US 7261690

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

Let me check for claim text and any recent litigation activity.

Let me try to locate the actual claim text.

Identification and search-scope note

I searched for the literal string 7261690 (and the forms US7261690, 7,261,690, US7261690B2, US 7,261,690 B2). Results returned only records for this exact patent — I did not retrieve and did not include data for near-neighbors such as 7,285,090, 7,689,437, 6,605,038, 8,073,707, 8,961,414, or 7,959,567, which are separate patents in the same family and are noted below only where they bear on the family chain.

One important limitation: the claims text was not retrievable. The authoritative full text supplied to me is truncated at column ~line "Recharger contacts 485 … are adapted to mate with and be electrica…" — i.e., before the claims. No third-party source I retrieved (Google Patents, FreePatentsOnline, Justia, the granted-PDF OCR page) reproduced the numbered claims. My claim overview below is therefore derived from the "Summary of the Invention" paragraphs of the specification, not from verbatim claim language, and is flagged accordingly.

1. Bibliographic data (verified)

Terminal disclaimer note: the granted PDF carries the (*) notice — "This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer" with 154(b) by 0 days. This means patent term was disclaimed to avoid double patenting over an earlier-expiring family member, consistent with the 2020-06-16 Google-listed expiration. (Uncertainty: I did not retrieve the specific reference patent named in the disclaimer; it is most plausibly US 6,605,038 or a sibling, but I cannot confirm that.)

2. Abstract (verbatim from the granted patent)

"A detecting, monitoring and reporting apparatus includes at least two sensors for facilitating the generation of data indicative of physiological parameters of the individual and/or data indicative of a contextual parameters of the individual. A processor is coupled to the sensors and is adapted to generate at least one of derived data from at least a portion of the data indicative of physiological parameters and analytical status data from at least a portion of at least one of the data indicative of physiological parameters, the data indicative of contextual parameters, the derived data and the analytical status data. A memory retrievably stores the data and one of various ways of transmitting the data is provided."

3. Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Uncertainty flag: high. The following maps the apparatus families described in the specification's summary section. I could not confirm the claim numbers, exact independent-claim boundaries, or the total number of independent claims. Treat these as "what the independent claims are very likely to cover," not as quoted claim text.

(a) Stand-alone wearable apparatus family. An apparatus for detecting, monitoring and reporting human physiological and/or contextual information, comprising:

• at least two sensors drawn from the group consisting of physiological sensors (producing data on physiological parameters) and contextual sensors (producing data on contextual parameters such as the individual's environment/surroundings/location);
• a processor coupled to the sensors that generates (i) derived data from the physiological-parameter data, and/or (ii) analytical status data from the physiological data, contextual data, derived data, and/or previously generated analytical status data;
• a memory that retrievably stores the physiological data, contextual data, derived data and/or analytical status data; and
• means for transmitting any of that data to the individual — e.g., a visual output device, a tactile output device, an audible output device, or a coupled computing device.

This family also contemplates optional manual data-entry and a wireless device for receiving/outputting information to/from a worn wireless device, an implanted wireless device, or a nearby wireless device.

(b) Two-piece apparatus family (sensor device + computing device). An apparatus in which the sensor device houses the at least-two sensors (physiological and/or contextual) and the memory, and a separate computing device coupled to the sensor device performs the derivation — generating derived data and/or analytical status data from the stored data. Output to the individual is again via visual, tactile, or audible output device, or via the computing device itself; optional manual entry and wireless I/O as in (a); optionally a processor in the sensor device to generate derived data.

(c) Apparatus with food-consumption/nutritional capability. An apparatus for monitoring and reporting physiological and/or contextual information plus nutritional information, comprising: the at least-two physiological/contextual sensors; means for entering food-consumption information; a memory storing conversion information for converting food-consumption information into nutritional information; a processor generating derived data and/or analytical status data (using the nutritional information as an input to analytical status data); and means for transmitting the data to the individual.

Additional machine-generated hint (unverified): Google Patents' auto-generated concept tags for this record list claim concepts including "caloric expenditure" (tagged to 4 claims) and "sedentary" (tagged to 4 claims), which suggests dependent claims directed to caloric-expenditure and sedentary-activity determinations. These tags are machine-generated and I could not verify them against claim text — treat as unconfirmed.

4. Family / prosecution context

The 2002-08-01 PCT filings listed against this record (PCT/US2002/024552 → WO 2003015005 A2/A3) and their national-phase counterparts (EP 1414340 B1, CA 2454655 C, JP 4283672 B2, KR 100956791 B1, BR0211760, MXPA04001055, IL160079, ES2429364T3, PT2768402T, DK1414340T3) sit in the same family. Continuing US applications claiming benefit of 09/923,181 include 11/322,010 → US 8,961,414 B2 and 11/876,623 → US 7,959,567 B2, among others.

5. Litigation — and the specific 2026 CAFC check

District court: The Google Patents record links this patent to Delaware District Court case 1:12-cv-00133, which is BodyMedia, Inc. v. Basis Science, Inc., filed February 2, 2012, before Chief Judge Gregory M. Sleet. The court's Rule 7.1/Commissioner report dated 02/02/2012 lists the asserted patents as 6,605,038; 7,020,508; 7,261,690; 7,285,090; 7,689,437; and 8,073,707 — so 7,261,690 was among the patents-in-suit. Basis Science moved to stay pending reexamination and to transfer to N.D. Cal. Both parties were later acquired (BodyMedia by AliphCom/Jawbone in 2013; Basis Science by Intel in 2014), and the case did not proceed to judgment.

CAFC 2026 docket check — negative result. I found no Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit appeal involving US 7,261,690 in 2026 or any other year. This is consistent with the patent's status: it is recorded as Expired – Fee Related, with an anticipated expiration of 2020-06-16, and has not been asserted in any litigation reflected in the indexes I searched since the 2012–2013 Delaware case.

Caveat on search coverage: I searched public web indexes (Google Patents, Unified Patents litigation portal, PlainSite, Patexia, Darts-IP metadata), not PACER directly and not the CAFC's own docket system. A very recent 2026 filing could exist without appearing in these aggregators. I cannot represent my negative result as an authoritative docket clearance.

6. Explicit uncertainty summary

• Confirmed with high confidence: title, patent/application numbers, filing date, issue date, inventors, original assignee, claim count (146), abstract text, priority chain, classification, expired-fee status, and the 2012 Delaware litigation.
• Not confirmed — do not rely on: the literal text or numbering of the independent claims (source text truncated before the claims; no third-party reproduction found); the identity of the patent cited in the terminal disclaimer; the "caloric expenditure"/"sedentary" claim-concept tags; the precise litigation outcome of BodyMedia v. Basis Science.
• Negative finding: no CAFC 2026 (or other-year) appellate docket for 7261690 was located.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 7261690. Let me search multiple sources.

Let me dig into the specific litigation records referenced.

Let me verify the outcome of the Delaware case and check for additional assertions of the '690 patent.

Litigation involving US Patent 7,261,690

I was able to complete several searches before hitting a tool limit. Here is what the records I retrieved actually show, with the caveats noted.

1. BodyMedia, Inc. v. Basis Science, Inc. (the only case I could confirm asserting the '690 patent)

Grounding: The docket's "Report to the Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks for Patent/Trademark Number(s) 6,605,038; 7,020,508; 7,261,690; 7,285,090; 7,689,437; 8,073,707" (filed 02/02/2012) is the record that places the '690 patent in this suit. See the Unified Patents litigation page for the case (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/Delaware%20District%20Court/case/1%3A12-cv-00133) and Plainsite's docket (https://www.plainsite.org/dockets/2ihv896xp/delaware-district-court/bodymedia-inc-v-basis-science-inc/).

Procedural history I could confirm from the dockets: first and second amended complaints by BodyMedia; Basis Science answered and counterclaimed; Basis Science filed a motion to stay pending reexamination and to transfer the case to the Northern District of California (D.I. 15), which the court addressed in an order on the motion to stay/transfer (D.I. 44), followed by BodyMedia's motion for reargument (June 20, 2013). Companion inter partes reexamination of the related '707 patent (No. 95/002,376) ran in parallel and was appealed to the Federal Circuit as BodyMedia, Inc. v. Basis Science, Inc., No. 2015-1788 (Fed. Cir.), appellant's brief filed Oct. 8, 2015.

Outcome/current status (important caveat): The case terminated without an identified final judgment on the merits of the '690 patent. I could not retrieve a dismissal order or settlement document in the searches available to me, so I cannot state the precise disposition terms. Context: BodyMedia was acquired by AliphCom, Inc. (d/b/a Jawbone) in April 2013, and Basis Science was acquired by Intel in 2014; a Korean IP analysis (kiip.re.kr) characterizes this dispute as ending "before a judgment" due to those acquisitions. Treat the exact termination mechanism as unverified.

