US 7289772

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

US Patent 7,289,772 — Summary

Note on identifiers: I interpreted "7289772" literally as US 7,289,772 B1. I did not find any CAFC 2026 docket activity tied to this specific patent number; details below.

Bibliographic data (from the authoritative patent text and search results)

Assignment chain (Google Patents legal events): PalmSource, Inc. → Access Systems Americas, Inc. (name change, eff. 2006-11-08) → Access Co., Ltd. (2010-05-28) → Google Inc. (2010-06-11) → HTC Corporation (2011-08-29) → Google Inc. (2012-11-08) → Google LLC (name change, 2017).

Abstract (verbatim)

The present invention relates to a method for utilizing a graphic user interface in a portable electronic device. Specifically, the present invention pertains to a method of using a portion of a graphic user interface display to provide information to the user without disrupting an application in progress. The user interface provides tools that enable the user to answer or reject an incoming call, without interruption of applications already operating on the device during the call. On a portable electronic device that combines computer functions and wireless telephone functions, the user is able to view caller ID information, in an information window, while using another application. Further, the user is able to make a decision about answering or rejecting the call and execute the appropriate response, all without having to interrupt the application currently in use. It is appreciated that the portable electronic device could be a cellular phone, a personal data assistant, a pager, etc.

Independent claims in plain language

Claim 1 — "Implementing a graphic user interface for an electronic device" (the generic/device-agnostic claim)

A four-step method:

1. Concurrent display: Render a GUI that simultaneously shows (i) a first display region running an application and (ii) a second display region containing a status bar. Both are on screen at the same time.
2. Receive event input: Receive information about an event that is unrelated to the application running in the first region (i.e., an outside event, not something the app caused).
3. Status-bar notification + control: Show an indication of that information in the status bar and, in response to the event, display a graphical interface tool (e.g., an on-screen button/icon) in the status bar that gives the user a choice regarding the event.
4. Act on the choice: Perform an action on the event based on the user's selection, where the selection is a command about disposition of the event (i.e., what to do with it).

Catch-all limitation: All of steps (a)–(d) occur while the application is operating and without interfering with that application. This "no interruption" requirement is the heart of the claim.

Claim 10 — "Implementing a graphic user interface for a portable telephone device" (the telephone-specific claim)

Same four-step structure as claim 1, recast for a portable telephone:

1. Concurrently display an application region and a status-bar region.
2. Receive information relating to an incoming telephone call (no "unrelated to the application" wording here — the event is defined as the call itself).
3. Show an indication in the status bar and, in response to the call, display a graphical interface tool in the status bar offering the user a choice regarding the call.
4. Take an action on the call based on the user's selection, where the selection is a command about disposition of the call.

Catch-all limitation: Same as claim 1 — steps (a)–(d) are performed while the application operates without interfering with it.

Dependent claims (narrowing): Claims 2–9 depend from claim 1 and add: device is a portable telephone (2); event is an incoming call (3); information is caller ID (4); command is to answer (5); command is to reject (6); command entered via a graphic selection tool (7); action executable without disturbing the application (8); GUI implemented on a touch screen (9). Claims 11–16 mirror these for claim 10.

Litigation / dispute history (this is where I found the most substantive non-patent record)

• ITC Investigation No. 337-TA-808 (HTC v. Apple) — US 7,289,772 was one of the asserted patents. An Initial Determination/Order (Order No. 15, Motion Docket No. 808-035) terminated several patents from the investigation, expressly listing U.S. Patent Nos. 6,708,214, 6,473,006, 7,020,849, 6,868,283, and 7,289,772. The order found HTC's right to sue on the Google-origin patents was illusory because Google retained control (sublicensing/enforcement restrictions), i.e., HTC lacked standing to enforce them. (Source: ITC order PDF surfaced via search.)
• Delaware District Court — Google Patents lists litigation at 1:11-cv-00715 (Delaware).
• Family: the parent, US 6,868,283 B1 ("Also Published As"), shares the same title and priority date (2001-01-16); it is the direct ancestor of the '772 patent.

CAFC 2026 docket check — result

I could not find any CAFC 2026 docket entry, appeal, or IPR naming US 7,289,772. My searches returned 2026 Federal Circuit activity only for unrelated patents (e.g., Contour IP Holding v. GoPro, No. 2026-2012; Tramec Sloan v. Surti, No. 2026-1117; FedEx v. Qualcomm, Nos. 24-1235 / 26-170), and 2026 PTAB filings for unrelated patents (e.g., Apple IPR2026-00316 on US 11,664,123; IPR2026-00284). None reference '772.

