US 7202961

Patent Overview — US 7,202,961 B2

Title: Method for dynamically creating a printer driver

Patent number / application: US7202961B2; application US09/871,751

Inventor: Elliot Lee Klosterman

Assignee: Hewlett Packard Development Co LP (original assignee; assignment recorded from Hewlett-Packard Company in 2003)

Key dates: Priority and filing date 2001-06-01; publication of US20020181011A1 on 2002-12-05; granted 2007-04-10; adjusted expiration 2023-11-23; status listed as "Expired – Fee Related." Legal status is stated as an assumption, not a legal conclusion.

Purpose: The patent addresses the burden of installing and selecting printer drivers on networked computers. The background notes that selecting an appropriate printer driver "can be a cumbersome and time-consuming process," particularly when a needed driver is absent, and that storing many drivers reduces available memory. The invention therefore seeks to "dynamically create a driver for a peripheral device on a host device," minimizing space-consuming resident driver software and improving host performance during printing.

Plain-language scope: A host device initiates communication with a peripheral device using a first program (a "host module"). In response, the peripheral device supplies a rendering module—a second program—to the host. The first and second programs then work cooperatively to control (drive) the peripheral device. The description frames this generally as a system, method, and apparatus, including an apparatus with a processor that receives a host communication and transmits a response containing the second program logic.

Figure/classification content: Figures 1–5 depict a network (LAN/WAN/Internet via communication system C), host architecture, peripheral architecture, a process flow diagram, and an embodiment block diagram. Classifications include G06F3/12 and subclasses (e.g., G06F3/1204, G06F3/1225, G06F3/1285–1287).

Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7202961/en

What the excerpt does not establish: It provides only the abstract, background, summary, brief figure descriptions, and general program-logic boilerplate—not the full claims, detailed description, or any prior-art citations. Therefore claim scope, claim count, dependencies, embodiments' specifics, and the identity or content of cited references cannot be determined from this text. No litigation, ownership-transfer, validity, or prior-art analysis is stated or implied.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 7202961 across patent litigation databases and court records.

Let me search more specifically for this patent in litigation databases.

Let me search litigation-specific databases and the patent's court records directly.

Findings: Litigation involving US Patent 7,202,961

No litigation is known involving US Patent 7,202,961.

Despite targeted searching across patent-litigation sources (Unified Patents litigation portal, PACER-oriented references, CourtListener/Google/FreePatentsOnline records, and general web search), I found no record of any lawsuit, complaint, or court proceeding in which US 7,202,961 was asserted or challenged. I could not identify a plaintiff, defendant, jurisdiction, case number, filing date, or outcome — because no such case appears to exist in the sources I was able to reach.

Important caution about false positives

My searches surfaced several hits containing the string "296 patent," but none of these relate to US 7,202,961 — they are unrelated patents whose numbers happen to end in "296":

• A Delaware case (Univ. of Texas / TissueGen v. Boston Scientific, D. Del. No. 18-392) involving a polymer-fiber stent patent referred to as "the '296 patent." This is a different patent (a medical-device patent, not a printer-driver patent).
• An IPR/PTAB proceeding involving "the 296 Patent" concerning geofencing/location-based advertising, with Home Depot, Samsung, and H2 inventors as parties. Again, a different patent.

Under your strict instruction to interpret identifiers literally and not auto-correct them, I flag these explicitly: a bare "296" reference is not US 7,202,961, and I have not treated any of them as litigation against this patent.

Why this patent likely has no litigation history

The record is consistent with a never-asserted, defensive corporate patent:

• Assignee/Owner: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. (originally Hewlett-Packard Company), Palo Alto, CA.
• Inventor: Elliot Lee Klosterman.
• Filing/Priority date: June 1, 2001; granted: April 10, 2007 (US 7,202,961 B2; pre-grant publication US 2002/0181011 A1, Dec. 5, 2002).
• Subject matter: Dynamic creation of a printer driver — an HP-internal printing-architecture invention (claims recite a host module with a first program and a rendering module disposed in a printer, transferred to the host and used cooperatively).
• Status: Expired – Fee Related. The maintenance-fee record shows a reminder mailed Nov. 15, 2010, lapse for nonpayment Apr. 10, 2011, and expiration due to nonpayment under 37 CFR 1.362 (May 31, 2011). The patent therefore lapsed roughly four years after issuance and has been expired for over a decade.

A patent that went abandoned for nonpayment of maintenance fees in 2011 shows no evidence of having been enforced. There is also no reexamination, IPR, or other post-grant challenge to US 7,202,961 reflected in the record (the PTAB/reexam hits I found concerned different patents).

Limits of this answer

I must be candid: absence of evidence in my searches is not categorical proof of absence. However, I exhausted my available search steps, and no source I could access identified any litigation for this specific patent number. If you need a definitive negative, the authoritative next steps would be:

1. USPTO Patent Center / Assignment records for application 09/871,751 (to confirm no recorded litigation/assignment flags).
2. PACER / CourtListener docket search on the exact patent number "7,202,961" to confirm no docket matches.
3. Unified Patents litigation portal (portal.unifiedpatents.com) and Lex Machina / Docket Navigator keyword searches restricted to "7,202,961" (not "296").

If you'd like, I can draft the exact search strings to run against those databases, or note that — given the June 1, 2001 priority date and 2011 expiration — any hypothetical assertion window would have been limited to roughly 2007–2011.

I'll verify the "no PTAB activity" default against live sources before writing the report.

Let me run a few more targeted checks for litigation, pre-AIA proceedings, and any assertion history.

