 VES–Zonar license; Oct 26, 2010 IGS infringement suits in E.D. Tex.; 2011‑10‑01 IGS–Zonar license "Contract"; 2014‑07‑01 Addendum; 2018‑11‑14 IGS sues Zonar for royalties; 2019‑11‑19 Zonar files IPR2020‑00154 (’953 patent) and IPR2020‑00155 (this patent); 2020‑08‑27 both IPRs terminated by settlement.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7102494
    2002 : Priority application filed
    2005 : Continuation filed
         : Inventors assign to VES
    2006 : Patent US 7102494 issues
    2009 : VES transfers IP estate to IGS
    2010 : IGS files EDTX suits on sibling patents
    2013 : VES to IGS assignment recorded
    2018 : IGS sues Zonar over royalties
    2020 : Zonar IPR settled and terminated
    2022 : Patent expires

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — PRESENT (with a material qualification).
Patent moved from an operating assignee (VES, a hardware developer holding design and apparatus patents) to a licensing‑only LLC (IGS). Corroboration, not naming: (a) IGS's revenue model as pleaded in its own complaint is a per‑unit royalty — "$5.00 for Zonar's sale and servicing of each Licensed System," plus a 2007 predecessor license and a 2014 addendum keyed to sales volume; (b) the 2010 STPI report describes IGS as "a patent licensing company" owning nine patents all originating from Lesesky; (c) Unified Patents' docket classifies the patent owner in IPR2020‑00155 as "NPE (Individual)."
Qualification that cuts against the strongest form of this signal: IGS is not an anonymous shell. It is a South Carolina LLC with a stated principal place of business (Rock Hill, SC), members identified as citizens of SC and NC, and a publicly named CEO (Lesesky, the inventor). There is no evidence of a Delaware/Texas single‑member shell, a registered‑agent mail drop, or concealed principals. So: licensing‑only transferee — yes; anonymous shell — no.

2. Known asserter in the chain — PRESENT (weak‑to‑moderate).
IGS does not match any entity on the enumerated lists (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi‑LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Round Rock, DGC, Spangenberg entities). However, it is (i) classified as "NPE (Individual)" by Unified Patents on the IPR2020‑00155 docket, and (ii) the plaintiff in a six‑defendant E.D. Tex. infringement campaign filed 2010‑10‑26 against OnStar, ATX, Xirgo Technologies, Progressive Casualty Insurance, Power Solution, and BSM Wireless — including an insurer sued over its use of a vendor's product, a hallmark of broad assertion strategy. Important limit: the patents asserted in 2010 were US 6,608,554 / 6,411,203 / 6,744,352 / 7,015,800 / 7,449,993 — not the '494. The '494 appears in the chain's assertion history only via the Zonar license dispute (a contract/declaratory‑judgment action, not an infringement count) and the resulting IPR.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — INSUFFICIENT DATA.
This is the signal the task most wants, and it is precisely the signal I could not test: no correspondent of record was retrieved for either recording. I also cannot confirm or deny recurrence, because I did not obtain the assignment‑record correspondence fields. One adjacent data point, not a substitute: in IPR2020‑00155 the petitioner's counsel field reads Seed Intellectual Property Law Group LLP (Zonar's side, not IGS's), and IGS was represented in the D.S.C. case by Edward Coyne, Joseph A. Schouten, and Marla S. Bowman. Those are litigation counsel, not recording correspondents, and I decline to treat them as such. Marked unclear; no finding.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT.
The chain is a single hop with a multi‑year hold: inventors→VES (2005), VES→IGS (executed ~2009, recorded 2013‑08‑16), then nothing until expiration on 2022‑05‑30. There is no chain of successive LLCs, no shared‑address relay, no <24‑month serial reassignment. This is the single most favorable fact in the file for IGS.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — PARTIALLY PRESENT, and it cuts both ways.
Relative to the 2010‑10‑26 E.D. Tex. campaign, the transfer of VES's estate to IGS preceded assertion by roughly one year on IGS's own pleading (2009), which fits the pattern of a chain arranged to create a clean asserting owner — but it is outside the 6‑month window. Relative to the 2018‑11‑14 Zonar suit, the 2013 recording is five‑plus years earlier, so no. And the Zonar action is a royalty/contract claim, not an infringement claim, which is not the posture this signal is designed to detect. Present in weak form only.

6. Bankruptcy fire‑sale — NOT PRESENT.
No Chapter 7/11 for VES appears anywhere in the record I retrieved. The estate was transferred voluntarily to an entity the inventor controlled and ran, which is the opposite of a distressed sale. Marked not present, with the caveat that I did not exhaustively search South Carolina bankruptcy dockets.

7. Privateering — UNCLEAR, leaning NOT PRESENT.
The formal shape (operating company VES hands patents to a non‑practicing affiliate IGS, which then asserts) superficially matches. But the decisive element — the operating company using the NPE as a proxy to attack its own competitors while remaining commercially active — is absent. VES's product business and the 2010 defendants (OnStar/telematics, insurer, GPS vendors) do not present as a competitive relationship, and VES divested its whole estate rather than retaining a product line while a proxy enforced. Meanwhile, the payout structure with Zonar was an ordinary running royalty license, not a proxy litigation campaign. The closest thing to a "privateering" fact here is that the inventor himself sits on both sides of the transfer, which is better characterized as inventor‑led monetization. Marked unclear.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT.
The chain terminates at IGS, an asserter. It was never transferred to RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents (as a member's defensive asset), or OIN. Note the apparent tension with the fact that a Unified Patents index page and google patents NPE tagging touch this patent: those are databases describing the patent, not assignments of it. Unified Patents is not the owner. The patent was instead neutralized by a different mechanism — expiration (2022‑05‑30) — and by Zonar's settlement‑terminated IPR (2020‑08‑27).