Uncertainty / caveats

1. Expiration date: Google Patents states "anticipated expiration 2024-11-08." Because '772 is a continuation of an application filed 2001-01-16, its 20-year term is normally measured from that earliest filing (≈2021-01-16 plus any PTA), so the 2024-11-08 figure may be an automated artifact of using this application's own filing date. Either way the patent is expired (last maintenance fee on record: 12th-year payment, 2019-04-30). I flag this as a term-calculation question rather than a settled fact.
2. Current owner: Google Patents lists Google LLC as current assignee, but note the 2011 assignment to HTC and the 2013 assignment back to Google. I did not independently verify the present chain of title from USPTO assignment records.
3. The ITC standing ruling above is quoted from a search-surfaced order text; I did not retrieve the full ITC record file to confirm the final disposition of the investigation.
4. No 2026 litigation finding should be read as proof that none exists — I simply found no indexed record for this patent in 2026.

I'll research litigation involving US 7,289,772. Let me search multiple sources.

Let me search the specific litigation references tied to this patent family.

Let me verify the Delaware case details and outcome via Unified Patents and docket records.

Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. 7,289,772

Patent identification (literal): U.S. Patent No. 7,289,772 B1, "Technique allowing a status bar user response on a portable device graphic user interface," inventors Michel Bonansea and Vincent Leclaire, application 10/984,114 filed Nov. 8, 2004, granted Oct. 30, 2007, priority date Jan. 16, 2001 (continuation of US 6,868,283 / application 09/764,653). Current assignee of record: Google LLC. Legal status: Expired – Lifetime (anticipated expiration Nov. 8, 2024).

Bottom line: Only one patent-enforcement campaign is documented against the '772 patent — HTC Corporation's 2011 assertion of the patent against Apple Inc., litigated in parallel at the U.S. International Trade Commission and in the District of Delaware. The '772 patent was never asserted against any other party, and the family-level litigation links on the patent record point only to these HTC v. Apple matters and to the family's Darts-ip record.

Case 1 — ITC Investigation No. 337-TA-808

Why the '772 assertion was dismissed: The '772 patent was one of nine patents Google transferred to HTC in late August 2011 (two originating from Palm — including the '772 — plus three from Openwave and four from Motorola). Apple argued, and the ALJ agreed, that HTC did not hold "all substantial rights" in the transferred patents (the transfer was effectively a non-exclusive, encumbered grant), so HTC lacked standing to enforce them. That standing ruling is the primary reported substantive development concerning the '772 patent.

Case 2 — HTC Corp. v. Apple Inc., D. Del.

The Google Patents record for this patent lists the Delaware District Court case 1:11-cv-00715 as litigation in this family. Note that HTC's Delaware filings against Apple also appear under a companion docket number, 1:11-cv-00785 (HTC Corp. v. Apple Inc.); I cannot fully verify from the sources retrieved which of the two Delaware dockets carried the '772 count after amendment, so treat the specific docket-to-patent mapping with appropriate caution.

Related points / caveats

• Family-level litigation: The Google Patents "Family has litigation" flag for this family lists (i) ITC case 337-TA-808, (ii) Delaware District Court case 1:11-cv-00715, and (iii) a Darts-ip "first worldwide family litigation" record (family ID 34274900). No other U.S. or foreign litigation naming the '772 patent appears in those records.
• Related patent, not the same patent: Sister patent U.S. 6,868,283 (the '283 patent, same title/inventors, same family) was also asserted in the same HTC v. Apple campaign and was likewise terminated on standing grounds. Do not conflate the '283 and '772 patents — they are separate patents with separate claim sets (16 claims in the '772).
• Apple's suits against HTC (e.g., D. Del. 1:10-cv-00166, 1:11-cv-00611 and various ITC investigations such as 337-TA-710/721) were Apple asserting its own patents and do not involve U.S. 7,289,772 as an asserted patent.
• No other litigation known: Based on the sources retrieved (Google Patents family/litigation data, Unified Patents litigation portal, ITC Federal Register notices, and contemporaneous reporting), I found no other litigation asserting or challenging U.S. 7,289,772 (no district court, ITC, PTAB, or foreign proceedings beyond the HTC v. Apple matters above). I was unable to retrieve full PACER/Unified Patents docket pages for every entry (search limits were reached), so the exact termination dates and the precise docket number carrying the '772 count in Delaware should be confirmed against PACER if needed.