2. Cases I checked that do NOT involve the '690 patent (to avoid false positives)

• AliphCom d/b/a Jawbone and BodyMedia, Inc. v. Fitbit, Inc., No. 3:15-cv-02579 (N.D. Cal.) and ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-963 — asserted U.S. 8,446,275 (AliphCom) and 8,073,707 (BodyMedia), not the '690 patent.
• Fitbit, Inc. v. AliphCom / BodyMedia (D. Del., Sept. 2015) — asserted U.S. 9,048,923; 9,026,053; 9,106,307 — not the '690.
• My Health, Inc. v. BodyMedia, Inc. (E.D. Tex., Marshall Div.) — asserted U.S. 6,612,985 (University of Rochester) against BodyMedia — not the '690.
• iLife Technologies Inc. v. Body Media, Inc. (E.D. Tex.) — BodyMedia as defendant — not the '690.
• FEGO Precision Industrial Co., Ltd. v. BodyMedia, Inc., No. 2:14-cv-00043 (E.D. Tex.) — not the '690.
• Various PTAB IPRs (e.g., IPR2016-00543/-00545 by Fitbit against BodyMedia patents) — these involved '413, '707, '707-family patents, not the '690.
• Numerous search hits for "7261690" were merely prior-art citations in other patents' prosecution, not litigation.

Summary

On the evidence retrieved, **the only lawsuit asserting US 7,261,690 is BodyMedia, Inc. v. Basis Science, Inc., D. Del. No. 1:12-cv-00133 (filed Feb. 2, 2012)**, which terminated without a confirmed merits judgment, likely in connection with the 2013–2014 acquisitions of the parties. Consistent with this, Google Patents flags the '690 family as having litigation (Delaware District Court case 1:12-cv-00133) and Darts-ip shows that as the first worldwide family litigation.

Caveats: (1) I was cut off by a tool-step limit before I could run final confirming queries on the Delaware case's exact dismissal/termination and on the Unified Patents caselist page for this specific patent; (2) I could not directly query PACER or the full CAFC docket. If you need a certified litigation history, the authoritative sources to pull are the PACER docket for 1:12-cv-00133 (including the D.I. 44 order and any subsequent dismissal), the CAFC docket for appeal No. 2015-1788, and the Unified Patents Portal caselist filtered to patent 7,261,690. Until those are checked, I'd characterize the "no other known litigation" conclusion as high-confidence but not court-certified.

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

Let me check the Fitbit-era IPR wave against BodyMedia's portfolio and confirm whether '690 was ever challenged.

PTAB Proceedings — US 7,261,690 ("Apparatus for monitoring health, wellness and fitness")

Analyst note on sourcing. Per the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO Open Data Portal, most recent ingest), there are no AIA trial proceedings naming US 7,261,690. I ran independent web searches to test that default against older or unindexed filings and could not surface any IPR, PGR, or CBM in which the '690 was the challenged patent. I found substantial adjacent PTAB activity involving sibling BodyMedia patents and a parallel ex parte reexamination campaign, which I report separately below — none of it is a proceeding on the '690, and I have not converted any of it into one.

Proceedings overview

Total proceedings on US 7,261,690: 0 (0 active / 0 claims invalidated by PTAB / 0 claims sustained by PTAB / 0 settled / 0 institution denials). The patent has never been the subject of an IPR, PGR, or CBM. It is also expired (anticipated expiration 2020-06-16; Google Patents legal status "Expired – Fee Related"), with record ownership having passed through the Jawbone/AliphCom chain to JB IP Acquisition LLC (2019) with a security interest to J Fitness LLC. The defensive posture is therefore not "the patent is hardened by surviving IPRs" — it is "the window for a PTAB challenge closed with the patent's term, and no petitioner ever took a shot." A defendant facing a demand should first ask whether any actionable damages window even remains under 35 U.S.C. § 286.

Proceedings on the '690

None. There is no proceeding number, petitioner, panel, institution decision, or Final Written Decision to report for US 7,261,690, and I will not manufacture one to fill the template.

Adjacent proceedings — do not confuse these with a challenge to the '690

These are real proceedings against different BodyMedia patents. They matter for pattern-of-litigation context and for understanding what the same parties did (and did not do), but they create no statutory estoppel against the '690 and established no claim-level outcome in the '690.

IPR2016-00545 — Fitbit, Inc. v. BodyMedia, Inc.

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2016 (exact filing date not verified in retrieved sources)
• Status: Final Written Decision issued — claims held unpatentable
• Judge panel: Not verified from retrieved sources
• Petition grounds: § 102 (anticipation)
• Final Written Decision: Reported (Mealey's, 2017-07-21) as issued 2017-07-19, with the "three remaining claims" of the patent deemed unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. § 102. Verification needed: the source describes the patent as covering "a system for monitoring health, wellness and fitness," which is the title of both the '690 and US 7,689,437. I could not confirm from the retrieved material which patent number this FWD actually addressed. Do not rely on this as a '690 outcome without pulling the FWD from PTAB E2E.
• Appeal: Not verified in retrieved sources
• Defensive value: None as to the '690. It shows Fitbit was willing to take BodyMedia patents to FWD, which makes the absence of a '690 petition more conspicuous.

IPR2016-00543 — Fitbit, Inc. v. BodyMedia, Inc.

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2016 (petition dated 2016-02-01 in the record retrieved)
• Status: Institution Denied
• Judge panel: Not verified from retrieved sources
• Patent challenged: US 8,961,413 (not the '690)
• Petition grounds: Ground 1 — claims 1–4, 6–11 anticipated by Billon (§ 102); Ground 2 — claim 5 obvious over Billon + Wyatt; Ground 3 — claim 12 obvious over Billon + Pardey; Ground 4 — claims 4, 10 obvious over Billon + Tuorto; Ground 5 — claim 8 obvious over Billon + Amano
• Institution decision: Denied; reported as rejected by the Board on 2016-08-04 (Mealey's, 2016-08-05). Patent Owner's Preliminary Response argued Fitbit failed to apply the broadest reasonable interpretation and that Billon disclosed none of several claim features.
• Final Written Decision: None (no institution)
• Defensive value: Confirms the Board was receptive to BodyMedia's claim-construction and motivation-to-combine defenses in this family.

IPR2016-00707 — Fitbit, Inc. v. BodyMedia, Inc.

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2016-03-02
• Status: Institution Denied (37 C.F.R. § 42.108)
• Judge panel: Trevor M. Jefferson, Michael J. Fitzpatrick, Frances L. Ippolito (Jefferson writing)
• Patent challenged: US 8,398,546 (not the '690); claims 1–29
• Petition grounds: §§ 311–319 challenge to claims 1–29
• Institution decision: Denied, decision dated 2016-09-08. Panel concluded Fitbit "has not demonstrated a reasonable likelihood that it would prevail in showing unpatentability of claims 1-29 of the '546 patent."
• Final Written Decision: None
• Defensive value: Second consecutive denial in the same 2016 Fitbit campaign.

Ex parte reexaminations (Basis Science campaign) — not AIA trials

The D. Del. stay order of 2013-06-06 in BodyMedia, Inc. v. Basis Science, Inc., C.A. No. 12-133-GMS, records that six of Basis Science's seven ex parte reexamination requests had been granted by late 2012, with office actions rejecting all claims of several patents. The 2012-02-02 report to the Commissioner in that case listed the '690 among the patents-in-suit (alongside 6,605,038; 7,020,508; 7,285,090; 7,689,437; 8,073,707). Ex parte reexamination is a central reexamination proceeding, not an AIA trial — it does not appear on a PTAB docket and produces no FWD. I could not verify from the retrieved sources whether the '690 itself was among the granted reexaminations or what the claim-level outcome was. Confirm via USPTO Patent Center reexamination records before relying on it.

ITC and district court litigation (context only)

• Certain Activity Tracking Devices, Inv. No. 337-TA-963 (ITC): ALJ invalidated asserted claims of the '413 and '707 (and earlier the '546 and '275) as patent-ineligible under § 101 (orders of 2016-03-03 and 2016-04-27). Again: sibling patents, not the '690.
• AliphCom d/b/a Jawbone & BodyMedia, Inc. v. Fitbit, Inc., No. 3:15-cv-02579 (N.D. Cal.).
• BodyMedia, Inc. v. Basis Science, Inc., C.A. No. 12-133-GMS (D. Del.) — the litigation cited in the patent's Google Patents family litigation entry.

Strategic summary

Claim status on the '690 (as of this analysis). Zero claims are CANCELED by PTAB — no AIA trial ever reached a FWD on this patent. Zero claims are SUSTAINED by PTAB for the same reason. In practical terms all 146 claims are UNTESTED before the Board, and that is not a compliment to the patent: it reflects that the patent's assertion life ended before any petitioner had a reason to file. The strongest validity-threat signal in the record is not a PTAB decision at all — it is the § 101 eligibility rationale the ITC applied to closely related BodyMedia claims ('413, '707, '546, '275), which is a district court argument preserved for any live dispute, not a PTAB argument.

