US 7120129

I'll search for authoritative information on this patent number, including any 2026 CAFC activity.

Let me run additional targeted searches for litigation/docket activity and the patent's current assignee status.

Let me run final targeted searches on any Federal Circuit or PTAB activity specific to this patent number.

US Patent 7,120,129 — Verified Summary

Bottom line up front: I found no Federal Circuit (CAFC) 2026 docket activity, appeal, or PTAB proceeding involving this specific patent number. The searches returned no CAFC case captions, appeal numbers, or oral-argument calendar entries referencing 7,120,129. Given that the patent's adjusted expiration is recorded as 2023-08-07, the absence of 2026 appellate activity is consistent (though an expired patent can still be litigated for past damages). I flag this as a negative search result, not proof of non-existence — I could reach only public web indexes, not PACER, the CAFC docket system, or USPTO Patent Center directly.

Bibliographic data (from the authoritative full text)

Note: US 7,512,081 B2 is the continuation, and it carries a broader title ("…wireless and wired computing…"). Do not conflate the two — they are separate patents in the same family.

Abstract (as recorded)

"A system and method for enabling a zero configuration nomadic wireless and wired computing environment presenting a just works experience is presented. The system examines predefined user preference or profile settings to determine to which of a competing number of wireless networks available it should connect, and what type of authentication should be used for such connection. Nomadic wireless computing between infrastructure wireless networks and ad hoc wireless networks may be accomplished without further user intervention required in an auto mode. Also, both infrastructure only and ad hoc only modes are available through the system of the invention. Further, the user may set a preference for infrastructure or ad hoc modes in the auto mode. With an infrastructure mode preference set, the system will automatically detect and transfer connectivity to a newly available infrastructure wireless network if the user was previously operating off-line or in ad hoc mode."

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Claim 1 — the "zero configuration" method (wireless + wired).
A method for giving a user "just works" connectivity across wired, wireless-infrastructure, and wireless-ad-hoc networking. It recites a sequence of steps: (a) check user preferences for network connectivity; (b) scan for network presence; (c) connect to a network based on those preferences; (d) check a default mode setting; (e) check a preferred list of network providers; (f) check an authentication mode setting; (g) build a BSSID list of all networks discovered in the scan; and (h) derive preferred and compatible SSIDs from that BSSID list. The claim then closes by specifying that the "connecting" step is accomplished by connecting to those preferred and compatible SSIDs. In substance: scan first, build an inventory, filter it against user/policy preferences, then associate with the best match — without manual reconfiguration.

Claim 13 — the nomadic-wireless, infrastructure-then-ad-hoc method.
A method for enabling nomadic wireless computing with three core steps: (1) scan to determine the presence of wireless networks and other wireless stations (STAs); (2) attempt to connect with the wireless networks in infrastructure mode; and (3) when that fails, selectively attempt to associate with the other wireless stations in ad hoc mode. Claim 13 additionally incorporates an authentication sub-routine — determine the user's preferred authentication method, perform IEEE 802.11 association, connect as a valid user with credentials when IEEE 802.1X is set, and connect as an unauthorized user without credentials when the credentialed connection fails.

Supporting claim context worth noting

• Claim 12 (dependent) supplies the four operating modes referenced by claim 1: infrastructure-only, ad-hoc-only, "auto infrastructure preferred," and "auto ad-hoc preferred."
• Claim 2 layers a fallback loop onto claim 1 — try one preferred/compatible SSID, and on failure move down the list until an association forms.
• Claims 9 and 10 cover monitoring for the appearance of, respectively, a new infrastructure network or a new ad-hoc network, and connecting when it appears.

Verbatim-text caveats (literal, not auto-corrected)

• Claims 4 and 13 both read "...when the step of connecting as a valid user with credentials falls." Read literally as printed in the source text; the intended word is evidently "fails," but I am reporting the identifier/text as it appears rather than correcting it.
• The related continuation's title on its face says "wireless and wired computing," whereas US 7,120,129's title omits "and wired." These are different documents.

Uncertainty statement

I have authoritative bibliographic, claim, and abstract data for this patent from the patent's own full text. What I do not have, with confidence, is any 2026 CAFC or district-court docket entry naming 7,120,129 — nothing in the search results matched that number, and the only literal "7120129" hit outside patent databases was an unrelated French construction-industry certificate number (Qualibat no. 7120129), which is a false positive I disregarded. If you need a definitive litigation check, that requires a direct PACER/CAFC docket or USPTO Patent Center query rather than open web search.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 7120129 across the requested sources.

Let me search more targeted litigation databases.

Let me search additional specialized litigation databases and check for any assignment/assertion activity.

Litigation Search Results — U.S. Patent No. 7,120,129

Bottom line: Based on my searches, I found no evidence of any litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 7,120,129.

Important caveat on the "129 patent" hit-rate problem

My searches were flooded with results for other patents that happen to share the "129" shorthand. None of these are U.S. 7,120,129, and I have deliberately excluded them. Examples of look-alikes I encountered and verified are not the patent in question:

I flag this explicitly because the instruction to interpret identifiers literally means these near-matches must not be reported as litigation against 7,120,129.

What the record does show for U.S. 7,120,129

From the Google Patents family/source record:

• Assignee of record: [Microsoft Corp.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Microsoft%20Corp.) (original) → Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC (2014 reassignment). This is a corporate assignment, not a litigation transfer or NPE acquisition.
• No reissue, no ex parte reexamination, no IPR/PGR appears in the record (the "PTAB" entries tied to this family that surface in searches belong to unrelated patents).
• Related continuation: U.S. 11/236,777 (issued as US 7,512,081) — a division/continuation, not a litigation.
• Foreign siblings: EP 1,241,838 B1; JP 2002-344458 A / JP 4335235 B2; CN 100418066 C. I found no litigation, opposition, or UPC action reported for these either (the EP patent is now expired).
• Legal status: Expired – Lifetime, adjusted expiration 2023-08-07 (consistent with a 2001 priority date and term extension).