Verdict

NPE — high confidence.

Two strong signals plus corroboration: (i) a documented transfer from an operating hardware company (VES) to a licensing‑only LLC (IGS) whose pleaded business model is per‑unit royalties, recorded 2013‑08‑16 (executed per IGS's own complaint ¶48 in 2009, an execution‑vs‑recording gap I flag as unverified); and (ii) a third‑party NPE classification — Unified Patents labels the IPR2020‑00155 patent owner "NPE (Individual)" — layered on IGS's 2010‑10‑26 six‑defendant E.D. Tex. infringement campaign against OnStar, Progressive Casualty, Xirgo, and others (on sibling patents, not the '494). Confidence is capped by two honest limits: the correspondent of record was not retrieved for either assignment, so the repeat‑correspondent test could not be run; and the chain is a single hop with no cascading LLC relays, which removes the strongest indicia of a shell‑network structure. This is best characterized as an inventor‑controlled NPE — Lesesky, the named inventor, is IGS's CEO — rather than an anonymous troll shell. Practically, assertion exposure is now moot: the patent expired 2022‑05‑30 and the only PTAB challenge (IPR2020‑00155) terminated by settlement on 2020‑08‑27.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number 7102494) — and specifically pull the reel/frame and correspondent fields for the 2005‑03‑14 and 2013‑08‑16 recordings, which are the two data points this analysis could not confirm and which would either confirm or collapse signal #3.

I'll search for authoritative records on this patent and its cited references.

Let me verify the key references that bear on the anticipation analysis.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 7,102,494 B2 (per-claim §102 mapping)

Scope note. This builds on the previously generated summary (bibliographic data, claim breakdown, litigation). I do not repeat those. What follows is the citation-by-citation prior-art analysis you asked for. Everything is for US 7,102,494 literally; I did not substitute any similar number.

Two cross-reference flags before I begin:

1. Date discrepancy (repeated). The task header says "Current Date: April 26, 2026," while my session metadata shows a fetch timestamp of 2026-09-30. The patent's own dates (priority 2002-05-30; issue 2006-09-05; expiry 2022-05-30) are unaffected. I flag this so the statutory-bar arithmetic below can be re-checked against whichever date you treat as authoritative — but note the analysis is anchored to the 2002-05-30 effective filing/priority date, which is settled either way.
2. New contradiction to flag. The previously generated summary states US 5,488,352 is by "Lesesky et al." The 7102494 specification text does say that, but the printed front page of the parent US 6,946,953 lists the inventor as "Jasper" for 5,488,352. These two sources disagree on the named inventor; I do not resolve it and do not auto-correct either. Verify against the official printed patent before relying on inventorship for §102(e)/§103(c) common-ownership questions.

0. The statutory framework I am applying

• US 7,102,494 was filed 2005-03-14 as a continuation, claiming the 2002-05-30 priority of US 10/158,581 (now US 6,946,953). It is a pre-AIA patent (filed before 2013-03-16), so pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. §102 governs.
• §102(b) cutoff = 2001-05-30 (one year before priority). Anything "patented or described in a printed publication" before that date is a statutory bar regardless of common inventorship or assignee.
• §102(e) = US patents/applications "by another" filed before the 2002-05-30 priority. Critically, VES's own patents/applications (Lesesky/Weant) are not "by another," so §102(e) generally does not reach the applicant's own co-pending work — but they still qualify under §102(a)/(b) once they issued more than a year before 2001-05-30.
• §102(a) = known/used/patented/published by others before the invention date.
• Anticipation under §102 requires a single reference disclosing every limitation as arranged in the claim. Where a reference supplies all-but-one limitation, I say so explicitly and identify the gap — that is an obviousness (§103) setup, not anticipation.

1. Ranking: the face citations in order of relevance

(Family-cited, and highly relevant, but check the parent: US 6,430,485 Hullinger and US 5,884,202 Arjomand — discussed in §3 below.)

2. Tier 1 — the genuinely threatening references, in detail

Ref. 1 — US 6,064,299 A — Lesesky et al. (Vehicle Enhancement Systems, Inc.)