Estoppel landscape. Because no IPR/PGR/CBM was ever instituted on the '690, no § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches to this patent — not against Fitbit, not against Basis Science, not against anyone. Fitbit's 2016 petitions were directed to the '413 and '546, and its earlier/later filings to other BodyMedia patents; § 315(e)(2) estoppel is patent-specific, so nothing from IPR2016-00543, -00545, or -00707 bars a future or past ground against the '690. All prior art remains theoretically available: § 102, § 103, and § 112 grounds are unconstrained by IPR estoppel. Ex parte reexamination, if one occurred on the '690, does not create § 315(e) estoppel either (different statutory regime, different standard, no petitioner-estoppel provision of comparable scope). The real constraints on a defendant today are (i) the patent's expiration on 2020-06-16, which caps the infringement period, and (ii) the § 286 six-year damages lookback, which makes the recoverable window a function of the complaint date, not the patent's merits.

Pattern signals. (1) Same petitioner across multiple patents: Fitbit filed a coordinated 2016 wave against BodyMedia/AliphCom patents (at minimum IPR2016-00543, -00545, -00707), winning a FWD on one and losing institution on two — but never petitioned against the '690. (2) Patent owner posture: BodyMedia/Jawbone defended aggressively in district court, the ITC, and the Board, and successfully defeated institution twice in 2016; I found no Federal Circuit appeal by BodyMedia of any PTAB decision on a '690-family patent (none exists, since no FWD on the '690). (3) Defensive aggregator: No Unified Patents or comparable aggregator appears in the chain for this patent — the Google Patents family litigation data shows private-party litigation (D. Del. 1:12-cv-00133) and private-party PTAB filings only. (4) Ownership: the patent moved to JB IP Acquisition LLC on 2019-07-19 (from AliphCom LLC and BodyMedia, Inc.), with a J Fitness LLC security interest — an assertion-vehicle structure worth noting in a demand-letter analysis.

Recommended next steps

1. Start with expiration, not validity. Confirm the term and the terminal disclaimer on the face of the patent (the printed patent carries a "subject to a terminal disclaimer" notice) and the 2020-06-16 anticipated expiration. If your client's accused activity post-dates the expiration, there is no direct infringement to analyze. Pull the Patent Center file wrapper and the reexamination history to confirm which reexaminations, if any, touched the '690.

2. If a demand letter cites the '690, demand the asserted claims and the damages period. There is no PTAB FWD to point at, so you cannot say "claim 1 is dead." What you can say with confidence is that no AIA tribunal has ever scrutinized any claim of this patent, that the § 286 window is likely closed or narrow, and that the Board twice refused to institute Fitbit's 2016 challenges to sibling patents in this family — BodyMedia's claim-drafting survived the Board's preliminary review on the patents that were actually attacked.

3. Verify before citing. Two items require file-level confirmation and I will not assert them as fact:

   • The IPR2016-00545 FWD (2017-07-19, § 102, "three remaining claims" unpatentable) — confirm the challenged patent number on PTAB E2E at https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ before attributing any outcome, favorable or unfavorable, to the '690.
   • Whether any ex parte reexamination of the '690 issued a rejection and what became of it.

   Useful dockets: Docket Alarm, IPR2016-00707 — https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2016-00707/Fitbit_Inc._v._BodyMedia_Inc/ ; Federal Circuit opinions via CourtListener — https://www.courtlistener.com/ ; patent record — https://patents.google.com/patent/US7261690/en.

4. If an active assertion exists today (post-expiration assertion of past damages only), the live PTAB question is academic: a petition must be filed within § 315(b)'s one-year bar of service and must have a real controversy. Note that an expired patent cannot be amended in an IPR, which changes the Board's calculus in the patent owner's disfavor — a point worth raising if any petition is contemplated.

5. Frame the absence accurately in any client memo. Do not write "the '690 survived two IPRs" — that is false and I found no support for it anywhere. Write: "US 7,261,690 has never been subject to an AIA trial proceeding. It expired on 2020-06-16 and is held by JB IP Acquisition LLC. Related BodyMedia patents were litigated extensively at the PTAB, the ITC, and in district court between 2012 and 2017, with mixed results, but none of those outcomes bind the '690."

I'll start by pulling what I can on the assignment records, the litigation, and the corporate history.

Let me dig for the recorded assignment specifics (reel/frame, correspondent) and the later NPE-stage entities.

US 7,261,690 B2 — "Apparatus for monitoring health, wellness and fitness"

Important sourcing note up front. The authoritative record I was able to retrieve for this patent (the Google Patents full-text/legal-events capture) exposes the conveyance type, assignor, assignee and recording date for every recorded assignment, but it does not expose reel/frame numbers or the correspondent/attorney of record. I could not retrieve the USPTO Patent Assignment Search record pages themselves within this session. I will not invent reel/frame numbers or correspondent names — those fields are marked [not retrieved] below, and every entry should be verified at the USPTO Assignment Center using the link in the Verdict section. This is a real evidentiary gap for the "repeat correspondent" test in particular.

Inventors

All six are named on the face of the patent and all six appear as assignors on the 2001-10-09 "Assignment of Assignors' Interest" to BODYMEDIA, INC. (the only inventor→company assignment recorded against this application). BodyMedia was founded c. 1999 in Pittsburgh as a spin-off of sensor/body-worn computing research from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh, and the inventor group is consistent with a founder/senior-technical roster rather than a hired engineering team.

Pattern check — "all inventors gone within 12 months of filing": Not determinable from the sources reviewed. There is no evidence in the record I retrieved of a mass inventor departure around the 2001 filing; the inventor group stayed associated with BodyMedia through the 2000–2001 filings for the sibling applications (US 09/595,660; US 09/602,537; US 10/227,575; US 10/682,759). I found no fire-sale-precursor pattern here, and I am explicitly not inferring one.

Original assignee

BodyMedia, Inc. (Delaware corporation, principal place of business 420 Fort Duquesne Boulevard, Pittsburgh, PA 15222 — address confirmed in the My Health, Inc. v. BodyMedia complaint, E.D. Tex.).

• Primary line of business: Wearable body-monitoring hardware and the associated data platform. Its flagship was the BodyMedia FIT / SenseWear armband — a multi-sensor upper-arm band (accelerometer, GSR, heat flux, skin temperature) — plus the BodyMedia "Health Manager"-style web/analytics service that is literally the subject matter of this patent family (see the web-page and central-monitoring-unit disclosure at cols. of the specification). During 2007–2013 it was a direct-to-consumer and clinical/employer wellness device company, with the platform registered with the FDA as an aid to weight loss.
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Yes. The specification's FIGS. 12–20 (armband sensor device 400, computer housing, flexible wing body, GSR electrodes 465, heat flux sensor 460, rechargeable battery, vibrating motor) are a description of the shipped BodyMedia armband, and BodyMedia asserted this family against a competitor (below).
• Current status: Dissolved / absorbed. BodyMedia was acquired by AliphCom, Inc. (d/b/a Jawbone) in 2013 for a reported >$100M (deal announced 2013-04-30; BodyMedia operations kept in Pittsburgh and folded into Jawbone). Jawbone itself ceased operations and entered liquidation in July 2017 (wind-down handled by Sherwood Partners; Hosain Rahman left to found Jawbone Health Hub). BodyMedia, Inc. nonetheless remained a named co-assignor on recordings as late as 2019-07-19, i.e., the corporate shell was still on title chain when the patents were sold.

Assignment timeline

All entries below are recorded dates as surfaced in the patent's legal-events record. Execution dates are [not retrieved]. Reel/frame and correspondent are [not retrieved] for every entry — see the sourcing note above. I have not fabricated them.

1. 2001-10-09 (recorded) — Reel [not retrieved]

   • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest
   • Assignor: Teller, Eric; Stivoric, John M.; Kasabach, Christopher D.; Pacione, Christopher D.; Moss, John L.; Liden, Craig B.
   • Assignee: BodyMedia, Inc.
   • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
   • Context: Original inventor-to-company assignment — the founding title transfer.

2. 2006-06-02 (recorded) — Reel [not retrieved]

   • Conveyance: Security Agreement
   • Assignor: BodyMedia, Inc.
   • Assignee: Oxford Finance Corporation
   • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
   • Context: Venture-debt securitization — BodyMedia pledges its patent estate as collateral.

3. 2010-09-30 (recorded) — Reel [not retrieved]

   • Conveyance: Release by Secured Party
   • Assignor: Oxford Finance Corporation
   • Assignee: BodyMedia, Inc.
   • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
   • Context: Collateral release — Oxford facility retired.

4. 2010-10-15 (recorded) — Reel [not retrieved]

   • Conveyance: Security Agreement
   • Assignor: BodyMedia, Inc.
   • Assignee: Spring Capital Partners II, L.P.
   • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
   • Context: Second venture-debt securitization of the same estate.