Let me do a final round of checks on reexamination, litigation dockets, and the maintenance-fee lapse.

PTAB Activity Report — U.S. Patent No. 7,202,961

Patent: Method for dynamically creating a printer driver
Patent owner / current assignee: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. (originally Hewlett-Packard Company)
Inventor: Elliot Lee Klosterman
Appl. No.: 09/871,751 · Filed: 2001-06-01 · Granted: 2007-04-10
Source of proceedings list: USPTO Open Data Portal structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (canonical), plus independent web verification.

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Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings are on file. The USPTO ODP structured block returns no AIA trials for US 7,202,961, and my independent web searches surfaced no IPR, PGR, or CBM petition, no institution decision, no Final Written Decision, and no Federal Circuit appeal involving this patent — no proceeding was found, so there is nothing in the "claims invalidated / claims sustained / settled / institution denied" buckets to count (all are 0, and the "active" count is 0). The bottom-line defensive posture is therefore not "the patent has survived IPRs and is hardened" and not "claims 1–5 were canceled." It is something better for a defendant: this patent is expired. The patent lapsed on 2011-04-10 for failure to pay the 3.5-year maintenance fee, more than a year before the AIA IPR regime took effect on 2012-09-16 — which is a large part of why no AIA trial exists. A demand letter citing US 7,202,961 today is asserting an expired patent.

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Per-proceeding detail

Not applicable — there are no proceedings to report. To be explicit about what I checked and did not find:

• No IPR (no IPR20xx-##### naming US 7,202,961, no petitioner, no FWD, no appeal).
• No PGR — categorically unavailable in any event: a PGR requires at least one claim with an effective filing date on or after 2013-03-16, and this patent's effective filing date is 2001-06-01.
• No CBM — a printer-driver/rendering patent would not satisfy the § 18(a)(1)(B) "financial product or service" prong, and the CBM transitional program sunset on 2020-09-16.
• No ex parte or inter partes reexamination record surfaced either (pre-AIA vehicles that would have been the only available PTAB-adjacent challenges during this patent's live term).

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The real story: the patent lapsed in 2011

The legal-event record in the authoritative patent text is unambiguous:

Status verbatim from the structured data: Expired - Fee Related, with an Adjusted expiration entry of 2023-11-23 (the nominal/adjusted term had all fees been paid). I flag this internally inconsistent pairing rather than paper over it: the legal events show an actual 2011 lapse, while the adjusted expiration field reflects the theoretical term. Either reading produces the same answer for a defendant on 2026-10-01 — there is no live patent term. Under the nominal-term reading the patent expired 2023-11-23; under the actual-events reading it lapsed 2011-04-10.

This matters for two reasons:

1. No prospective infringement. An expired patent cannot be infringed going forward. Even the § 286 six-year damages lookback (reaching back to 2020-10-01) cannot capture anything on the actual-lapse reading, because the enforceable term ended in 2011.
2. No IPR economics. IPRs on expired patents are legally permissible (the Board has instituted them), but there is no litigation-defense incentive when the patent is already dead and the owner — HP, a large operating company, not a monetization entity — abandoned it for a $1,550-class maintenance fee in 2011.

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Strategic summary

Claim status. Claims 1–18 are UNTESTED — no claim has been canceled by the PTAB and none has been upheld; the patent simply expired before the AIA trial regime existed. Claim 1 (host module + rendering module disposed in a printer, used cooperatively), claim 10 (the "second program" variant), and method claim 16 (with dependent claims 17–18 on print-job initiation and deleting the second program logic post-job) all stand or fall together as a dead statutory term, not as adjudicated validity. Do not let an adversary or a licensor represent otherwise: there is no FWD to cite, in either direction.

Estoppel landscape. No § 315(e)(2) estoppel exists because no IPR/PGR reached a Final Written Decision. Practically, though, the estoppel question is academic: with the patent lapsed, the entire prior-art universe — including the eight references cited on the face of the patent (US 5,228,118 to Brother; US 5,659,336 to Microsoft; US 5,852,744 to Oki America; US 6,139,177 and US 6,170,007 to HP; US 6,523,696 to Toshiba; US 6,804,019 to Seiko Epson; US 6,707,568 to Ricoh) — remains available for an invalidity theory in any retrospective dispute, unimpaired by estoppel. The strongest defense, however, is not invalidity but expiry and unenforceability of any prospective claim.

Pattern signals. None. No petitioner has ever filed on this patent; there is no serial-filer pattern, no defensive aggregator (no Unified Patents or RPX filing), and no patent-owner appeal activity — consistent with an abandoned corporate asset rather than a litigation vehicle. The patent was never the kind of asserted asset that attracts IPRs, and the Google Patents citation graph shows only patent publications (cited-by and family lists), no Board decisions.

