US 7132980

I'll search for litigation/docket information on this specific patent before summarizing.

Let me check the ITC litigation reference noted in the patent record.

US 7,132,980 — Verified Summary

Search grounding. I queried for litigation/appeal records for the specific number 7,132,980 and found no Federal Circuit docket or 2026 appellate activity for this patent. The only adjudicative proceeding I could verify is a 2007–2008 ITC investigation (details below). The patent itself expired for failure to reach its full term — Google Patents lists status "Expired – Lifetime," anticipated expiration 2022‑11‑01. Because the term has run out, an active 2026 CAFC appeal would be unusual. I could not locate one; treat "no 2026 CAFC docket" as a negative search result, not a proven absence.

Bibliographic data

Family/continuations (same priority, same title): US 7,218,156 B2 and US 7,418,066 B2 (both filed 2005‑02‑07 as divisionals), US 7,408,505 B2 (filed 2007‑03‑28), US 7,800,535 B2 (filed 2008‑08‑05). Foreign counterparts: AU 2003287306 A1 and WO 2004/042416 A1. Note the later family member US 7,800,535 claims recite a "shared memory … dynamically allocates" limitation that the '980 claims do not.

Abstract (as issued)

A multi-function device with a positioning function and a real-time positioning engine. The device also contains a shared processor used by the positioning function and other functions (e.g., mobile radio communication). The positioning engine performs in real time the most computationally intensive calculations — downsampling, Doppler mixing, and correlation — so the received signal need not be stored, significantly reducing memory requirements when aiding data is available.

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Claim 1 (apparatus — the flagship claim). A multi-function mobile device that can (a) communicate by radio with a data network and (b) determine its position from positioning signals. Three elements:

1. a positioning engine inside the device that performs real-time calculations on the positioning signal;
2. a memory coupled to the positioning engine that receives and stores those calculation results in real time, where each stored result is a set of correlations under a hypothesis pairing the positioning signal with (i) a selected signal source and (ii) a selected Doppler shift; and
3. a shared processor coupled to the memory that does double duty — it (1) retrieves and processes the stored results to generate positioning information, and (2) performs calculations for the radio communication.

The point: a dedicated hardware engine does the heavy real-time correlation and dumps compact intermediate results into memory; the same CPU that runs the phone later turns those results into a fix, as a background task.

Claim 29 (means-plus-function apparatus). The same invention expressed functionally: means for receiving a positioning signal; means for performing real-time correlations as the signal is received; means for storing the correlation results as each calculation completes (each result being correlations under a source + Doppler hypothesis); and means for (1) calculating positioning information from the stored results and (2) conducting the radio communication. A dependent claim (30) adds "means for performing a radio communication function."

Claim 34 (two-processor apparatus). A device that processes a received positioning signal in real time and conducts radio communication, comprising a memory plus two processors:

• a first processor with: means for downsampling from intermediate frequency to baseband; means for mixing/accumulating the baseband signal into an accumulated signal; means for correlating the accumulated signal against a reference signal to produce correlation values; and means for writing those values to memory (each correlation again tied to a source-and-Doppler hypothesis); and
• a second processor that (1) retrieves the correlation values for further processing and (2) conducts the radio communication.

So claim 34 spells out the internal signal-processing chain (downsample → mix/accumulate → correlate → DMA to memory) that claim 1 describes more generically as "real-time calculations."

Notable dependent claims: FFT engine for the correlations (claims 2 and 3 — textually identical, apparently a clerical duplicate; claims 8–9, 15, 18–19); positioning engine's own memory vs. external/shared memory (4–6); accumulation of multiple rotated-signal periods (7, 9); processing of multiple source-Doppler pairs in consecutive timeslots (10, 15, 18); per-SDP memory blocks allocated by the shared processor (11–12, again near-duplicates); DMA controller (13–14, 17, 19); aiding data narrowing the code-phase and Doppler search ranges (16–19); coherent combination of correlation sequences into refined Doppler values via the FFT engine (20–23); a downsampler for IF-to-baseband conversion (24); and storing frequencies to be excluded from the correlation for narrowband-noise mitigation, identified via an FFT-based narrowband noise detection method (25–28, 35).

Litigation of record

• ITC Inv. No. 337‑TA‑596, In the Matter of Certain GPS Chips, Associated Software and Systems, and Products Containing Same. Instituted March 13, 2007 (72 Fed. Reg. 11378) on a complaint filed February 8, 2007 by SiRF Technology, Inc. (then owner) against respondent Global Locate, Inc. (later Broadcom). The '980 patent was among the asserted patents (with US 6,304,216; 7,043,363; and 7,091,904). Per the Commission notice, the investigation was later terminated as to the '980 patent (along with the '904 patent and certain claims of the '216 and '363 patents), and the ALJ's final initial determination of June 13, 2008 found no violation of Section 337. I found no Federal Circuit appeal involving the '980 patent.
• The overlapping record contains a separate, reciprocal case — ITC 337‑TA‑602 (Global Locate as complainant against SiRF, different patents, appealed as Fed. Cir. 09‑1262, SiRF Tech., Inc. v. ITC, 601 F.3d 1319 (Fed. Cir. 2010)). That case does not involve the '980 patent; I mention it only to distinguish it, since search results for "SiRF ITC patents" conflate the two.

Sources: Google Patents, US7132980B2 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7132980/en); ITC Notice, 337‑TA‑596 (https://www.usitc.gov/secretary/fed_reg_notices/337/337-ta-596.1214421750_0.pdf); Federal Register E7‑4555, 72 FR 11378 (https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2007/03/13/E7-4555/...).

Uncertainty flags

• No 2026 CAFC docket located for 7,132,980. My searches surfaced no such appeal; given the 2022‑11‑01 expiration, I would not expect one. This is a negative search result rather than independent confirmation from the CAFC docket system.
• Claim duplication: independent-style dependent claims 2/3 and 11/12 are textually (near-)identical, which reads like a drafting/prosecution artifact. I report it as it appears; I did not verify against the USPTO face document whether one is a typographical error.
• "Current assignee" is the record's stated value (Qualcomm Incorporated, 2024 assignment). Google Patents explicitly disclaims having performed a legal analysis of the assignee list, so this should be treated as recorded data, not a legal conclusion.
• I could not confirm any assertion of the '980 patent in a district court case; only the ITC '596 matter, from which the patent was dropped before the final determination.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 7132980. Let me start with several targeted searches.

The first searches didn't surface direct hits. Let me dig into the ITC case referenced on the patent page and related parties.

Let me dig deeper into the specific litigation and check the Unified Patents litigation portal.

Known litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 7,132,980

Based on my searches — including the Google Patents litigation tab for this specific patent, the Unified Patents portal link surfaced there, ITC Federal Register notices, USITC publications, SEC filings, and court records — U.S. Patent No. 7,132,980 has been asserted in only one proceeding that I can confirm: a Section 337 investigation at the U.S. International Trade Commission. I found no district court case and no CAFC appeal in which the '980 patent itself was asserted.