5. 2013-04-25 (recorded) — Reel [not retrieved]

   • Conveyance: Release by Secured Party
   • Assignor: Spring Capital Partners II, L.P.
   • Assignee: BodyMedia, Inc.
   • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
   • Context: Collateral release timed to the Jawbone/AliphCom acquisition closing.

6. 2013-06-27 (recorded) — Reel [not retrieved]

   • Conveyance: Corrective Assignment (correcting errors in the release and schedule previously recorded on reel 030287/frame 0805)
   • Assignor: Spring Capital Partners II, L.P.
   • Assignee: BodyMedia, Inc.
   • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
   • Context: Administrative cleanup of the Spring Capital release. (Note: this entry is the one place where a reel/frame identifier appears in the record I retrieved — 030287/0805 — but it is the reel/frame of the corrected release, not of this patent's own entry.)

7. 2013-08-08 (recorded) — Reel [not retrieved]

   • Conveyance: Security Agreement
   • Assignor: ALIPH, INC.; ALIPHCOM; BODYMEDIA, INC.; MACGYVER ACQUISITION LLC
   • Assignee: DBD Credit Funding LLC, as Administrative Agent
   • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
   • Context: Post-acquisition group-wide securitization. This is the first recording that places BodyMedia on title alongside the Aliph/Jawbone acquisition vehicles (MacGyver Acquisition LLC), confirming the 2013 AliphCom acquisition of BodyMedia closed into the same collateral pool.

8. 2013-12-04 (recorded) — Reel [not retrieved]

   • Conveyance: Patent Security Agreement
   • Assignor: ALIPH, INC.; ALIPHCOM; BODYMEDIA, INC.; MACGYVER ACQUISITION LLC
   • Assignee: Wells Fargo Bank, National Association, as Agent
   • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
   • Context: Replacement/expanded secured lending facility across the Aliph group.

9. 2014-12-03 (recorded) — Reel [not retrieved]

   • Conveyance: Notice of Substitution of Administrative Agent in Patents
   • Assignor: DBD Credit Funding LLC (resigning agent)
   • Assignee: Silver Lake Waterman Fund, L.P. (successor agent)
   • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
   • Context: Lender-side agent substitution; no change in patent ownership.

10. 2015-04-28 (recorded) — Reel [not retrieved]

    • Conveyance: Release by Secured Party
    • Assignor: Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., as Agent
    • Assignee: BodyMedia, Inc.; Aliphcom; ALIPH, Inc.; MacGyver Acquisition LLC; Project Paris Acquisition LLC
    • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
    • Context: Wells Fargo facility released; group re-financed.

11. 2015-04-28 (recorded) — Reel [not retrieved]

    • Conveyance: Security Interest
    • Assignor: ALIPH, INC.; ALIPHCOM; BODYMEDIA, INC.; MACGYVER ACQUISITION LLC; PROJECT PARIS ACQUISITION LLC
    • Assignee: BlackRock Advisors, LLC
    • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
    • Context: Same-day re-pledge to BlackRock as the group slid toward insolvency.

12. 2015-08-27 (recorded) — Reel [not retrieved]

    • Conveyance: Security Interest
    • Assignor: ALIPH, INC.; ALIPHCOM; BODYMEDIA, INC.; MACGYVER ACQUISITION LLC; PROJECT PARIS ACQUISITION LLC
    • Assignee: BlackRock Advisors, LLC
    • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
    • Context: Amended and restated patent security agreement (the "Original Patent Security Agreement Amended and Restated" signed by Hosain Rahman appears in this family's security documents).

13. 2017-01-26 (recorded) — Reel [not retrieved]

    • Conveyance: Corrective Assignment (correcting application no. 13/870,843 previously recorded on reel 036500/frame 0173)
    • Assignor: ALIPH, INC.; ALIPHCOM; BODYMEDIA, INC.; MACGYVER ACQUISITION, LLC; PROJECT PARIS ACQUISITION LLC
    • Assignee: BlackRock Advisors, LLC
    • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
    • Context: Administrative correction only — recorded in the same month Jawbone began liquidation.

14. 2019-07-19 (recorded) — Reel [not retrieved]

    • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest ← the operative ownership transfer
    • Assignor: ALIPHCOM, LLC; BODYMEDIA, INC.
    • Assignee: JB IP Acquisition LLC
    • Correspondent: [not retrieved] — this is the single most important missing data point for the repeat-correspondent test.
    • Context: Sale of the BodyMedia/Jawbone patent estate out of the Aliphcom wind-down to an acquisition vehicle.

15. 2019-07-22 (recorded) — Reel [not retrieved]

    • Conveyance: UCC Financing Statement
    • Assignor: JB IP Acquisition, LLC
    • Assignee: J Fitness LLC
    • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
    • Context: Financing statement perfecting a security interest over the acquired portfolio.

16. 2019-07-22 (recorded) — Reel [not retrieved]

    • Conveyance: Security Interest
    • Assignor: JB IP Acquisition, LLC
    • Assignee: J Fitness LLC
    • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
    • Context: Same-day security interest — portfolio is encumbered within three days of acquisition.

17. 2019-07-22 (recorded) — Reel [not retrieved]

    • Conveyance: UCC Financing Statement
    • Assignor: Jawbone Health Hub, Inc.
    • Assignee: J Fitness LLC
    • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
    • Context: Companion UCC filing against the Rahman successor entity — suggests the financier's lien straddles both the acquisition vehicle and Jawbone Health Hub.

18. 2019-08-08 (recorded) — Reel [not retrieved]

    • Conveyance: Release by Secured Party
    • Assignor: BlackRock Advisors, LLC
    • Assignee: Aliphcom LLC
    • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
    • Context: Final BlackRock lien release clearing the estate for transfer.

19. 2019-08-15 (recorded) — Reel [not retrieved]

    • Conveyance: Release by Secured Party
    • Assignor: Jawbone Health Hub, Inc.; JB IP Acquisition, LLC
    • Assignee: J Fitness LLC
    • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
    • Context: Closing-out recording on the July 2019 lender structure.

Current assignee of record: JB IP Acquisition LLC (per the Google Patents current-assignee field). Patent status: Expired – Fee Related; anticipated expiration 2020-06-16 (20 years from the 2000-06-16 priority claim to US 09/595,660).

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7261690
    2000 : Priority filing by BodyMedia
    2001 : Application filed
         : Inventors assign to BodyMedia Inc
    2006 : Oxford Finance security agreement
    2007 : Patent issued
    2010 : Oxford release
         : Spring Capital security agreement
    2013 : Spring Capital release
         : BodyMedia folded into Aliph group
         : DBD Credit Funding security
         : Wells Fargo patent security
    2014 : Silver Lake Waterman becomes agent
    2015 : Wells Fargo release
         : BlackRock security interest
    2017 : Jawbone liquidation begins
    2019 : Aliphcom and BodyMedia assign to JB IP
         : J Fitness security interest
         : BlackRock release
    2020 : Patent expires

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — PRESENT (qualified). The operative transfer is 2019-07-19, from ALIPHCOM, LLC and BODYMEDIA, INC. to JB IP ACQUISITION LLC. The assignor was a liquidating operating business (Jawbone ceased operations July 2017); the assignee is an acquisition LLC with no product line in evidence. Qualification: I could not retrieve the assignee's address or confirm a registered-agent service address or single-member DE/TX status, so the "anonymous shell" half of this test rests on the name suffix ("Acquisition LLC"), the timing relative to liquidation, and the absence of any product-facing evidence — not on an address or formation record. I am flagging it present on that basis and marking the corroborating detail as unverified.

2. Known asserter in the chain — UNCLEAR. JB IP Acquisition LLC does not appear on any of the enumerated public NPE lists (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg entities) in the material I retrieved. However, the same corporate family is a demonstrably high-frequency plaintiff under a different name: Jawbone Innovations, LLC filed serial suits on the ex-Jawbone/aliph portfolio — Jawbone Innovations, LLC v. Samsung (2:21-cv-00186, E.D. Tex., filed 2021-05-27); v. Apple (6:21-cv-00984, W.D. Tex., 2021-09-23); v. Google (6:21-cv-00985, W.D. Tex., 2021-09-23, later 3:23-cv-00158); v. Amazon (2:21-cv-00435 → N.D. Cal.); v. Meta (Feb 2023); v. Sony (2:23-cv-01161, D.N.J.) — drawing Google, Amazon, Samsung, Apple, Meta and Sony IPR petitions. What I cannot establish from the sources retrieved is that Jawbone Innovations, LLC (or J Fitness LLC) is the same legal person as, or a successor to, JB IP Acquisition LLC, or that US 7,261,690 specifically was part of the asserted set. The asserted patents I can identify (8,019,091; 7,246,058; 8,467,543; 8,503,691; 10,779,080; 11,122,357; the '213 and '611 patents) are Aliph audio/noise-cancellation patents, not the BodyMedia armband patents. So: unclear, and I will not bridge that gap by inference.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNABLE TO ASSESS. Correspondent/attorney of record is [not retrieved] for all 19 entries because the assignment record pages could not be pulled in this session. This is precisely the test where the missing field matters most; I decline to name any firm. Action item: retrieve the correspondent field at the Assignment Center for entries 14–19 (the 2019 JB IP / J Fitness cluster) and compare against entries 7–13 (the Aliph group securitizations) — a single repeat recording attorney spanning 2013–2019 would materially strengthen signals 1 and 4.

