US 7206837

I'll search for the specific patent number and any 2026 litigation/reexamination activity.

Let me run targeted searches on the CAFC docket and the 2026 reexamination certificate.

One more targeted check on the Federal Circuit docket and the reexamination.

US Patent 7,206,837 — Analyst Summary

Basis: Google Patents full-text record for US7206837B2 (fetched 2026-09-29 per the record metadata supplied), plus targeted web searches. Where the search results and the authoritative patent text disagree, I flag it below.

1. Bibliographic Data

Assignee chain of record (relevant to current enforcement): Avaya Technology Corp. → Avaya Inc. → Zenith Mgmt. Foundation LLC (2012) → XenoGenic Development LLC (2016) → Intellectual Ventures Assets 160 LLC (2020) → Fleet Connect Solutions LLC (2020-06-05).

2. Abstract (verbatim)

"Methods of providing trip status information periodically to a user in transit to a destination are disclosed. Trip status information comprises information and alerts based on estimates of various time-of-arrival metrics, such as expected time-of-arrival and earliest time-of-arrival. The estimates are based on a plurality of data, including calendrical time (the time and date), historical statistics, average speed, current weather, weather forecasts, current traffic, and traffic forecasts."

3. Plain-Language Overview of the Claims

Independent claim 1 (the only independent claim)

A three-step method:

1. Receive a location of a mobile communications device that is in transit to a destination;
2. Estimate the time-of-arrival bounds at the destination for a confidence interval — based on (a) that location and (b) at least one historical travel-time statistic (i.e., a statistical range around an arrival time, not just a point estimate); and
3. Send the time-of-arrival bounds to the mobile device.

The hallmark of the granted claim is the confidence-interval framing of the arrival-time estimate derived from historical statistics.

Dependent claims (2–6), in plain language

• Claim 2 — The historical travel-time statistic may be a minimum value, maximum value, variance, an n-th order moment (n > 2), or a probability distribution.
• Claim 3 — The estimate may additionally rely on current weather, current traffic, forecast weather, forecast traffic, and/or a speed metric over a time interval.
• Claim 4 — The mode of travel is one of: automobile, private watercraft, private aircraft, snowmobile, skateboard, roller skates, skiing, ambulating, swimming.
• Claim 5 — The mode of travel is a common-carrier mode: bus, train, commercial watercraft, commercial aircraft, spacecraft — and the estimate is also based on a departure schedule for that mode.
• Claim 6 — The user specifies a desired time-of-arrival, and the expected time-of-arrival and the bounds are also based on that desired time.

⚠️ Claim-text inconsistency you should be aware of

The granted (B2) claim 1 does not positively recite either "calendrical time" or "mode of travel," yet:

• dependent claim 4 and claim 5 reference "said mode of travel," and
• dependent claim 3 references "said user's speed" —

with no antecedent basis in claim 1 as printed. By contrast, the pre-grant publication US 2004/0088107 A1 (retrieved via Justia) recites a different claim 1 that does require "said location, a calendrical time at said location, a mode of travel, and at least one historical travel time statistic," and its claim 3 additionally lists a "mean value" among the statistics. The A1 set also had a claim directed to expected/earliest/bounds/confidence-interval metrics that does not appear in the B2 set.

This strongly suggests the claims were amended during prosecution (the "calendrical time" and "mode of travel" limitations were evidently moved out of the independent claim), and that the B2 claim text as rendered may be incompletely captured. I cannot resolve from the sources available whether the antecedent-basis defect is real in the issued patent or is a rendering/OCR artifact. Treat the claim-scope statement above as the literal text of record, not a legal construction.

Note also the 2026-04-07 reexamination certificate (C1) "confirms claims" — i.e., as of that date the challenged claims survived ex parte reexamination, three weeks before today's date. I did not retrieve the certificate's own claim text, so I cannot confirm whether the certificate reproduces or alters the printed B2 claims.

4. Technical Content (for context)

• Field: transportation / methods of providing trip-status information to a traveler in transit.
• Stated problem: mentally estimating arrival times is cumbersome, data may be unavailable (poor radio/GPS, no data capability, chartered-bus passengers), and doing it while driving is hazardous.
• Stated novel feature: use of calendrical time (time and date) in the estimate, because historical travel-time distributions vary enormously by time-of-day and day-of-year (the specification's example contrasts 1:00 PM Wednesday, 4:00 PM Friday, and 4:00 PM on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving for a Baltimore→USPTO drive).
• Disclosed embodiments:
  • FIG. 2 (single-segment trips): tasks 210–280 — receive location, destination/desired time, mode of travel, weather and traffic (and forecasts), set updateHistorical, look up historical travel-time data keyed to mode of travel + calendrical time, estimate metrics, transmit to the device, delay, re-poll location, compute average speed and remaining distance, detect discontinuities (location discontinuity such as entering/leaving a beltway; time discontinuity such as a fixed 30-minute polling interval pushing the trip into rush hour), and loop.
  • FIG. 4 (multi-segment trips): tasks 410–490 — as above but with intermediate points, per-segment modes, departure schedules (e.g., a train leaving hourly), and metrics estimated for in-progress and remaining segments.
  • FIG. 1 / FIG. 3: representational diagrams of a user (140) traveling source (110) → destination (120), and via intermediate points 310-1…310-4.
• Implementation flexibility: computation may reside on a remote server or in a processor embedded in the mobile device; output may go to a handheld device or an automobile dashboard.
• Cited prior art (11–13 references), notably US 5,987,377 (Highwaymaster, "determining expected time of arrival"), US 6,006,159 and US 2002/0069017 (Schmier, public-transit arrival information), US 6,317,686 (Bin Ran, "Method of providing travel time"), and US 5,958,577 (Vectorlink, travel information distribution).

5. Litigation Status (as found; US district courts)

The patent is a high-volume NPE assertion asset held by Fleet Connect Solutions LLC. Google Patents lists ~30 filed cases; representative examples verified in search results:

• Geotab Inc. / Geotab USA Inc. v. Fleet Connect Solutions LLC, D.N.J. 1:24-cv-06089 (filed 2024-05-13; Judge Stanley R. Chesler) — declaratory-judgment action; U.S. Patent No. 7,206,837 is Exhibit 8 to the complaint. (Justia docket: https://dockets.justia.com/docket/new-jersey/njdce/1:2024cv06089/[548284](/patent/548284))
• Fleet Connect Solutions LLC v. Pegasus Transtech, LLC (d/b/a Transflo), M.D. Fla. 8:25-cv-01652 — 7,206,837 among eight asserted patents; voluntarily dismissed without prejudice under Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) (no infringement or validity ruling).
• Fleet Connect Solutions LLC v. UAB Gurtam, E.D. Tex. 2:25-cv-00661 (filed 2025-06-25; NPE, patents include 7206837). (https://npe.law.stanford.edu/case/[300486](/patent/300486))
• Fleet Connect Solutions LLC v. Forward Thinking Systems LLC (d/b/a FleetCam), E.D.N.Y. 2:25-cv-05178 — "Exhibit E. Evidence of Use Regarding Infringement of U.S. Patent No. 7,206,837."
• Platform Science, Inc. v. Fleet Connect Solutions, LLC, S.D. Cal. 3:25-cv-00457 — DJ action; 2026 docket activity includes a stay (Feb 2026) and an order on motion to dismiss (April 2026).
• Other venues docketed for this family include E.D. Tex., W.D. Tex., C.D. Cal., N.D. Cal., S.D. Cal., D. Ariz., N.D. Ga., E.D. Wis., S.D. W. Va., E.D. Va., D.N.J., E.D.N.Y., and M.D. Fla.
• One search hit shows Fleet Connect Solutions LLC v. Road Ready LLC, captioned in the Michigan Eastern District as 2:26-cv-13496 with a date rendered "09/15/26" — that date falls after today's date (2026-04-26), so I treat it as an unreliable docket-rendering artifact and cannot confirm it.

⚠️ CAFC 2026 — none found

You specifically asked me to check CAFC 2026 dockets for 7206837. My searches returned no Federal Circuit appeal captioned to this patent (or to Fleet Connect Solutions) in 2026. I also found no precedential CAFC decision on 7206837. I cannot rule out an appeal existing under a caption I did not surface; treat "no CAFC 2026 proceeding found" as absence of evidence, not evidence of absence. The only 2026 post-grant development I did confirm is the USPTO ex parte reexamination certificate C1 dated 2026-04-07 confirming the claims.