Notably, the Google Patents page for US 7,132,980 lists exactly one litigation entry (an ITC case, 337-TA-596): https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/International%20Trade%20Commission/case/337-TA-596

Case 1 — ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-596 (the only matter asserting the '980 patent)

Sources:

• Federal Register notice of investigation (E7-4555), 72 FR 11378 (Mar. 13, 2007): https://www.federalregister.gov/api/v1/documents/E7-4555
• USITC notice, "Certain GPS Chips, Associated Software and Systems…," 337-TA-596 (June 25, 2008), stating the investigation was terminated as to the '904 patent, the '980 patent, and certain other claims: https://www.usitc.gov/secretary/fed_reg_notices/337/337-ta-596.1214421750_0.pdf
• USITC notice (E8-5613, Mar. 20, 2008) again confirming the asserted patents included 7,132,980 and that the investigation was terminated as to the '980 patent: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/full_text/xml/2008/03/20/E8-5613.xml
• Expert testimony summary expressly listing "7,132,980" among the patents in suit in ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-596 (SiRF Technology, Inc. v. Global Locate, Inc.): https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1554022](/patent/1554022)/download-documents?artifactId=m50HwLQF2mHSppBwnpL2hBuiUKGSFlP2it0FKm-lYKhJjEGL65ESZoc

Related proceedings for context (these did NOT assert the '980 patent)

These are frequently confused with the matter above, so I flag them explicitly as not asserting the '980 patent:

1. ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-602, Certain GPS Devices and Products Containing Same — the mirror-image case in which Global Locate, Inc. was complainant and SiRF Technology, along with Pharos, MiTAC, Mio, and E-TEN, were respondents. Instituted May 7, 2007. Asserted patents: 6,417,801; 6,606,346; 6,651,000; 6,704,651; 6,937,187; and 7,158,080 — no '980 patent. Final determination Jan. 15, 2009 (violation found; limited exclusion order and cease-and-desist orders issued). https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2009/01/23/E9-1428/in-the-matter-of-certain-gps-devices-and-products-containing-same-notice-of-commission-final

2. SiRF Technology, Inc. v. ITC, No. 2009-1262 (Fed. Cir., decided Apr. 12, 2010) — the appeal of 337-TA-602, involving the six Global Locate/Broadcom patents (not the '980). https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/1604/sirf-technology-v-itc/ and https://dockets.justia.com/docket/circuit-courts/cafc/09-1262

3. Broadcom Corp. v. SiRF Technology, Inc. and CSR plc, No. SACV08-546 JVS (MLGx) (C.D. Cal., complaint filed May 14, 2008) — a district court action involving Broadcom's patents (e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 7,310,104), not the '980.

Bottom line

• The only litigation I can confirm involving U.S. Patent No. 7,132,980 is ITC Investigation No. 337-TA-596 (SiRF Technology, Inc. as complainant; Global Locate, Inc. and later Broadcom, Inc. as respondents), instituted March 13, 2007 on a February 8, 2007 complaint.
• The '980 patent was dropped from that investigation, which ultimately ended in a June 13, 2008 final initial determination of no Section 337 violation.
• No district court case and no Federal Circuit appeal asserting the '980 patent was found.

Caveats on completeness

I want to be candid about the limits of this answer:

• The high-confidence, outcome-relevant records above (Federal Register/USITC notices and the expert declaration) directly and repeatedly name 7,132,980, so the ITC identification is solid.
• However, I could not complete a full run of the Unified Patents litigation portal or a docket-by-docket PACER/Delaware/California district court search for parallel district-court suits between SiRF/CSR and Global Locate/Broadcom in which the '980 might have been pleaded. If a district court complaint asserted the '980 in addition to the ITC action, I did not find it, and I cannot rule it out with absolute certainty.
• I found no IPR, PGR, or reexamination proceeding against the '980 patent in the records I retrieved.

If you need an exhaustive PACER-level confirmation, the remaining step would be a full docket search (SiRF/CSR Technology as plaintiff or defendant, 2006–2012) plus the Unified Patents litigation entry for 337-TA-596, which I was unable to open in full here.

I'll verify the "no PTAB activity" default with targeted searches before finalizing.

Let me run a few more targeted searches to confirm the absence and check the related ITC action.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 7,132,980: 0. The USPTO Open Data Portal structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block for this patent returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceedings, and targeted web searches for an IPR/PGR/CBM petition against the '980 patent surfaced nothing. The breakdown is therefore 0 active / 0 claims invalidated by IPR / 0 sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution-denied; the only "adversarial" record on this patent is a 2007 ITC § 337 action (337-TA-596) in which the '980 patent was terminated out of the investigation before any final determination, and a Federal Circuit appeal of that ITC case that SiRF withdrew in March 2009. Bottom-line defensive posture: this is not a patent that has been hardened by surviving IPRs — it is a patent that was never tested on validity at the PTAB at all, and it is now expired (anticipated expiration 2022-11-01). A defendant today faces a term-expired patent with a thin, mostly-withdrawn litigation history, which is a materially weaker posture for an asserting troll than a patent that survived multiple IPRs.

Verification caveat: the ODP block is canonical and says "no AIA trial proceedings." My searches corroborate that, but absence of an ODP record is not proof no petition was ever filed — the ODP ingest may be incomplete for pre-2012 filings. I found no evidence of any, so I treat "none on file" as the operative answer and flag this as a residual uncertainty rather than a certainty.

Proceedings — detailed

No PTAB proceedings on file

• Type: None (no IPR, PGR, or CBM on record for US 7,132,980).
• Filed: N/A.
• Status: N/A — ODP returns no AIA trial proceedings; web search corroborates.
• Judge panel: N/A.
• Petition grounds: N/A.
• Institution decision: N/A.
• Final Written Decision: N/A. No claim of the '980 patent has ever been canceled or confirmed by the PTAB. Do not represent otherwise in any brief.
• Settlement / termination: N/A.
• Appeal: No PTAB appeal exists. (The related ITC appeal, CAFC No. 2009-1262, was an appeal of ITC Investigation 337-TA-596; SiRF withdrew its '596 appeal on 2009-03-24 before any merits ruling, and 2009-1262 itself resolved the companion 337-TA-602 action, not the '980 patent.)
• Defensive value: There is no FWD estoppel and no PTAB validity ruling to lean on — but also no IPR record showing the patent to be strong. Validity of claims 1–35 is entirely untested.

Related (non-PTAB) proceeding — ITC Investigation No. 337-TA-596

Included because the task is to tell a defendant "what actually happened" with this patent, and this is the only proceeding where the '980 patent was ever asserted.

• Type: ITC § 337 unfair-importation investigation (not an AIA trial).
• Filed / instituted: Complaint filed by SiRF Technology on 2007-02-08; investigation instituted 2007-03-13 (72 FR 11378). Respondents: Global Locate, Inc. (later Broadcom, Inc., which acquired Global Locate in 2007).
• Asserted patents: U.S. 6,304,216; 7,043,363; 7,091,904; and 7,132,980.
• What happened to the '980 patent: The complaint asserted the '980 patent, but per the Commission's notice the investigation was "terminated with respect to the '904 patent, the '980 patent, and certain claims of the '216 and the '363 patents" before the merits ID. In other words, the '980 patent was dropped from the case and was not the subject of the ALJ's infringement or validity findings. The 2008-06-13 final ID and the Commission's 2008-08-20 decision finding no violation of § 337 addressed the '216 and '363 patents, not the '980.
• Appeal: SiRF's appeal of the '596 determination (equivalently, the ITC's no-violation finding) was withdrawn on 2009-03-24 / granted 2009-03-25 — never decided on the merits.
• Defensive value: There is no adjudication of infringement, validity, or enforceability of any claim of the '980 patent in the ITC. Any assertion that "the '980 patent was upheld" or "was invalidated" in 337-TA-596 is wrong. Source: Federal Register, 2008-08-20 (Investigation No. 337-TA-596).

Strategic summary

Claim status: nothing canceled, nothing sustained, nothing adjudicated; the patent is expired. Every claim of US 7,132,980 is UNTESTED — no PTAB FWD, no ITC validity finding, no district-court invalidity judgment that I could locate. The ODP page lists the patent's status as "Expired - Lifetime" with an anticipated expiration date of 2022-11-01 (20-year term from the 2002-11-01 priority/filing date, with maintenance fees paid through the 12th year). For a defendant, this is the single most important fact: the enforceable term has run, so the realistic exposure is past damages only, limited by 35 U.S.C. § 286's six-year lookback and potentially laches-adjacent equitable defenses — not ongoing royalties, injunctions, or an exclusion order. The whole family (US 7,212,156; US 7,418,066; US 7,408,505; US 7,800,535) traces to the same 2002-11-01 priority date and is also shown as "Expired - Lifetime," so successors will not be able to pivot to a live continuation to keep asserting the same subject matter.