• Full citation: Apparatus and Method for Communication Between Heavy Duty Vehicle and Remote Data Communication Terminal, US 6,064,299 A. Priority 1995-11-09; issued 2000-05-16. Family sibling: WO 97/17232 A1 (pub. 1997-05-15); continuations US 6,411,203 and US 6,608,554.
• §102 basis: §102(b) — issued 2000-05-16, more than one year before 2002-05-30, and it is a printed publication of the §102(b) type irrespective of the common assignee. (WO 97/17232 is independently §102(b).)
• What it discloses: A heavy-duty vehicle with electronic subsystems on a twisted-pair bus; "vehicle data communications protocol converting means 33" that converts SAE J1708 → RS-485 → IrDA or RF for transmission "through-the-air" to a remote terminal 60/60′; a first transceiver 35 on the vehicle associated with a connector 50 in the cab; and a remote terminal with a second transceiver and remote-side protocol converting means converting the over-the-air protocol to a third protocol (RS-485/RS-232) for a computer. It expressly states the first and second transceivers each have a physical layer and that the over-the-air protocol "only uses the physical layer."
• Claims it potentially anticipates: None in whole. It is the single most complete mapping to claim 7, supplying the vehicle protocol converter, the vehicle transceiver, the second transceiver, and the second protocol converter. The gap is the "requestor… request the opening of an over-the-air communication window." US 6,064,299 has no window-opening requestor, no buffer, and no "during the open window" timing. It also fails claim 1(d) (no "buffer… transfer… when the first transceiver is not transmitting") and fails claim 12 (its data is encapsulated in the over-the-air protocol, the opposite of claim 12's "substantially devoid of an over-the-air communication protocol").
• Assessment: This is your primary §103 base for claims 1, 2, 7, 8 and 12, and it is the reference an examiner would combine with a wireless-medium-access teaching (e.g., IEEE 802.11b DCF/RTS-CTS, which the 7102494 specification itself concedes "is specified in the IEEE 802.11b standard and is well understood") to reach the "requestor/window" limitation.

Ref. 2 — US 5,732,074 A — Spaur, Braitberg, Kennedy, Hatcher (CellPort Labs, Inc.)

• Full citation: Mobile Portable Wireless Communication System, US 5,732,074 A. Filed 1996-01-16; issued 1998-03-24. Family: WO 97/26750 A1; EP 0 875 111.
• §102 basis: §102(b) (issued 1998-03-24), and it is by another.
• What it discloses: A controller in the vehicle linked to a vehicle standardized network (CAN) via a controller interface; a TCP/IP stack, HTTP web server and CGI-bin in the controller; a wireless device (CDPD airlink modem) communicating with a remote station/computing terminal; bi-directional requests and commands — including remote control of vehicle devices (door locks, readings) and downloading of executable code; data memory storing vehicle parameter data. Notably: "If a channel is available to the particular vehicle, the CDPD link can proceed to transmit" — channel-availability gating, which is the closest thing in the face citations to a "window" concept.
• Claims it potentially anticipates: Claim 1 arguably on the converter/transceiver elements but not on the "first requestor" or the "buffer… when the first transceiver is not transmitting." Claim 12 not anticipated (Spaur's payload is IP/HTTP framed, not "devoid of the over-the-air protocol"). Its strongest §102-adjacent exposure is to dependent claims reciting remote control of vehicle subsystems if such a claim existed; the nearest issued claim is claim 14's "changing the condition of the vehicle."
• Assessment: Genuine §102(b) art with independent §103 value, especially on the "vehicle-side controller + wireless + remote terminal" architecture. It was asserted by Cellport in the later IPR campaign against the '074 itself (Cellport v. …, IPR2015-00633; also cited in IPR2022-00970), which confirms the '074 is treated as broad foundational wireless-vehicle-link art.

Ref. 3 — US 5,884,202 A — Arjomand (Hewlett-Packard Company)

• Full citation: Modular Wireless Diagnostic Test and Information System, US 5,884,202 A. Filed 1995-07-20; issued 1999-03-16.
• §102 basis: §102(b); listed under "Family Cites Families" and on the parent '953's front page (Arjomand).
• What it discloses: A modular portable test unit that connects to a vehicle's diagnostic connector and communicates wirelessly with a remote/base unit for vehicle diagnostics and information.
• Claims it potentially anticipates: None whole. It is strong §103 evidence for claim 1(a)/(c) (vehicle-side converter + transceiver) and for claim 7's two-transceiver architecture. It has no "requestor," no "window," and no half-duplex buffer.
• Assessment: The best "wireless link to a vehicle bus" art of its vintage; use it with US 6,064,299 or US 5,732,074.

Ref. 4 — US 6,772,248 B1 — McClure et al. (Dearborn Group, Inc.)

• Full citation: Protocol Adapter for In-Vehicle Networks, US 6,772,248 B1. Filed 1999-03-26; issued 2004-08-03.
• §102 basis: §102(e) — US patent by another filed before 2002-05-30.
• What it discloses: A protocol adapter translating between in-vehicle network protocols (e.g., SAE J1708/J1939, CAN, J1850) and computer-side protocols. This is the canonical "protocol converter" reference.
• Claims it potentially anticipates: Claims 6 and 11 would be squarely met as to their added limitations (the JA/J1939 and RS-232/422/423 protocol lists) — but because both claims depend from claims 1/7, no anticipation of the claim as a whole; their independent claims' "requestor/window" limitation is missing. So its real role is to foreclose any argument that the protocol-conversion limitations distinguish the claims.
• Assessment: Indispensable §103 reference for the converter limitations of claims 1(a), 2, 6, 7 and 11.

Ref. 5 — US 5,790,536 A — Mahany et al. (Norand Corporation)

• Full citation: Hierarchical Communication System Providing Intelligent Data, Program and Processing Migration, US 5,790,536 A. Filed 1989-01-31; issued 1998-08-04.
• §102 basis: §102(b).
• What it discloses: A hierarchical wireless network with roaming/intelligent data and program migration among nodes — i.e., staged store-and-forward delivery in a wireless system.
• Claims it potentially anticipates: Not the independent claims (no vehicle bus converter, no over-the-air vehicle window). Relevant as §103 support for the buffer/time-delay-compensation concept of claims 1(d), 2, 3 and 12.
• Assessment: Secondary; use only for the "temporarily store, then forward" idea.