Reasoning for likely absence of litigation

1. Ownership profile. U.S. 7,120,129 remained with Microsoft and its licensing arm; it does not appear in the hands of a monetization entity/NPE, which is what typically generates the infringement suits that dominate patent-litigation databases.
2. Subject matter and era. It claims Microsoft's "zero configuration" 802.11 association logic (claims 1–20, priority 2001-03-13, filed 2001-03-13). Microsoft is predominantly a defensive holder and has not asserted this patent publicly.
3. Patent already expired (2023), so affirmative assertion is no longer available; any past suit would have had to occur well before that.

Limitations of this search

• I was able to run targeted web searches but could not directly query PACER, Docket Navigator, or the Unified Patents litigation caselist with a confirmed, parsed result for this number before running out of query budget. My conclusion is therefore based on the absence of any indexed litigation, PTAB, or docket hit — not on an exhaustively confirmed "zero results" from a paid docket database.
• If a definitive negative is needed, I recommend a direct Docket Navigator / LexMachina party-and-patent search on 7,120,129 and a PACER "case number by patent" query, plus a check of the USPTO Patent Center "Legal Events"/"Litigation" tab (the Google Patents page shows no litigation tab entries for this patent).

Conclusion: I have found no known litigation — no district court action, CAFC appeal, ITC investigation, PTAB proceeding, or foreign court/opposition proceeding — involving U.S. Patent No. 7,120,129. I state this with moderate confidence given the search limitations noted above; I have not fabricated any case, party, number, or date.

I'll verify the structured ODP result against public sources before writing this up.

No IPR hits yet. Let me run more targeted searches to make sure I'm not missing anything in the PTAB docket or a defensive aggregator filing.

Let me do a final verification pass on the case-number side and check for any reexam or aggregator activity.

PTAB / AIA Trial Landscape — U.S. Patent No. 7,120,129

Patent: System and method for achieving zero-configuration wireless computing and computing device incorporating same
Patent owner: Microsoft Corporation → Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (recorded 2014-12-09)
Appl. No. 09/805,500 · Priority/Filed: 2001-03-13 · Granted: 2006-10-10
Legal status: Expired – Lifetime (adjusted expiration 2023-08-07)
Claims: 20 (three independent: claims 1, 13, and claim 12/18-style mode-selection claims within those families)

Proceedings overview

Zero (0) AIA trial proceedings on file. The structured USPTO Open Data Portal block returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceedings for 7,120,129 — no claims invalidated, no claims sustained, nothing settled, and no institution decisions to report. My independent web searches for PTAB petitions, FWDs, and Federal Circuit appeals naming this patent likewise returned no hits. The bottom-line defensive posture is therefore neither "hardened" nor "dead" — it is untested agency-side, but structurally obsolete: the patent has expired, so the realistic exposure is a past-damages claim under 35 U.S.C. § 286 (six-year lookback, i.e. no earlier than 2020-09-28), not an injunction or an ongoing royalty. The absence of any PTAB challenge across a ~11-year post-AIA window in which the patent was still in force (2012-09-16 through 2023-08-07) is itself a signal that no accused party ever found a challenge worth financing — or, more likely, that no one was ever seriously accused.

No per-proceeding entries follow, because there are no proceedings to describe. I will not manufacture proceeding numbers, panels, or claim-level dispositions. The remainder of this memo covers what I verified, the collateral-confusion risk, and how a defendant should actually use the absence.

What I checked, and the limits of that check

• Canonical source: the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block supplied in this prompt (USPTO ODP ingest) — reported no AIA trial proceedings. That is the authoritative dataset for this task.
• Corroborating searches: queries targeting IPR + 7,120,129, the patent title, the Microsoft assignee, Unified Patents as a defensive aggregator, and the PTAB docket (ptacts.uspto.gov) returned no petition, institution decision, FWD, or Board appeal for this patent. Nothing surfaced that would override the ODP default.
• Explicit caveat: I could not run a native PTAB E2E / Docket Navigator docket query by patent number in this session, and ODP ingest can lag newly-filed petitions. A petition filed in the last quarter may not appear. If you need a belt-and-suspenders answer, run the patent number directly against PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/) and re-confirm; but the default on this record is no activity.
• I also did not locate any ex parte reexamination certificate, inter partes reexamination, or covered-business-method review for this patent — again, treat that as "not found," not as proof of absence.

⚠️ Collateral-confusion warning — two other "'129 patents" DO have PTAB history

If you or your docket vendor keyword-search "IPR" + "'129 patent," you will get hits that belong to different patents. Do not let these contaminate your analysis:

Neither of those is 7,120,129. Any "claims canceled in IPR" story you hear about a "'129 patent" is almost certainly one of these, and importing it into an analysis of this patent would be a serious error (and, if repeated in a brief, a credibility problem).

Strategic summary

Claim status: all 20 claims are UNTESTED agency-side. No claim of 7,120,129 has been canceled, confirmed, or even construed by the Board. Claims 1 and 13 (the two independent method claims — the auto/infrastructure/ad-hoc mode-selection logic and the credentials-then-no-credentials fallback) stand exactly as issued, unamended by any post-grant certificate. Anyone who tells you claims 1–5 are dead is confusing this patent with something else. The practical consequence runs the other way from a normal IPR memo: because there is no narrowing FWD, there is also no claim-by-claim survival roadmap handed to you — you would be litigating construction from scratch, with the claims at full breadth.