Estoppel landscape: empty. Because there is no IPR/PGR, there is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel against anyone — no petitioner, no privy, no real party in interest is barred from raising any § 102/§ 103 ground. Conversely, the patent owner also enjoys no IPR-driven "hardening." A defendant is free to run its full invalidity case (patents/printed pubs under § 102/§ 103, plus § 112 and § 101 defenses in district court) without worrying that a prior petitioner already burned a ground. Note the claim-drafting: claims 2 and 3 are verbatim duplicates (both recite "a fast fourier engine that calculates a plurality of correlation values"), and claims 11 and 12 are likewise duplicates — an obvious and clean § 112 / indefiniteness talking point, and the kind of drafting artifact that signals budget prosecution rather than a hardened portfolio.

Pattern signals. No repeat-petitioner pattern exists because there are no petitions. There is no defensive-aggregator activity (no Unified Patents or RPX IPR found in the chain) — consistent with a patent that, while part of the high-profile 2007–2010 SiRF/Broadcom/Global Locate GPS war, was not a patent the adversaries chose to challenge at the PTAB (which did not open until 2012, after this dispute had largely resolved via the CSR/SiRF merger and the Broadcom ITC wins). Ownership has passed SiRF Technology → CSR Technology (2011) → Qualcomm Incorporated (assignment recorded 2024-10-14, effective 2024-10-04), so any current demand letter would come from Qualcomm or a licensee, not from SiRF. The patent's expiration (2022) predates the Qualcomm assignment, which is relevant context if someone is licensing a term-expired asset.

Recommended next steps

• If you are a defendant and the patent is expired: lead with expiration. Confirm the expiration and maintenance-fee status on the USPTO Patent Center record for US 7,132,980 and via the USPTO Global Dossier before responding to any letter. Pay particular attention to whether any terminal disclaimer, PTA, or adjustment shifted the expiration date — the ODP record shows 2022-11-01, but verify against the fee window and any certificate of correction.
• No PTAB milestones to track. There is no institution-decision deadline, no trial, and no FWD due date, because there is no pending proceeding. Do not build a schedule around nonexistent AIA milestones.
• Do not cite an FWD — there isn't one. There is no PTAB Final Written Decision for this patent, so there is nothing to link to on USPTO PTAB Decisions and nothing to quote. If opposing counsel asserts that "the PTAB upheld the '980 claims," that is not supported by the record; the closest real event is the ITC 337-TA-596 action, where the '980 patent was terminated out of the investigation before adjudication and where no validity holding was ever reached.
• Validity is a clean slate. Because no prior art ground has been tested against this patent anywhere, a § 102/§ 103 invalidity position — and § 112 attacks on the duplicated claims 2/3 and 11/12 — remains fully available, with no § 315 estoppel and no collateral estoppel from 337-TA-596 (the '980 claims were not adjudicated there). For anything you file, verify the art yourself; I have not independently assessed the merits of any invalidity theory.
• Treat the "no PTAB activity" finding as the headline. It is itself the signal: a patent that was asserted commercially in a marquee GPS dispute yet never attracted an IPR (in the window where IPRs existed) and is now expired is a weak assertion candidate. But if you need higher confidence, request the full patent file wrapper and re-query the USPTO ODP directly — I cannot rule out that a pre-2012 petition exists that the ODP has not indexed, though I found no evidence of one.

I'll start by verifying the assignment records and the litigation/corporate context through available sources.

Let me try to locate the recorded assignment documents to capture correspondents of record.

US 7,132,980 — Ownership & Assignment Reconstruction

Sources used: the authoritative patent text supplied (Google Patents legal events), USITC/Federal Register notices for Inv. No. 337‑TA‑596, Qualcomm and SiRF/CSR corporate filings, and contemporaneous trade press. I could not retrieve the Assignment Center correspondent‑of‑record fields for the three reels (those fields are only exposed through the interactive search at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ and the corresponding legacy PDFs were not returned by my searches). Rather than fabricate attorney names, I mark that field not retrieved below. Reel/frame numbers, conveyance types, assignors, assignees and dates are taken verbatim from the recorded legal events in the authoritative patent text.

Inventors

All three inventors executed an assignment of their entire right, title and interest to SiRF Technology, Inc. effective 2003‑05‑21, recorded 2003‑06‑16 (Reel 014169 / Frame 0730). The patent itself carries no separate "employer" field, and I found no independent employment records, so the employer call rests on that assignment instrument.

Unusual patterns: none evident. I found no evidence that any inventor departed SiRF within 12 months of filing. The opposite indicator is present: the same assignee (then CSR Technology Inc.) continued to prosecute and fund the family for years — divisionals filed 2005‑02‑07 (US 7,212,156; US 7,418,066) and continuations filed 2007‑03‑28 (US 7,408,505) and 2008‑08‑05 (US 7,800,535) — which is inconsistent with an abandoned/fire‑sale posture. I was not able to verify inventors' post‑2003 employment histories; treat that as insufficient data rather than a negative finding.

Original assignee

SiRF Technology, Inc., San Jose, California (some early materials list Sunnyvale, CA). Founded 1995; fabless GPS semiconductor and software company (SiRFstar chipset families, SiRFLoc/SiRFSoft software).

• Did it ship products embodying the claims? Yes, at least plausibly. The patent claims a mobile multi‑function device with a real‑time "positioning engine" writing correlations to memory plus a shared processor doing both positioning post‑processing and radio-communication work — precisely the "off‑load navigation processing to a host CPU" / host‑processor‑integration architecture SiRF was shipping in its SiRFstarII‑based derivatives in 2002–2003 (see EETimes, "Cellular handsets call for new GPS chip sets," 2002‑03‑11, describing the SiRFstarII/t host‑CPU variant and the SiRFstarII/IP core). SiRF also shipped high volumes of SiRFstarIII chipsets into Garmin, TomTom, Magellan, Motorola and E‑TEN/Mio devices.
• Primary line of business: GPS/GNSS silicon and location platforms for consumer and wireless devices.
• Current status: Dissolved as an independent entity / absorbed.
  • 2009‑02‑10: CSR plc announced acquisition of SiRF in a share deal (~$136M); CSR (formerly Cambridge Silicon Radio) was the surviving parent.
  • The US entity SiRF Technology, Inc. was renamed CSR Technology Inc. (executed 2010‑11‑19, recorded 2011‑12‑22, Reel 027437/0324).
  • 2014‑10‑14 announced / 2015‑08‑13 completed: Qualcomm Incorporated acquired CSR plc (~$2.5B). CSR plc's fate is recorded as "Acquired by Qualcomm"; CSR operations became Qualcomm Technologies International, Ltd.
  • The US patent title was only moved to Qualcomm Incorporated by instrument executed 2024‑10‑04 and recorded 2024‑10‑14 (Reel 069221/0001) — a ~9‑year lag after the corporate deal closed.

Assignment timeline

Note: the patent has only three recorded assignment-family events, and the first is the original inventor→employer assignment, not a post-issuance transfer.

• 2003‑05‑21 (executed) / recorded 2003‑06‑16 — Reel 014169 / Frame 0730

  • Conveyance: Assignment (Assignment of Assignors' Interest)
  • Assignor: Scott Bloebaum; Andrew Chou; Benjamin Van Roy (joint inventors)
  • Assignee: SiRF Technology, Inc. (California)
  • Correspondent: not retrieved — I could not pull the correspondent field from the Assignment Center / legacy assignment PDF for this reel, and I will not guess. No recurrence can therefore be flagged.
  • Context: Original inventor-to-employer assignment (pre-issuance), executed 2003‑05‑21 but recorded ~6 months later on 2003‑06‑16.

• 2010‑11‑19 (executed) / recorded 2011‑12‑22 — Reel 027437 / Frame 0324

  • Conveyance: Change of Name (not an arm's-length transfer)
  • Assignor: SiRF Technology, Inc.
  • Assignee: CSR Technology Inc. (California)
  • Correspondent: not retrieved (same limitation as above).
  • Context: Internal reorg / change of name only — the legal consequence of CSR plc's 2009 acquisition of SiRF; no change in beneficial ownership and no consideration.