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Recommended next steps

1. Say it plainly: no PTAB activity exists, and the patent is expired. The absence of IPRs here is not the usual "well-asserted patent that hasn't been challenged yet" signal — it is the signature of an abandoned asset. Verify the lapse yourself against the USPTO Patent Center maintenance-fee record for Appl. No. 09/871,751 (the "Expired - Fee Related" fee status and the 2011-04-10 lapse are the entries to confirm), and pull the fee history to confirm no petition to accept an unintentionally delayed payment under 35 U.S.C. § 41(c) / 37 CFR 1.378 was ever granted.
2. If you are a defendant facing an assertion: do not spend budget on an IPR — you cannot kill what is already dead, and the Board would gain you nothing an early motion cannot. Instead (a) demand the plaintiff produce its chain of title and its maintenance-fee records, (b) move to dismiss or for summary judgment on the ground that the asserted claims of an expired patent cannot be infringed prospectively, and (c) if past damages are pleaded, test the six-year § 286 window against the 2011 lapse — there is no accrual window left to reach.
3. If a demand-letter counterparty is citing specific claims, ask them to identify the FWD or IPR number they are relying on. There isn't one. Claims 1–18 were never adjudicated by the Board — and I found no district-court judgment invalidating them either — so any representation of "PTAB-confirmed" or "PTAB-invalidated" claims would be false.
4. Residual verification. The ODP structured list is canonical and shows nothing, and my web searches found no proceedings. I could not fully exhaust PTAB E2E / PTAB Decisions (the search tool returned a step-limit notice on my last queries), so if you need belt-and-suspenders confirmation, run a direct docket-number-agnostic query in PTAB E2E by patent number, and a parallel CourtListener/reCAP query for "7202961" — but given a 2011 lapse against a pre-AIA, non-financial-services patent, the expected return from either is nothing.

Key links: Patent (authoritative text and legal events): https://patents.google.com/patent/US7202961/en · Pre-grant publication US20020181011A1: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20020181011A1/en · PTAB decisions portal: https://www.uspto.gov/patents/ptab/decisions · CourtListener: https://www.courtlistener.com

No proceeding numbers, claim numbers, FWD dispositions, judge panels, or appeal dockets are cited above because none exist for this patent. Nothing in this report should be read as identifying an AIA trial that the record does not contain.

I'll verify the assignment record against live sources before reconstructing the chain.

Note on source retrieval

I reconstructed the chain from the authoritative patent text supplied (Google Patents' rendering of the USPTO assignment/legal-events data). I attempted to pull the Assignment Center records directly, but this session's tooling did not surface the underlying assignmentcenter.uspto.gov / assignment.uspto.gov entries — so the correspondent-of-record field could not be verified for either recording, and I flag that as a data gap rather than guessing. Reel/frame values below are as they appear in the cited legal-events data.

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Inventors

Unusual-pattern check:

• No inventor attrition. Klosterman continued to file HP-assigned applications after this one — e.g. US 20030043396 ("Printer driver access interface," filed 2001-08-29) and a co-invented application filed 2001-09-28, both HP-assigned — so he remained with the assignee well past 12 months. A portfolio fire-sale premise has no support here.
• Single-inventor patent. Unremarkable for a printer-driver architecture filing.
• One timing oddity worth noting literally: the assignment was executed 2001-04-09, i.e. before the 2001-06-01 filing date. That is consistent with a standard employee invention-assignment obligation, not with a pre-sale transfer.

Original assignee

Entity on the issued patent: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. (Houston, Texas). Note the sequencing: the application was filed 2001-06-01 naming Hewlett-Packard Company, and the patent issued 2007-04-10 after the 2003 intra-group transfer to HPDC, so HPDC is the assignee of record on the face of US 7202961.

• Primary line of business: printers, imaging supplies, and personal computing — HPDC, L.P. is the HP intellectual-property holding subsidiary.
• Products embodying the claims: the specification itself names HP LaserJet 4100, 4550, 2200 and 8550 as exemplary devices, and the claims are directed to a host-side driver assembled from a rendering module supplied by the printer over HTTP. HP is unambiguously an operating company shipping printers and printer-driver software. Whether any specific shipping product practiced claim 1 is not established by these records — the assignment data only shows ownership.
• Current status: operating. HP's enterprise business was separated as Hewlett Packard Enterprise in 2015; HPDC, L.P. remains an HP Inc. affiliate. No bankruptcy, no dissolution, no entity-level wind-up appears in the record.

Assignment timeline

Two recorded conveyances, both internal:

• 2001-04-09 (executed) / recorded 2001-08-22 — Reel 012096/0862

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest (see document for details)
  • Assignor: Klosterman, Elliot Lee (sole inventor)
  • Assignee: Hewlett-Packard Company (Colorado)
  • Correspondent: not retrievable in this session — data gap (see note above). No recurrence pattern can be asserted or excluded without it.
  • Context: standard employee invention assignment to the employer; no third party involved.

• 2003-09-26 (executed) / recorded 2003-09-30 — Reel 014061/0492

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Hewlett-Packard Company
  • Assignee: Hewlett-Packard Development Company L.P. (Texas)
  • Correspondent: not retrievable in this session — data gap. Note: this same reel/frame (014061/0492) is the boilerplate reorganisation assignment HP used to sweep large blocks of its portfolio into the HPDC holding entity in Sept. 2003 — i.e. a mass intra-group recording, not a transaction specific to this patent.
  • Context: internal corporate reorganisation / transfer to the group IP-holding entity.

Non-assignment legal events on the same record (for completeness, not transfers): Certificate of correction 2008-09-09; maintenance-fee reminder 2010-11-15; lapse for failure to pay maintenance fees 2011-04-10; recorded patent discontinuation 2011-05-31 under 37 CFR 1.362.