6. Explicit Uncertainties

1. Granted claim 1's scope — the printed B2 claim 1 omits "calendrical time" and "mode of travel," while dependent claims 4–5 rely on "said mode of travel." I could not determine whether this is the true issued text or a rendering defect. The A1 publication's claims differ materially.
2. Reexamination certificate C1 (2026-04-07) — I confirmed the existence and "confirms claims" disposition, but not the certificate's claim text. Whether the C1 certificate reproduces the B2 claims verbatim is unverified.
3. Term — the record shows "Adjusted expiration 2024-09-12," which is consistent with a 20-year term from 2002-11-04 plus roughly 680 days of patent-term adjustment, but I did not retrieve the underlying PTA/terminal-disclaimer determination.
4. One statute-of-limitations-adjacent item (not a legal opinion): the patent's adjusted expiration being in 2024 while active litigation continued into 2025–2026 and a reexamination certificate issued in 2026 is worth independent verification before relying on expiry for any damages-period analysis.
5. I did not access PACER or the USPTO PatentCenter directly; docket facts above come from Google Patents, Justia, CourtListener, PacerMonitor, and secondary reporting, and sub-case-level accuracy (e.g., which docket number maps to which asserted patent) is not guaranteed.

Primary source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7206837/en (US7206837B2).

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 7206837.

Let me dig deeper into the specific cases involving this patent.

Let me gather details on the specific cases and their outcomes.

Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. 7,206,837

Bottom line

Yes — there is extensive known litigation. U.S. Patent No. 7,206,837 ("Intelligent trip status notification") is owned by Fleet Connect Solutions LLC, a non-practicing entity (reportedly associated with Empire IP LLC), which acquired it via the Avaya → Zenith Mgmt. Foundation → Xenogenic Development → Intellectual Property Ventures Assets 160 → Fleet Connect chain. Fleet Connect has asserted the '837 patent (usually as one patent in a multi-patent portfolio campaign) in dozens of telematics/fleet-management suits since 2022.

The primary authoritative list is the Stanford NPE Litigation Database page for the patent:

• https://npe.law.stanford.edu/patent/7206837

Google Patents also records a large number of these cases as "Family has litigation":

• https://patents.google.com/patent/[US7206837](/patent/US7206837)/en

Cases listed by the NPE Litigation Database as involving US 7,206,837

Additional cases where the '837 patent appears in the pleadings/asserted portfolio

These surfaced in searches of pleadings and dockets (the '837 patent was listed as an asserted patent or attached as an exhibit), but they are not all on the NPE database's short list above, so treat the "asserted" status with caution — an exhibit does not always mean that patent was affirmatively asserted:

Outcome / status summary

• No case involving the '837 patent has produced a merits ruling on infringement, validity, or damages that I could find. The resolutions I located are all procedural: voluntary dismissals (with and without prejudice), transfers, or pending actions.
• Kroger — dismissed without prejudice by joint stipulation (no preclusion, patent re-assertable).
• LKQ — dismissed with prejudice.
• Southern Tire Mart — dismissed (Nov 17, 2023).
• Pegasus Transtech (Transflo) — voluntarily dismissed without prejudice.
• CalAmp — transferred from E.D. Tex. to C.D. Cal.; still live.
• Geotab and Platform Science — declaratory-judgment actions brought by the technology vendors against Fleet Connect; at last available data, pending/open.
• Teletrac Navman, PowerFleet, Clarience, Alan Ritchey, UAB Gurtam, GPS Insight — status not confirmed as resolved in the sources I retrieved; treat as active/unverified.

Post-grant and ownership status relevant to the litigation

• Reexamination: Per Google Patents' legal-events record, a request for reexamination was filed (effective Dec 13, 2024), and a reexamination decision confirming the claims issued (reported date Apr. 7, 2026; effective Apr. 2, 2026, "C1" reexamination certificate). This means the challenged claims survived and the patent remains in force for the asserted portfolio.
• Expiration: Google Patents lists the patent as Expired – Lifetime, adjusted expiration 2024-09-12. The 2025 filings would therefore appear to target past damages within the limitations period rather than ongoing infringement — worth verifying against each complaint.
• Current assignee: Fleet Connect Solutions LLC (per Google Patents).

Important caveats

• This session's tool calls were cut off before I could individually verify each docket's latest status. Case numbers, courts, and filing dates are drawn from the Stanford NPE Litigation Database, CourtListener/Justia dockets, UniCourt, PatSnap litigation write-ups, and an Ex Parte complaint-analysis page. Where a source was a vendor blog (PatSnap) or a secondary aggregator, the "verbatim order" language should be confirmed against PACER before reliance.
• I did not find any appellate (CAFC) decision, ITC action, or PTAB final written decision specifically on the '837 patent.
• Some entries above (e.g., GPS Insight, Rivian, Southern Tire Mart) are cases where the '837 patent appears in the asserted/exhibited portfolio; if you need to know whether the '837 patent was actually asserted (vs. merely attached), that requires reading each complaint's counts.

Most reliable single source for the confirmed list: https://npe.law.stanford.edu/patent/7206837 (eight cases as of the retrieved data). If you want, I can try to pull the current PACER status for the open matters (Geotab, Platform Science, CalAmp, Teletrac Navman, PowerFleet, Clarience, UAB Gurtam).

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

Let me dig into the reexamination reference and confirm there's no IPR/PGR/CBM hiding under a different caption.

One more targeted check on the reexamination outcome and any ORBCOMM petition, since ORBCOMM is an identified requester.

I verified the canonical structured block against live sources before writing. Here is the analysis.

Proceedings overview

US 7,206,837 has zero AIA trial proceedings on file at the PTAB — 0 IPRs, 0 PGRs, 0 CBM reviews; breakdown: 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denied. The bottom-line defensive posture is unusual and mixed: the patent is entirely un-hardened on the AIA side (no claim has ever been tested by the Board, and no § 315(e)(2) estoppel exists against anyone), but it is also expired (Expired – Lifetime, adjusted expiration 2024-09-12), so the realistic exposure is back-damages only, and the one validity challenge that was run — an ex parte reexamination (90/019,766, ORBCOMM Inc. as requester) — ended with the claims confirmed, not canceled. A defendant today is not facing a "hardened-by-IPR" patent, but is facing a confirmed, expired patent wielded by a serial NPE — the defensive playbook is District Court invalidity/§ 101/claim construction, not an IPR.

Corroboration of the "no PTAB activity" default. I ran targeted searches for an IPR/PGR caption tied to the '837 patent and to Fleet Connect Solutions and found none. Note that "7206837" is not a unique string — one search returned an astrophysics paper on the star KIC 7206837 — so the absence of PTAB hits in patent-specific queries is meaningful, not a search artifact. The PTAB E2E/PTACTS petition documents that do reference Fleet Connect (e.g., petition 1556913 and petition 1556914) are attorney "other-matters" disclosures listing Fleet Connect district court and reexam work — they are not proceedings on the '837 patent.

No AIA trial proceedings — what that means procedurally

Because no petition reached a Final Written Decision, no party is estopped under 35 U.S.C. §§ 315(e)(2) or 325(e)(2), and there is no FWD to link. Any prior-art ground a defendant can find is still on the table. There is also no institution denial to cite.

90/019,766 — ORBCOMM Inc. (Requester) v. Fleet Connect Solutions LLC (Patent Owner)

This is not an AIA trial proceeding. I include it because it is the only quasi-post-grant validity challenge to this patent, and it is material to a defendant's posture.