• 2024‑10‑04 (executed) / recorded 2024‑10‑14 — Reel 069221 / Frame 0001

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: CSR Technology Inc.
  • Assignee: Qualcomm Incorporated (California)
  • Correspondent: not retrieved (same limitation as above).
  • Context: Intra-group transfer to the ultimate parent following Qualcomm's 2015 acquisition of CSR plc; effectively a housekeeping/reel-perfecting transfer of the residual CSR US entity's patents. Note the patent's 20-year term had already run (anticipated expiration 2022‑11‑01).

Non-assignment legal events (for completeness): patent grant STCF 2006‑10‑18; first maintenance fee 2010‑04‑29 (4th yr); 2014‑05‑07 (8th yr); 2018‑04‑13 12th-year maintenance fee paid (M1553). Status: Expired – Lifetime (anticipated expiration 2022‑11‑01).

Litigation of record: The patent is flagged as subject to USITC Inv. No. 337‑TA‑596, Certain GPS Chips, Associated Software and Systems, and Products Containing Same. That investigation was instituted 2007‑03‑13 on a complaint filed 2007‑02‑08 by SiRF Technology, Inc. itself (operating owner at the time), naming Global Locate, Inc. and later Broadcom, Inc. as respondents; the '980 patent was among the patents asserted, and the investigation was later terminated as to the '980 patent. (72 Fed. Reg. 11378; USITC notice of 2008‑06‑25.)

If the Assignment Center shows additional records beyond these three reels (e.g. security interests, releases or corrections), they did not appear in the legal-events record I was given, and I did not invent any.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7132980
    2002 : Application filed 1 Nov 2002
    2003 : Inventors assign to SiRF Technology
         : Recorded reel 014169 frame 0730
    2006 : Patent issued 7 Nov 2006
    2007 : SiRF asserts patent at ITC 337-TA-596
    2009 : CSR plc acquires SiRF Technology
    2010 : SiRF renamed CSR Technology Inc
    2011 : Name change recorded reel 027437
    2015 : Qualcomm acquires CSR plc
    2022 : Twenty year term ends 1 Nov 2022
    2024 : CSR Technology assigns to Qualcomm

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. Every link is between operating corporations: inventors → SiRF Technology, Inc. → CSR Technology Inc. (change of name only) → Qualcomm Incorporated. No "IP/Licensing/Holdings/Ventures" entity, no registered-agent address, no single-purpose LLC appears in reels 014169/0730, 027437/0324 or 069221/0001.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. No assignee matches Acacia, Marathon Patent Group, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi‑LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, or any Spangenberg entity. The only asserters are (i) SiRF as complainant at the ITC in 2007 and (ii) Broadcom/Global Locate asserting against SiRF in the parallel 337‑TA‑604 — i.e. operating companies suing competitors both ways.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear / not assessable. The correspondent-of-record field was not retrievable for any of the three reels, so I cannot check for a recurring recording attorney. This is an absence of data, not a negative finding. On the record available, there is nothing to flag.

4. Cascading transfers — not present. Only three recorded instruments across ~21 years (2003, 2010/2011, 2024). The middle event is a change of name, not a conveyance; the last is executed ~9 years after the underlying corporate acquisition. No chained LLCs, no shared correspondent address, no <24-month cascade.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. The first assertion naming the '980 patent was SiRF's ITC complaint filed 2007‑02‑08. The nearest recorded instrument is the inventor→SiRF assignment of 2003‑05‑21 — nearly four years earlier — and the patent issued 2006‑11‑07, ~3 months before the complaint. SiRF asserted as the long-standing owner, not via a freshly-recorded assignment. No transfer within 6 months of suit.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. No Chapter 7/11 event for SiRF, CSR or the original assignee appears in the record. The 2009 CSR/SiRF transaction was a $136M share deal, and CSR plc was acquired by Qualcomm for ~$2.5B — solvent transactions, not distressed sales.

7. Privateering — not present. The only assertion was by the operating owner itself (SiRF, ITC 337‑TA‑596, 2007) against a direct competitor (Global Locate/Broadcom). Nothing indicates SiRF or CSR transferred the patent to a third party to assert on its behalf.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — not present. The chain terminates at Qualcomm Incorporated, an operating semiconductor company, not at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents or OIN.

Aggregate: 0 of 8 signals present (1 signal — repeat correspondent — is unassessable for lack of data).

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

Justification: the entire recorded chain is operating-company to operating-company — inventors assigned to SiRF Technology, Inc. (Reel 014169/0730, executed 2003‑05‑21), which was renamed CSR Technology Inc. by change of name (Reel 027437/0324, effective 2010‑11‑19), which in turn assigned to Qualcomm Incorporated (Reel 069221/0001, executed 2024‑10‑04). The single assertion event on record was brought by the then-owner SiRF itself as complainant in USITC Inv. No. 337‑TA‑596 (complaint filed 2007‑02‑08, instituted 2007‑03‑13) against competitor Global Locate — and SiRF was a high-volume shipper of GPS chipsets (SiRFstar families) embodying the claimed positioning-engine-plus-shared-processor architecture. No NPE, shell-entity, cascading-transfer, bankruptcy or privateering indicia appear in any reel/frame; the only significant caveat is that the correspondent-of-record fields could not be retrieved, and the patent has been expired since 2022‑11‑01, so this is a historical operating-company assertion rather than a live campaign.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search by patent number 7132980) and the legacy index at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html — reels to check are 014169/0730, 027437/0324 and 069221/0001.

I'll research US patent 7132980 and its cited prior art. Let me start with targeted searches.

I have the patent's citation data. Let me enrich the key references with details.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 7,132,980 B2

0. Patent identification (verified)

Independent claims to test against the art:

• Claim 1 — mobile multi-function device: (a) a positioning engine performing real-time calculations on the positioning signal; (b) a memory that receives/stores the results in real time, each result being correlations under a hypothesis of a signal source + Doppler shift; (c) a shared processor that processes the results into positioning information and performs radio-communication calculations.
• Claim 29 — the same subject matter in means‑plus‑function form.
• Claim 34 — device with a memory, a first processor (downsample → mix/accumulate → correlate → write correlation values) and a second processor that retrieves the correlations and conducts radio communication.
• Dependent claims add: FFT engine for correlations (2–3, 8–9, 15, 18, 20–23), internal/external/shared memory (4–6), accumulation of rotated periods (7, 9), timeslot/SDP processing (10, 15, 18), per‑SDP DMA memory blocks (11–12), DMA (13–14, 17, 19), aiding data (16), downsampler IF→baseband (24), frequency exclusion / narrowband-noise detection (25–28, 35).

Critical caveat up front. The 18 references below are the references of record the examiner considered; the patent granted over all of them, so none was actually applied as a §102 anticipation. What follows is a hypothetical §102 mapping based on the reference titles/abstracts and the partial texts I was able to retrieve. For several old references I could retrieve no substantive text (notes flag those). A true anticipation mapping requires element‑by‑element comparison against the full reference, which I could not do for every item; where I lack confidence I say so rather than assert.

1. The 18 patent citations of record — full citation, dates, description, potential §102 target

Dates are given as priority date / publication date, per the Google Patents citation table for US 7,132,980.

Tier A — Most relevant (shared GPS + radio processor architecture)

A1. US 5,877,724 A — "Combined position locating and cellular telephone system with a single shared microprocessor"

• Assignee: Trimble Navigation Limited | Inventor: Paul M. Davis | Priority 1997‑03‑25 / Published 1999‑03‑02
• Description: A compact integral GPS + analog cellular unit in which a single shared processor is coupled to, and controls, both the position-locating system and the cellular telephone system; in one embodiment both systems and the processor sit on a single substrate. (Confirmed from retrieved text.)
• Potential §102 target: Claims 1, 29, 30, 34 — this reference is the closest architectural anticipation of the "shared processor performs both positioning and radio-communication calculations" limitation (claim 1(c) / claim 34 second processor). It does not appear to disclose (i) a real‑time hardware positioning engine that outputs correlation results or (ii) storing results "in real time … each result comprising correlations under a hypothesis … Doppler shift." So it likely anticipates only a subset of elements — i.e., it defeats the broad "shared processor" concept but not claim 1 as a whole (a §102 rejection requires all elements in one reference). It is strongest for claim 30 ("means for performing a radio communication function").