No further assignments exist. There is no post-2011 record, no security agreement, no release, no change of name, and no transfer to any licensing entity. Ownership has rested with HPDC since 2003, and the patent is dead.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7202961
    2001 : Inventor assigns to HP Company
         : Application filed 1 June
    2003 : Reassigned to HP Development Co LP
    2007 : Patent US 7202961 issues
    2008 : Certificate of correction recorded
    2011 : Expired for unpaid maintenance fee

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT. Both assignees are named HP operating/holding entities (reel 012096/0862 → Hewlett-Packard Company; reel 014061/0492 → Hewlett-Packard Development Company L.P.). No "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" suffix assignee, no registered-agent address, no single-member LLC anywhere in the chain.
2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT. Neither assignee matches any entity on the listed NPE rosters (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg entities). No Unified Patents / RPX high-frequency-plaintiff hit appeared in searches.
3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR (data gap). Correspondent of record was not retrievable for either reel in this session. I note only that reel 014061/0492 is a mass HP reorganisation recording, where correspondence would predictably be HP's own IP Administration (Fort Collins, CO) — but since I could not verify a name, I am not treating this as either a finding or a clean negative.
4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT. Exactly two assignments, 2.1 years apart (2001-08-22 and 2003-09-30), both between affiliated HP entities. Nothing resembling chained LLCs inside 24 months.
5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT. No infringement action naming US 7202961 was found, and the last transfer predates issuance itself (2003 transfer, 2007 grant) — the opposite of a standing-record transfer engineered to tee up a suit.
6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. HP never filed Chapter 7/11. The patent lapsed 2011-04-10 for nonpayment of maintenance fees — abandonment by the owner, not a sale in insolvency proceedings.
7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT. No operating-company-to-NPE transfer of any kind exists; the patent never left HP.
8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT. Chain terminates at HPDC, L.P., not at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN.

Verdict

Insufficient data — understood precisely: this is not an NPE finding. The record contains only the original inventor-to-employer assignment (reel 012096/0862, effective 2001-04-09, recorded 2001-08-22) and a single intra-group transfer to the HP holding entity (reel 014061/0492, effective 2003-09-26), with no third-party transfer, no security interest, and no litigation naming the patent. The chain terminates at an operating company, and the patent was abandoned for failure to pay maintenance fees effective 2011-04-10 — a fully neutralised asset that presents no NPE exposure. I decline to label it "operating-company assertion" because the second half of that test — suing actual competitors — has no support in the record.

Verify at: USPTO Patent Assignment Search (search "7202961"), mirrored at Assignment Center; cross-check the legal-events table at Google Patents US7202961B2.

I'll start by verifying the patent record and then examine each cited reference.

Let me research the remaining cited references to characterize them accurately.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 7202961 B2

0. Verification and scope

Confirmation of identity: the Google Patents page returned for the query "US7202961 method for dynamically creating a printer driver" is titled "US7202961B2 – Method for dynamically creating a printer driver" — a match. No other patent number was substituted.

Important scope note. The user asked about "each patent citation for 7202961." I interpret that as the eight references cited on the face of the patent (the "Patent Citations (8)" / prior-art table). I have deliberately excluded the six "Cited By" documents (e.g., US2005/0015779, US2006/0152760, US2010/0107097, US9400622) — those post-date the 2001 priority date and therefore are not prior art to 7202961. I also note the patent has no family members and no applications claiming its priority, so no additional family art exists.

Legal standard applied. Under 35 U.S.C. § 102, a single reference anticipates a claim only if it discloses every limitation. As shown below, none of the eight cited references is a clean § 102 anticipation of independent claims 1, 10, or 16; the value of these references is predominantly as § 103 (obviousness) art. I flag this explicitly rather than overstate anticipation.

1. The claim set, distilled (what each independent claim requires)

• Claim 1 (system): (a) host module on a host device initiating a communication, the host module having a first program; (b) a rendering module disposed in a printer, including rendering functionality for the printer, logic for displaying text/graphics, and information about the printer; (c) the rendering module is provided to the host device in response to the communication; (d) first program + rendering module used cooperatively to control the printer.
• Claim 10 (system): same architecture but the printer-resident module includes a "second program" for displaying text/graphics.
• Claim 16 (method): initiating a communication from a computer to a printer (computer has first program logic); receiving a response that includes a second program logic for displaying text/images/graphics; driving the printer cooperatively using the first and second program logic.
• Dependents: 2–9 (loading into host; printer has a server module with web access; directory server; optimize rendering for the specific printer; usable across OS environments; print-job-triggered; delete on completion) and 11–15, 17–18 (mirror versions).

The point of novelty is element (c): the printer returns the rendering/second program to the host in response to the host's communication, so no rendering driver need be resident on the host.

2. Summary matrix

3. Reference-by-reference analysis

Reference 1 — US 5,228,118 A (the strongest cited reference)

Full citation: US 5,228,118 A, "Printing system wherein one of printer drivers through which print data is sent from a data processor to a printer is selected based on interpreters available on the printer," Brother Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha. Priority 1991-06-29; granted 1993-07-13.
Description: A data processor (PC) and printer communicate over a bidirectional interface. The PC sends an inquiry signal; the printer's ID-data output means returns interpreter-identification data. The PC's printer-driver selecting means then automatically selects one of a plurality of printer drivers already stored on the PC that is compatible with the printer's interpreter (with priority-order fallback). A second aspect broadcasts the inquiry to select among multiple printers.
Claims potentially at issue:

• Claims 1 / 10 / 16 (communication + compatibility-driven control): 118 discloses the initiate-communication → receive-response → drive cooperatively skeleton. However, it does not anticipate because (i) the printer's response is identification data, not a "rendering module"/"second program logic" (claim 16's core limitation), and (ii) the drivers are resident on the host, so the "rendering module disposed in a printer … provided to the host device in response to said communication" (claim 1) is absent.
• Claim 6 (optimize rendering for the specific printer): conceptually adjacent (driver chosen for the specific printer), but 118 selects an existing driver; it does not configure/optimize a module received from the printer.
  Assessment: No § 102 anticipation of any claim; best positioned as the primary § 103 reference, i.e., "inquiry/response-based automatic driver configuration" to be combined with the web-download art of References 5–6.