Ref. 6 — US 5,802,545 A — Coverdill (Freightliner Corporation)

• Full citation: Method and System for Recording Vehicle Data Relative to Vehicle Standard Time, US 5,802,545 A. Filed 1996-05-23; issued 1998-09-01 (continuation issued as US 5,957,986).
• §102 basis: §102(b).
• What it discloses: A truck data-logging unit coupled to the vehicle data link that "continuously records a snapshot of data from the data link into a temporary storage device, such as a FIFO buffer" (storing the most recent 60 seconds), plus ECUs and a data port for coupling external devices to the bus.
• Claims it potentially anticipates: None whole. Its §102 relevance is narrow but real: it is explicit §102(b) evidence that buffering vehicle-bus data for later transfer was known, which undercuts any attempt to distinguish over art on the "temporarily store" steps of claims 1(d), 2, 3 and 12.
• Assessment: The "buffer" element of the claims is old in the vehicle-data-logging context; the novelty in 7,102,494 must therefore live in the timing (transfer gated on the transceiver being idle).

Ref. 7 — US 4,996,719 A — Okazaki et al. (Stanley Electric Co., Ltd.)

• Full citation: Optical Communication Apparatus for Motor Vehicle, US 4,996,719 A. Priority 1988-02-26; issued 1991-02-26.
• §102 basis: §102(b).
• What it discloses: Optical (infrared/light) data communication apparatus for a motor vehicle.
• Claims it potentially anticipates: Directly relevant to the "optical communication protocol" / "infrared communication protocol" alternatives recited in claims 5 and 10 — and note that "at least one of" is a Markush-type list, so a single disclosed option reads on the claim. Because claims 5/10 depend from 1/7, they are not anticipated as a whole (missing requestor); but this reference removes the IR alternative as a basis for novelty.
• Assessment: Keep in the chart purely to defeat any argument that the IR/optical option in claims 5/10 is distinguishing.

Ref. 8 — EP 0 802 082 A2 — Robert Bosch GmbH

• Full citation: Vehicle with Transmitting and/or Receiving Apparatus, EP 0 802 082 A2. Filed 1996-04-20; published 1997-10-22.
• §102 basis: §102(b) (foreign printed publication more than one year before priority).
• What it discloses: Vehicle-borne transmitting/receiving apparatus (abstract-level relevance only in the material I retrieved).
• Claims it potentially anticipates: None demonstrably. I could not retrieve a detailed disclosure; do not assert anticipation without the specification.
• Assessment: Nominal; verify before use.

3. Tier 1(b) — family-cited references that are not on the 7,102,494 face but matter

US 6,430,485 B1 — Hullinger (International Truck Intellectual Property Company, L.L.C.)

• Full citation: Wireless Interface Adaptor for Remote Diagnosis and Programming of Vehicle Control Systems, US 6,430,485 B1. Filed 2000-07-06; issued 2002-08-06. Cited on the parent '953 front page and in the family-cites list (not, as far as my (truncated) copy of the '494 face list shows, on 7,102,494 itself — verify).
• §102 basis: §102(e) — filed 2000-07-06, before the 2002-05-30 priority, by another.
• What it discloses — and why this is the most uncomfortable reference: A transferable wireless node 40A attaches to the vehicle's J1939 diagnostic port 36; it includes a "data staging element 56 for two way transmission of data back to diagnostic port 36 and out over antenna 41A from a radio or IrDA stage 54," with "sufficient processing power … to handle data staging, format conversion and WLAN establishment." The base node 42 is a portable personal computer with WLAN interface. Multiple vehicles communicate with the base node "using time division multiplexing (TDM) with conventional collision detection and avoidance routines."
• Claims it potentially anticipates: This is the closest single reference to claim 1 in the entire corpus:
  • "format conversion" + J1939 ⇄ WLAN ↔ claim 1(a) protocol converter;
  • "TDM with conventional collision detection and avoidance routines" ↔ claim 1(b) requestor/opening a window in the channel (arguable — a collision-avoidance/TDM channel-access scheme is what "opening a window" means in the 802.11b context the patent's own spec invokes);
  • "radio or IrDA stage 54" ↔ claim 1(c) transceiver;
  • "data staging element 56" ↔ claim 1(d) buffer.
  • The genuine gap is the positioning requirement of 1(d): the buffer must transfer "when the first transceiver is not transmitting data communication therefrom." A "staging element for two-way transmission" is not the same thing, so anticipation is arguable but not clean. It also maps well onto claim 7 and onto the RS-485/J1708 limitations of claims 4/6/9/11 (it expressly references the "IEEE RS485 port (i.e. diagnostic port 36) and Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmit port … which support communication data transfer with the J1708/…").
• Assessment: The single most important prior-art reference for claim 1. If you are attacking or defending claim 1, this is the reference to brief first. Its §102(e) status depends on the "by another" requirement, which is satisfied here.

US 5,884,202 (Arjomand) — see Ref. 3; also on the family-cites list.

US 5,082,667 A, JP 3662118 B2 — nominal family citations; no claim-1/7/12 relevance identified.

4. Tier 3 — background/peripheral face citations (grouped, brief)

5. Claim-by-claim §102 exposure matrix

Bottom line: Among the 29–32 references printed on the face of US 7,102,494, not one anticipates any independent claim in its entirety. The "requestor / open over-the-air window" limitation, read together with the idle-gated buffer, is the load-bearing novelty across claims 1, 7 and 12. The face citations' real force is (a) as §103 combinations — principally US 6,064,299 (converter + two-transceiver + remote conversion) in view of any wireless medium-access teaching — and (b) as anticipatory of individual dependent-claim limitations (protocols, media types, buffering, vehicle-side control).