A2. US 2003/0139879 A1 — "GPS receiver and method for processing GPS signals"

• Assignee/inventor: Norman F. Krasner (Snaptrack) | Priority 1996‑09‑06 / Published 2003‑07‑24
• Description: The Snaptrack/Krasner GPS architecture in which RF is downconverted to IF, digitized and stored in memory, then processed by a programmable DSP performing FFT/fast-convolution correlations; the shared processor handles position computation. This is the family member of the Krasner "combo" art that the 7,132,980 specification itself distinguishes (U.S. Pat. No. 6,002,363).
• Potential §102 target: Claims 2, 3, 20–23 (FFT correlation), 24, 29, 34 — discloses FFT‑based correlation value generation and shared GPS/phone processing. Note the specification's own admission that Krasner stores the sampled signal in memory before processing, which is precisely the limitation the '980 patent uses to distinguish itself (the '980 PE processes in real time and stores only results). Hence this reference is more relevant as §103 combination art than as clean §102 anticipation of claim 1.

A3. US 5,781,156 A — "GPS receiver and method for processing GPS signals"

• Assignee: Snaptrack, Inc. | Priority 1995‑10‑09 / Published 1998‑07‑14
• Description (from retrieved text): Antenna → downconverter to IF → digitizer → memory storing a "snapshot" of sampled IF GPS signals → DSP performing FFT operations to produce pseudoranges; the front end powers down after the snapshot; Doppler of in‑view satellites may be supplied from a basestation.
• Potential §102 target: Claims 2, 3, 16 (aiding data), 34 — teaches FFT correlation processing and aided Doppler. Again, this is snapshot/block storage rather than the claimed real‑time engine storing correlation results, so it maps to individual limitations, not to claim 1 in full.

Tier B — Correlation / acquisition processing references

B1. US 6,327,473 B1 — "Method and apparatus for increasing the sensitivity of a global positioning satellite receiver"

• Assignee: Qualcomm Incorporated (Soliman et al.) | Priority 1998‑09‑08 / Published 2001‑12‑04
• Description (from retrieved text): Improves GPS receiver sensitivity by summing corresponding samples over several 1 ms code sample periods into a composite sample period, applying an FFT, multiplying by the frequency‑domain code representation, and applying an inverse FFT to obtain code‑phase/alignment information — i.e., frequency‑domain correlation with Doppler/bit‑edge handling.
• Potential §102 target: Claims 2, 3, 7, 9, 20–23, 34 (correlating accumulated signal with a reference signal to yield correlation values) — a strong single‑reference disclosure of the FFT‑correlation mechanism and coherent accumulation. It does not disclose the shared radio‑communication processor of claim 1.

B2. US 6,184,822 B1 — "Split C/A code receiver"

• Assignee: Novatel, Inc. | Priority 1998‑08‑24 / Published 2001‑02‑06
• Description: A GPS receiver architecture that splits acquisition/correlation of the C/A code between hardware and processing stages. (Title/abstract level only — I did not retrieve full text.)
• Potential §102 target: Claims 2, 3, 34 (correlation engine). Lower confidence; would need full‑text review.

B3. US 5,420,593 A — "Method and apparatus for accelerating code correlation searches in initial acquisition and doppler and code phase in re‑acquisition of GPS satellite signals"

• Assignee: Trimble Navigation Limited | Priority 1993‑04‑09 / Published 1995‑05‑30
• Description: Accelerated code‑correlation search across code phase and Doppler. (Cited in the family list; title‑level analysis.)
• Potential §102 target: Claims 10, 15, 18 (searching code‑phase/Doppler across source‑Doppler pairs). Lower confidence without full text.

B4. US 6,628,234 B2 — "Method and system for processing positioning signals in a stand‑alone mode"

• Assignee: Fast Location.Net, LLC | Priority 2001‑07‑18 / Published 2003‑09‑30
• Description: Stand‑alone (non‑aided) processing of positioning signals. (Title‑level; full text not retrieved.)
• Potential §102 target: Claims 1, 34 (position processing) — relevance uncertain without full text.

B5. US 2003/0151547 A1 — "Directly acquiring precision code GPS signals"

• Inventor: Anthony Mauro | Priority 2002‑02‑08 / Published 2003‑08‑14
• Description: Direct P(Y)‑code acquisition. (Title‑level.)
• Potential §102 target: Claims 1, 29, 34 — the priority date (Feb 2002) is before the '980 priority date, so it qualifies, but I could not retrieve text to assess disclosure.

Tier C — Shared/combined-platform and memory-architecture references

C1. US 6,430,503 B1 — "Distributed GPS navigation system"

• Assignee: Trimble Navigation Ltd. | Priority 1998‑01‑06 / Published 2002‑08‑06
• Description: A GPS navigation system distributing computation between components/a server.
• Potential §102 target: Claims 33, 29 (transmitting positioning information to a server). Note claim 33 is a method‑step claim ("further performing the step of…"), which is itself an anomaly.

C2. US 6,516,285 B1 — "Position detecting apparatus with DSRC feature and its control method"

• Assignee: Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. | Priority 1999‑09‑30 / Published 2003‑02‑04
• Description: Combined position‑detection device with dedicated‑short‑range‑communication feature.
• Potential §102 target: Claim 1 / 29 / 30 (combined positioning + communication device). Relevance partial.

C3. CA 2,352,009 A1 — "Low power RF receiver with redistribution of synchronisation tasks"

• Assignee: Asulab S.A. | Priority 2000‑07‑04 / Published 2002‑01‑04
• Description: RF receiver in which synchronisation tasks are redistributed between processor stages to reduce power.
• Potential §102 target: Claims 1, 24, 34 (task partitioning / power). Relevance partial; full text not retrieved.

C4. US 2001/0033614 A1 — "Equaliser for digital communications systems and method of equalisation"

• Inventor: John E. Hudson | Priority 2000‑01‑20 / Published 2001‑10‑25
• Description: Frequency‑domain equalisation for digital communications. (Title‑level.)
• Potential §102 target: Claims 2, 3, 24 — likely cited as general frequency‑domain/transform art, not positioning‑specific. Weak.

Tier D — Background / non-analogous art (cited as general RF/processing context)

D1. US 3,774,201 A — "Time compression signal processor" — Raytheon Co. | Priority 1970‑12‑17 / Published 1973‑11‑20. Time‑compression signal processing (FFT/transform context). I did not retrieve text. Potential §102 target: none of the position‑specific claims with confidence; general transform art.

D2. US 4,785,463 A — "Digital global positioning system receiver" — Motorola, Inc. | Priority 1985‑09‑03 / Published 1988‑11‑15. A digital GPS receiver. Potential §102 target: Claims 1, 34 (digital GPS receiver), but predates the shared‑processor concept; likely only §103 material.

D3. US 5,420,592 A — "Separated GPS sensor and processing system for remote GPS sensing and centralized ground station processing…" — Radix Technologies, Inc. | Priority 1993‑04‑05 / Published 1995‑05‑30. Separates the GPS sensor from a central processing station. Potential §102 target: Claims 29, 33 (external/server processing).

D4. US 6,009,363 A — "Vehicle computer system with high speed data buffer and serial interconnect" — Microsoft Corporation | Priority 1995‑11‑29 / Published 1999‑12‑28. General computing/multi‑function device with buffer + interconnect. Weak as GPS art; likely cited for multi‑function/shared‑resource architecture. Potential §102 target: none of the position‑specific limitations.

D5. US 6,259,404 B1 — "Position location system and method" — Signatron Technology Corporation | Priority 1995‑12‑15 / Published 2001‑07‑10. General position‑location system. Potential §102 target: Claim 1 / 34 (position determination), non‑specific.

D6. US 5,844,936 A — "Method and device for eliminating interference signals in a direct sequence spread spectrum link" — Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales | Priority 1995‑12‑22 / Published 1998‑12‑01. Interference (narrowband) suppression in DSSS. Potential §102 target: Claims 25–28, 35 (frequencies excluded from correlation / narrowband‑noise mitigation) — this is the reference most on‑point for the narrowband‑noise claim family.

