Invalidity dossier
US 7254618
System and methods for automatic DSP processing
Current assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC
Added 9/23/2026, 2:01:29 PM
Active provider: DeepSeek · deepseek-flash
Patent summary
Title, assignee, inventors, filing/issue dates, abstract, and a plain-language overview of the claims.
Patent Overview: US7254618B1
Title: System and methods for automatic DSP processing
Patent number: US7254618B1
Application number: US09/904,465
Filing date: 2001-07-13
Priority date: 2000-07-14
Publication (grant) date: 2007-08-07
Original assignee: Microsoft Corp
Current assignee (as listed): Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC
Legal status (as listed): Expired – Fee Related, adjusted expiration 2024-01-20
Inventors: Steven E. Swenson; Theodore Calhoun Tanner, Jr.
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US7254618](/patent/US7254618)/en
Purpose: According to the supplied text, the invention "relates to a system and methods for to realize automated DSP processing for media entities in a computing environment," and "provides a system and methods for automatically performing DSP processing on media entities to create a persistent dat[abase]" (sentence truncated in the excerpt).
Plain-language scope (from the excerpt): The patent addresses difficulty in classifying information with subjectively perceived attributes, such as music. The excerpt describes prior approaches — broad merchant genres, search by song/album/artist name, critic and customer reviews, and collaborative filtering ("People who bought this album also bought . . .") — and criticizes them, notably that collaborative filtering relies on extrinsic similarity (purchase behavior) rather than objective similarity of intrinsic attributes, requires large historical data, and lets early transactions over-influence later buyers. The stated invention performs DSP processing automatically on media entities to produce a persistent data structure, apparently to enable objective, content-based comparison rather than purchase-based suggestion.
Classification highlights: G10H1/00 (electrophonic musical instrument details); G06F16/40, 16/45, 16/63–16/639, 16/68, 16/683 (multimedia/audio retrieval, query-by-example, metadata); G10H2240/075, 2240/081, 2240/131 (musical metadata, genre classification, library retrieval).
What the excerpt does not establish: The full claim text, written description, and drawings are absent; the excerpt's "Definitions" section is fragmentary and the quoted sentence is truncated. Nothing here establishes claim scope with precision, embodiments, specific DSP algorithms, or the persistent database's structure. Litigation, ownership transfers, validity, and prior art are outside this overview per instructions.
Generated 10/1/2026, 9:52:36 PM
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Litigation summary
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Proceedings on file (0)
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No PTAB proceedings on file. This patent has not been challenged via IPR, PGR, or CBM. The absence is itself a signal — well-asserted patents eventually attract IPRs. The LLM analysis below may surface filings the ODP feed hasn’t indexed yet.
PTAB challenges
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Assignment history
Inventors, original assignee, and the chain of ownership recorded with the USPTO — including the correspondent attorney who recorded each assignment, since shell-LLC chains often share one repeat-player attorney even when the entity names look unrelated. Surfaces NPE / patent-troll patterns: shell-entity transfers, known asserters in the chain, repeat correspondent fingerprints, pre-litigation assignments, and bankruptcy fire-sales.
Prior art
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Obviousness
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Extensions
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Derivative works
Defensive disclosure: derivative variations of each claim designed to render future incremental improvements obvious or non-novel.