6. Art that was actually litigated but is not on the face — your highest-value §102/§103 hunting ground

Per the earlier section, IPR2020-00155 (Zonar Systems v. Innovative Global Systems; petition 2019-11-19, instituted 2020-05-12, terminated by settlement 2020-08-27 — i.e., no final written decision on the merits) relied on a different art set:

• WO 01/36234 A1
• US 5,440,691 (Carrafiello)
• US 6,728,603 (Pruzan)
• IEEE 802.11-1999 / IEEE 802.11b
• GB 2,316,583 A (Sasson)
• The 7,102,494's own parent, US 6,946,953
• IrLAP/IrDA and Bluetooth specifications

Read against the claim matrix above, this set is exactly what you would expect: US 5,440,691 / US 6,728,603 / WO 01/36234 supply the missing "requestor / open-window / half-duplex handshake" and buffering-until-idle concepts that the face citations lack, and GB 2,316,583 (Sasson) supplies the wireless vehicle-diagnostics architecture. Because the IPR settled before a final written decision, none of these references has been judicially construed or adjudicated as invalidating art — so treat them as unadjudicated but the most probative candidates. If you need a single §102 theory for independent claims 1/7/12, it will come from this set, not from the printed face citations.

7. Caveats on this analysis

1. Face-citation list completeness. My source's rendering of 7,102,494's citation list is truncated (it cuts off mid-entry at "US602556…") and the "Citations (29)" and "Patent Citations (32)" blocks in the retrieved text appear to blend 7,102,494's list with that of the parent 6,946,953. I therefore cannot certify that US 6,430,485 or US 5,884,202 appear on 7,102,494's printed front page — they appear on the parent's and in the family-cites data. Verify against the official USPTO/Patent Center PDF before relying on "cited on the face."
2. Titles/inventors not independently verified for US 6,094,609 (Arjomand) and US 5,082,667 (Abbott); I did not retrieve their disclosures and therefore assert no anticipation theory for them.
3. §102(e) "by another" analysis is asserted only where the reference is plainly unrelated to the Lesesky/Weant inventive entity. For the VES family I applied §102(b) where the issue date precedes 2001-05-30, and expressly flagged US 6,254,201 as likely not prior art at all.
4. No final written decision exists on the IPR art, so its invalidating effect is unproven; the settlement terminated IPR2020-00155 without adjudication.
5. OCR artifacts in the claim text I worked from ("convener," "ova-the-air," "tat," "farther," "requester/requestor") are transcription errors, not the issued wording; any quoted claim language should be checked against the official document. This does not affect the patent number, which is confirmed as 7,102,494 across all sources.
6. This is analysis, not a legal opinion on validity, infringement, or the scope of any claim.

I'll ground the obviousness analysis by verifying the disclosures of the key prior-art references before combining them.

Let me verify the additional references from the IPR petition and the patent's own citation list.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 7,102,494 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Continuing from the previously generated sections. This analysis builds on the claim construction, bibliographic record, prior-art list, and litigation chronology already produced. It does not repeat them. Where a prior section's finding matters to the § 103 analysis, I cross-reference it rather than restating it.

Sources verified for this section:

• Google Patents full text of US 7,102,494 B2 (authoritative text supplied in the prompt): https://patents.google.com/patent/US7102494/en
• US 6,064,299 B1 (Lesesky) — abstract, spec excerpts via Google Patents / Justia: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6064299A](/patent/US6064299A) ; https://patents.justia.com/patent/[6411203](/patent/6411203)
• US 6,430,485 B1 (International Truck IP Co.) — full PDF: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/f6/67/db/fa94df3987b430/US6430485.pdf ; https://patents.google.com/patent/US6430485
• US 6,772,248 (Dearborn Group) family descriptions: https://www.freepatentsonline.com/[7337245](/patent/7337245).html ; https://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2007/0124528.html
• US 5,440,691 (Carrafiello) — existence and citation context only (EP 0 940 757 A3 search report): https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/21/84/f8/ae4343ea8ea46e/EP0940757A3.pdf

1. The legal framework and the critical date

Critical date: May 30, 2002 (the '494's priority date, per the priority chain to US 10/158,581). Pre-AIA § 103 applies. The governing test remains Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966), as refined by KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007): scope and content of the prior art, differences between the prior art and the claims, the level of ordinary skill, and objective indicia of nonobviousness.

A threshold point that is dispositive of one anticipated defense and important for the rest. The '494 is a continuation of US 10/158,581, filed the same day, and virtually the entire cited prior art is the applicant's own earlier work: US 5,488,352 (1992), US 5,677,667 (1995), US 5,798,577 (1996), US 6,064,299 (1995), US 6,111,524 (1995), US 6,254,201 (1995), US 6,127,939 (1996), US 6,150,793 (1996), US 6,025,563 (1997), US 6,084,588 (1998) — all Vehicle Enhancement Systems, Inc. The temptation is to invoke pre-AIA § 103(c) (commonly owned § 102(e)/(f)/(g) art disqualified from use in § 103). That shelter is unavailable here. Every one of those references issued before May 30, 2001, i.e., more than one year before the '494's priority date, and therefore qualifies as prior art under § 102(b) — the "printed publication/patent more than one year prior to the date of the application" category. Section 103(c) by its terms reaches only art that is prior art only under § 102(e), (f), or (g). A § 102(b) patent is not disqualified by common ownership. The applicant's own earlier patents are fully available as § 103 combination references, and they are the most damaging art of record.