• Type: Ex parte reexamination (35 U.S.C. §§ 301–307) — not an IPR / PGR / CBM. Ex parte reexam is examiner-driven; the requester is not a party and has no PTAB appeal rights as a party.
• Filed: Request filed effective 2024-12-13 (per the patent's legal events, "Request for reexamination filed," docketed 2025-02-18).
• Status: Terminated. Legal event "Reexamination decision confirms claims," recorded 2026-04-07, kind code C1, "REEXAMINATION CERTIFICATE," effective 2026-04-02. Plain English: the claims were confirmed — none were canceled on the face of the event record.
• Judge panel: N/A — a reexamination is decided by a USPTO examiner, not an APJ panel. No panel to report.
• Requester grounds: Not established from the sources I could retrieve. Fleet Connect's complaints assert the '837 patent's claims are "not directed to an abstract idea" — i.e., § 101 defense framing (see the Penske/Zonar complaint, E.D. Tex. 2:23-cv-00210) — but I could not confirm what art ORBCOMM submitted. Do not assume a § 102/§ 103 basis.
• Institution decision: N/A (reexam is ordered or denied by the CRU, not "instituted" by the Board).
• Final Written Decision: N/A. There is no FWD. There is a reexamination certificate, which the record shows as confirming claims. I cannot state whether any claim was amended in the certificate — the C1 text would resolve that, and I was unable to retrieve the certificate body. Treat "confirmed without amendment" as unverified.
• Settlement / termination: N/A.
• Appeal: No Federal Circuit appeal found. A reexam appeal would run through the PTAB (examiner's answer → Board) and then to the CAFC; neither appears on the record.
• Defensive value: Negative for a defendant on the merits — the claims survived a validity challenge and came back confirmed, which Fleet Connect will cite as a robustness datapoint. But the proceeding has no estoppel effect on any defendant. A related docket disclosure also describes a "Response to Non-Final Office Action" in this reexamination with a disposition of "Completed August 2025" — meaning the reexam was pending for roughly a year and a half against an already-expired patent, which underscores that the real fight is about past damages, not prospective conduct.

Strategic summary

Canceled vs. sustained vs. untested. Nothing is canceled. The patent has 6 claims total — claim 1 (sole independent) and dependent claims 2–6 — and every one of them is untested by the PTAB. The only adjudicated validity event is the ex parte reexamination certificate confirming the claims (effective 2026-04-02). So a defendant cannot say "claim 1 is dead," and should not build a defense on any IPR disposition, because there is none. Note two scope facts worth pressing: (i) issued claim 1 recites only the device "location" and "at least one historical travel time statistic" — it does not recite the "calendrical time" or "mode of travel" that the specification calls "a novel feature of the present invention," so the claim is at once broader than the spec's pitch and vulnerable to a written-description/enablement and obviousness attack; and (ii) claims 4 and 5 refer to "said mode of travel," and claim 6 to "the expected time-of-arrival," neither of which appears in claim 1 — classic antecedent-basis problems under § 112(b) that bear directly on construction.

Estoppel landscape. There is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel, full stop. No IPR or PGR reached an FWD, so no petitioner or privy is barred from raising any ground, and ex parte reexamination does not generate § 315(e)/§ 325(e) estoppel — those provisions are keyed to IPR/PGR petitioners, and a reexam requester is not a party. Practically, that means all prior art — including the 13 references of record and anything the examiner never saw — remains available to a defendant in District Court. The art already on the face of the patent (all pre-2002) is: US 5,428,544; US 5,563,608; US 5,568,390 (and its B1); US 5,987,377; US 6,006,159; US 6,524,964; US 6,317,686; US 5,959,577; US 6,700,692; and published applications US 2001/0034624 A1, US 2002/0069017 A1, US 2002/0099500 A1. Two of these are especially on point for a § 103 attack on claim 1: US 5,987,377 (Highwaymaster, "Method and apparatus for determining expected time of arrival") and US 6,317,686 (Bin Ran, "Method of providing travel time") — both squarely in the ETA-estimation space. If a defendant is considering an IPR, however, two gates apply: the § 315(b) one-year bar from service of the complaint, and the reality that the patent expired 2024-09-12, which removes most of the strategic upside (no injunction to defeat, no prospective royalties; a patent owner also cannot amend claims in an expired-patent IPR).

Pattern signals. (1) No petitioner has filed multiple IPRs — no petitioner has filed any IPR. (2) The patent owner has not pursued PTAB appeals, but Fleet Connect Solutions LLC is an extremely aggressive District Court filer: its campaign is documented across 30+ cases in the litigation links in the record (E.D. Tex., W.D. Tex., C.D. Cal., N.D. Cal., D. Ariz., D.N.J., E.D.N.Y., N.D. Ga., E.D. Wis., S.D. W. Va., E.D. Va., M.D. Fla., S.D. Cal.), and a Platform Science complaint alleges Fleet Connect "has filed over 50 patent infringement lawsuits in at least ten different district courts" and is "a non-practicing entity owned and controlled by Empire IP LLC" (CourtListener, S.D. Cal. 3:25-cv-00457, Dkt. 1). (3) There is no defensive aggregator acting as a petitioner — Unified Patents appears in the chain only as a data aggregator (its litigation portal populates the case list); it is not a party on this patent. The closest thing to a defensive-aggregator move is ORBCOMM, a telematics manufacturer whose products are the accused instrumentality in multiple Fleet Connect suits (see the E.D. Tex. 2:24-cv-00879 complaint), filing the ex parte reexam — the classic manufacturer-side move when an IPR is time-barred or economically pointless. (4) Ownership chain is the Intellectual Ventures monetization pipeline: Avaya → Zenith Mgmt. Foundation → Xenogenic Development → Intellectual Ventures Assets 160 LLC (2020-05-01) → Fleet Connect Solutions LLC (2020-06-05). (5) Fleet Connect does dismiss cases — e.g., the Penske/Zonar case was dismissed with prejudice per joint stipulation on 2023-12-11, and the PowerFleet case was dismissed with prejudice on 2025-10-10 — so early settlement/exit is a realistic outcome.

Recommended next steps

1. Do not cite an IPR FWD — there isn't one. I could not identify any Final Written Decision, institution decision, or termination for this patent, so there is nothing to link at USPTO PTAB E2E or CourtListener. Any defense brief that quotes an "FWD" on the '837 patent would be fabricated. The correct affirmative statement is: "No AIA trial proceeding has ever been instituted on U.S. 7,206,837; no claim of the patent has been canceled, and no § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches to any party."

2. Anchor on expiration first. The patent is Expired – Lifetime with an adjusted expiration of 2024-09-12. That caps relief: no injunction, no ongoing royalty; recoverable damages run only to pre-expiration acts and, under 35 U.S.C. § 286, only for the six years before the complaint was filed. Run the accused-product sales timeline against that window immediately — for many Fleet Connect suits filed in 2023–2025, the compensable period is short.

3. Verify the reexamination certificate body. Pull the C1 certificate for Reexam Control No. 90/019,766 (via USPTO PatentCenter, the reexamination file, or the '837 patent page at Google Patents). Two questions decide whether it helps or hurts you: (a) were any claims amended, and if so, does prosecution history estoppel or a narrowing amendment limit infringement theories? (b) what art did ORBCOMM submit, and did the examiner consider and reject it? If the examiner considered specific art and confirmed the claims over it, that art is weaker in District Court — but § 315(e) estoppel does not attach, so you can still run it and add art the examiner never saw.

4. If you are inside the § 315(b) window, weigh an IPR anyway — but weigh it honestly. With no prior IPR, an IPR remains available to a defendant served within the last year, and there is zero estoppel risk to a sister defense. But because the patent expired 2024-09-12, an IPR cannot produce prospective relief and the patent owner cannot amend, which cuts both ways (a clean claim set also means no amendment risk to you). The stronger candidates for a § 103 challenge are US 5,987,377 and US 6,317,686, both already of record.

5. Drive claim construction on the two terms that carry the case. Per the infringement analysis of claim 1, the fight is over "time-of-arrival bounds ... for a confidence interval" and "historical travel time statistic." The specification's own language about a "traditional relational database with tables of historical travel time data for various combinations of start and destination locations, modes of travel, and calendrical time categories (e.g., rush hour, holiday, off-peak, etc.)" (col. 3) supports a narrow construction limited to pre-compiled, categorized historical data — which is a strong non-infringement argument against modern systems that compute ETA windows from real-time traffic/telemetry. Pair that with the § 112(b) antecedent-basis defects in claims 4, 5, and 6 ("said mode of travel," "the expected time-of-arrival" — absent from claim 1).

6. Treat the absence of PTAB activity as a timing signal, not a comfort. A patent asserted across 30+ suits without a single IPR usually means the defendants are small downstream customers (the complaints confirm this is an "end-user" targeting strategy) rather than deep-pocketed manufacturers, and/or that the § 315(b) clock ran out before anyone moved. If you are a manufacturer with indemnity exposure — the posture Platform Science, ORBCOMM, and Zonar occupy — you are the natural IPR petitioner, and your window is the one-year bar.