D7. US 2002/0026282 A1 — "Dead reckoning system for reducing auto‑correlation or cross‑correlation in weak signals" — Turetzky, Gregory Bret (SiRF) | Priority 2000‑08‑24 / Published 2002‑02‑28. Weak‑signal correlation mitigation. Potential §102 target: Claims 2, 20–23 (correlation refinement), and possibly the validation logic described in the spec (though validation is described but not claimed).

2. Non‑patent literature cited

1. Asai, Takashi et al., "Software Solution of GPS Baseband Processing," 1998 Int. Conf. on Consumer Electronics, June 1998, pp. 180–181. — Software‑based GPS baseband processing; relevant as §102/§103 art against software‑implemented correlation/downsampling concepts.
2. Shang, Jie et al., "Design and Implementation of MIMU/GPS Integrated Navigation Systems," 2002 IEEE PLANS, April 2002, pp. 99–105. — Integrated inertial/GPS navigation design; background art.

3. Additional references cited in the family (not in the '980 face citations, but relevant)

The published family (e.g., US 7,800,535; US 7,408,505; US 7,218,156; US 7,418,066) additionally cites SiRF/other art that is directly on‑point for the shared‑memory-and-processor concept, and is worth adding to a full prior‑art picture:

• US 6,526,322 B1 — "Shared memory architecture in GPS signal processing" (SiRF Technology) — shared‑memory GPS architecture; directly relevant to claims 4–6, 11–12, 34.
• US 6,393,046 B1 — "Spread spectrum receiver with multi‑bit correlator" (SiRF Technology) — multi‑bit correlator; claims 2, 34.
• US 6,754,509 B1 — "Mobile communication device having dual micro processor architecture with shared digital signal processor and shared memory" (Qualcomm) — dual‑processor/shared DSP+memory; claims 1, 4–6, 29, 34.
• US 6,369,753 B1 — "Host‑independent monolithic integrated circuit for RF downconversion and digital signal processing of GPS signals" (Motorola) — integrated GPS downconversion + DSP; claims 24, 34.

(These carry the same priority‑date qualification as the face citations — all predate 2002‑11‑01 — but I retrieved only citation metadata, not full text, so treat the mapping as provisional.)

4. Bottom line

• No single cited reference appears to anticipate claim 1 as a whole. Claim 1 requires the combination of (i) a real‑time positioning engine, (ii) storing correlation results (not raw samples) in real time keyed to source/Doppler hypotheses, and (iii) a shared processor doing both positioning and radio‑communication calculations. The closest references each miss at least one element:
  • US 5,877,724 (Trimble) — shared processor for GPS + cellular, but no real‑time engine / correlation‑result storage → defeats only the shared‑processor limitations (claim 1(c), claim 30).
  • US 2003/0139879 A1 (Krasner/Snaptrack) and US 5,781,156 (Snaptrack) — FFT correlation and shared GPS processing, but store sampled signals rather than real‑time correlation results → §103 combination art at best.
  • US 6,327,473 (Qualcomm) — strongest disclosure of the FFT‑correlation/accumulation mechanism → targets claims 2, 3, 7, 20–23, 34.
• The examiners evidently treated these as §103 combination/background art, consistent with the fact that the '980 claims issued intact.

Reliability notes / limits of this analysis

• I obtained full retrieved text for US 5,877,724, US 6,327,473, US 5,781,156, and US 2003/0139879 A1; for the remainder I relied on title/abstract/citation metadata only, and a later search step hit a tool limit. Anticipation conclusions for Tier B/D items are therefore preliminary and lower‑confidence and should be verified against the complete reference texts (e.g., via USPTO PatentCenter / Google Patents full‑text).
• I did not auto‑correct any identifiers; numbers are reproduced literally as they appear in the source. Note the patent itself contains a likely drafting anomaly: claims 2 and 3 are textually identical (both recite "said positioning engine comprises a fast fourier engine that calculates a plurality of correlation values"), and claims 11/12 are likewise duplicates — reported as‑is.

I'll ground this analysis in the patent page's prior-art section and verify key references before writing the § 103 analysis.

Obviousness Analysis of U.S. Pat. No. 7,132,980 Under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Sources consulted: the patent page at https://patents.google.com/patent/[US7132980](/patent/US7132980)/en (specification, claims, and its "Patent Citations"/"Family Cites Families"/"Non-Patent Citations" sections), plus verification of the key primary references: US 6,002,363 (Krasner/SnapTrack), US 5,877,724 (Trimble), and US 5,781,156 (Krasner/SnapTrack).

1. Legal framework

A claim is unpatentable under § 103 if the differences between the claimed subject matter and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time of the invention to a person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA). Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966); KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007). The inquiry turns on: (1) scope and content of the prior art; (2) differences between the prior art and the claims; (3) the level of ordinary skill; and (4) objective indicia of non-obviousness. KSR makes clear that a motivation to combine need not be found expressly in the references; it may come from the "design incentives and other market forces," from "any need or problem known in the field," or from the "background knowledge, creativity, and common sense" of the POSITA. Id. at 418–21.

A critical feature of this record: the '980 patent's own Background of the Invention is an explicit admission of the problem and the motivation. It states:

"What is needed is a method and a system to transform the received positioning signal into a signal with reduced memory requirement … Also, a method and a system are needed to offload most of the calculations relating to the positioning function from the shared processor so as to increase the availability of the shared processor to the other functions of the device."

That paragraph supplies the very "known problem" that KSR treats as a motivation to combine. It frames the claimed invention as the predictable solution (move compute-intensive work into real-time hardware so only compressed results are stored) to a problem the applicant admits was recognized before the filing date (2002‑11‑01).

2. Level of ordinary skill in the art

A POSITA here would be an engineer with a bachelor's degree in electrical/computer engineering (or equivalent) and roughly 2–5 years of experience in GNSS/GPS receiver design and/or mobile radio (cellular) baseband design, including familiarity with: spread-spectrum correlation, FFT-based matched filtering, Doppler/code-phase search, ASIC/DSP hardware blocks, DMA, and the shared-resource design of combined GPS/cellular terminals. The asserted references are all directed to this exact field; no reference is "analogous art" problem arises.

3. The claimed subject matter

Independent claim 1 (representative)

Independent claim 29 (means-plus-function)

Substantively identical: "means for performing real-time correlations as said positioning signal is received," "means for storing results of said real-time correlations as calculation … are completed," and "means for (1) calculating positioning information based on said stored results and (2) conducting said radio communication."

Independent claim 34 (two-processor architecture)

First processor with means for downsampling IF→baseband, mixing and accumulating, correlating with a reference signal, and writing correlation values to memory (each correlation "under a hypothesis … signal source and … Doppler shift"); second processor that retrieves correlation values and conducts radio communication.

Representative dependents

• 2, 3, 8, 15, 18, 20–23, 28: FFT engine / coherent combining (2 and 3 are verbatim identical, as are 11 and 12).
• 4–6: memory inside/outside engine; memory shared with the radio communication function.
• 7, 9: accumulating multiple periods of a rotated signal.
• 10: source–Doppler pairs each processed in one timeslot.
• 11, 12: per-SDP memory-block allocation by the shared processor.
• 13, 14, 17, 19: DMA controller.
• 16, 18, 19, 31, 32: aiding data reducing code-phase and Doppler search ranges.
• 24: downsampler IF→baseband.
• 25–28: storing frequencies to be excluded from correlation (narrowband-noise detection).
• 33: transmitting positioning information to a server.

The practical "heart" of the patent (and the reason for allowance) is the architectural split: (i) a real-time positioning engine that performs the compute-intensive correlation, and (ii) a memory storing correlation results rather than raw samples, with (iii) a shared processor doing the balance of the positioning and the radio-communication work as a background task. The specification repeatedly stresses that this "process-buffer-process" arrangement gives "[r]educed CPU computation" and "[r]educed CPU memory" relative to Krasner's raw-sample-storing design.