Reference 2 — US 5,659,336 A

Full citation: US 5,659,336 A, "Method and apparatus for creating and transferring a bitmap," Microsoft Corporation. Priority 1994-10-24; granted 1997-08-19.
Description: Relates to generating a bitmap (raster image) and transferring it (host↔printer). This bears on the rendering/imaging limitations.
Claims potentially at issue: Claims 1 / 10 ("rendering functionality," "logic for displaying text and/or other graphics") and claim 16 ("driving said printer"). But it discloses no host↔printer program-module download, and no host module/first-program architecture.
Assessment: No anticipation. At most § 103 support for the rendering/data-translation limitations in combination with Reference 1 or 5–6.

Reference 3 — US 5,852,744 A

Full citation: US 5,852,744 A, "Method for discovering a network printer by assigning dedicated sockets to different printer types and polling the dedicated sockets to learn the corresponding state," Oki America, Inc. Priority 1995-07-14 (filed 1996-06-18 per USPTO/EP record); granted 1998-12-22. (Corresponding EP 0 756 400 B1.)
Description: Establishes a socket with a socket-ID tied to a printer type; polls periodically; builds a printer information object with status. Essentially a network printer discovery/status method.
Claims potentially at issue:

• Claims 1 / 10 / 16: touches "initiating a communication from a host device" and receiving printer data — but the returned data is printer status, not a rendering/second program.
• Claims 4 / 13 ("server module having a web access mechanism to provide a communication path") and claims 5 / 14 (directory server providing an address): 744's socket/broadcast discovery supports the locating/communicating limitations, but does not disclose the claimed web/server-module combination.
  Assessment: No anticipation. Useful § 103 art for the address-discovery/communication-path limitations when combined with References 5–6.

Reference 4 — US 6,523,696 B1

Full citation: US 6,523,696 B1, "Communication control device for realizing uniform service providing environment," Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba. Priority 1996-10-15; granted 2003-02-25.
Description (lower-confidence on specific claim language — I did not retrieve the full text): A communication-control architecture that abstracts device/network differences so services can be provided uniformly across heterogeneous devices.
Claims potentially at issue: Claims 1 / 10 / 16 (the "compatible with any selected peripheral device" / cooperative-control theme) and claim 7 (use with each of a plurality of operating-system environments). It does not disclose a rendering module being downloaded from a printer to a host.
Assessment: No anticipation. I flag medium confidence on its detailed disclosure; treat as background/§ 103 art only after confirming the specific claims.

Reference 5 — US 6,170,007 B1

Full citation: US 6,170,007 B1, "Embedding web access functionality into a device for user interface functions," Hewlett-Packard Company. Priority 1996-10-25; granted 2001-01-02. (Counterpart EP 0 838 768 B1, "Web interfacing device.") Related app US 2001/0025307 A1 and US 2001/0034779 A1.
Description: A web server embedded in the device provides a device web page; HTTP commands specify a URL for the device; the network interface lets a browser access the device's UI. Parent/related filings note that device web pages may reference "new and updated software driver routines for the device."
Claims potentially at issue:

• Claims 4 / 13: strongest read on "server module having a web access mechanism to provide a communication path." But these are dependents that incorporate all limitations of independent claim 1/10, which 007 does not meet (no rendering/second program pushed to the host). So it cannot anticipate the dependents either.
• Claims 1 / 10 / 16: supports the HTTP/URL communication-path aspect only.
  Assessment: No anticipation. It is, with Reference 6, the principal § 103 partner for the "embedded web server / communication path" and "download over the web" limitations.

Reference 6 — US 6,139,177 A

Full citation: US 6,139,177 A, "Device access and control using embedded web access functionality," Hewlett Packard Company (Venkatraman et al.). Application 08/846,061; priority 1996-12-03; granted 2000-10-31. (Counterpart EP 0 847 008 A.) Continuation of Ser. No. 08/760,164.
Description: Embedded web functionality generates a device web page enabling selection of a control function. Its "loader" function loads new information/software elements INTO the device, updates the device configuration to reflect the newly installed elements, and can include a type indication specifying that a component corresponds to native code in the device. HTTP commands are generated in the device to perform file transfers to obtain new information.
Claims potentially at issue:

• Claims 4 / 13 (server module / web access communication path): strong.
• Claims 1 / 10 / 16: relevant to "information elements or software elements … loading and installing" and to the specification's "updates a peripheral device configuration" step (see ¶0042 of 7202961), and claims 9 / 15 (the configuration-update/delete feature). Critically, the transfer direction is reversed: 177 loads software into the device; claim 1/10/16 require the module to be provided from the printer to the host. This is the decisive difference that defeats anticipation.
  Assessment: No anticipation. The most intellectually relevant HP reference; strongest § 103 art for the "loading/installing software elements + updating configuration" limitations, but it must be combined with a host-side-driver reference (e.g., Reference 1) to reach the claims.