Verification caveat: the "no AIA trial proceedings" finding rests on (i) the canonical USPTO ODP block in this prompt and (ii) corroborating searches that surfaced only District Court and ex parte reexamination activity. I did not retrieve the 90/019,766 reexamination file wrapper, the C1 certificate body, or a complete PTAB E2E petition index for Patent 7,206,837. Before filing anything, re-run a docket query at USPTO PTAB E2E using "7,206,837" and the patent owner name "Fleet Connect Solutions LLC," and confirm the reexam certificate text.

I'll research the assignment records and correspondent details for this patent.

Assignment Record Reconstruction — US 7,206,837

Source note: The authoritative source for this reconstruction is the legal‑events ("Legal Events" / "Assigned to" / "Reassignment") record reproduced in the full patent text, which gives reel/frame for every recorded conveyance. I was able to retrieve the reel/frame table and two corroborating primary documents (the Xenogenic Development LLC certificate of merger; the Geotab declaratory‑judgment complaint describing Fleet Connect Solutions LLC's corporate structure). I was not able to retrieve the "correspondent of record" field for the individual records in this chain — see the explicit limitation noted under signal 3. I have not invented any correspondent names.

Inventors

Pattern observations:

• Single-inventor patent. Unusual for an enterprise-communications portfolio patent and worth noting because it makes the asset easy to sever from any product line — there is no co-inventor or team to keep the asset tethered to a business unit.
• Departure within 12 months of filing: not determinable. Avaya's employment records are not public and no inventor‑leave record is available in the assignment file. The patent's specification is written in an academic, non‑product register (its running example is "driving from Baltimore, Md. to the U.S. Patent Office"), which is consistent with a research-disclosure filing rather than a product roadmap filing — but that is an inference from the text, not a documented fact.
• No inventor-name changes, corrections, or nunc pro tunc inventor assignments appear anywhere in the chain.

Original assignee

Avaya Technology Corp. (New Jersey corporation), named on the issued patent; reorganized to Avaya Technology LLC by a corporate conversion effective 2005‑10‑04, and the patent was then reassigned to Avaya Inc. in 2008.

• Line of business: Enterprise communications — IP telephony, contact center, unified messaging/UC. Not navigation, telematics, or fleet management.
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? No evidence found. The claimed subject matter (estimating time-of-arrival bounds from a mobile device's location plus historical travel-time statistics) is unrelated to Avaya's product lines. The specification itself contemplates generic deployment — it states the invention could be delivered via "an automobile dashboard" or "a processor in a remote server" — which is language typical of a patent filed for portfolio value rather than to protect a shipping product. I found no assertion by Avaya that this patent covered any Avaya product.
• Current status: Avaya's operating business continued after the 2012 divestiture and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January 2017 (documented in this patent's own record by the bankruptcy-court lien-release order at Reel 044892/0001, effective 2017‑11‑28), and again in 2023. Avaya continues to operate post-emergence, but it has not owned this patent since 2012.

This is the single most important structural fact in the chain: the originating operating company never used the patent, and the patent left Avaya's hands in 2012 — twelve years before it expired and ten years before it was first asserted.

Assignment timeline

All reel/frame numbers below are drawn from the patent's legal-events record. Execution ("effective") dates are as recorded; recording dates follow.

2002‑10‑29 (executed) / recorded 2002‑11‑04 — Reel 013477/0542

• Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
• Assignor: Seligmann, Doree Duncan (individual inventor)
• Assignee: Avaya Technology Corp., New Jersey
• Correspondent: Not retrieved. Not disclosed in the sources available to me.
• Context: Original employment/prosecution assignment of the invention to the operating company at filing.

2007‑10‑26 (executed) / recorded 2007‑11‑27 — Reel 020156/0149

• Conveyance: Security Agreement
• Assignor: Avaya, Inc.; Avaya Technology LLC; Octel Communications LLC; and others
• Assignee: Citibank, N.A., as Administrative Agent
• Correspondent: Not retrieved.
• Context: Securitization — collateral grant over a cross-entity Avaya patent portfolio, not a change of ownership.

2007‑10‑26 (executed) / recorded 2007‑11‑28 — Reel 020166/0705

• Conveyance: Security Agreement
• Assignor: Same Avaya entity group as above
• Assignee: Citicorp USA, Inc., as Administrative Agent
• Correspondent: Not retrieved.
• Context: Securitization — second lien/credit facility over the same collateral pool.

2008‑06‑25 (executed) / recorded 2008‑06‑27 — Reel 021158/0319

• Conveyance: Reassignment
• Assignor: Avaya Technology LLC
• Assignee: Avaya Inc., New Jersey
• Correspondent: Not retrieved.
• Context: Internal reorganization — consolidation of the operating-company IP into the parent. Note the sequencing anomaly: this reassignment was recorded in 2008, while the underlying corporate conversion that created "Avaya Technology LLC" was only recorded later (next entry).

2005‑10‑04 (effective) / recorded 2008‑12‑29 — Reel 022071/0420

• Conveyance: Conversion from Corporation to LLC
• Assignor: Avaya Technology Corp.
• Assignee: Avaya Technology LLC
• Correspondent: Not retrieved.
• Context: Change of name/entity form only — a 37 CFR 3.27-type conversion record, filed late (recorded ~3 years after the effective date). No change in beneficial ownership.

2011‑02‑11 (effective) / recorded 2011‑02‑22 — Reel 025863/0535

• Conveyance: Security Agreement
• Assignor: Avaya Inc., a Delaware corporation
• Assignee: The Bank of New York Mellon Trust, N.A., as Notes Collateral Agent
• Correspondent: Not retrieved.
• Context: Securitization — notes collateral, evidencing Avaya's deteriorating capital structure ahead of the 2012 divestitures.

2012‑08‑24 (recorded) — Reels 028846/0513, 028846/0734, 028846/0665

• Conveyance: Release by Secured Party (three separate releases)
• Assignor/Secured party: Citibank, N.A. (0513); Citicorp USA, Inc. (0734); The Bank of New York Mellon Trust Company, N.A. (0665)
• Assignee: Avaya, Inc.
• Correspondent: Not retrieved.
• Context: Securitization unwind — clean-up of the 2007/2011 liens so the portfolio could be sold free of encumbrance. It is directly on the critical path to the sale recorded one month later.

2012‑07‑30 (executed) / recorded 2012‑09‑26 — Reel 029029/0396

• Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
• Assignor: Avaya Inc.
• Assignee: Zenith Mgmt. Foundation Limited Liability Company
• Correspondent: Not retrieved.
• Context: Fire-sale / transfer-to-asserter. This is the pivotal event: the patent leaves the operating company for an entity that is not in the communications business. The entity later disappears into the Intellectual Ventures shell structure (see the 2016 merger entry).

2012‑07‑30 (executed) / recorded 2012‑09‑26 — Reel 029043/0194

• Conveyance: Confirmatory Assignment
• Assignor: Avaya Technology, LLC
• Assignee: Avaya Inc.
• Correspondent: Not retrieved.
• Context: Internal reorg clean-up — a belt-and-braces record confirming the 2008 chain of title, recorded contemporaneously with the sale so the buyer received a facially complete record.

2015‑08‑26 (effective) / recorded 2016‑01‑25 — Reel 037572/0244

• Conveyance: Merger
• Assignor: Zenith Mgmt. Foundation Limited Liability Company
• Assignee: Xenogenic Development Limited Liability Company
• Correspondent: Not retrieved as a US assignment correspondent record, but I recovered the underlying certificate of merger: it is a Delaware merger of the non-surviving Zenith entity into Xenogenic, signed 2015‑08‑28 by Phyllis Turner-Brim, VP & Chief IP Counsel, Intellectual Ventures (pturnerbrim@intven.com), with the surviving entity's principal place of business stated as 3150 139th Avenue SE, Building 4, Bellevue, Washington 98005 — an Intellectual Ventures address.
• Context: Internal reorg inside the Intellectual Ventures shell family. This is the document that definitively identifies both Zenith and Xenogenic as IV vehicles; the IV connection is proven, not inferred from naming.

2017‑11‑28 (effective) / recorded 2017‑12‑15 — Reel 044892/0001

• Conveyance: Bankruptcy Court Order releasing all liens (releasing the security interest at Reel 025863/0535)
• Assignor/Secured party: The Bank of New York Mellon Trust, N.A.
• Assignee: Avaya Inc.
• Correspondent: Not retrieved.
• Context: Bankruptcy release — documents Avaya's January 2017 Chapter 11. Critically, this release benefits Avaya, which no longer owned the patent; it cleans the record of Avaya-era liens against a patent that had already been sold to the IV chain. It does not transfer this patent.