4. Scope and content of the prior art on the face of the patent

The page's prior-art sections supply an unusually complete § 103 toolkit. Grouped by function:

(A) Shared-processor / multi-function GPS + radio terminals — the "device" element (claim 1 preamble, (c)):

• US 6,002,363 (Krasner, SnapTrack) — combined GPS/communication system with shared circuitry; a single processing unit performs both the GPS correlation (FFT-based) and the communication demodulation/control; the unit also includes a snapshot memory storing sampled IF GPS signals. Verified at https://uspto.report/patent/grant/[6002363](/patent/6002363) ("the processing of GPS signals as well as communication signals is performed in a processor which is shared between the two functions"). This is the applicant's own admitted closest prior art ("the GPS-receiver and cellular phone combo device disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,002,363 by Krasner contains a processor that performs all the calculations needed to process GPS signals and all the calculations associated with the cellular phone function").
• US 5,877,724 (Trimble) — "Combined position locating and cellular telephone system with a single shared microprocessor"; the shared processor "controls the functions and operation of both the position locating system and the cellular telephone system," including multitasking position and cellular protocols. https://patents.google.com/patent/US5877724
• US 6,097,974 (Camp/Ericsson) and US 6,754,509 (Qualcomm) — combined GPS/radiotelephone and dual‑microprocessor-with-shared DSP and shared memory architectures.
• US 6,526,322 (SiRF) — "Shared memory architecture in GPS signal processing."

(B) Real-time GPS signal-processing "engines" that perform correlation in dedicated hardware/DSP and output correlation data — the "positioning engine" + "result" elements (claim 1(a),(b)):

• US 5,781,156 (Krasner, SnapTrack) — GPS receiver with downconverter, digitizer, sample memory, and a DSP performing FFT correlation to output pseudorange/correlation information; expressly optimized to "provid[e] superior acquisition time and receiver sensitivity compared with traditional correlator-based approaches." https://patents.google.com/patent/US5781156
• US 4,785,463 (Motorola, "Digital global positioning system receiver") — dedicated digital GPS receiver with hardware correlation circuitry.
• US 5,420,592 (Radix Technologies) — "Separated GPS sensor and processing system."
• US 6,184,822 (Novatel, "Split C/A code receiver") and US 6,369,753 (Motorola, host-independent monolithic RF-downconversion + DSP IC for GPS).
• US 3,774,201 (Raytheon, "Time compression signal processor") and US 6,408,? / 6,428? series — signal-compression/correlation processors.
• NPL: Asai et al., "Software Solution of GPS Baseband Processing," 1998 ICCE; Shang et al., "Design and Implementation of MIMU/GPS Integrated Navigation Systems," 2002 IEEE PLANS.

(C) FFT/common-element building blocks:

• US 6,577,271 (SiRF, "Signal detector employing coherent integration"), US 6,850,557 (SiRF), US 6,552? series — coherent accumulation and correlation engines.

(D) Narrowband-noise / frequency-exclusion (claims 25–28):

• US 5,844,936 (CNES, "Method and device for eliminating interference signals in a direct sequence spread spectrum link") — removing interfering spectral components before correlation.
• US 6,122,309 (Motorola, interference suppression using modal moment estimates) and US 6,215,812? / 6,215,? (BAE, narrowband interference canceller).

(E) Aiding data (claims 16–19, 31, 32):

• US 6,327,473 (Qualcomm, increasing GPS-receiver sensitivity) and US 6,430,503 (Trimble, distributed GPS navigation) — external aiding (Doppler/ephemeris/approximate time-location) to shrink code-phase and Doppler search windows.

(F) Coherent accumulation of rotated/multiple periods (claims 7–9):

• Krasner '363/'156 describe coherently adding successive PN frames (preprocessing) after Doppler removal — accumulation of multiple periods of a rotated signal.

5. The differences between the claims and the prior art

The features that distinguish claim 1 from the single closest reference (Krasner '363) are narrow:

1. Krasner '363 stores sampled IF signal in the snapshot memory and then processes it; claim 1 requires storing the results of the real-time calculations, each result comprising correlations (i.e., the correlation output, not raw samples).
2. Claim 1 requires a "positioning engine" that performs the real-time calculations, which the applicant characterizes as hardware distinct from the shared processor; Krasner '363 performs all digital processing in the shared processor.

Everything else — a multi-function GPS/radio device, a shared processor that both computes position and conducts radio communication, FFT correlation, per-satellite/per-Doppler hypothesis testing, and an on-device memory — is squarely disclosed by Krasner '363, Trimble '724, and Krasner '156.

The entire distance between the claims and the prior art is therefore the architectural relocation of the correlation computation into a dedicated real-time engine that writes correlation outputs to memory. That is precisely the change the Background section admits was desired.

6. Obviousness combinations

Below are five alternative grounds. Each maps a primary reference to each claim-1 element and supplies the KSR-compliant motivation.

Ground 1 — Krasner '363 in view of Motorola '463 (and/or Novatel '822), and further in view of Trimble '724

Motivation to combine. Krasner '363 itself explains why one would want to move processing hardware: it acknowledges that its DSP-based approach "operat[es] under stored instructions" on stored snapshot data, and the '980 Background admits the resulting drawbacks (large memory; shared processor tied up for long periods). A POSITA seeking to "reduce the cost, size and power consumption associated with the memory" and to "offload most of the calculations … from the shared processor" would have been led directly to the well-known class of dedicated real-time GPS correlators (Motorola '463, Novatel '822, Raytheon '201) that output correlation data rather than raw samples. Combining a hardware correlator front end with an existing shared-processor GPS/phone platform requires only ordinary engineering skill and has a predictable result (correlation values in RAM instead of a stored snapshot). KSR, 550 U.S. at 417 (predictable variation of a known design is obvious). Trimble '724 supplies the explicit teaching that a single shared microprocessor should control both GPS and cellular functions.

Ground 2 — Krasner '156 in view of US 6,754,509 (Qualcomm) and US 6,526,322 (SiRF)

• US 5,781,156 discloses the FFT-based GPS engine and its downconverter/digitizer and memory storing processed data, plus the use of external aiding (Doppler from a basestation) — the "positioning engine," the "downsampler" (claim 24), FFT correlation (claims 2, 8), and aiding (claims 16–19).
• US 6,754,509 ("Mobile communication device having dual microprocessor architecture with shared DSP and shared memory") discloses a second processor that performs radio communication while sharing memory with the signal-processing processor — mapping directly onto independent claim 34's "first processor … and second processor coupled to said memory … conducting said radio communication," and onto claim 6's "memory … shared with said radio communication function."
• US 6,526,322 (SiRF) supplies the shared-memory architecture between the GPS engine and the host.

Motivation. KSR squarely permits combining the FFT-based GPS engine of Krasner '156 with the dual-processor/shared-memory mobile-platform architecture of Qualcomm '509 and SiRF '322 to achieve the admitted goal (reduced memory, shared resources). All three references are in the same field (GPS receivers, mobile radio terminals, shared-memory signal processing), so they are combinable and reasonably expected to work together.

Ground 3 — Trimble '724 in view of Krasner '363 (and/or Krasner '156)

Trimble '724 supplies: a compact combined position-locating + cellular unit, a single shared processor controlling both, multitasking OS, position protocol + cellular protocol + reporting tasks, and the ability to communicate position information over the cellular link. Krasner '363/'156 supply: FFT-based, Doppler/aiding-driven correlation producing correlation information, and storing the processed data.

Motivation. Trimble '724's own stated object is to avoid "additional bulk, cost, and complexity" of separate GPS and cellular processors. Combining it with Krasner's FFT correlation engine (which the field recognized as superior for weak-signal acquisition, as Krasner '156 states) is a predictable improvement to reduce part count and processor loading.

Ground 4 — For claims 2, 3, 8, 15, 18, 20–23, 28 (FFT engine; coherent combining into refined Doppler frequencies)

• US 6,577,271 (SiRF, "Signal detector employing coherent integration") and US 6,850,557 (SiRF) disclose coherent accumulation of correlation results and FFT-based correlation.
• Krasner '363 expressly performs forward FFT of the data block, multiplies by the FFT of the PN reference, and inverse-FFTs to obtain the correlation set — an FFT engine that "calculates a plurality of correlation values" (claims 2/3).
• Krasner '363's post-processing that combines results across blocks teaches the coherent/non-coherent combination recited in claims 20–23.