Primary sources: Google Patents US7289772B1 page (litigation links and family data) — https://patents.google.com/patent/US7289772/en ; ITC institution notice, 76 Fed. Reg. 60870 (Sept. 30, 2011) — https://regulations.justia.com/regulations/fedreg/2011/09/30/2011-25279.html ; Unified Patents litigation entry for 337-TA-808 — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/International%20Trade%20Commission/case/337-TA-808 ; HTC amended Delaware complaint, Case 1:11-cv-00715-GMS (filed 09/06/11).

I'll verify the PTAB landscape for this patent with targeted searches before writing.

Let me run a few more targeted checks to confirm the absence and check related litigation history.

One more check on whether Apple ever petitioned for review of the HTC-asserted patents.

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings (IPR / PGR / CBM) have ever been filed on US 7,289,772. The USPTO Open Data Portal "PTAB proceedings on file" block returns none, and my targeted web searches surfaced no petition, institution decision, or Final Written Decision naming this patent — so the breakdown is 0 active / 0 invalidated / 0 sustained / 0 settled / 0 denied, and no AIA-trial disposition exists to hand a defendant. The bottom line is unusual and, from a defense standpoint, almost entirely favorable: there is no PTAB record to argue from, no § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches to anyone, and — the dispositive practical fact — the patent's legal status is verbatim "Expired - Lifetime," with an anticipated expiration of 2024-11-08, meaning as of today (2026-10-01) there are no enforceable claims to assert going forward. A demand letter citing this patent in 2026 is citing an expired right, not a hardened one.

No proceedings to report

I am deliberately not generating the per-proceeding template. No proceeding numbers exist, and I will not invent any. What the structured data does contain is a litigation flag, which is easy to confuse with PTAB activity and is worth separating out:

• "Family has litigation" — two entries, both court/agency cases, not AIA trials:
  • ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-808 (HTC Corp. v. Apple Inc.), filed 2011-08-16, instituted 2011-09-27, terminated 2013-01-14 — link: ITC Notice of Institution, 76 Fed. Reg. 60870
  • D. Del. 1:11-cv-00715 (HTC v. Apple companion case)
• Ownership chain relevant to why no IPR exists: PalmSource → ACCESS Systems Americas → ACCESS Co., Ltd. → Google Inc. (2010-10-08) → HTC Corp. (2011-09-01) → back to Google (2013-12-19) → Google LLC (2017-10-05). The patent sat with Google from late 2013 through expiry and was never re-asserted.

The only claim-level public record on this patent that I could verify comes from the ITC, not the PTAB: the Commission instituted 337-TA-808 on claims 1, 2, and 9 of the '772 patent. Those assertions were terminated on standing grounds — on 2012-06-28 ALJ Thomas B. Pender granted partial termination as to the five Google-acquired patents (the '006, '214, '283, '772, and '849 patents) for lack of standing, and the Commission declined review on 2012-07-10. The HTC–Apple dispute settled globally in November 2012. No IPR was ever filed against the '772 before or after that sequence.

Search caveat (stated plainly): my checks covered Google Patents' litigation/proceeding metadata, general IPR/PTAB coverage of the '772 and its sibling US 6,868,283, and the HTC–Apple "Google patents" IPR angle. I found nothing, consistent with the ODP result. I cannot claim to have exhaustively reviewed the PTAB E2E docket paper-by-paper; for a belt-and-suspenders confirmation, check PTAB E2E and USPTO PTAB Decisions directly.

Strategic summary

Claim status — canceled vs. sustained vs. untested. There is no PTAB-driven narrowing at all. Claims 1–16 are all "untested" before the Board — none canceled, none confirmed in an FWD, none amended or substituted. The claims that matter structurally are independent claims 1 and 10, with 2–9 depending from claim 1 and 11–16 depending from claim 10; the '772 is the continuation (filed 2004-11-08) of the '283 patent's application Ser. No. 09/764,653 (priority 2001-01-16). The critical caveat to any "the claims survive" framing: survival is a function of never having been challenged, not of having withstood challenge. Claim validity was never adjudicated on the merits anywhere — the ITC '772 assertions died on standing, not on patentability, so there is no administrative or judicial determination of validity to lean on either direction.