2017‑12‑15 (effective) / recorded 2018‑01‑09 — Reel 045032/0213

• Conveyance: Release by Secured Party (Citicorp USA, Inc. as assignor; released parties include Avaya Inc., Avaya Technology LLC, Octel Communications LLC, VPNET Technologies, Inc., Sierra Holdings Corp.)
• Correspondent: Not retrieved.
• Context: Bankruptcy-related securitization unwind, same character as the preceding entry.

2020‑04‑16 (executed) / recorded 2020‑05‑01 — Reel 052547/0982

• Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
• Assignor: Xenogenic Development Limited Liability Company
• Assignee: Intellectual Ventures Assets 160 LLC, Delaware
• Correspondent: Not retrieved.
• Context: Defensive aggregation → divestiture wave. IV pulls the asset out of the Xenogenic vehicle into a numbered "Assets" shelf LLC — the standard precursor to a packaged onward sale.

2020‑05‑29 (executed) / recorded 2020‑06‑05 — Reel 052853/0498

• Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
• Assignor: Intellectual Ventures Assets 160 LLC
• Assignee: Fleet Connect Solutions LLC, Texas
• Correspondent: Not retrieved.
• Context: Transfer-to-asserter. Fleet Connect Solutions LLC takes title. Per the Geotab declaratory-judgment complaint (D.N.J. 1:24-cv-06089), FCS was incorporated in April 2020 and has no officers, employees, or agents other than Daniel Mitry and Timothy Salmon, both New Jersey residents; it registered as a foreign corporation in New Jersey on 2021‑02‑24 using Incorp Services, Inc. as registered agent. In other words, the acquiring LLC was formed essentially contemporaneously with (indeed weeks before) the assignment.

Procedural events (non-assignment, for completeness):

• 2018‑09‑13 — 12th-year maintenance fee paid.
• 2024‑09‑12 — Adjusted expiration (Google Patents lists the patent as Expired – Lifetime).
• 2024‑12‑13 (effective) / 2025‑02‑18 (recorded) — Request for reexamination filed (no reel/frame; ex parte proceeding record).
• 2026‑04‑02 (effective) / recorded 2026‑04‑07 — Reexamination decision confirming the claims, "C1" — the challenged claims survived. This is why a nominally expired 2002-filing patent still matters: the reexam certificate preserves the claims for the pending and recently filed suits (and for past damages within the limitations period).

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7206837
    2002 : Filed Nov 2002
         : Assigned to Avaya Technology Corp
    2005 : Avaya Technology Corp converts to LLC
    2007 : Citibank security agreement
         : Citicorp security agreement
    2008 : Reassignment to Avaya Inc
         : Conversion recorded from Corp to LLC
    2011 : BNY Mellon security agreement
    2012 : Liens released
         : Sold to Zenith Mgmt Foundation LLC
    2015 : Merged into Xenogenic Development LLC
    2017 : Avaya Chapter 11 lien release
    2020 : Moved to Intellectual Ventures Assets 160
         : Acquired by Fleet Connect Solutions LLC
    2022 : First Fleet Connect suit on this patent
    2024 : Patent expires
    2025 : Reexamination requested
    2026 : Reexamination confirms claims

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — PRESENT.
The patent left an operating company (Avaya Inc.) for a licensing vehicle in 2012: Reel 029029/0396, executed 2012‑07‑30, Avaya Inc. → Zenith Mgmt. Foundation LLC. Concretely, not by naming:

• The receiving entity is a Delaware LLC with no products; it exists only as a title-holding layer.
• That layer was subsequently merged away in a transaction whose certificate was signed by Intellectual Ventures' VP & Chief IP Counsel and names the surviving entity's principal place of business as 3150 139th Avenue SE, Building 4, Bellevue, WA 98005 (Reel 037572/0244).
• The current holder, Fleet Connect Solutions LLC (Reel 052853/0498), is documented in the Geotab complaint as having no officers, employees, or agents other than two individuals, and using Incorp Services, Inc., a commercial registered-agent service, as its agent of record. That is a registered-agent address of the type the signal description calls out, sourced from a court pleading rather than from the name.

2. Known asserter in the chain — PRESENT.
Two independent public-list matches:

• Intellectual Ventures — proven, not inferred, by the merger certificate at Reel 037572/0244 (IV's Chief IP Counsel signing for Xenogenic; IV's Bellevue campus as the surviving entity's address). Assignees Intellectual Ventures Assets 160 LLC (Reel 052547/0982) and its Xenogenic/Zenith predecessors sit directly in the chain.
• Fleet Connect Solutions LLC — the current assignee — is listed in the Stanford NPE Litigation Database as an NPE ("NPE Status: Non Practicing Entity"; "Acquired patents") on the '837 patent, and is a high-volume plaintiff in the fleet-telematics space (see the separate litigation section for the docket list).

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR (not a finding either way).
I could not retrieve the correspondent-of-record field for any record in this chain from the sources available to me, so I cannot confirm or deny recurrence. Flagging two things explicitly so they are not misused:

• A near-miss that must NOT be attributed to this chain. Reel 052853/0153 — a Patent Security Agreement naming Acacia Research Group LLC, Monarch Networking Solutions LLC and ~17 other Acacia-affiliated assignors, in favor of Starboard Value Intermediate Fund LP as Collateral Agent, with correspondent S. Kareff c/o Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP, 919 Third Avenue, 25th Floor, New York, NY 10022 — is a different recording from this patent's Fleet Connect assignment at Reel 052853/0498. Same reel number, different frame; the Schulte Roth correspondent belongs to the Acacia/Starboard instrument and I have found no evidence connecting it to the '837 patent.
• A lead requiring verification, not a conclusion. Reel 052853 appears to be a batch reel recorded 2020‑06‑05 containing both the Acacia/Starboard security agreement (frame 0153) and the IV Assets 160 → Fleet Connect assignment (frame 0498). Two recordings in the same IV/Acacia economic ecosystem, submitted into the same reel on the same day, may indicate a common recording agent or common back-office. That is a hypothesis to test against the Assignment Center's correspondent field — I do not have the correspondent names to substantiate it, and I am not asserting it.

4. Cascading transfers — PRESENT.
Consecutive hops inside a single beneficial family: Zenith → Xenogenic (merger, effective 2015‑08‑26, Reel 037572/0244) → Intellectual Ventures Assets 160 LLC (executed 2020‑04‑16, Reel 052547/0982) → Fleet Connect Solutions LLC (executed 2020‑05‑29, Reel 052853/0498). The last two links are 43 days apart, and the terminal assignee was incorporated in April 2020 — i.e., the acquiring entity and the two-step transfer were arranged as one coordinated transaction. These assignees share not merely a correspondent (unverified) but a proven common principal: Intellectual Ventures, whose IP counsel executed the 2015 merger certificate.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT on the strict 6-month test; present in substance.
Fleet Connect acquired the patent 2020‑05‑29; the first Fleet Connect suits in which the '837 patent appears date to 2022 (e.g., Southern Tire Mart, E.D. Tex. 2:22-cv-00312, filed August 2022). That is roughly 27 months, outside the 6-month window. However, the acquisition was plainly made into a pre-formed assertion vehicle (LLC organized April 2020, two principals, no operating business), so the transaction was assert-enabling even though the first complaint came later. I am recording it as not meeting the literal signal while noting the substance, rather than overclaiming.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — PARTIALLY PRESENT; NOT the cause here.
Avaya did go through Chapter 11 (documented by the lien-release order at Reel 044892/0001, effective 2017‑11‑28, and the secured-party releases at Reel 045032/0213), but this patent had already left Avaya in 2012, five years before the filing. The bankruptcy records in this chain are lien clean-ups affecting a patent Avaya no longer owned. So: bankruptcy present in the assignor's history, but a bankruptcy-driven fire-sale is not present as the mechanism for this asset's transfer. The 2012 transfer is better characterized as a pre-bankruptcy monetization sale.

7. Privateering — UNCLEAR.
The 2012 Avaya → Zenith transfer has the shape of privateering (operating company hands patents to a licensing vehicle whose downstream owner asserts), but classic privateering requires evidence that the NPE asserts on the operating company's behalf against the operating company's competitors. The Fleet Connect defendants (Geotab, PowerFleet, Teletrac Navman, GPS Insight, Platform Science, Rivian, Kroger) are telematics/fleet companies — not Avaya's communications competitors. That pattern is monetization, not privateering on Avaya's behalf. Marking unclear rather than asserting a privateering theory.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — NOT PRESENT.
The chain terminates at Fleet Connect Solutions LLC, an active plaintiff asserting the patent in multiple districts, not at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. There is no neutralizing transfer. Note also that Intellectual Ventures sold the asset out of its own holdings in 2020 — the opposite of an aggregation-for-defense outcome.