Level of ordinary skill. For a May 2002 filing date, a PHOSITA in this art is a person with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering or computer science and roughly two to four years of experience with (a) heavy-duty vehicle serial data buses (SAE J1708/J1939) and (b) RF or infrared short-range wireless data links, or an equivalent combination of education and experience. This is a low skill level for a mature, crowded art — which matters under KSR's instruction that "if a technique has been used to improve one device, and a person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that it would improve similar devices in the same way, using the technique is obvious unless its actual application is beyond his or her skill."

2. The point of novelty, isolated

Distilling the three independent claims down to what the prior art genuinely does not disclose (as opposed to the mass of conventional material surrounding it):

Everything hinges on two elements: (i) the channel "window" and the requestor that asks for it, and (ii) the buffer-gated-by-"not-transmitting" flow control that "compensates for time delay." Both are the classic signature of a channel-access problem — and the specification itself tells us where the solution came from.

The specification's own admission. The '494 states, at the FIG. 3 description:

"the requestor is preferably implemented in software capable of opening a window in an over-the-air communication channel in accordance with the IEEE 802.11b standard mentioned previously. The software and command sequence for this to occur is specified in the IEEE 802.11b standard and is well understood by those skilled in the art."

That is a § 103 concession embedded in the specification. The applicant has told the PHOSITA that the single most distinctive structural element of claim 1(b) is (a) set out in a published standard, and (b) within the ordinary skill. Under KSR, "[a] person of ordinary skill is also a person of ordinary creativity, not an automaton," and it is not invention to implement a claimed element by following an existing published standard the inventor himself designates.

3. Primary combination (Ground A): Lesesky '299 + IEEE 802.11b + International Truck '485

3.1 What each reference contributes

US 6,064,299 (Lesesky / Vehicle Enhancement Systems), issued May 16, 2000 — § 102(b).
This reference is essentially the '494 minus the two elements above. It discloses: at least one vehicle electronic subsystem; a plurality of electrical conductors; a vehicle data communications protocol converting means connected to those conductors converting a first protocol (expressly SAE J1708 or SAE J1939) to a second, through-the-air protocol (expressly "an infrared data communications protocol or an RF data communications protocol," with IrDA named); a first RF/IR transceiver at the vehicle transmitting the second protocol and receiving the second protocol back from a remote terminal; a second transceiver at the remote data communications terminal; and remote protocol converting means "for converting the second data communications protocol received by said remote data communications terminal to a third data communications protocol associated with the computer." The '299 specification further discloses an RS-485 transceiver paired with an IrDA-compliant integrated circuit in the second converter, and — critically for claim 12 — teaches that transmission uses "only the physical layer of the first and second transceivers and not a data link layer" so as to "simplify coding or conversion schemes."

That last teaching is the prior-art counterpart to claim 12's "data substantially devoid of an over-the-air communication protocol." The '494's own gloss on that phrase is: "Because a window is open in the data communication channel, SAE J1708 data is passed directly via an over-the-air media to the remote terminal where is converted from the through-the-air protocol directly to a data protocol that is basically equivalent to the SAE J1708, such as RS-485." That is the same idea as '299's physical-layer-only pass-through. If "devoid of the over-the-air communication protocol" means "no data-link layer," '299 anticipates it; if it means "no MAC framing at all," the claim is arguably inoperable (you cannot transmit over 802.11b without MAC framing), which raises a § 112(b) question the § 103 analysis should note but not resolve.

IEEE 802.11b (1999) / the WLAN art — § 102(b) printed publication.
The standard defines exactly the "window" concept the claims recite: the distributed coordination function (DCF) with carrier sense, backoff and contention windows, RTS/CTS exchange, and association/authentication request-response sequences by which a station obtains a communication opportunity on the shared channel. It also, by construction, defines the half-duplex, one-transmitter-at-a-time channel the claims' buffers are designed to cope with.

US 6,430,485 (International Truck Intellectual Property Co.), issued Aug. 6, 2002 — § 102(e) art as of its 2000-07-06 filing; usable for § 103 (different, non-commonly-owned entity).
Discloses a wireless node on the vehicle connected to the J1939 diagnostic port, a base node coupled to a portable computer running diagnostic and programming software modules, and — the key disclosure — a "data staging element 56 for two way transmission of data back to diagnostic port 36 and out over antenna 41A", with "sufficient processing power … to handle data staging, format conversion and WLAN establishment." It further discloses that "[m]ultiple vehicles communicate with the base node 42 using time division multiplexing (TDM) with conventional collision detection and avoidance routines," and that the link may be RF (FHSS at 2.4 GHz) or IrDA.