Motivation. Using an FFT engine to compute all code-phase correlations at once is a textbook efficiency improvement over serial correlation (Krasner '156/'363 both explain the ~171× computational savings), and coherent integration to refine Doppler is the standard way to increase sensitivity. No new motivation is needed beyond routine optimization.

Ground 5 — For the narrowband-noise claims (25–28) and dependent structural claims

• Claims 25–28: US 5,844,936 (CNES) and US 6,122,309 (Motorola) disclose identifying and excluding interfering spectral components (narrowband interference) before correlation. Combining this with any of Grounds 1–3 to "exclude … frequencies from the calculation of the correlation" is a routine and predictable use of a known anti-jam technique, expressly recognized as desirable in GPS receivers.
• Claims 7/9 (accumulate rotated periods): Krasner '363 step 110 (coherent addition of successive PN frames after Doppler removal).
• Claims 10–12 (source–Doppler pairs in timeslots; per-SDP memory blocks): time-division multiplexing of per-satellite/per-Doppler channels over a block of time is conventional; Krasner '363 processes satellite/Doppler hypotheses sequentially. Allocating one DMA memory block per channel is routine programming.
• Claims 13, 14, 17, 19 (DMA): DMA transfer of signal-processor results to system memory is standard (and is the ordinary way to "write its results to a memory" without CPU intervention). Nothing in the record suggests DMA for GPS results was novel.
• Claim 6 (shared memory with the radio communication function): US 6,754,509 (Qualcomm) and US 6,526,322 (SiRF).
• Claim 24 (downsampler IF→baseband): US 6,369,753 (Motorola) and Krasner '156's downconverter/digitizer.
• Claims 33 (transmit positioning info to server): Krasner '363 (remote unit transmits pseudorange/position to basestation) and US 6,430,503 (Trimble, distributed GPS navigation).

7. Why a POSITA would have combined these references (common-thread motivation)

The motivations recur across all grounds and can be summarized:

1. Express problem statement in the patent ("what is needed") — reducing memory and freeing the shared processor. Under KSR, a "problem known in the field" is a valid motivation.
2. Field-of-endeavor identity — all references are GPS receivers and/or combined GPS/mobile-radio terminals; combinability is presumed.
3. Predictable results — moving correlation into dedicated real-time hardware and storing only its outputs (compressing the data) reduces memory/BOM and processor load with no loss of function; Krasner '363 itself already describes "data compression" and "pre-processing" on stored samples, making the further step of storing only correlation outputs an incremental, predictable design choice.
4. Teaching in the references themselves — Trimble '724 teaches the single-shared-microprocessor concept; Qualcomm '509/SiRF '322 teach shared memory and dual-processor platforms; Motorola '463/Novatel '822/Raytheon '201 teach real-time hardware correlation outputs. Combining teaches-away-free elements that each solve one sub-problem yields the claimed whole.
5. Design incentives / market forces — the '980 Background and the reference abstracts (Trimble '724: avoiding "additional bulk, cost, and complexity"; Krasner: "reduced power dissipation and reduced size and cost") establish the commercial drivers that KSR recognizes as sufficient motivation.

8. Weaknesses and counter-arguments a patent owner would raise

An honest analysis must flag the soft spots in these grounds:

• No single reference on the page discloses the exact combination of a separate "positioning engine" and storage of correlation outputs and a shared position/radio processor. The strongest primary references (Krasner '363) do the correlation in the shared processor and store raw samples; the strongest engine references (Motorola '463) are not combined GPS/phone devices. Thus the obviousness case is genuinely a combination case and is vulnerable if the patent owner can show the POSITA would not have looked to, or would not have been able to combine, dedicated-correlator hardware with a shared-processor phone platform.
• "Real-time" is emphasized in the specification. A patent owner will argue the claims require a specific real-time/process-buffer-process architecture and that a hardware correlator of the time did not store per-source, per-Doppler correlations in a system memory shared with a cellular function. The strength of the response is that dependent claims 10–12 (timeslot/channel processing, per-SDP memory blocks) and 7/9 (rotated-signal accumulation) describe routine engineering, while independent claim 1 is broad.
• The applicant's own incorporated applications (Ser. Nos. 09/888,227 and 10/237,557, cited in the specification) are not § 103 prior art because they name the same inventors/assignee (not "another"). Their disclosure cannot be used against the claims; if the "coherent combination into refined Doppler frequencies" (claims 20–23) depends entirely on Application 557, then that ground (my Ground 4) must rest on other references (SiRF '271, Krasner '363 post-processing), which is weaker.
• Claim-drafting defects: claims 2/3 and 11/12 are verbatim duplicates. This is a validity/prosecution-history issue (potential indefiniteness/claim-multiplicity), not strictly a § 103 issue, but it undercuts the patent's claim to distinct inventive subject matter and can be raised alongside.
• Prosecution history should be reviewed (this record does not include it). The examiner had Krasner '363, Trimble '724, and the hardware-correlator art before the Office, and still allowed; the reasons of allowance likely rested on the "store correlation results / real-time engine" architecture. A § 103 challenger would want the applicant's arguments to confirm what the Office considered the point of novelty, because it defines the difference that must be overcome.
• Litigation/status context: the page shows an ITC case (337‑TA‑596) and an anticipated expiration on 2022‑11‑01 ("Expired – Lifetime"). The obviousness question is therefore largely academic for enforcement now, but remains relevant to the ITC record and to the related family members (US 7,212,156; US 7,418,066; US 7,408,505; US 7,800,535).

9. Objective indicia (secondary considerations)

The record supplied contains no evidence of objective indicia:

• No nexus evidence of unexpected results in the file (the specification asserts reduced memory/compute, but that is a predicted benefit of the architecture, not an unexpected one — and it is the same benefit the Background admits was desired, which weakens rather than strengthens the case).
• No long-felt-but-unresolved need beyond the applicant's own admitted statement of the need, which cuts against non-obviousness.
• No copying, skepticism, or commercial-success evidence on the page. (Commercial success would also require a nexus to the claimed architectural feature; the broad commercial adoption of shared-processor GPS phones, if anything, tends to show the solution was a natural design path.)

Absent such evidence, the Graham/KSR balance favors a finding of obviousness on the combinations above.

10. Conclusion

Using only the prior art identified on the patent page, the independent claims of US 7,132,980 are, in my assessment, subject to strong § 103 challenges, chiefly because the only meaningful difference over the admitted closest prior art (Krasner '363 / Trimble '724) — relocating the compute-intensive correlation into a real-time engine that stores correlation results instead of raw samples and shares a processor with the radio function — was the exact solution the patent itself says the field "needed," and was implemented with well-known elements (hardware correlators, FFT engines, shared-memory/dual-processor mobile platforms, DMA) whose combination yields predictable results.

The most defensible grounds are:

1. Krasner '363 + Motorola '463 (or Novatel '822) + Trimble '724 — for independent claims 1, 29, 34 and most dependents.
2. Krasner '156 + Qualcomm '509 + SiRF '322 — for claims 1, 6, 24, 34.
3. Trimble '724 + Krasner '363/'156 — alternative device-level combination.
4. SiRF '271 / Krasner '363 — for the FFT (2, 3, 8) and coherent-combination (20–23, 28) dependents.
5. US 5,844,936 / US 6,122,309 — for the narrowband-noise dependents (25–27).

Caveat on confidence: I have verified the key primary references' disclosures and claim language above via the linked sources, but I have not reviewed the full text of every secondary reference (e.g., Motorola '463, Novatel '822, Qualcomm '509, SiRF '322) on this record, nor the prosecution history; the element-by-element mappings for those secondary references are based on their titles, the page's classification data, and their abstracts/claims as reflected in the citations. Those mappings should be confirmed against the full reference texts (and the '980 file history) before these grounds are relied upon in a formal validity challenge.