Reference 7 — US 6,804,019 B2

Full citation: US 6,804,019 B2, "Print data generation system and corresponding method for use with a printing system," Seiko Epson Corporation. Priority 1997-06-09; granted 2004-10-12.
Description (medium confidence): Generation of print data from application data for a printing system (host-side data generation/translation).
Claims potentially at issue: Claims 1 / 10 ("rendering functionality … logic for displaying text and/or other graphics") and claim 16 ("driving said printer"). It concerns host-side print-data generation, not a printer→host module transfer.
Assessment: No anticipation. Possible § 103 art for the rendering/translation limitations.

Reference 8 — US 6,707,568 B1

Full citation: US 6,707,568 B1, "Printer driver filter and method of printing with the same," Ricoh Company, Ltd. Priority 1999-11-02; granted 2004-03-16.
Description: A printer-driver filter interposed between an application and a printer driver to modify print data before printing.
Claims potentially at issue: Claims 1 / 10 ("first program and said rendering module used cooperatively") and claim 16 (cooperative driving). The filter-vs-driver cooperation is architecturally analogous to the claimed first-program/rendering-module cooperation, but there is no printer-originated rendering module and no host↔printer download.
Assessment: No anticipation. Marginal § 103 art for the "cooperative" limitation.

4. Bottom line

1. No cited reference anticipates claims 1, 10, or 16 under § 102. Each fails the single most distinctive limitation — the rendering module / second program logic being sent from the printer to the host in response to the host's communication (claims 1, 10, 16). Under § 102 you cannot combine references to supply that gap.
2. US 5,228,118 is the closest single reference (host-initiated inquiry, printer returns device-specific data, host auto-configures for that printer), and it is the natural anchor for an obviousness attack.
3. US 6,170,007 and US 6,139,177 (both HP) supply the missing "embedded web server / HTTP communication path / load-and-update software elements" teaching, and US 5,852,744 supplies network discovery/addressing. A § 103 combination of 5228118 + 6170007/6139177 (+ optional 5852744) is the most coherent challenge to independent claims 1/10/16 and their dependents (notably claims 4/13 and 9/15).
4. References 2, 4, 7, and 8 (bitmap transfer, uniform-service environment, print-data generation, driver filter) are best characterized as secondary/background art for the rendering, cooperative-control, and cross-platform limitations — useful in combination, not individually anticipatory.
5. Confidence caveat: I retrieved full text for References 1, 3, 5, and 6. For References 2, 4, 7, and 8 I relied on their titles/abstract-level information; a definitive § 102/§ 103 opinion on those four should verify their full claim sets. Also note References 4, 5, 7, and 8 post-date 7202961's 2001-06-01 filing only in grant date — their priority dates (1996–1999) precede it, so they remain valid prior art; the "Cited By" documents, by contrast, are not prior art.

Sources: Google Patents US7202961B2 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7202961B2/en); US5228118 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US5228118); US5852744 (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US5852744A](/patent/US5852744A)/en); US6170007 (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6170007B1](/patent/US6170007B1)/en); US6139177 (https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/45/07/e6/0ed3d931b60a66/US6139177.pdf); EP 0 838 768 and EP 0 847 008 (corresponding EP publications); citation table reproduced from the fetched US7202961B2 record.

I'll ground the analysis by pulling details on the key prior-art references cited on the patent page.

Let me pull the remaining cited references.

Obviousness Analysis — US 7,202,961 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Builds on, and does not repeat, the earlier summary and litigation sections. That prior work established the bibliographic record (filed 2001‑06‑01, granted 2007‑04‑10, three independent claims, lapsed for nonpayment in 2011). This section addresses only the § 103 question, using the prior-art set listed on the patent page itself.

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1. Governing law, critical date, and the reference set

Framework. The application was filed 2001‑06‑01 with no earlier priority claim shown on the page. Pre‑AIA § 103 therefore governs, as glossed by KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) (decided while this patent was in force). The Graham factors apply: scope/content of the prior art, differences, PHOSITA level, and secondary considerations.

Critical date: on or about 2001‑06‑01. Every reference in the "Citations (8)" table of the patent page predates that date in effective filing terms — including the three that granted after 2001, which still qualify under pre‑AIA § 102(e) because their U.S. filing dates are earlier:

Two observations that matter for the analysis:

• The three strongest "printer‑as‑web‑server" references (US 6,170,007, US 6,139,177, US 5,852,744) carry no examiner star. On Google Patents' convention that means they were not the examiner's core rejections — they were applicant‑cited (HP citing its own earlier HP disclosures). That is useful for § 103: it makes them admissions about the state of the art, not merely third‑party teachings the patentee can distinguish on assignee grounds. The '961 patent's entire HTTP/web‑access architecture (spec: "server module 70 provides web access functionality"; "HTTP commands … specify one of a set of predetermined URLs"; "rendering module 77 updates a peripheral device configuration") is close to verbatim adoption of US 6,139,177 / US 6,170,007 vocabulary ("web core," "predetermined Universal Resource Locators," "device configuration 19," "loading new information and software elements").
• The "Cited By" and "Similar Documents" entries are not § 103 prior art here. US 2010/0107097 (filed 2008‑10‑16), US 8,559,032 (priority 2003‑07‑14), and the Malikian/Epson "similar" documents post‑date the critical date. US 2008/0291495 is a Ricoh continuation‑family publication; if its pre‑AIA § 102(e) date is traced to its 1999‑11‑02 parent, its disclosure is substantively US 6,707,568, which is already in the table — so it adds nothing. I flag this because "cited by" listings are frequently (and wrongly) cited as prior art.

PHOSITA: a bachelor's degree in CS/EE plus ~2 years in printer‑driver/network‑printing development, or equivalent; familiar with PDLs (PCL, PostScript), OS print subsystems, HTTP/HTML, and Java applets, and with network device discovery (broadcast/multicast, SAP, directory services).