Estoppel landscape: there is none — and that cuts in a defendant's favor. § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches only to a petitioner (or its real parties-in-interest/privies) after a final written decision under § 318(a). With no FWD, no estoppel bars any party from raising any § 102/§ 103 ground on prior patents or printed publications — and, critically, unlike an IPR petitioner, a district-court defendant is not limited to patents and printed publications under § 311(b), so system prior art, public use, on-sale, and § 112 defenses all remain fully open. The flip side: you also get no free ride. There is no Board precedent on how these claim terms read, so the ~2001–2002 IEEE 802.11b "zero configuration" body of art (drivers, vendor configuration utilities, Windows XP-era wireless client behavior) has to be developed from scratch rather than borrowed from an FWD's obviousness analysis. The patent's ~71 examiner/third-party citations in Google Patents' "Cited By" list show it is a well-cited reference, not an obscure patent — expect the patent owner to argue the art was already considered by the examiner if you rely on anything in the file wrapper.

Pattern signals: none on this patent. No repeated petitioner, no joinder, no Unified Patents or other aggregator activity, no PTAB appeal. Microsoft (through Microsoft Technology Licensing) is a sophisticated PTAB petitioner — it has used IPR offensively elsewhere, e.g. as Petitioner against Surfcast (IPR2022-00423 / IPR2022-00592) — but it has never had to defend this patent at the Board. The more salient commercial facts are the family structure and expiry: the continuation US 7,512,081 shares the 2001-03-13 priority date and is likewise now Expired – Fee Related; the European sibling EP 1 241 838 B1 and the Chinese/Japanese members belong to the same priority family. A licensing demand citing 7,120,129 as a live, enforceable patent therefore has a fundamental problem: the patent expired on 2023-08-07, so the only thing it can support is backward-looking damages, and only for acts on or after 2020-09-28 — a window of roughly 2 years and 10 months out of a 20+ year term.

Recommended next steps

1. Treat this as "no PTAB activity," and say so plainly. The absence is the finding. Do not hedge it into a phantom proceeding list. Back it with a fresh PTAB E2E query on the patent number if the demand letter is real.

2. Neutralize the demand on expiration before you spend a dollar on validity. Armed with the 2023-08-07 adjusted-expiration date, establish (a) no injunctive relief is available for a patent that has expired, and (b) under § 286, the damages window opens no earlier than 2020-09-28. If the accused product/conduct predates that, or the accused acts are all post-2023-08-07, the demand may be worth nothing. Also confirm who now owns it — the 2014-12-09 assignment to Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC is the last recorded transfer; any demand should be tested on standing/chain-of-title, which is a recurring failure mode for patents of this vintage (see the Azure Networks standing dismissal cited above, where the patentee lost and was affirmed on lack of standing).

3. If you do have pre-expiry exposure, an IPR is still legally available but rarely the best tool. The Board will institute on an expired patent, but (i) you would be spending ~$300K–$500K+ to cancel claims in a patent that can no longer be infringed prospectively, and (ii) after expiry the Board applies the Phillips framework rather than the broadest reasonable interpretation, which affects your art mapping. A district-court invalidity case — where you are free to use system art, public-use, § 112 indefiniteness (this is a "capable of"-type claim family with software claim-construction texture), and § 101 — is usually the higher-leverage path. Note that § 315(b)'s one-year bar is irrelevant here: there is no IPR clock running, and none ever was.

4. Preserve the § 101 / § 112 angles now. Nothing in the file shows the Board has ever touched these claims, so they carry no post-grant narrowing and no estoppel. That makes them exposed on eligibility (a software-implemented "scan, select, associate" claim set drafted in 2001) and on indefiniteness/enablement for the mode-selection and authentication-fallback language in claims 1–13. These grounds are unavailable in IPR and are therefore a purely district-court asset — do not let an IPR filing forfeit or distract from them.

5. Do not build any argument on the other "'129 patents." Re-read the caution table above. If a vendor's IPR search hands you IPR2014-00155, IPR2014-00635, or Azure Networks v. CSR, verify the patent number in the caption before it goes anywhere near a brief.

Sources consulted

• Structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO Open Data Portal ingest) for US 7,120,129 — no AIA trial proceedings.
• Google Patents — US7120129B2 (bibliographic data, prosecution/assignment timeline, adjusted expiration 2023-08-07, "Cited By" list).
• USPTO PTAB E2E / Patent Trial and Appeal Board — referenced for independent re-verification.
• D. Del. opinion, 12-1461 — establishes that the "Harmonix '155 IPR" and "Ubisoft '635 IPR" concern a different '129 patent (audio-controlled virtual environments).
• Azure Networks, LLC v. CSR PLC, No. 2013-1459 (Fed. Cir. Nov. 6, 2014) / CourtListener PDF — a different '129 patent (hub/peripheral PAN); claim-construction appeal and standing dismissal, not a PTAB appeal.

Statements about "no proceedings" reflect the ODP ingest and public searches as of 2026-09-28. Where I could not verify something directly — e.g., a petition filed within the last ingest cycle — I have flagged it rather than asserted a negative.

I'll reconstruct the ownership chain, starting with targeted searches for the recorded assignments, correspondent of record, and any litigation signals.

Let me drill into the specific assignment records for this patent and the correspondent of record.

I've hit my search-call limit. Here is the ownership reconstruction, flagging exactly what the retrieval supported and what it did not.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US 7,120,129 B2

Method note: I queried open indexes (Google Patents legal events, Espacenet/INPADOC, FreePatentsOnline, plainsite, uspto.report) because I cannot reach the USPTO Assignment Center, PEDS/ODP, or PACER directly. The Assignment Center exposes reel/frame and correspondent fields that are not fully reproduced in the open legal-events feeds, so the reel/frame and correspondent entries below are flagged where they are inferred rather than read off the record. Verify at assignmentcenter.uspto.gov and assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html.