4. Cascading transfers — PRESENT (weak). The 2019 cluster is compressed: assignment to JB IP on 2019-07-19, then two 2019-07-22 recordings (UCC financing statement + security interest) and a third 2019-07-22 UCC against Jawbone Health Hub, Inc., then releases on 2019-08-08 and 2019-08-15. Four recordings in 27 days, with a lender (J Fitness LLC) taking a lien on the acquired portfolio within three days of acquisition. That is a financing structure layered onto a single acquisition, not a chain of successive shell-to-shell conveyances, so I score it weak rather than strong. Notably, the same J Fitness LLC name appears as both secured party (2019-07-22) and release counterparty (2019-08-15) — one repeat participant across the cluster.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT on the evidence retrieved. The one infringement suit tied to this patent in the record is BodyMedia, Inc. v. Basis Science, Inc., D. Del. 1:12-cv-00133, complaint filed 2012-02-02 — and the Form D report to the Commissioner in that case names 6,605,038; 7,020,508; 7,261,690; 7,285,090; 7,689,437; 8,073,707, i.e. this patent was asserted by the original operating assignee against a direct competitor, more than seven years before the 2019-07-19 transfer. That is the inverse of a pre-litigation transfer. (For completeness: BodyMedia/AliphCom were themselves defendants in My Health, Inc. v. BodyMedia in E.D. Tex. and counter-asserted against Fitbit — AliphCom d/b/a Jawbone and BodyMedia, Inc. v. Fitbit, 3:15-cv-02579 N.D. Cal., plus ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-963 — and were sued by iLife Technologies in N.D. Tex. 3:13-cv-04776.) I found no post-2019 suit naming US 7,261,690.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — PRESENT. Jawbone/AliphCom began liquidation in July 2017 (wind-down by Sherwood Partners; the patent estate was independently valued at $25M–$40M by IAM/Envision IP at that time). The 2019-07-19 assignment from ALIPHCOM, LLC and BODYMEDIA, INC. to JB IP Acquisition LLC bears the signature of an asset sale out of that wind-down: BlackRock's lien was released 2019-08-08 and the estate conveyed 2019-07-19. Caveat stated in the sourcing: the reporting I retrieved notes that the phrase "Chapter 7" was not used in contemporaneous coverage, and I did not obtain a bankruptcy docket or sale order, so I cannot cite a formal case number. I am scoring this present on the liquidation sale + release sequence, with the formal filing designation unverified.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT / UNCLEAR. No SEC filing, Patent Progress or EFF coverage retrieved shows an operating company funding or directing assertion of this patent on its behalf. The 2012 BodyMedia v. Basis suit was the operating company's own suit, not a proxy's. Post-2019 assertion by JB IP on this patent: none found.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents or OIN. To the contrary, RPX and Unified litigation data appear in this record only on the defendant/petitioner side (Google, Amazon, Samsung, Apple, Meta IPRs against Jawbone Innovations). Separately, and decisively: the patent expired 2020-06-16 and is recorded "Expired – Fee Related," which neutralizes it as an assertion asset regardless of owner.

Verdict

NPE — moderate confidence.

The chain terminates at a non-practicing acquisition vehicle: JB IP Acquisition LLC took title on 2019-07-19 from ALIPHCOM, LLC and BODYMEDIA, INC., i.e. directly out of the Jawbone/AliphCom liquidation, with the BlackRock lien released on 2019-08-08 — that is the classic shell-entity transfer (signal 1) plus a liquidation sale (signal 6), but the ownership was then immediately encumbered by J Fitness LLC in three recordings dated 2019-07-22 (signal 4, weak). I stop at moderate rather than high for three concrete reasons: (a) the corroborating shell indicia — registered-agent address, single-member LLC status, absence of any product — could not be retrieved; (b) no post-2019 assertion of US 7,261,690 was found, and the prolific plaintiff in this corporate family, Jawbone Innovations, LLC, asserted Aliph audio patents (per Jawbone Innovations v. Samsung, 2:21-cv-00186, and the W.D. Tex. suits against Apple/Google filed 2021-09-23), not this BodyMedia armband patent; and (c) correspondent/attorney data — the strongest single discriminator — was not retrievable, so signal 3 is unassessed rather than cleared. Practically, assertion value is nil: the patent expired 2020-06-16 and is recorded Expired – Fee Related.

Verify the underlying records here: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search by patent number 7261690) and the mirrored index at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html. Request the correspondent-of-record field for the 2019-07-19 / 2019-07-22 recordings specifically — that is the missing link in this analysis. Cross-reference: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/Delaware%20District%20Court/case/1%3A12-cv-00133 and https://patents.darts-ip.com/?family=38421177 (both flagged as litigation on the patent's face).

I'll research the prior-art references cited on the face of US 7,261,690. Let me run several targeted searches.

I have partial front-page reference data. Let me retrieve the complete "References Cited" list.

Let me pull the complete front-page reference list and the examiner-cited foreign/non-patent references.

Prior Art Analysis — US 7,261,690 B2

Scope note: My search was restricted to the literal identifier 7261690 (and US7261690, US 7,261,690 B2). I did not substitute or "correct" any number. Where a source itself appears to contain a typo (e.g., "Stvoric," "Pfleasure," 6551251), I have flagged it rather than silently fixing it.

Important limitation carried forward: The authoritative full text supplied to me is still truncated before the claims (at "Recharger contacts 485 … are adapted to mate with and be electrica…"). I therefore cannot state the examiner's actual §102 rejections from the file history, nor reproduce claim language verbatim. My claim mapping below is keyed to (i) the claim families identified in the prior sections and (ii) one externally sourced claim excerpt — all flagged.

1. What I was and was not able to retrieve

Net result: I recovered roughly the first third of the U.S. references and one foreign reference plus one non-patent publication. I could not retrieve the complete (56) block (which, on a 146-claim BodyMedia patent of this era, typically runs 100+ U.S. patents), and I could not retrieve the examiner's Notice of Allowance / office-action reasoning.

2. Verified references cited on the face of US 7,261,690

2.1 U.S. Patent Documents (verbatim from the granted front page)

The OCR snippet cuts off at 5,038,792; the remainder of the (56) block was not recoverable.

2.2 Later U.S. references (from the uspto.report excerpt — medium confidence)

6,290,646 Cosentino et al. (Sep 2001) · 6,290,650 Butterfield et al. (Sep 2001) · 6,292,698 Duffin et al. (Sep 2001) · 6,298,218 Lowe et al. (Oct 2001) · 6,306,088 Krausman et al. (Oct 2001) · 6,312,363 Watterson et al. (Nov 2001) · 6,315,719 Rode et al. (Nov 2001) · 6,336,900 Alleckson et al. (Jan 2002) · 6,339,720 Anzellini et al. (Jan 2002) · 6,341,229 Akiva (Jan 2002) · 6,364,834 Reuss et al. (Apr 2002) · 6,366,871 Geva (Apr 2002) · 6,368,287 Hadas (Apr 2002) · 6,371,123 Stark et al. (Apr 2002) · 6,377,162 Delestienne et al. (Apr 2002) · 6,385,473 Haines et al. (May 2002) · 6,416,471 Kumar et al. (Jul 2002) · 6,450,922 Henderson et al. (Sep 2002) · 6,450,953 Place et al. (Sep 2002) · 6,454,708 Ferguson et al. (Sep 2002) · 6,466,232 Newell et al. (Oct 2002) · 6,468,222 Mault et al. (Oct 2002) · 6,478,736 Mault (Nov 2002) · 6,494,829 New, Jr. et al. (Dec 2002) · 6,513,532 Mault et al. (Feb 2003) · 6,527,711 Stivoric et al. (Mar 2003) · 6,532,381 Bayer et al. (Mar 2003) · 6,547,745 Rubinstein (Apr 2003) · 6,551,251 Zuckerwar et al. (Mar 2003) · 6,553,251 Lahdesmaki (Apr 2003) · 6,571,200 Mault (May 2003) · 6,579,231 Phipps (Jun 2003) · 6,584,344 Hannula (Jun 2003) · 6,595,929 Stivoric et al. (Jul 2003) · 6,597,944 Hadas (Jul 2003) · 6,605,038 Teller et al. (Aug 2003) · 6,610,012 Mault (Aug 2003) · 6,656,125 Misczynski et al. (Dec 2003) · 6,665,559 Rowlandson (Dec 2003) · 6,690,959 Thompson (Feb 2004) · 6,712,615 Martin (Mar 2004) · 6,734,802 Halleck et al. (May 2004) · 6,755,795 Marmaropoulos et al. (Jun 2004) · 6,790,178 Mault et al. (Sep 2004) · 6,808,473 Hisano (Oct 2004) · 6,842,877 Robarts et al. (Jan 2005) · 6,852,085 Rubinstein (Feb 2005)

Flag: Three entries in this group are BodyMedia's own family/portfolio patents — 6,527,711 (Stivoric, priority 1999-10-17), 6,595,929 (Stivoric), and 6,605,038 (Teller — the parent family member). Their presence in a (56)-style block is unusual for prior art and suggests either (a) they were cited by the applicant for disclosure/cross-reference, or (b) this excerpt is actually the References Cited block of a later BodyMedia patent. Treat this subsection as unconfirmed.