Verdict

NPE — high confidence.

The chain contains at least three strong, document-grounded signals acting together: (a) a shell-entity transfer out of an operating company — Avaya Inc. → Zenith Mgmt. Foundation LLC at Reel 029029/0396 (executed 2012‑07‑30) — into a structure later proven to be Intellectual Ventures' by the merger certificate at Reel 037572/0244 (IV's Chief IP Counsel signing, IV's Bellevue address for the surviving entity); (b) a cascading transfer running Zenith → Xenogenic → Intellectual Ventures Assets 160 LLC (Reel 052547/0982, executed 2020‑04‑16) → Fleet Connect Solutions LLC (Reel 052853/0498, executed 2020‑05‑29) with only 43 days between the final two hops and a terminal assignee incorporated in April 2020; and (c) a known asserter as the current owner, with Fleet Connect Solutions LLC carried as a non-practicing entity in the Stanford NPE Litigation Database and documented in the Geotab complaint as having no employees beyond two individuals and a commercial registered-agent service. The original assignee never shipped a product embodying the claims, and the patent is currently expired yet was asserted after formal reexamination confirmed the claims (C1 certificate, effective 2026‑04‑02) — the classic posture of an assertion vehicle extracting past damages.

Verify at: USPTO Assignment Search / Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search by patent number 7206837; the indexed counterpart is https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html). The two items I could not confirm and that a records pull would settle are (i) the correspondent of record on each reel/frame above — the single most probative remaining datum, particularly whether one attorney or firm recorded both Reel 052547/0982 and Reel 052853/0498 — and (ii) the actual frame-level contents of Reel 052853 to confirm the Acacia/Starboard instrument at frame 0153 is unconnected to this patent.

Caveat, stated plainly: every reel/frame citation above is taken from the patent's published legal-events record; the correspondent fields were not retrievable this session, so signal 3 is reported as unclear rather than as a finding.

I'll research the cited prior art for US 7,206,837, focusing on the references most relevant to its confidence-interval/element-based claims.

Let me verify the remaining cited references for accurate dates and content.

Prior-Art Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 7,206,837 ("Intelligent trip status notification")

Filing/priority date: 2002-11-04.
Analytical frame: I searched the USPTO/Google Patents record for 7206837 specifically and worked from the 13 references the patent's front page lists under "Patent Citations." I did not substitute similar numbers or family members. Note that one search batch hit the tool-call limit, so the filing dates for US 5,563,608, US 5,568,390, and US 2001/0034624 A1 come from the Google Patents citations table (priority dates) rather than a page-level verification; flagging that as a minor caveat.

Threshold point that governs everything below (carried over from the summary): the granted claim 1 is narrower than the specification. Claim 1 recites only (i) receiving a location of a mobile device in transit to a destination; (ii) estimating "time-of-arrival bounds … for a confidence interval" based on (a) the location and (b) at least one historical travel time statistic; and (iii) sending the bounds to the device. Post-grant, the patent survived ex parte reexamination (certificate C1, 2026-04-07, "confirms claims"), so the granted claim set is the operative one for prior-art comparison.

A. The references that actually matter for claim 1

These are the only cited references that touch the core inventive concept — a statistical range/confidence-interval arrival estimate computed from historical travel-time data.

1. US 6,317,686 B1 — Ran ("Method of providing travel time")

• Citation: U.S. Patent 6,317,686 B1, "Method of providing travel time," inventor Bin Ran; assignee/priority chain per record.
• Dates: filed 2000-07-21; granted/published 2001-11-13. (Google Patents; FreePatentsOnline claim text retrieved.)
• Brief description: Internet-based traffic-prediction system. Builds a route-segment model from historical travel-time/speed data adjusted by real-time data, weather forecasts, and planned events, and outputs predicted travel times with an associated "prediction confidence probability." Critically, its specification states: "Predictions based on a given confidence level will produce a range of trip times which will reflect the type of uncertainty and its magnitude," and its dependent claims recite that the "predicted trip time comprises a range of times which is consistent with the probabilistic range of the predicted weather conditions" (claims 5, 10, 17).
• § 102 potential: This is the single most dangerous reference for claim 1. It discloses estimating a travel-time range tied to a confidence level from historical data, plus weather/traffic and forecasts (which also map to claim 3). The § 102 gap is that Ran is a predictive traffic-information service — the output is delivered in response to an Internet request for a planned trip, not, as claim 1 requires, "a location of a mobile communications device that is in transit" and the bounds sent back to that device. Whether Ran's disclosure reaches a mobile device already en route is the pivotal factual question; a § 102 rejection would have to bridge that. Expect this to be the reference an examiner/defendant pairs with a location-based mobile unit reference (e.g., Westerlage or Vectorlink) for a § 103 combination.

2. US 5,987,377 A — Westerlage et al. (HighwayMaster Communications) ("Method and apparatus for determining expected time of arrival")

• Citation: U.S. Patent 5,987,377, Westerlage, Kennedy, Saunders, Beasley, Hoag; assignee HighwayMaster Communications, Inc. App. No. 09/033,565.
• Dates: filed 1998-03-02; granted 1999-11-16. (Continuation of Ser. No. 08/387,221, filed 1995-02-10, now US 5,724,243; terminal disclaimer noted.) Source: patent PDF and uspto.report/5987377.
• Brief description: A remote dispatch generates destination information; a mobile unit on the vehicle uses a GPS/positioning receiver to fix its position and computes an expected time of arrival for the in-transit vehicle. The specification expressly says the ETA calculation "may also consider … the time of day during which vehicle 40 is traveling, the average time of a trip from origin A to destination B along route 52 based upon prior travel, weather conditions, and other information," and it compares the ETA to an appointment time to generate "late information."
• § 102 potential: Strongest cited art against the in-transit + mobile-device + historical-prior-travel + weather concepts that underpin claim 1's preamble and step (ii)(b), and directly on point for claim 3 (weather/traffic in the estimate) and claim 6 (comparison to a desired/appointment time). The weakness for § 102 is the "bounds … for a confidence interval" limitation: Westerlage produces a point expected time and a late/on-time flag, not statistically bounded arrival ranges. Stands as a § 103 workhorse combined with Ran.

3. US 6,006,159 A — Schmier ("Public transit vehicle arrival information system")

• Citation: U.S. Patent 6,006,159, Schmier & Freda; CIP of provisional 60/002,303 filed 1995-08-14.
• Dates: priority 1995-08-14; granted 1999-12-21.
• Brief description: GPS-equipped transit vehicles report position to a central processor that computes predicted arrival times at each stop using "historical or experience information … obtained from calculations of transit time for similar vehicles previously operating between appropriate points on the same transit route." That historical data "will be organized according to time of day, date and day of the year (i.e. Weekday, Saturday, Sunday, holiday, holiday season …)," and route info includes schedules. Results are pushed to portable access means such as pagers, notebook and palm computers and telephones.
• § 102 potential: Directly anticipates the "historical travel time statistic" + calendrical organization + delivery to a portable device combination, and is strong art against claim 5 (common-carrier mode + departure schedule). Weakness for § 102 on claim 1: it predicts a point arrival time at a stop, not a confidence-interval bound at the user's destination.

4. US 2002/0069017 A1 and US 2002/0099500 A1 — Schmier (continuation publications of the '159 family)

• Citation / dates: US 2002/0069017 A1, published 2002-06-06; US 2002/0099500 A1, published 2002-07-25; both priority 1995-08-14.
• Brief description: Substantively identical disclosure to US 6,006,159 (same "public transit vehicle arrival information system" text).
• § 102 potential: Same mapping as reference 3 (claims 3 and 5 in particular). Timing caveat: both published within one year before the 2002-11-04 filing, so neither is § 102(b) art; they qualify at most under § 102(a)/(e) (and, being the applicant's own-field published applications, are more naturally § 103 references). Do not treat them as § 102(b) statutory bars.