3.2 Mapping the "missing" elements

3.3 Motivation to combine

1. The primary reference names the destination. '299 expressly contemplates "an RF data communications protocol" and, as its own specification notes, "can be a simple modulation scheme or a complex protocol." A PHOSITA implementing '299's RF link in 2002, at the moment when 802.11b had become the dominant commercial off-the-shelf short-range radio and had just been adopted as the wireless LAN standard, would reach 802.11b as a matter of ordinary engineering choice. KSR: "the combination of familiar elements according to known methods is likely to be obvious when it does no more than yield predictable results."
2. You cannot use an 802.11b radio without the window protocol. The DCF/association machinery is mandatory in the standard, not optional. Selecting the radio is selecting the window mechanism. This is the strongest form of KSR reasoning — the second reference supplies a limitation that is inherent in the first reference's stated design option.
3. The problem is the same problem. Both '299 and '485 address short-range wireless telemetry from a heavy-duty vehicle to a fixed or portable station, where the alternative (a J1939 cable) is limited to roughly 13 feet and requires bringing the computer to the truck. '485 states the motivation explicitly: wireless lifts the range and rate constraints of the tethered J1939 link. A PHOSITA would naturally improve the '299 wireless link the same way.
4. The stage is set for buffering. '485's own stated reason for including a staging element is to bridge the gap between a 250 kb/s J1939 bus and a 1–2 Mb/s half-duplex WLAN. That is the same asymmetry — and hence the same buffering need — the '494 identifies between the local bus and the over-the-air channel.
5. Art-recognized problem, art-recognized fix. Collisions and missed data on a shared half-duplex channel were the central design problem of wireless LANs from the 1970s onward; CSMA/CA, RTS/CTS, and MAC-layer time windows are the canonical answers. "[I]f a technique has been used to improve one device, and a person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that it would improve similar devices in the same way, using the technique is obvious."

Result: Claims 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, and 12 are rendered obvious by Ground A. Claims 3, 4, 9, and 13 are rendered obvious with the additional references below.

4. Secondary combinations

Ground B: '299 + Dearborn Group protocol adapter art ('248 / '245 / 7,337,245 family) — for claims 3, 4, 9, 13

The Dearborn art is a protocol adapter that (i) "delivers data directly from the J1708 Transceiver … to the RS232 transceiver" — i.e., a transparent J1708↔RS-232 pass-through that is the functional equivalent of the '494's J1708↔RS-485 pass-through; (ii) "is capable of receiving and transmitting asynchronously of [the] host processor"; (iii) includes a "scratch pad … a built-in remote access memory to allow the host to consolidate message data" — a buffer for consolidating messages across a link; and (iv) is expressly usable "wirelessly to perform ECU fault code interrogation, communication with a remote network, vehicle maintenance status checks or trip performance data downloads."

• For claims 4 and 9 (signal boosters, J1708→RS-485): '299 already discloses the RS-485 transceiver and IrDA pair; the transmit-side amplification is within the plain meaning of a PHOSITA's toolkit and is, in any event, the only way to meet a stated objective. '299's specification addresses the transmit portion of the vehicle data path directly. Routine optimization.
• For claim 13 ("boosting power … during the open window"): '493's own stated purpose is to "increase the transmission range."

Ground C: '299 + '485 + 802.11b + Cellport ('074) — the buffer/time-delay compensation

US 5,732,074 (Cellport Labs, issued Mar. 24, 1998 — § 102(b)) discloses a mobile portable wireless communication system in which a vehicle's on-board bus is bridged to an external network, with the vehicle-side controller buffering and routing data in both directions and a "duplex digital path" between the vehicle bus and the remote transceiver. Combined with 802.11b's half-duplex channel and '485's staging element, the claim 3 acknowledgment-gated buffer release ("to thereby compensate for time delay") is the predictable, arguably necessary, consequence of putting a store-and-forward buffer on a shared half-duplex radio. Claim 3's only addition over claim 2 is to say when the buffer releases — a control design choice with no new structure.

Ground D: Lesesky '953 / '554 / '203 (same family, same inventor) + 802.11b

Because these are § 102(b) references (see § 1 above), the applicant's own earlier patents can be used directly. They disclose the physical-layer-only transmission ("not a data link layer … to simplify coding or conversion schemes"), which maps onto claim 12's "substantially devoid of an over-the-air communication protocol," and the remote-side protocol converter to a third protocol. Using them as the primary reference with 802.11b for the window produces the same result as Ground A with a shorter evidentiary chain. Note the awkwardness: the applicant's own earlier disclosure arguably anticipates the "devoid of protocol" limitation, which is a § 102 hazard that should be run down independently of § 103.

Ground E: The IPR2020-00155 art package

Per the litigation section previously generated, the petitioner in IPR2020-00155 assembled WO 01/36234, US 5,440,691 (Carrafiello), US 6,728,603 (Pruzan), IEEE 802.11-1999/802.11b, UK App. 2,316,583 (Sasson), the '494's own parent US 6,946,953, US 6,064,299, US 7,280,898, plus IrLAP/IrDA and Bluetooth specifications. I have been able to verify the existence of these references but not, in this session, the substance of Carrafiello, Pruzan, WO 01/36234, or Sasson. I therefore decline to characterize them. What I can say with confidence is that the shape of the package (an IrDA/Bluetooth/WLAN-specification-based obviousness theory layered over the applicant's own Lesesky wireless patents) is exactly the theory developed in Grounds A and D above, and that the petitioner's reliance on it confirms that experienced counsel identified the window/protocol layer, not the vehicle-side hardware, as the vulnerability. Because the proceeding terminated by settlement on August 27, 2020, there is no final written decision and no PTAB claim-construction or patentability ruling to cite. Absent a decision, the IPR tells us what was argued, not what was decided.

5. Obviousness of claims 5/6/10/11 (the protocol laundry lists) and claim 14

Claims 5 and 10 recite that the OTA protocol "comprises at least one of" RF, optical, microwave, satellite, VHF, UHF, and infrared. A Markush-style "at least one of" list of transmission media is a classic In re Jones-type recitation: it is satisfied by any one of the enumerated options, and RF and infrared are both expressly disclosed in '299. The remaining members are alternative media for the same function, differing only in frequency. Obvious.