Inventors

Seven named inventors on a single Microsoft corporate filing (application 09/805,500, filed 2001‑03‑13):

Basis for the employer call: all seven are the assignors on the 2001‑07‑23 "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST" recording into MICROSOFT CORPORATION, and the patent carries an examiner/agent-of-record entry of "MICROSOFT CORPORATION (REDMOND, WA, US)" (FreePatentsOnline). Microsoft-resident inventors on this portfolio characteristically list a "c/o Microsoft Corp., One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052" correspondence address in the assignment instrument. Caveat: I did not retrieve the per-inventor addresses or the executed assignment PDF for this patent, so the employer attribution rests on the assignment recording and corporate-filing posture, not on a read of the instrument itself.

Pattern check — inventors departing within 12 months of filing: No such signal. This is a pure in-house corporate application (all seven assignors into the same employer), and the next recorded event is 13 years later. There is no evidence of inventor attrition preceding, or coinciding with, any transfer. Note that the "all-inventors-depart-then-fire-sale" tell is inapplicable where the only downstream transfer is an intra-group reorganization (below).

Original assignee

Microsoft Corporation, One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052‑6399 (assignee on the issued patent; the 2001 assignment named "MICROSOFT CORPORATION," and the patent's agent-of-record is Microsoft's own in-house Redmond address).

• Primary line of business: operating software company — operating systems and productivity software. Microsoft is operating, not acquired, dissolved, or in bankruptcy. (It has not been in Chapter 7/11 at any point relevant to this chain.)
• Did it ship a product embodying the claims? Yes, reliably so. The specification is written against a live "Windows platform" implementation (it names NDIS OIDs such as OID_802_11_BSSID_LIST_SCAN and OID_802_11_BSSID_LIST, the MSADHOC default ad-hoc SSID, and the Windows "sys tray" UI). This is the Windows XP–era zero-configuration/automatic wireless configuration feature in Windows, and Windows XP shipped 2001‑10‑25, months after this application was filed. So the claimed subject matter maps onto a shipped Microsoft product, not an abstraction shelved by the assignee.
• Current owner of record: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC (MTL), a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary, per the Google Patents legal event of 2014‑12‑09 and the reassignment entry naming "MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING, LLC." MTL's address of record in assignment filings is One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052 — i.e., the parent's campus, not a standalone registered-agent address.

Assignment timeline

Two recorded conveyances appear in the Legal Events feed for this patent. Neither reel/frame nor correspondent was captured in the results returned to me — see the flags.

2001‑03‑13 / recorded 2001‑07‑23 — Reel not retrieved (Assignment Center query required; not present in open legal-events feed)

• Conveyance: Assignment — "Assignment of Assignors' Interest"
• Assignor: Ayyagari, Arun; Sheth, Sachin C.; Ganugapati, Krishna; Moore, Timothy M.; Bahl, Pradeep; Peicu, Mihai S.; Teodorescu, Florin (all seven inventors)
• Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Correspondent: not retrieved for this patent. I saw a Microsoft-side correspondent example in unrelated recordation data ("Workman Nydegger, 60 East South Temple, Suite 1000, Salt Lake City, UT 84111") but that pertains to a different Microsoft matter and I will not attribute it to this patent.
• Context: one sentence — routine inventor-to-corporate assignment on an in-house Microsoft application; no third party involved.

2014‑10‑14 (executed) / recorded 2014‑12‑09 — Reel 034543/0001 (inferred — see flag)

• Conveyance: Assignment — "Assignment of Assignors' Interest" (bulk corporate transfer)
• Assignor: Microsoft Corporation
• Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC
• Correspondent: not retrieved.
• Context: internal corporate reorganization — the 2014 carve-out of Microsoft's patent portfolio into a wholly owned licensing/holding subsidiary; a single bulk instrument spanning the Microsoft portfolio, executed 2014‑10‑14 and recorded 2014‑12‑09.

Reel/frame flag (important). I did not read "034543/0001" off a record naming US 7,120,129. I observed reel/frame 034543/0001 in an independent INPADOC Legal Status record for a different Microsoft patent (US 2007/182999 → US 7,536,654) showing the exact same transaction signature: ASSIGNMENT, NEW OWNER Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC (Washington), effective date 2014‑10‑14, recorded 2014‑12‑09, "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST; ASSIGNOR: MICROSOFT CORPORATION; REEL/FRAME: 034543/0001." That is Microsoft's single bulk portfolio assignment, so US 7,120,129's 2014‑12‑09 recording is very likely within reel 034543 — but treat the specific frame as to‑be‑verified, not confirmed. Likewise, no reel/frame for the 2001 assignment was surfaced.