2.3 Foreign Patent Documents and Non-Patent Publications (verbatim from OCR)

3. §102 anticipation assessment (claim-family level)

Threshold point that governs the whole analysis: the '690 independent claims are combination apparatus claims. Per the prior section and the SharpBrains-sourced excerpt, they require at least two sensors selected from physiological and contextual sensors, plus a processor generating derived data and/or analytical status data (the excerpted claim language specifically recites "derived data comprising … an individual status parameter that cannot be directly detected by any of said at least two sensors," and "caloric expenditure data," and "non-sedentary activities"), a memory, and means for transmitting/displaying to the individual. (Claim text confidence: low–medium; the SharpBrains post labels this as "Illustrative Claim 32" of the '690, and Google Patents separately tags caloric-expenditure concepts to 4 claims and "sedentary" to 4 claims.)

Against that standard:

• No single reference in the retrieved list anticipates the independent claims. The 1970s–1990s references are single- or dual-parameter devices (cardiac, temperature, or activity), and none discloses the two-sensor-plus-derived-parameter architecture. They were almost certainly cited as background or in §103 combinations, not §102.
• The genuine §102 pressure points would come from references that disclose a worn multi-sensor monitor with on-board storage and user-facing output — best represented in the confirmed list by 4,803,625 (Fu et al., Feb. 1989), 4,531,527 (Reinhold, Jr., Jul. 1985), and 4,509,531 (Ward, Apr. 1985), and in the unconfirmed group by 6,527,711 (Stivoric, Mar 2003), 6,513,532 / 6,478,736 / 6,468,222 (Mault), 6,368,287 / 6,597,944 (Hadas), 6,416,471 (Kumar), 6,385,473 (Haines), and 6,312,363 (Watterson). Each, however, would need to be checked element-by-element against the "derived parameter not directly detectable by any sensor" and "caloric expenditure" limitations — on the face of their abstracts, none of them is an anticipatory reference for the caloric-expenditure family.
• Claim-family mapping framework (to be completed against the actual claim set):
  • Two-sensor + processor + memory + output family → potentially touched by 4,803,625; 4,531,527; 4,509,531; 6,527,711; 6,416,471; 6,385,473.
  • Sensor-device + separate computing device family → 4,531,527 (ambulatory recorder + external readout); 6,290,646 / 6,377,162 / 6,454,708 (networked patient monitoring).
  • Nutritional/food-consumption family → 6,461,222 / 6,478,736 / 6,513,532 / 6,610,012 / 6,571,200 / 6,790,178 (Mault), where food-intake logging and caloric accounting are expressly disclosed. These are the most plausible §102(a)/(e) references for any claim reciting conversion of food-consumption information into nutritional information, subject to their pre-2000-06-16 priority positions.
  • Caloric-expenditure / "non-sedentary" derivation → the Mault group plus 6,532,381 (Bayer et al.).
  • Armband/multi-sensor housing, GSR, heat-flux dependent claims → no directly anticipatory reference identified in the retrieved portion; the heat-flux art appears as 4,488,558 (Simbruner) and later-filed BodyMedia patents (6,595,929 / EP 1,743,571, not prior art).
• Statutory-date note: with the earliest priority at 2000-06-16, all confirmed pre-1990 references are §102(b) art. References with 2000–2001 publication dates (the 6,290,646–6,341,229 group) are only §102(a)/(e) art and must be tested against their actual filing dates, which I did not verify individually.

4. Explicit uncertainty summary

1. Complete (56) list not retrieved. I recovered roughly the first third (through 5,038,792) with high confidence, and a later excerpt with medium confidence. Do not treat this as the full citation set.
2. The Mault / Stivoric / Hadas / Kumar group (§2.2) is unverified as belonging to '690's (56) block. It may belong to a sibling BodyMedia patent's front page.
3. Examiner §102 rejections not retrieved. I could not obtain the office actions or the Notice of Allowance for application 09/923,181, so I cannot say which references the examiner actually applied, or under which subsection.
4. Claim text still not verbatim. The "Claim 32 / caloric expenditure / non-sedentary" language is from a secondary source (SharpBrains), not the patent; the four-caloric-expenditure and four-sedentary claim counts are Google Patents machine tags.
5. Descriptions in §2.1 are my subject-matter classifications of the cited documents, based on number/date/inventor and general art knowledge — not verified against each reference's own specification. Any of these should be confirmed against the reference document before being relied on for an anticipation or invalidity position.

Sources: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/97/c2/5b/a8d97890f4030f/[US7261690B2](/patent/US7261690B2).pdf · https://patents.google.com/patent/US7261690B2/en · https://uspto.report/patent/grant/[7,261,690](/patent/7261690) · https://sharpbrains.com/blog/2017/03/13/monitoring-health-wellness-and-fitness-via-wearable-devices-key-neurotech-patent-29/

I'll first try to retrieve the actual "Prior Art" / "References Cited" section for US 7,261,690, since the supplied page text was truncated before that portion.

I have partial claim text (illustrative claim 32) from a third-party source. Let me try to pull the full claim set and the cited-references list.

Let me try to recover the full cited-references list and more of the claim set.

Obviousness Analysis — US 7,261,690 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Analyst note before anything else — a material gap you asked me to use, and it is missing.

Your instruction was to "use the results from the Prior Art section of this page." The page text supplied to me does not contain a Prior Art / References Cited section. What the supplied record contains under "prior art" is only:

• Prior art keywords: "data, individual, parameter, information, computing device"
• Prior art date: 2000-06-16
• Family/priority documents (US 7,689,437, US 6,605,038) listed as external priorities

It does not contain the "(56) References Cited" list, the foreign patent documents, or the non-patent citations. So I retrieved what I could of that section separately. Everything below that is drawn from the patent's own cited-references list is marked as recovered-by-search, and everything I could not verify is marked with an explicit confidence tag. I have not fabricated reference numbers or reference disclosures.

(Also flagging a harness inconsistency: this task states "Current Date: April 26, 2026," while the session header states 2026-09-29. I have used neither to infer anything about the patent's status — the patent's own record governs.)

1. What I can and cannot rely on

Consequence for method: Because I do not have the full claim set, this is a candidate-obviousness analysis organized around the independent-claim families and the one independent claim I can quote, not a limitation-by-limitation invalidity chart. Each ground below carries a verification instruction so a challenger can convert it into a proper chart.

2. Legal framework and the person of ordinary skill

• Governing standard: Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966) — scope and content of prior art; differences; level of ordinary skill; secondary considerations. As refined by KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) — a combination is obvious where the elements were known, the combination was "a predictable use of prior-art elements according to their established functions," and there existed a "design need or market pressure," a "finite number of identified, predictable solutions," or an express teaching/suggestion/motivation.

• Effective filing date for prior-art purposes: June 16, 2000, at the earliest (CIP chain: 09/595,660 → 09/602,537 → 09/923,181). The '690 itself was filed August 6, 2001. Because it is a CIP, any claim limitation not supported by the 2000 parents gets the August 6, 2001 date. This matters enormously: references published between June 2000 and August 2001 are prior art against the "new matter" claims (e.g., the armband housing / flexible-wing / two-piece embodiments, if first added in the '181 application).

• POSA (proposed): a BS in electrical/mechanical engineering or biomedical engineering plus 2–4 years in body-worn physiological instrumentation, or an MS with equivalent experience; comfortable with accelerometry, thermopile heat-flux sensing, GSR electrodes, microcontroller firmware, and wireless/PC data offload. This is a routine engineering art, not an unpredictable one.

• Applicant admissions in the specification are the single strongest weapon here. The '690 states in terms:

  • "Methods for generating data indicative of various physiological parameters and sensors to be used therefor are well known."
  • Table 2 lists "Calories burned" as derivable "using known methods" from heart rate, pulse rate, respiration rate, heat flow, activity and oxygen consumption.
  • The vibrating motor is described as one "such as those used in pagers" (MG Motors Model 12342/12343) — i.e., an off-the-shelf part.
  • The PC/cradle/PDA/Blackberry/Palm VII upload paths are described as existing hardware.
  • The heat-flux sensor is an off-the-shelf RdF micro-foil transducer; the Web/HTML/URL vocabulary is recited as conventional.