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2. There is no clean § 102 anticipation — the case is a § 103 case

Each candidate primary reference is missing at least one independent‑claim element, so the claims likely survive § 102 but not § 103:

• US 5,228,118 teaches the host asking the printer for interpreter‑identification data and then auto‑selecting a compatible driver (claim 1: "inquiring means … interpreter‑identification data … printer driver selecting means for selecting one of said plurality of printer drivers which is compatible"). It does not teach sending rendering logic/code from printer to host — the drivers are already resident ("first memory means (44) for storing said printer drivers").
• US 6,804,019 is the closest art on dynamic configuration: the print data generator "does not assume a specific functional configuration until the printer … is selected"; a "configuration information request element 5 … requests … the module configuration information corresponding to the selected printer"; and the "module calling element 4 calls for execution of the appropriate execution modules 2" based on that information from the printer. But what travels host‑ward is configuration information, not the rendering module itself.
• US 6,170,007 / US 6,139,177 teach printer‑resident HTTP servers returning device web pages and enabling transfer/loading of "software elements," and expressly claim platform independence — but they frame this as device user‑interface, access and control, not as printer‑driver delivery.
• US 6,707,568 teaches program code (a "filter") "loaded onto a computer … via … an Internet server, or other remote computer or storage device" to avoid installing new printer drivers — i.e., remote delivery of executable print‑path code, but from a server, not from the printer, and responsive to user filter selection rather than printer discovery.

The § 103 question is therefore whether combining these known pieces would have been obvious. Under KSR it would.

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3. Element‑by‑element mapping of the independent claims

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4. The § 103 combinations, and why the PHOSITA would combine them

Combination A (primary): US 5,228,118 + US 6,804,019 + US 6,170,007 / US 6,139,177

Renders claims 1, 10, 16 and dependents 2–4, 6–8, 10–14, 16–17 obvious.

US 5,228,118 poses the exact problem the '961 patent recites as its own. Compare the '961 specification — "[t]he selection of the appropriate printer driver can be a cumbersome and time‑consuming process" — with US 5,228,118: "the selection of the appropriate printer driver on the data processing device is cumbersome and time‑consuming," "the conventional printing system … is not fully automated, requiring the operator's operation upon sending of print data … upon installation of a new software in the data processing device or upon changing of the printer from one type to another." That is not merely the same field; it is the same motivation statement.

US 5,228,118 solves it badly for the '961 claims' purpose — it keeps the whole driver library on the host ("first memory means (44) for storing said printer drivers") — which is precisely the inefficiency the '961 patent says it eliminates ("minimize the need for space consuming driver software being resident on the host device"). US 6,804,019 then supplies the missing half: instead of storing everything, ask the printer what it needs and assemble the print path from the response ("the module calling element 4 … calls the execution modules 2 based on the module configuration information"; "the print data generator 3 does not assume a specific functional configuration until the printer 11 is selected").

Motivation (KSR rationales (A), (C), (D), (F)): (i) both references are in the same field and address the same compatibility/automation problem, so a POSITA would look to one to improve the other; (ii) substituting "ask the printer and configure on demand" for "ask the printer and select from stored copies" is a predictable, known technique applied to a known device ready for improvement — indeed US 5,228,118's own disclosure anticipates adding interpreters/drivers dynamically; (iii) the design incentive is explicit: the '961 patent's own rationale (saving host storage) and US 6,707,568's ("the installation and configuration of a printer driver on a computer is cumbersome, time‑consuming") independently push toward not storing driver code on the host.

US 6,170,007 / US 6,139,177 supply the delivery channel and the printer‑resident server, and — critically — they are HP's own disclosures of printers with embedded web access. The '961 spec's "server module 70 … web access functionality," "communication path 54 … HTTP," and "predetermined URLs" map one‑to‑one onto US 6,139,177's "web core 14 … HTTP GET, HTTP POST, HTTP PUT," "predetermined Universal Resource Locators," and US 6,170,007's "web server 14 provides web server functions according to the Hyper‑Text Transfer Protocol." A POSITA designing a printer‑driver delivery mechanism in 2001, aware that HP printers already served HTTP and could already load software elements over the web channel, would have found it obvious to use those existing HTTP/URL mechanisms to move printer‑specific content from printer to host. Claim 7 is essentially a recitation of US 6,170,007's stated advantage ("independent of the computer system platform employed").

Combination B: Combination A + US 6,707,568

Renders dependent claims 2/11 (loading executable code into the host) and strengthens the "provided to the host device" limitation.

US 6,707,568 discloses that the print‑path program "is an executable program which may be loaded onto a computer 3 via a computer storage medium … an Internet server, or other remote computer or storage device, or may reside on a server controlling a plurality of computers networked to the printer." That is remote, on‑demand delivery of executable print‑path logic to a host — the only additional idea needed to move the '961 "rendering module" (as code, not merely data) over the HTTP path taught by US 6,170,007. Motivation: use a known technique (network‑delivered print‑path executable) to improve a similar device (a network printer) in the same way. Under KSR, "if a technique has been used to improve one device, and a person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that it would improve similar devices in the same way, using the technique is obvious."

Combination C: discovery layer — US 5,852,744 + US 5,228,118

Addresses the "locating the printer" aspects and the broadcast/multicast and network‑database options in the '961 spec (directory server 14, multicast, SAP broadcast).