If you want the authoritative entries, the Assignment Center "Search by Patent Number" for 7120129 will return both reel/frame pairs and both correspondent blocks directly; I could not execute that query.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7120129
    2001 : Application filed 13 March
         : Seven inventors assign to Microsoft
    2006 : Patent US 7120129 issues
    2014 : Microsoft assigns to MTL
         : Internal corporate reorganization
    2023 : Adjusted expiry date

NPE / troll-pattern signals

No strong NPE signal is present in this chain. The ownership record is the archetypal operating-company → captive IP subsidiary reorganization, the same 2014 corporate action that touched the entire Microsoft portfolio.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

Justification: the only two recorded events are (i) the 2001‑07‑23 inventor→Microsoft Corporation assignment on application 09/805,500 and (ii) the 2014‑10‑14/2014‑12‑09 bulk transfer into Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC, the parent's wholly owned licensing arm — not an independent asserter — with the parent's own Windows product embodying the claimed zero-configuration wireless behavior and no bankruptcy, cascading LLC chain, or known-NPE name anywhere on the record. Two candid caveats: (1) I found no evidence this specific patent was ever asserted in litigation, so the "assertion" element of the label is a characterization of the owner class, not a documented suit; and (2) the 2014 reel/frame (034543/0001) is an inference from the identical transaction signature on a sibling Microsoft patent, and the correspondents of record for both links were not retrievable from open sources — pull both directly from the Assignment Center before relying on them. If the "assertion" requirement is read strictly, the most defensible alternative is Insufficient data as to assertion, but the ownership chain itself shows no NPE pattern.

Verify at: USPTO Assignment Center — search US 7,120,129 · Assignment Search (indexed)

I'll research the prior-art citations for US 7,120,129. Let me run targeted searches.

Let me search for the actual front-page references-cited list from authoritative sources.

I've hit the tool-usage limit, so I'll synthesize what I actually retrieved rather than continue searching. I want to be upfront: I was not able to retrieve the front‑page "(56) References Cited" list for US 7,120,129, and I will not invent it. Here is my honest, sourced analysis.

Prior-art analysis — US 7,120,129 B2

1. USPTO lookup: confirmed

The patent number resolves to a single, unambiguous record (no look-alike number surfaced):

This matches the previously generated summary, so no contradiction to flag. The §102 critical date is therefore 2001-03-13 (or the 2002-03-07 EP / national-stage dates for the family — but for the US claims it is 2001-03-13).

2. The decisive gap: the backward-citation list is not in the provided material

The authoritative full text supplied for this analysis contains: Classifications, Definitions, Abstract, Description, Claims (20), Priority/Family tables, "Cited By (71)," and "Families Citing this family (159)." It does not contain the patent's own "References Cited" section (the front-page U.S. patent documents / foreign documents / other publications the examiner and applicant cited against this application).

That section is exactly what your task requires. My live searches did not surface it either. The 7120129 hits I got were of three kinds, none of them the backward-citation list:

• Forward citations (documents citing 7,120,129) — e.g., Justia pages for US 8,285,855; US 8,638,763; US 8,788,715; US 7,957,339, all listing "7120129 | October 10, 2006 | Ayyagari et al." in their Referenced Cited tables.
• The family record itself (e.g., a PCT search-report family annex listing EP 1241838, CN 100418066, JP 2002344458A, US 7120129 B2, US 7512081 B2).
• A false positive — a chemistry paper where 0.7120129 is an unrelated computed numerical constant (a rotational coordinate / free-energy figure), not a patent.

3. Why the "Cited By" lists cannot satisfy your §102 request

You asked which references "potentially anticipate under 35 U.S.C. § 102." A reference can only anticipate if it is prior art as of 2001-03-13. Every entry in the patent's 71-item "Cited By" table and its 159-item "Citing family" table post-dates that date. For example:

…and so on down both lists. These are §102 art against later patents, not against 7,120,129. Using them to invalidate 7,120,129 would be a category error. I am flagging this explicitly because the task framing ("each patent citation for 7120129") blurs the forward/backward distinction.

4. What §102-capable material I can ground from the authoritative text

Working only from the supplied full text, the following are the state-of-the-art references the patent itself relies on, and they are the only §102-eligible things I can identify with confidence:

I want to be clear about the limits of this: identifying the standard as background art is grounded, but I cannot responsibly map specific prior-art references to specific claims (e.g., "ref X anticipates claim 4") without the actual (56) list, because that mapping depends on comparing each reference's disclosure to each claim limitation.

5. The reference I can confirm exists but must caution against

My search surfaced US 7,002,920 B1 (Ayyagari et al., issued 2/2006) being cited by other patents. It shares an inventor (Arun Ayyagari) and is a Microsoft wireless patent. However:

• It issued in 2006, and I could not verify its filing date.
• If it was filed before 2001-03-13 it could be §102(e) art; if not, it is not prior art at all.

Because I cannot confirm its filing date, I am not asserting it as prior art. Treat it as a lead to verify, not a finding.

6. Framework for the mapping you asked for (to be populated once the (56) list is obtained)

Once the real References Cited section is in hand, the analysis should be structured as follows, and I've pre-scoped where each claim's novelty pressure points are:

Claim 1 (independent — the 8-step zero-config method + BSSID→SSID derivation): anticipation requires a single reference disclosing all of: preference check; scan; connect-on-preferences; default mode check; preferred-provider list check; authentication-mode check; BSSID-list construction; and derivation of preferred + compatible SSIDs. A reference missing any one of these — especially the BSSID-list-building step — fails §102 and shifts the analysis to §103.

Claim 13 (independent — scan → infrastructure-first → selectively ad-hoc, with the 802.1X credential fallback): requires scan detecting networks and STAs, infrastructure-first ordering, selective ad-hoc fallback, and the with-credentials / without-credentials authentication ladder.

Dependent claims 2–12 and 14–20 add: SSID fallback loop (2), 802.1X with/without credentials (3, 4), non-802.1X association (5), auto-mode→ad-hoc (6), ad-hoc SSID selection incl. default (7, 8), infrastructure/ad-hoc monitoring (9, 10), policy file (11), the four named modes (12), off-line fallback (14), new-network detection (15), listing + prioritization (16), and mode-selection dependencies (18–20).

A defensible §102 answer needs, per reference: full citation, its date, a one-line disclosure summary, and the specific claims every limitation of which it discloses. I can produce that in full only with the actual (56) list.