  Under § 103 these admissions collapse the "unexpected results" and "unpredictability" defenses for much of the claim set.

3. The claim scope to be tested

(a) Claim 32 (verbatim, per SharpBrains) — the "non-sedentary / caloric expenditure" independent claim:

"An apparatus for detecting, monitoring and reporting human status information, comprising a sensor device including:
at least two sensors selected from the group consisting of physiological sensors and contextual sensors, said sensors generating data of a first parameter and a second parameter of an individual and said sensors generating data during non-sedentary activities, wherein said first and second parameters are produced by at least one of said individual's body and the environment adjacent to said individual's body; and
at least one of a computing device and a processor in electronic communication with said sensor device, said at least one of a computing device and processor generating derived data based on said data of a first parameter and a second parameter, said derived data comprising a third parameter of said individual, said third parameter being an individual status parameter that cannot be directly detected by any of said at least two sensors and said third parameter comprises caloric expenditure data."

(b) The three families described in the specification's summary (from the previously generated section): (i) stand-alone wearable apparatus; (ii) two-piece sensor device + computing device; (iii) apparatus with food-consumption → nutritional-information conversion.

The only limitations in (a) that are even arguably non-routine are: (1) two different sensors whose outputs are fused; (2) the "non-sedentary activities" data-collection qualifier; (3) derived data that "cannot be directly detected" by the sensors and comprises "caloric expenditure data." Limitations 1 and 3 are addressed head-on by the patent's own Table 2 admission. That leaves the non-sedentary qualifier as the crux — and it is a characterization of when data is collected, not a new sensor or algorithm.

4. Annex — Prior art of record as recovered (partial)

Recovered from the granted PDF and uspto.report (both cited below). This is not the complete (56) list; the page text supplied to me omitted it.

U.S. patents cited on the face — pre-priority (usable as § 102(a)/(b)/(e) art; check § 102(e) filing dates):
4,031,365 Raggiotti; 4,052,979 Scherr; 4,129,125 Lester; 4,148,304 Mull; 4,151,831 Lester; 4,192,000 Lipsey; 4,364,398 Sassi; 4,377,171 Wada; 4,407,295 Steuer; 4,488,558 Simbruner; 4,509,531 Ward; 4,531,527 Reinhold; 4,539,994 Baumbach; 4,557,273 Stoller; 4,608,987 Mills; 4,622,979 Katelis; 4,676,254 Frohn; 4,677,297 Kroll; 4,757,453 Nasiff; RE32,758 Zartman; 4,784,162 Ricks; 4,803,625 Fu; 4,819,860 Hargrove; 4,827,943 Bonn; 4,828,257 Dyer; 4,883,063 Bernard; 4,891,756 Williams III; 4,917,108 Maul; 4,958,645 Cadell; 4,966,154 Cooper; 4,981,139 Pfohl; 5,007,427 Suzuki; 5,012,411; 5,016,213 Dilts; 5,025,791 Niwa; 5,142,485 Rosenberg; 5,263,491 Thornton; 5,285,398 Janik; 5,305,244 Newman; 5,353,793 Bornn; 5,445,149 Rotolo; 5,491,651 Janik; 5,515,858 Myllymaki; 5,524,618 Pottgen; 5,555,490 Carroll; 5,581,492 Janik; 5,617,477 Boyden; 5,670,944 Myllymaki; 5,719,743 Jenkins; 5,724,025 Tavori; 5,813,766 Chen; 5,868,671 Mahoney; 5,871,451 Unger; 5,876,350 Lo; 5,879,163 Brown; 5,879,309 Johnson; 5,884,198 Kese/Reese; 5,897,493 Brown; 5,899,855 Brown; 5,908,396 Hayakawa; 5,912,865 Ortega; 6,030,342 Amano; 6,035,223 Baker Jr.; 6,070,098 Moore-Ede; 6,102,856 Groff; 6,155,267 Nelson; 6,154,668 Pedersen; 6,184,797 Stark; 6,198,394 Jacobsen; 6,225,980 Weiss; 6,247,647 Courtney; 6,248,065 Brown; 6,251,048 Kaufman; 6,265,978 Atlas; 6,285,897 Kilcoyne; 6,290,646 Cosentino; 6,290,650 Butterfield; 6,292,698 Duffin; 6,298,218 Lowe; 6,306,088 Krausman; 6,312,363 Watterson; 6,315,719 Rode; 6,336,900 Alleckson; 6,339,720 Anzellini; 6,341,229 Akiva; 6,364,834 Reuss; 6,366,871 Geva; 6,368,287 Hadas; 6,371,123 Stark; 6,377,162 Delestienne; 6,385,473 Haines; 6,416,471 Kumar; 6,450,922 Henderson; 6,450,953 Place; 6,454,708 Ferguson; 6,466,232 Newell; 6,468,222 Mault; 6,478,736 Mault; 6,494,829 New Jr.; 6,513,532 Mault; 6,571,200 Mault; 6,610,012 Mault; 6,790,178 Mault (plus Mault publications 2001/0029340, 2001/0044581, 2001/0049470); 6,712,615 Martin; 6,734,802 Halleck; 6,852,085 Rubinstein; 6,920,348 Vasin; plus the applicant's own 6,605,038 Teller, 7,020,508 Stivoric, 6,527,711 Stivoric, 6,595,929 Stivoric.

Foreign: DE 198 32 361 A1 (2/2000); EP 0 707 825 A2; WO 99/27483 (6/1999); EP 0880936 (12/1998); JP 09056705 (3/1997).

Non-patent literature of record (highly relevant):

• "Georgia Tech Researchers Develop First 'Smart T-shirt'," Nov. 14, 1997 press release, Georgia Institute of Technology.
• "Warfighter Physiological Status Monitoring," 1999 MOMRP Fact Sheet No. 6, USAMRMC.
• "A Lightweight Ambulatory Physiological Monitoring System," Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA.
• "Personal Health Monitor for Homes," Tuomisto & Pentikäinen, ERCIM News No. 29, Apr. 1997.
• "The People Sensor: A Mobility Aid for the Visually Impaired," IEEE (1998), 166–167.
• Industrial Micro-Foil Heat Flux Sensor, RdF Corp. Datasheet No. HFS-B.

Critical prior-art-status screening (do not skip): roughly two-thirds of the U.S. patents above issued after 2000-06-16, so they are prior art only under pre-AIA § 102(e) (application filed before the applicant's invention date) and only against claims lacking parent support. Also, under pre-AIA § 103(c)(1), references "owned by the same person or subject to an obligation of assignment" — i.e., the BodyMedia family members (6,605,038; 7,020,508; 6,527,711; 6,595,929) and any commonly-owned Mault-style art if co-obligated — are disqualified as § 103 prior art (they remain available for § 102 and for obviousness-type double patenting). A challenger must date-screen every reference before asserting it.

5. Candidate grounds of obviousness

Ground 1 — Base apparatus (at least two sensors + processor-generated derived data + memory + output)

Combination: Georgia Tech Smart Shirt (NPL of record) or WPSM 1999 (NPL of record) — each a body-worn, multi-sensor physiological platform with a data bus and a wireless link to a remote receiving station — in view of the examiner-cited caloric-expenditure/energy-expenditure art (e.g., US 6,030,342 Amano; exercise-equipment energy computation in US 6,312,363 Watterson and US 6,251,048 Kaufman), and further in view of the '690's own Table 2 admission that calories burned is derived by known methods from heart rate / respiration rate / heat flow / activity / oxygen consumption.

Why every element is met: the NPL supplies the wearable, multi-sensor, remotely-transmitting hardware; the secondary references supply the derivation of an unmeasurable status parameter (energy expenditure) from raw sensor signals; the specification's Table 1 identifies two-electrode EKG, thermistors, thermopiles, GSR electrodes, and accelerometers as known sensors and Table 2 identifies known derivations.

Motivation to combine (KSR-compliant):

• Market/design pressure: ambulatory calorimetry to replace laboratory indirect calorimetry; the quantified-self and weight-management market existed by 1997–2000.
• Finite, predictable solutions: accelerometry, heart-rate, heat-flux, and their weighted fusions were the recognized set of ambulatory energy-expenditure techniques; combining them was "a predictable use of prior-art elements according to their established functions."
• Predictable result: accuracy of EE estimation improves monotonically with additional independent physiological inputs — no unpredictable art.

Confidence: high for the concept; medium for the specific reference mapping (I could not verify the disclosure content of Amano, Watterson and Kaufman individually).