5. US 5,959,577 A — Vectorlink ("Method and structure for distribution of travel information using network")

• Citation: U.S. Patent 5,959,577, Vectorlink, Inc.
• Dates: filed 1997-08-28; granted 1999-09-28.
• Brief description: A mobile unit (portable/handheld or vehicle-installed) with a GPS receiver determines its position and transmits it over a data network to a data-processing station, which returns travel-related information — directions to a destination, traffic conditions in the area, etc. — to the mobile unit.
• § 102 potential: Supplies the "receiving a location of a mobile communications device" and "sending … to said mobile communications device" mechanics, but says nothing about time-of-arrival bounds or historical travel-time statistics. Not an anticipatory reference for claim 1 alone; it is the natural secondary reference to close Ran's or Westerlage's "in-transit mobile device" gap in a § 103 combination.

B. The references that are peripheral to the claims

These were cited but do not reach the claim-1 core; they are § 103 background/obviousness or hardware/positioning art.

6. US 5,428,544 A — Shyu (Norm Pacific Automation Corp.) ("Traffic information inter-vehicle transference and navigation system")

• Dates: priority 1990-11-05; filed 1993-07-08; granted 1995-06-27.
• Brief description: Vehicles exchange traffic information (speed, route, direction) peer-to-peer via in-vehicle transceivers; a microcomputer identifies its own position against a digital map and displays navigation info. (Confirms: filed Jul. 8, 1993.)
• § 102 potential: None for claim 1 — no arrival-time estimation and no historical statistics. Relevant only as evidence that in-transit vehicle location + on-board display was long known.

7. US 5,563,608 A — Matsushita Electric ("Position measuring system and method therefor")

• Dates: priority 1993-07-27; granted 1996-10-08 (date per the patent's citations table; page-level date not separately re-verified this session).
• Brief description: Position-measurement/positioning technology.
• § 102 potential: None for claim 1. Cited to support the "receiving a location" / GPS-positioning element (step (i)) generally.

8. US 5,568,390 A — Toyota Jidosha K.K. ("Navigation system to be mounted on vehicles"), and its B1 re-publication US 5,568,390 B1

• Dates: priority 1993-08-10; granted 1996-10-22 (B1 entry dated 1998-03-31 in the record).
• Brief description: On-board vehicle navigation/route guidance.
• § 102 potential: None for claim 1 — background on in-vehicle navigation displays. Note the record lists US 5,568,390 B1 as a duplicate of the same document, not a separate invention; do not count it twice.

9. US 6,523,964 B2 — Donnelly Corporation ("Vehicle control system and method")

• Dates: priority 1993-02-26; granted 2003-02-25.
• Brief description: Vehicle electronics/control and information-system architecture.
• § 102 potential: None for claim 1. Its grant date (2003) post-dates the '837 filing, so at best it is § 102(e) art via its earlier US filing; cited as vehicle-system context only.

10. US 6,700,692 B2 — Gentex Corporation ("Electrochromic rearview mirror assembly incorporating a display/signal light")

• Dates: priority 1997-04-02; granted 2004-03-02.
• Brief description: Rearview-mirror assembly with an integrated display. This maps to the specification's passing statement that an automobile dashboard could be an alternative delivery mechanism.
• § 102 potential: None for the claimed method — it is display hardware, cited for the alternative output device.

11. US 2001/0034624 A1 — NEC Corporation ("Travel information distribution system")

• Dates: priority 2000-04-13; published 2001-10-25.
• Brief description: Distribution of travel information to users (date per the citations table; not independently re-verified this session beyond the record).
• § 102 potential: Likely § 102(b) art on the general concept of distributing travel information, but the available detail does not show time-of-arrival bounds for a confidence interval; not anticipatory for claim 1 as I can see it. Worth a full-text pull before relying on it.

C. Mapping summary (reference → claims it could bear on under § 102)

D. Bottom line

1. The reference to lead with is US 6,317,686 B1 (Ran) — it is the only cited reference that expressly frames a travel-time estimate as a range tied to a confidence level derived from historical data, which is exactly the claim-1 inventive twist. Its exposure is that it is a pre-trip planning service, so it does not obviously disclose a device already in transit.
2. US 5,987,377 (Westerlage) and US 6,006,159 (Schmier) fill that in-transit/mobile gap and independently hit claims 3 and 5 (weather/traffic; common-carrier mode + departures schedule) and claim 6 (appointment-time comparison). Pairing Ran + Westerlage (or + Vectorlink) is the obvious § 103 combination.
3. No single cited reference appears to anticipate claim 1 in full. Anticipation requires all elements in one reference, and none of the twelve/twenty (counting the duplicate/document-family entries) discloses, in one document, both (a) a mobile device in transit and (b) time-of-arrival bounds for a confidence interval computed from historical travel-time statistics. The realistic attack is § 103, not clean § 102.
4. Do not overstate the "self-identified novel feature." The patent's stated novelty is calendrical time, and Westerlage and Schmier already organize historical travel data by time of day / date / day of year — so that differentiator is, on the cited art, weaker than the specification implies. The confidence-interval bounds limitation in granted claim 1 is doing the heavy lifting for validity, which is consistent with the claims having been narrowed during prosecution (see the A1-vs-B2 discrepancy flagged in the summary).

Caveats / uncertainties: (i) I was unable to page-verify the filing dates for US 5,563,608, US 5,568,390, and US 2001/0034624 A1 before hitting the tool-call limit; those dates are taken from the Google Patents citations table. (ii) § 102 date categories depend on the effective filing dates of continuation/§ 102(e) references (US 6,523,964, US 6,700,692, and the two Schmier 2002 publications), which I have mapped conservatively. (iii) I did not retrieve the reexamination certificate C1 (2026-04-07) claim text; if C1 altered or confirmed-with-amendment the B2 claims, the claim-scope mapping above should be re-run against the certificate text.

Primary source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7206837/en (US7206837B2), with reference-specific corroboration from the Google Patents pages for US5987377A, US6317686B1, US5959577A, US6006159A, and the uspto.report record for US5987377.

I'll verify what the of-record prior art references actually teach before mapping them to the claims, since an obviousness analysis stands or falls on accurate reference content.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 7,206,837 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Basis: the "Prior Art" content of the supplied record — the Patent Citations list on the Google Patents page for US7206837B2 (11 entries; 13 when the duplicate US5568390B1 and the two Schmier publications are counted), cross-checked against the primary references themselves via web search. Claim scope is taken from the printed B2 claims as reproduced in the authoritative record.

Two flags before the analysis

1. Date conflict (must resolve, per operating rules). The system prompt states today is 2026-09-29; this task states April 26, 2026; the prior "Patent summary" section says the 2026-04-07 C1 reexamination certificate issued "three weeks before today's date" — which fits April 2026, not September. I proceed on the task's stated date. This does not change the § 103 result: every reference analyzed below has a 1993–2002 priority date, all well before the '837 priority date of 2002-11-04, and the reexamination certificate date (2026-04-07) is constant either way.

2. Claim-text defect carried forward, not repeated. As flagged earlier, printed B2 claim 1 recites neither "calendrical time" nor "mode of travel," yet claims 3–5 depend from "said mode of travel" / "said user's speed" with no antecedent basis. I therefore analyze claim 1 as printed, and separately show that even under the broader A1 formulation (which does recite "calendrical time" and "mode of travel"), the prior art of record still supplies those elements. If claims 4–5 are as printed, they are § 112(b) problems independent of § 103; the § 103 analysis below assumes the mode-of-travel limitation is properly in the claim chain.

1. The operative prior art of record

(The "Cited By" list — e.g., US 2008/0065324, US 8,589,075, US 9,239,246 — is all post-2002 and is not § 102/§ 103 prior art against a 2002-11-04 priority date. I do not use it as such.)

2. Claim 1, element by element

Claim 1 requires: (i) receiving a location of a mobile communications device in transit to a destination; (ii) estimating time-of-arrival bounds at the destination for a confidence interval based on (a) that location and (b) at least one historical travel-time statistic; (iii) sending the bounds to the device.

Ground A (primary): Ran '686 in view of Westerlage '377

Ran alone is arguably anticipatory of claim 1; at minimum, Ground A is a clear § 103 case. Ran supplies the confidence-interval/bounds limitation that the patent's prosecution history suggests was the point of novelty, and Westerlage supplies the "mobile communications device in transit" notification-and-alert channel.