7. What I recommend

To get the authoritative backward-citation list (which the provided full text omits), pull it from one of:

1. USPTO Patent Center / Patent Public Search — the "References Cited" pane for US 09/805,500.
2. The granted patent PDF front page (Google Patents "Download PDF") — box (56).
3. Google Patents → "Citations" tab (distinct from the "Cited By" tab I was able to see).

Provide that list and I will immediately produce the per-reference table (citation, dates, description, §102 claim mapping) you asked for.

Uncertainty statement

I have high confidence in the bibliographic data and the identification of the patent. I have no confident source for the specific U.S./foreign/other references cited in US 7,120,129, and every 7120129 search hit was either a forward citation (post-dating the 2001‑03‑13 priority date and therefore not §102 art), the family listing itself, or a numeric false positive. Rather than fabricate an examiner-style prior-art table, I am reporting the gap and the verified surrounding facts.

Note on literal identifiers: consistent with the rules and the prior section, I did not correct the "falls" for "fails" typo in claims 4 and 13, and I did not alter any patent/application numbers.

I'll research the prior-art references associated with this patent before performing the § 103 analysis.

Let me verify details on the key prior-art references I've identified, including those cited during prosecution of the family.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 7,120,129 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Analysis date: April 26, 2026 | Patent: US 7,120,129 B2 ("System and method for achieving zero-configuration wireless computing and computing device incorporating same") | App. No. 09/805,500 | Priority/filing: 2001-03-13 | Assignee of record: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC

0. What the "Prior Art" section of the page actually gives us — and what it does not

Before doing any § 103 work, I have to be candid about the record. The excerpt you supplied does not contain a backward "Citations / References Cited" list for this patent. The page's prior-art metadata is, literally, three items:

The long lists on the page ("Cited By (71)" and "Families Citing this family (159)") are forward citations, i.e., later documents that cite this patent. For the most part they postdate the 2001-03-13 priority date and therefore are not § 102 prior art against 7,120,129 — they are evidence about the later art (relevant to the continuation, US 7,512,081, whose claims have an effectively later posture), not about this patent.

I flag one important cross-check against the previously generated sections: no contradiction found. The prior summary correctly identified claims 1 and 13 as the independent claims, and the litigation summary correctly reported no litigation, no IPR/PGR, and no reexamination. That means this § 103 analysis is a paper analysis, not a reconstruction of an actual IPR ground.

Because the page's literal prior-art section is thin, I supplemented it by pulling the references actually identified in this patent's own family record — specifically (a) the EPO search report for the sibling EP 1 241 838 (same priority, same specification, same claims), and (b) the "References Cited" list appearing on the face of the continuation US 7,512,081. Those are the closest thing to an authoritative prior-art-of-record set for this disclosure. Where I could not verify a reference's content or date, I say so explicitly rather than filling the gap.

The working prior-art set

Caveats I will not paper over:

• PA-8/PA-9 are dated before the priority date, but dating alone does not establish that they were publicly accessible as printed publications under § 102(b). Their presence in an IDS proves citation, not accessibility. Treat them as probative of what a POSITA understood about 802.1X scenarios, not as conclusive § 102(b) art absent proof of public dissemination.
• PA-10 is Microsoft's own product announcement of the very functionality at issue. It is a printed publication, but it is also arguably the inventors' own work. In an IPR or litigation this would need a § 102(b)/§ 102(a) analysis for "by others." I use it as evidence of the state of the art and of the ordinary design objectives, not as a standalone § 102(b) knockout.
• Do not treat the forward "Cited By" list as prior art. For example, US 6,975,857 B2 (Hewlett-Packard, "Automatically configuring a communication interface…") is shown with a 2001-06-26 date — after this patent's priority date — and therefore is not prior art against 7,120,129. Similarly, the eWeek article by Carmel Nobel ("For WLAN, It's 802.11 bnn," Nov. 19, 2001) postdates 2001-03-13 and cannot be § 102 art here. I have excluded both from the grounds below.
• One forward-citation entry is worth a separate check but I could not verify it: US 2008/0032738 A1 (Palm, Inc., "Portable wireless network") shows a priority date of 2001-03-07 — six days before this patent's filing. If it has a U.S. filing/provisional date before 2001-03-13, it is potential § 102(e) art. I flag this as unverified.

1. Level of ordinary skill and claim construction

POSITA (as of March 13, 2001): a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, computer science, or equivalent, plus approximately two to three years of experience in wireless data networking, including practical familiarity with IEEE 802.11 MAC/PHY operation, network-interface driver models (e.g., the NDIS object-identifier set), and mobile-IP/roaming concepts. Equivalent experience may substitute for formal education.

Construction notes that matter for obviousness:

1. Claim 1 uses "comprising the steps of" without an express ordering requirement. Under the general rule, process steps are not limited to the recited order absent explicit sequencing language. This broadens claim 1 — the eight recited steps need only all be performed by the claimed method, in any operable order. That makes claim 1 easier to invalidate than its face suggests.
2. Claim 1's preamble recites "wired network, wireless infrastructure, and wireless ad hoc modes," but the body does not separately claim a wired-connection step. The wired limb is essentially preamble-only; the operative steps are mode/SSID/auth-selection steps that read on 802.11 stations.
3. The specification contains admissions usable as prior art (MPEP 2129; In re Fout). The Background states flatly: "Under this wireless standard, nomadic computer users may form their own network in an ad hoc mode, or may connect to an established network in an infrastructure mode" — conceding both modes and 802.11's provisions for them. And with respect to configuration tooling: "while currently IEEE 802.11 network interface vendors provide utilities to set configuration parameters…" — conceding vendor configuration utilities already existed. These are party admissions about the pre-existing art.
4. Claims 4 and 13 contain the literal string "falls" where "fails" is evidently intended ("…when the step of connecting as a valid user with credentials falls"). Consistent with the instruction to interpret identifiers literally and the prior section's caveat, I analyze the element as written; the typo does not change the substance.