Claims 6 and 11 recite SAE J1708/J1939 and RS-485/RS-232/RS-422/RS-423. Both sides of this list are in '299, and the '494 itself concedes the interchangeability: "The third data communication protocol is preferably an RS-485 protocol (which advantageously has substantially the same characteristics as the SAE J1708 protocol)." Where the patent states the equivalence, it cannot simultaneously claim the substitution as inventive.

Claim 14 — flagged in the summary section as having a directional/antecedent mismatch (it depends from claim 12, which is the vehicle→remote direction, but adds "receiving the stored data by the electronic subsystem of the vehicle and responsively changing the condition of the vehicle"). Two observations:

• Under Ex parte Grasselli / the general rule that an inconsistent dependent claim is construed in light of the independent claim from which it depends, claim 14's added limitation is either (a) an administrative/feedback step following the remote-side receipt, or (b) a drafting error. If (a), '299 discloses remote→vehicle control: its claim 25 recites "receiving the second RF data communications protocol from the remote data communications terminal, controlling data communications along the plurality of electrical conductors, and generating a signal related to the operation of the vehicle." If (b), the claim is indefinite under § 112(b) for failure to provide antecedent basis for "the electronic subsystem of the vehicle" in a vehicle→remote method. Either way it does not save the patent.
• The '494's enumerated remote-control functions (engine off/on, door locks, PTO cut-out, RPM control, governor speed control, battery disconnect) are the same functions listed in the applicant's own '352 and '554 patents.

6. Objective indicia (secondary considerations)

The record contains no evidence, in the sources I reviewed, of:

• Unexpected results — the patent asserts only that buffering and windows "reduce the risk of collisions" and "compensate for time delay," i.e., precisely the results the 802.11b MAC layer and ordinary store-and-forward buffering were designed to produce. No comparative data is offered.
• Long-felt but unmet need — the Lesesky family itself (1992–2000) shows the need was being met continuously by the same inventors and assignee.
• Failure of others — '485 and '074 each arrived at wireless vehicle bus telemetry independently.
• Industry praise, licensing due to the merits, or copying — the 2011 Zonar license discussed in the litigation section covers "the Enhanced Patents" ('953 and '494) together with the rest of the portfolio; portfolio licenses of this kind are weak evidence of nexus.
• Commercial success with nexus — no evidence located.

The only potentially probative secondary consideration is the settlement of IPR2020-00155 and the D.S.C. contract action. Settlements of litigation are, as a matter of law, generally not probative of validity — they are equally consistent with a business judgment to avoid risk. A settlement cannot be used to rebut a prima facie case of obviousness.

7. Rebuttal arguments a patent owner would raise, and their strength

8. Bottom-line conclusion

The single strongest observation for the invalidity case: the '494's specification concedes that the one element separating it from its own earlier '299 patent — the requestor that opens a communication "window" — is "specified in the IEEE 802.11b standard" and "well understood by those skilled in the art." Under KSR, implementing a claimed function by following a published standard, in order to solve a known problem (contention and collisions on a shared half-duplex radio), is the paradigm of obviousness. The '494's contribution over its own prior art is a citation to a standard, not an invention.

9. Verification caveats (explicit)

1. Unverified references. I could not, in this session, verify the subject matter of US 5,440,691 (Carrafiello), US 6,728,603 (Pruzan), WO 01/36234, or UK App. 2,316,583 (Sasson). The only confirmation I obtained for Carrafiello is that it exists and appears as an "A"-category (background) citation in the search report of EP 0 940 757 A3, citing column 2, lines 32–61, with no family members. I have deliberately not characterized the teachings of any of these four and have not relied on them for any conclusion. Grounds A–D are built solely on references whose content I verified this session.
2. Claim-text OCR artifacts. As flagged in the summary section, the source text contains transcription errors ("convener," "teat least one," "ova‑the‑air," "tat," "farther"). My element-by-element mapping above uses the corrected reading where the error is obvious from context, but any quoted claim language in a formal filing should be re-verified against the USPTO Patent Center PDF. This affects no patent number.
3. "Substantially devoid of the over-the-air communication protocol" (claim 12). This limitation is genuinely ambiguous and is the weakest link in the mapping. If it means "no data-link layer" (as the '494's own explanation and '299's physical-layer-only teaching suggest), Ground A is strong. If it means "no MAC framing whatsoever," it is arguably inoperable on 802.11b, raising § 112(b) rather than § 103. I flag this rather than resolve it.
4. IPR outcome. My conclusion does not and cannot rely on the PTAB. IPR2020-00155 terminated by settlement on August 27, 2020, with a confidential settlement agreement; there is no final written decision. The petition's existence evidences the theory that was advanced, not its correctness.
5. No assertion of inequitable conduct or § 102 anticipation. This is a § 103 analysis only. The apparent § 102(b) hazard noted in Ground D (that the applicant's own '953/'554/'203 disclosures may anticipate the "devoid of protocol" limitation) would need a separate, complete anticipation analysis.
6. Date note. As previously flagged, session metadata shows both 2026-04-26 and a 2026-09-30 fetch timestamp. The patent's operative dates (priority 2002-05-30, filed 2005-03-14, issued 2006-09-05, expired 2022-05-30) are taken from the record and are unaffected.