Ground B (alternative): Ran '686 in view of Schmier '159

Schmier independently supplies the two elements a tribunal might find thin in Ran — (a) historical travel times organized by calendrical category ("time of day, date and day of the year … Weekday, Saturday, Sunday, holiday, holiday season"), and (b) mobile delivery of a predicted arrival time to a pager-form device at the traveler's location. This combination is materially the same as Ground A but swaps in the transit/historical-table embodiment.

Ground C (alternative): Schmier '159 + Westerlage '377 + Fan '577

For a narrower reading in which Ran is treated as pre-trip planning rather than in-transit: Schmier gives historical, calendar-categorized travel times and position-based predicted arrival computations; Westerlage gives in-transit, continuously updated ETA and "late information" against an appointment time sent to the moving unit; Fan gives the handheld/server network architecture for requesting travel information from a mobile device. That triad covers every element of claim 1.

On "calendrical time" (the specification's stated point of novelty)

The '837 summary asserts that "use of the calendrical time (i.e., the time and date) … is crucial." Both Ran (time of day, day of week, day of year as model variables; "same time instant … same type of day") and Schmier (historical table "organized according to time of day, date and day of the year") expressly teach it. So even if claim 1 is ultimately construed per the A1 text to include calendrical time, the of-record art still reads on it — the alleged novelty is squarely anticipated in the prior art.

3. Why a POSITA would have combined these references (KSR)

1. Same field of endeavor, same problem. Ran's stated objective is to help "travelers … make intelligent decisions before and during their trips"; Westerlage's is to "substantially reduce … the disadvantages and problems associated with previous techniques used to determine and report the expected time of arrival." Both are ETA/travel-time estimation and notification — the exact field of the '837 patent (G01C 21/*).
2. Complementary, not competing, teachings. Ran is the predictor (a better historical+real-time+weather model producing a probabilistic trip time); Westerlage is the delivery-and-alert mechanism (in-vehicle ETA display, appointment-time comparison, "late" alert, continuous updating). Combining a better estimate with an existing notification channel is the predictable use of a known technique to improve a similar device (KSR Int'l v. Teleflex, 550 U.S. 398, 417 (2007)).
3. Explicit design incentive. The '837 specification's own background concedes that all seven data inputs (historical times, average speed, distance, traffic, weather, forecasts) and the ways of obtaining them ("odometer, speedometer, or GPS," "radio," "mobile communications device") were known in the art, and states the unmet need is merely that doing this mentally is "inconvenient and cumbersome," sometimes "dangerous." Framing the invention as automating a known manual calculation from known data is a classic obviousness posture; the asserted advantage is convenience, which KSR treats as within the skill of the art.
4. The "bounds/confidence interval" element is routine statistics on a known distribution. The '837 specification itself says the historical data "might include statistics such as expected trip time and standard deviation of a normal probability distribution, as is well understood in the art." Deriving bounds for a stated confidence level from a mean and standard deviation is ordinary mathematics; Ran already performs the range-at-a-confidence-level step, so this cannot supply the inventive weight.
5. KSR "obvious to try." Given Ran's teaching that prediction accuracy improves with historical-by-time-of-day data plus real-time and weather inputs, and Westerlage's teaching to push the result to the moving unit, there was a finite, identified set of options with a reasonable expectation of success.

4. Dependent claims

Claim 2 — min / max / variance / n-th order moment (n>2) / probability distribution.
Ran discloses thresholds ("range of feasible speed change," "range of times"), a variance ("the variance for the random error is small"; "the variance … is constrained by the probability of weather forecast"), a random error distribution ("typically assumed as having a normal distribution"), and statistical/heuristic model families. Schmier's transit data table supplies min/max-type bounds and schedule envelopes. Only the "n-th order moment where n > 2" branch is not expressly taught by the of-record art — but claim 2 is a Markush-style "at least one of" list, so the claim is met by any one listed statistic; and higher moments are a routine, purely conventional statistical choice. This claim adds essentially nothing.

Claim 3 — current weather, current traffic, forecast weather, forecast traffic, speed metric over a time interval.
Ran discloses all five: "Real-Time Weather Reports and Forecasts 214"; "Real-time Travel Time & Speed Data from Field Devices & Probe Vehicles 52"; real-time incident/traffic data; historical and real-time speed on links. Westerlage's destination information expressly includes "traffic updates" and "weather information" and an "expected travel speed along the predetermined route." Fan/Norm Pacific/NEC supply traffic distribution. This claim is squarely obvious over Ran alone.

Claim 4 — mode of travel from the group (automobile, private watercraft, private aircraft, snowmobile, skateboard, roller skates, skiing, ambulating, swimming).
The mode is merely a user-selected input parameter governing which historical distribution is looked up — the '837 specification itself treats it as a menu selection (task 220). Westerlage expressly contemplates the mobile unit being "carried by all types of vehicles, including cars, trucks, airplanes, boats, barges, rail cars … on a person's body." Ran's multi-modal framework covers automobile/rail/air/water. Spacecraft and the recreational modes are not expressly listed, but they are the epitome of obviousness-by-list: one of ordinary skill would recognize that any mode with a determinable speed and route can be an input. Note the claim-chain defect: absent a "mode of travel" antecedent in claim 1, this claim is also vulnerable under § 112(b).

Claim 5 — common-carrier modes + estimating also based on a departure schedule.
Ran expressly covers transit/rail/air/water modes and teaches that "the transit information center … and the railroad information center … will provide transit and train schedule, real-time status, and predictive arrival time at each station," and "waterway transport information center … provide water transport schedule." Schmier is built on transit schedules. Westerlage uses "appointment times." The "spacecraft" branch is again a nominal, unsupported addition with no statistical database — but the balance of the claim is met by Ran + Schmier.

Claim 6 — user specifies desired arrival time; expected arrival and bounds also based on the desired arrival time.
Ran: the user "identify[ies] either a preferred departure time or a preferred arrival time"; FIG. 7B computes the contour lines showing latest departure "in order to arrive at the destination by 5PM"; the system emits "departure time/arrival time choice recommendations and prediction confidence probability." Westerlage: comparison to an "appointment time" with "late information" when ETA deviates "by more than a predetermined amount." Both the desired-time input and the deviation/alert output are taught.

5. Countervailing points and weaknesses (stated honestly)

• The 2026-04-07 reexamination certificate (C1) "confirms claims." An examiner/certificate panel considered art and left the claims standing roughly three weeks before this analysis. That is a real-world datum against the grounds above — but (i) the reexamination was ex parte and the record available to me identifies no reference of record beyond those listed on the face of the patent; (ii) I could not retrieve the C1 claim text, so I cannot confirm whether the confirmed claims are the printed B2 claims or amended claims; and (iii) PTO confirmation of claims is not binding on a district court or the PTAB. I flag it rather than explain it away.
• Claim-construction risk cuts both ways. If "time-of-arrival bounds … for a confidence interval" were construed to require a numerically specified statistical coverage level (e.g., "90% interval"), that is still routine computation from Ran's mean/variance/random-error distribution — and Ran's "prediction confidence probability" arguably discloses it expressly. I do not see a construction that avoids Ran's disclosure.
• Antecedent-basis defect (claims 4–5). As previously flagged, "said mode of travel" has no antecedent in printed claim 1. A tribunal could strike those claims under § 112(b) rather than reach § 103; a PTAB panel applying Phillips would likely look to the specification, which does describe mode of travel as an input — and that description is itself the admission that the limitation is a lookup key, not an inventive contribution.
• No secondary considerations of record. I found no evidence in the supplied record or in my searches of commercial success, long-felt but unmet need, failure of others, licensing due to the merits, or copying tied by nexus to the claims. Absent such evidence, the Graham objective-indicia factor does not rebut the prima facie case above.
• Reference-content confidence. The Ran, Westerlage, Schmier, and Fan disclosures quoted above are drawn from the reference texts and are, in my judgment, high-confidence. I have not independently verified the full texts of US 5,428,544, US 5,563,608, US 5,568,390, or US 2001/0034624, so I do not rest any ground on their specific content — they are cited only as background art in the same field.

6. Bottom line

The central conclusion: the '837 claims are, on this record, vulnerable under § 103 as combinations of Ran '686 (probabilistic, calendar-aware, weather-adjusted travel-time prediction) with Westerlage/Highwaymaster '377 (in-transit ETA computation, notification, and late alerts) and Schmier '159 (calendar-categorized historical travel times delivered to portable devices) — with the "confidence interval bounds" limitation, the specification's own stated point of novelty, expressly disclosed in Ran ('686 at col./description: "Predictions based on a given confidence level will produce a range of trip times").