2. GROUND 1 — Claim 1 is obvious over PA-1 (IEEE 802.11-1999) in view of PA-10 (WZC publications) and PA-1-adjacent preference-list art

Claim 1 element-by-element:

Result: every step of claim 1 is disclosed across PA-1 and the WZC publications, and the combination is a mere arrangement of known elements performing their known functions (KSR, 550 U.S. at 416). The single remaining "gap" — expressly deriving the preferred/compatible SSID subset from the scanned BSSID list — is nothing more than applying a user-maintained preference list to the set of identities the 802.11 scan already returns. That is a textbook predictable variation (MPEP 2144.03).

Motivation to combine: the Background of the patent itself states the problem — a nomadic user "may not know the network name established therein," and public venues "may well have multiple network service providers available for connection, which further complicates the name selection." The reference combination addresses precisely that stated problem by automating selection. Where the problem is known, the elements are known, and the solution is their straightforward combination with predictable results, § 103 is satisfied. KSR, 550 U.S. at 417–421.

3. GROUND 2 — Claim 13 is obvious over PA-2 (Okanoue '577) in view of PA-1 and PA-8/PA-9

Claim 13 is the stronger independent claim and the one most exposed. Its three core steps and its authentication sub-routine map cleanly onto a single, unitary reference plus the standard.

Motivation to combine: PA-2 is not merely analogous art — it is in the same field (mobile terminals transitioning between junction-node networks and ad hoc networks) and addresses the same problem (deciding how to connect when the user's environment changes). A POSITA seeking to implement PA-2's trunk/ad-hoc switching on an IEEE 802.11 platform would have had every reason to adopt 802.11's own scanning, association, and authentication primitives (PA-1), because PA-2 is protocol-agnostic about the particular air interface while 802.11 is the dominant WLAN standard of the period — the patent itself concedes as much. Adding the credential/unauthenticated fallback is a known design preference of network operators (grant limited access to unauthenticated users rather than denying service), documented in PA-9.

4. GROUND 3 — The dependent claims add only routine, expected variations

Nothing in claims 2–12 and 14–20 introduces a structural or operational element not already known, nor any asserted result beyond the expected operation of the combined references.

5. GROUND 4 (alternative / corroborating) — The EPO already reached a § 103 conclusion on this same disclosure

This deserves emphasis because it is the strongest external corroboration in the record available to me. The EPO search report for EP 1 241 838 A3 (the European sibling of 7,120,129, same priority date of 2001-03-13, same specification, same claim set) designated four references as category "Y" — the EPO's express designation for art that renders claims non-inventive when combined with another document:

• PA-4 — Brewer et al., A Network Architecture for Heterogeneous Mobile Computing (cited against the broad independent claims);
• PA-7 — Mouly & Pautet, The GSM System for Mobile Communications;
• PA-5 — Perkins, Mobile-IP, Ad-Hoc Networking, and Nomadicity;
• PA-6 — Adachi et al., A Handoff Examination of a Hybrid System Using Cellular and Ad-Hoc Modes (cited specifically against claims 14, 22 and 24 of the EP equivalent).

A "Y" designation is the European analogue of a § 103 combination. Its significance here is that an independent examining authority, working on the same disclosure and the same priority date, concluded that combinations of these references put the claimed subject matter at the ordinary-skill level. Grounds 1–3 above supply the corresponding U.S.-law articulation of that conclusion, and Grounds 3/4 map the very claims the EPO targeted (hybrid infra/ad-hoc handoff, preference ordering) onto U.S. claims 9, 10, 12, 18, 19 and 20.

6. Why a POSITA would have been motivated to combine — the affirmative case

A § 103 conclusion is only as good as its motivation. Here the motivation is unusually well documented, coming from four independent directions:

1. The patent's own statement of the problem. The Background identifies three complaints about the prior art: (i) the user must open a UI and select the connection method; (ii) the user must input the network name, which is impractical "in an airport, hotel, etc."; and (iii) the user must manually reconfigure when transferring between networks. Every reference combination above is directed at exactly these three complaints. Where the specification frames the objective this crisply, the "motivation" inquiry largely answers itself.

2. Same field, same problem, overlapping disclosure. PA-2 (Okanoue '577) is not a remote analogue: it is a mobile-terminal network-connection controller that switches between a node-mediated network and an ad hoc network and forms a new ad hoc network when nothing is available. A POSITA implementing PA-2's logic on an 802.11 station would necessarily use PA-1's scan/associate/authenticate services, because there is no other way to do it. That is a "merely a combination of prior art elements according to known methods to yield predictable results" fact pattern. KSR, 550 U.S. at 416.

3. Design incentives and market forces. By early 2001 the WLAN market was expanding into airports, hotels, and campuses (as the patent's own Background notes), the Wi-Fi ecosystem was consolidating around 802.11b, and vendors were shipping interface-specific configuration utilities. The commercial incentive to replace those per-vendor utilities with a universal, zero-touch configuration layer is expressly recited in the patent ("The ability to set such generic configuration information enhances user experience by enabling a common approach…"). Recognizing a market-driven design need is a recognized motivation. KSR, 550 U.S. at 421.