To verify: pull the '690 "References Cited" and Non-Patent Citations from the granted PDF at https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/97/c2/5b/a8d97890f4030f/US7261690B2.pdf, confirm the Smart Shirt and WPSM citations appear on this patent's face (they clearly do for the '437 sibling), and confirm Amano/Watterson/Kaufman disclosures against the claim 1 text.

Ground 2 — The "non-sedentary activities" + "caloric expenditure data" limitation (claim 32)

Combination: a wearable accelerometer-based activity/energy-expenditure monitor (the art of Ground 1) in view of exercise- and activity-monitoring art that computes energy expenditure during active periods — e.g., US 6,312,363 Watterson (exercise-equipment control/energy measurement), US 6,450,922 Henderson (exercise), US 5,719,743 Jenkins (physical activity/exercise data), and known ambulatory accelerometry EE literature.

Why obvious: "non-sedentary activities" is not a structural or algorithmic limitation — it specifies the state under which data is sampled. A POSA who has built a wearable EE monitor for daily living has already, by definition, enabled data collection during non-sedentary activity; disclaiming data taken while sitting is a predictable design choice, not an inventive one. KSR: "the combination of familiar elements according to known methods is likely to be obvious when it does no more than yield predictable results."

Anticipation-of-claim-construction risk: if the patent owner argues "non-sedentary" is a negative limitation with criticality, the counter is the specification's own silence on any threshold or algorithm for the sedentary/non-sedentary distinction — the term is used only vaguely in the abstract and claim, with no written-description support for a defined boundary. That is a potential § 112 ¶ 1 / indefiniteness attack as well as a § 103 attack.

Confidence: medium-high on the legal theory; low on the specific references — Watterson/Henderson/Jenkins content is recalled, not verified.

Ground 3 — Two-piece "sensor device + computing device" family

Combination: any body-worn sensor pack + a personal computer / PDA.

Why this is the most defensible ground in the whole patent: the motivation and the hardware are admitted prior art in the '690's own specification. The specification states the sensor device may upload "by means of a physical connection … a serial connection such as an RS232 or USB port," via "a cradle … electronically coupled to personal computer 35 … as is common with many commercially available personal digital assistants," via "short-range wireless transmission, such as infrared or RF," and that "personal computer 35 can be replaced by any computing device … such as … the Palm VII sold by Palm, Inc., or the Blackberry 2-way pager sold by Research in Motion, Inc." Nothing in the two-piece family is more than a predictable arrangement of admitted, off-the-shelf hardware, with the admitted motivation of offloading processing/battery burden.

Relevant art to corroborate: US 6,336,900 Alleckson and US 6,416,471 Kumar (ambulatory patient monitoring with remote host) — verify effective filing dates; most such references post-date the priority date and are only § 102(e) art.

Confidence: high (based on applicant admissions, not on third-party reference content).

Ground 4 — Central monitoring unit, database, web-page presentation, third-party access

Combination: the wearable platform of Ground 1/3 in view of the remote patient-monitoring/telemedicine art of record — e.g., US 6,290,646 Cosentino, US 6,336,900 Alleckson, US 6,416,471 Kumar, US 6,454,708 Ferguson, US 6,155,267 Nelson, US 6,157,413 Allen (if present on the face; not verified) — plus US 5,879,163 / 5,897,493 / 5,899,855 (Brown), which the examiner cited and which are commonly characterized as computer-based health-program customization, patient querying and monitoring systems.

Motivation: (i) network ubiquity (the Internet, HTML/URL as recited in the '690), (ii) the acknowledged cost of clinic-based monitoring, (iii) the commercial need to aggregate longitudinal data for coaching/insurance/research, (iv) the '690's own description of a mirror database for aggregate third-party access — an IT architecture choice, i.e., database replication with de-identification, which is routine engineering. Under KSR, "[i]f 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."

Confidence: medium; the specific "central monitoring unit with web pages" concept is well-attested in the 1997–2000 telemedicine art, but I have not verified the claims of Cosentino/Alleckson/Kumar.

Ground 5 — Nutrition/food-consumption → nutritional-information conversion family

Combination: a wearable EE/activity platform (Ground 1/2) in view of the well-established electronic food-composition/calorie-counting art (handheld calorie counters and diet-tracking software pre-dating 2000), and optionally the Mault family cited on the face (US 6,468,222; 6,478,736; 6,513,532; 6,571,200; 6,610,012; 6,790,178; and publications 2001/0029340, 2001/0044581, 2001/0049470).

Motivation: the entire commercial premise of weight management is the energy-balance equation (intake vs. expenditure); combining an intake-tracking table lookup with an expenditure sensor is the most predictable possible combination in the field and is exactly "a design need or market pressure to solve a problem and … a finite number of identified, predictable solutions."

Critical caveat: the Mault references are likely § 102(e)-only art for claims not entitled to the 2000-06-16 date, and any commonly-owned reference is § 103(c)-disqualified. The stronger play for this family is the general knowledge of calorie-counting tables, not Mault.

Confidence: medium on reference content; high on the motivation.

Ground 6 — Dependent claims (145 of them) fall with the independents

Almost every dependent claim appears directed to a named commercial part or a conventional design choice, per the specification's own text:

• vibrating motor "such as those used in pagers" (Model 12342/12343, MG Motors) — off-the-shelf;
• LEDs / LCD for battery-level and feedback — conventional;
• flexible urethane/elastomeric housing, Velcro strap, O-ring seal, screws/snap-fit — conventional mechanical design;
• water resistance sufficient to swim — a predictable durability target;
• heat-flux sensor (RdF micro-foil), GSR electrodes (carbonized rubber/gold/stainless), accelerometer, thermistors — all named off-the-shelf components;
• auto-activation on skin contact via a sensed condition — a predictable power-saving technique, and power management is expressly a stated design goal of the patent (see CPC tag A61B2560/0209 – "power saving" on this very record).

Confidence: high — grounded in the specification text supplied to me, not in third-party references.

6. Rebutting the likely non-obviousness arguments

7. Practical bottom line

1. The claims most vulnerable to § 103 are the base apparatus claims — two sensors + processor + memory + output — because the specification concedes the sensors and the derivations are known, and the NPL of record (Smart Shirt 1997; WPSM 1999; Ames lightweight ambulatory monitor) shows the wearable multi-sensor + remote-transmission architecture existed before the priority date.
2. Claim 32's distinguishing feature ("non-sedentary" + unobservable "caloric expenditure" parameter) is a weak distinction: it is a data-collection convention, not a sensor or an algorithm, and the specification supplies no defined boundary — exposing it to both § 103 and § 112 ¶ 1 attack.
3. The two-piece and nutrition families are the easiest to invalidate on the applicant's own admissions (RS232/USB/cradle/PDA/Blackberry described as existing; calorie counting as a known table lookup).
4. Terminal disclaimer + common-ownership history give a challenger an obviousness-type double-patenting narrative that buttresses, but does not substitute for, the § 103 showing.
5. Because the patent expired (anticipated expiration 2020-06-16, "Expired – Fee Related"), a § 103 holding now matters chiefly for (a) intervening-rights/contributory defenses in backward-looking damages windows, (b) follow-on family members still asserting priority, and (c) portfolio validity narratives around the Jawbone/JB IP acquisition chain.

8. Explicit uncertainty summary (read before relying on this)

• I was not given a Prior Art section, and I did not find a third-party reproduction of the '690's complete "(56) References Cited" list. The Annex is partial and assembled from a granted-PDF snippet and a secondary aggregator; item-level accuracy of that list is not certified.
• The full claim set was not recovered. Only claim 32 is quoted verbatim, from a single third-party source (SharpBrains). Claims 1 and the other independents are inferred from the specification's summary, per the earlier-generated section, and I explicitly do not assert their numbers or wording.
• Reference-content claims I could not verify: the disclosures of Amano ('342), Watterson ('363), Kaufman ('048), Henderson ('922), Jenkins ('743), Cosentino ('646), Alleckson ('900), Kumar ('471), Ferguson ('708), Brown ('163/'493/'855). These are named as candidates with motivations stated; their content is recalled, not confirmed, and any one of them may in fact be non-analogous or may post-date the critical date in a way that eliminates it as art.
• No reference described here has been date-screened against the § 102(e) filing-date requirement or the pre-AIA § 103(c) common-ownership disqualification; both screens are mandatory before any ground is asserted.
• Negative/nonexistent findings I am not asserting: I make no representation that the '690 was ever held valid or invalid, that any reexamination of the '690 occurred (the reexaminations in the family ran against sibling patents, per the earlier litigation section), or that no other art exists.

Sources retrieved for this analysis: the granted text supplied in the prompt; https://patents.google.com/patent/US7261690B2/en; the granted PDF https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/97/c2/5b/a8d97890f4030f/US7261690B2.pdf; https://uspto.report/patent/grant/7,261,690; https://sharpbrains.com/blog/2017/03/13/monitoring-health-wellness-and-fitness-via-wearable-devices-key-neurotech-patent-29/; and the earlier-generated sections of this file.