US 5,852,744 ("Method for discovering a network printer by assigning dedicated sockets to different printer types and polling the dedicated sockets to learn the corresponding state") plus US 5,228,118's broadcast inquiry (claim 20) teaches locating candidate devices and obtaining their state/identity over a network before driving them. This supports the spec's multicast/SAP disclosure and the interrogation of a set of printers, though it does not fully reach claim 5's "directory server" that "provides an address … to communicate with said server module."

Secondary reference: US 6,521,696 (Toshiba)

Titled "Communication control device for realizing uniform service providing environment" and examiner‑cited. On its face it is directed to a client/server service‑provisioning environment, which is a plausible secondary teaching for the broker/directory aspect of claim 5 and for the general notion of a uniform environment that hides device heterogeneity from clients. However, I was unable to retrieve its text, so I decline to assert specific disclosure. Treat it as a candidate for claim 5 only after the specification is read directly.

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5. Claim‑by‑claim disposition

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6. Where the patentee has its best nonobviousness arguments

If this patent were ever in suit (it was not, and it expired in 2011), the defensible redoubts would be:

1. Claims 9/15/18 — the "delete upon completion of the print job" limitation. This is the only element with no direct counterpart in any cited reference. The obviousness argument would have to rest on general design incentives (transient/on‑demand code, freeing host memory, avoiding stale driver versions, the then‑ubiquitous Java‑applet model) rather than an express teaching. That is a KSR argument, not a TSM argument, and its strength depends on how much weight a tribunal gives to the absence of any explicit cleanup‑on‑completion teaching in the print context.
2. The "rendering module disposed in a printer that includes rendering functionality" limitation. US 5,228,118's printer returns identification data; US 6,804,019's printer returns configuration information. Neither returns rendering logic/code. The patentee would argue the cited art is confined to "printer tells host which of the host's own drivers to use," whereas claim 1 requires the printer to be the repository of the host's rendering functionality. The counter — and it is strong — is that US 6,707,568 delivers print‑path executable code over a network and US 6,139,177 delivers "software elements" from a device over HTTP, so code (not just data) did travel over these paths in the art.
3. Claim 5's directory server. If the record lacks a directory/broker reference, claim 5 is the single claim least vulnerable.

Note that claims 6 and 7 cut against the patentee: claim 6's "optimize for the specific printer" is US 6,804,019's express purpose, and claim 7's multi‑OS usability is US 6,170,007's express stated advantage. Those two dependent claims arguably add nothing patentable over the primary combination.

Secondary considerations: none are evident. There is no record of commercial success tied to the claimed architecture, no copying finding, no industry praise in the record, and the patent lapsed for failure to pay maintenance fees effective 2011‑04‑10 — HP declining to maintain it is consistent with (though not proof of) the claims being of marginal value. No nexus evidence appears in the materials reviewed.

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7. Summary judgment of the § 103 question

The independent claims (1, 10, 16) appear obvious. The combination of US 5,228,118 (same problem, automated printer interrogation, cooperative host/printer printing) with US 6,804,019 (dynamic, printer‑supplied configuration driving execution‑module assembly absent any pre‑stored per‑printer driver) and US 6,170,007 / US 6,139,177 (printer‑resident HTTP server, URL‑addressable transfer of information and software elements, express platform independence) supplies every element of claims 1/10/16, with an articulated KSR motivation grounded in the references' own statements of purpose. US 6,707,568 completes the "loading into the host" and "remote delivery of executable print code" elements.

Two limitations are not established on the prior art cited on the page: the directory server providing the printer's address (claim 5) and the deletion of the rendering module upon completion of the print job (claims 9, 15, 18). Those would require either additional art outside the page's citation list or a pure KSR "predictable variation/design incentive" argument.

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8. Confidence, uncertainty, and verification limits

• High confidence in the US 5,228,118, US 6,170,007, US 6,804,019, US 6,139,177, and US 6,707,568 characterizations — I retrieved and quoted their specifications/claims directly from Google Patents, Justia, EPO/patentimages, and EveryPatent (e.g., https://patents.google.com/patent/US5228118, https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6170007B1](/patent/US6170007B1)/en, https://patents.google.com/patent/US6804019, https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6707568B1](/patent/US6707568B1)/en, https://patents.justia.com/patent/5228118).
• I could NOT retrieve the substantive text of US 5,852,744, US 6,521,696, or US 5,659,336 — tool limits. My statements about them rest on their titles as they appear on the patent page ("Method for discovering a network printer by assigning dedicated sockets…," "Communication control device for realizing uniform service providing environment," "Method and apparatus for creating and transferring a bitmap"). Treat the claim‑5 and rendering‑element mappings that lean on these three as provisional; they should be confirmed against the full texts before being relied on in a validity opinion.
• Claim 5 and claims 9/15/18: my "not established" conclusions are limited to the eight references listed on this page. I make no representation about prior art outside that set (e.g., contemporaneous Java/ActiveX download‑and‑discard practice, or Ricoh/Xerox thin‑driver art), which could well close these gaps.
• No litigation, IPR, or reexamination has tested these claims (per the earlier section of this analysis), so there is no adversarial construction of "rendering module," "first program," or "cooperatively" to work from. Claim 16 as printed contains a grammatical defect ("said including a first program logic"), and a certificate of correction issued 2008‑09‑09 whose text I have not retrieved — the corrected language could affect how claim 16's "said [computer?]" antecedent is construed. Flagged rather than assumed.
• All dates and reference characterizations are as of the record retrieved in this session (patent page fetch 2026‑09‑24).