4. The prior art itself teaches the direction of the improvement. PA-2 teaches "trunk-first, ad-hoc-fallback." PA-6 and PA-4 teach preference-ordered, mode-switching hybrid operation. PA-10/WZC teaches a ranked preferred-network list over scanned SSIDs. Each reference points a POSITA toward the next, and none of them teaches away from the others. There is no teaching away to argue: nothing in PA-1, PA-2, or PA-4–PA-7 disparages automated selection, preference ordering, or infrastructure-first fallback. Indeed, PA-2's express teaching of ad-hoc creation when nothing is available is a superset of the claimed fallback.

5. Predictable results / reasonable expectation of success. Each step — scan, filter, rank, associate, authenticate, fall back — is individually deterministic and well understood. Combining them yields no asserted result beyond convenience to the user. That is precisely the "obvious to try" posture of KSR Part IV.

7. Anticipated non-obviousness arguments, and why they are weak here

I should present the counter-case fairly, since a serious analysis is not a rubber stamp.

A. "The claimed combination was not suggested as a whole; the references are from different sub-fields."
Weak. Four references (PA-1, PA-2, PA-4, PA-6) are all wireless/mobile data networking. KSR rejects the rigid "same field of endeavor" requirement; analogous art includes the field of the inventor's endeavor and any field a POSITA would reasonably look to. Moreover, the problems addressed (roaming, mode selection, avoiding manual reconfiguration) are common across cellular, mobile IP, and WLAN.

B. "The 'auto, infrastructure preferred' behavior with continuous monitoring for a newly appearing infrastructure network is a specific, non-obvious behavior."
Weakest of the dependent claims to sustain. PA-6 (hybrid cellular/ad-hoc handoff) and PA-4 (vertical handoff across heterogeneous networks) disclose exactly the "prefer one mode, switch when it appears" behavior, and periodic polling of a scan list is a routine implementation choice. The EPO targeted the corresponding claims (14, 22, 24 of the EP equivalent) with PA-6 specifically.

C. "Secondary considerations: commercial success, industry adoption, failure of others."
Potentially the patentee's best argument, and it deserves genuine weight. WZC was widely adopted and is conventionally credited with making Wi-Fi usable in Windows XP; the ITProToday piece I retrieved even notes that "802.11 under previous versions of Windows [was] a nightmare, with poor user interfaces, security issues, and high failure rates." Under WBIP/Volterra, the patentee would argue a nexus between that success and the claimed combination.
However: (i) the same recovered sources indicate the functionality was announced publicly on February 13, 2001, weeks before the filing date, which undercuts any pre-filing "failure of others" narrative and raises real § 102(b)/inventorship-publication questions; (ii) any commercial-success case must show the success is attributable to the claimed features rather than to Microsoft's bundling power, the OS monopoly position, or the general 802.11 market explosion; and (iii) the practice of "standard practice in the industry" cuts the other way where the claim reads on an industry standard (here, 802.11 scanning/association plus a preference list). I would expect a petition or invalidity contention to prevail on claims 1 and 13 irrespective of a well-constructed secondary-considerations record, but I want to be clear this is a judgment call and not a certainty.

D. "The claim is limited to the four-mode taxonomy (claim 12)."
Weak. Four ways of combining two binary choices. Exhaustive enumeration.

8. Explicit limits of this analysis — read before relying on it

1. I did not retrieve the actual "References Cited" (backward-citation) list from the face of US 7,120,129. The page's prior-art section as supplied contains only keywords and a prior-art date. My reference set is reconstructed from the sibling EP search report and the continuation's face. There may be examiner-cited art on the '129 patent itself that I have not seen, and if you have the front page, I would incorporate it before finalizing.
2. I verified the content of PA-1, PA-2, PA-3 and PA-10 from retrieved text. For PA-4 through PA-9, I have verified only that they appear as cited references with the designations noted — not their internal disclosure. Any assertion here that a given reference "discloses" a specific element should be re-verified against the reference itself (page/paragraph pin cites) before being used in a filing.
3. PA-8 and PA-9 are date-verified but not accessibility-verified. Concrete evidence of public dissemination (distribution, posting, library availability) is required to rely on them as § 102(b) printed publications.
4. US 2008/0032738 A1 (Palm, priority 2001-03-07) is an unverified potential § 102(e) reference and should be checked against its underlying provisional/filing date.
5. No litigation, IPR, PGR or reexam exists for this patent per the record in the prior sections, so there is no adjudicated claim construction, no estoppel, and no PTAB or court ruling on validity to anchor to. Everything above is an ex ante, from-scratch analysis.
6. This is analysis, not legal advice, and it concerns a patent recorded as Expired – Lifetime (adjusted expiration 2023-08-07). Invalidity of an expired claim matters for past damages, licensing, and defensive estoppel — not for prospective freedom to operate.

9. Bottom line

Claims 1 and 13 of US 7,120,129 are, on this record, more likely than not invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 103. The strongest ground is the Okanoue '577 + IEEE 802.11-1999 + Microsoft 802.1X white paper combination against claim 13, because Okanoue supplies the entire inventive arc of that claim — detect the medium, connect to the trunk (infrastructure) network, and fall back to (or create) an ad hoc network when that fails — and 802.11 supplies every remaining functional limitation. For claim 1, the combination of the IEEE 802.11-1999 scanning/association/BSSID-list machinery with the WZC preference-list publications accounts for every recited step, leaving only the routine step of applying a ranked preference list to the scanned SSID set. The dependent claims add finite enumerations and design choices with predictable results, and the EPO's "Y"-category designations on this same disclosure (Brewer, Perkins, Adachi, Mouly) supply independent corroboration that the claimed subject matter sits at the ordinary-skill level.

The patentee's most credible rebuttal is a secondary-considerations case built on WZC's real-world adoption — but it is materially weakened by the pre-filing public announcement of that very functionality on 2001-02-13, and by the need to prove nexus to the claimed features rather than to Microsoft's platform position.