Estoppel landscape. Because no IPR, PGR, or CBM was ever instituted, § 315(e)(2) estoppel is empty. There is no petitioner, no privy, and no real party in interest whose grounds are foreclosed, so a defendant today faces no statutory bar on raising any § 102/§ 103 ground based on patents or printed publications — including art that was before the examiner. The ten references cited on the face of the patent (US 5,559,860 to Sony, US 5,758,280 to NEC, US 6,282,435 to Sun, US 6,285,364 to Cisco, US 6,389,277 to Denso, US 6,456,841 to Mitsubishi, US 6,574,471 to Ericsson, US 2004/0214553 to LG, US 6,985,924 to Solomio, and US 6,993,362 to Ericsson) have never been tested in an adversarial validity proceeding. Notably, two of them — the Sony "user selectable response to an incoming call" reference and the Ericsson "handling incoming calls … during a meeting" reference — are squarely on the call-screening-display concept, and neither has been construed by the Board.

Pattern signals. No repeat-petitioner pattern exists (no petitioner at all). No defensive aggregator appears in the chain — the ODP family does not show Unified Patents, RPX, or any similar entity as a party; the only IPR-adjacent metadata is the Darts-IP "first worldwide family litigation" link, which is a litigation tracker, not a PTAB filer. The patent owner did not pursue PTAB appeals, because there were no PTAB proceedings to appeal; the Federal Circuit docket shows no appeal tied to this patent. The single genuinely explanatory pattern is timing and ownership: AIA trials became available only on 2012-09-16, the HTC–Apple dispute that was the patent's one real assertion window settled two months later (November 2012), and from December 2013 onward the patent was held by Google, which never asserted it. A never-asserted, expired patent attracts no IPRs — which is exactly what the record shows.

Recommended next steps

• Lead with expiration, not with PTAB. The Google Patents legal status for US 7,289,772 is verbatim "Expired - Lifetime", anticipated expiration 2024-11-08 (20 years from the 2004-11-08 filing), with the 12th-year maintenance fee paid 2019-04-30 — link: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7289772/en. Any assertion covering conduct after 2024-11-08 targets an expired patent; a demand letter built on such conduct has no claim-1 (or claim-10) leg to stand on.
• If you are being asserted for pre-expiration conduct, check the § 286 six-year lookback (a complaint filed today reaches back only to roughly 2020-10-01) and confirm in the assignment record whether the asserting party holds title at all. The one merit-worthy event in this patent's history was a standing failure — the ITC terminated the '772 assertions on 2012-06-28 (ALJ Pender, Order No. 15) because the Google-to-HTC transfer conveyed fewer than all substantial rights, upheld on Commission review 2012-07-10. If the current plaintiff is similarly a non-exclusive licensee or a rent-a-patent transferee, that is a threshold dispositive defense and it is documented in a public ITC record.
• There is no FWD to cite, and I will not manufacture one. If you need the negative confirmed on the record for a filing, pull the PTAB E2E docket for US 7,289,772 at https://ptab.uspto.gov and the sibling US 6,868,283 (same family, ID 34274900), and docket-check CourtListener for any appeal: https://www.courtlistener.com. The absence of PTAB activity is itself the finding — but on a patent whose expiration date has already passed, expiration, not invalidity, is the argument that ends the conversation.

I'll research this patent's ownership chain, litigation history, and assignment correspondents.

Let me dig into the assignment correspondents and litigation specifics.

Ownership & Assignment Analysis — US 7,289,772 B1

"Technique allowing a status bar user response on a portable device graphic user interface"
Application 10/984,114 (continuation of 09/764,653, filed 2001-01-16) · Filed 2004-11-08 · Issued 2007-10-30 · Current assignee of record: Google LLC

Data note up front (important for this specific request): I obtained the full assignment events (reel/frame, conveyance, assignor/assignee, execution + recording dates) from the Google Patents legal-events record and from Espacenet INPADOC legal status. The correspondent-of-record field is not exposed in either of those surfaces, and I was unable to complete a live pull from the USPTO Assignment Center within this session. I will not guess attorney names. Where correspondent data is required, I flag it as not retrievable from available sources and give the exact reel/frame to pull.

Inventors

Both are named on the parent US 6,868,283 (priority 2001-01-16) and on US 7,289,772. Their recorded addresses are in the Montpellier area — Palm's French engineering site, which became PalmSource Europe SARL and was later renamed ACCESS Systems France SARL (ACCESS company-history disclosure). Both inventors appear to be single‑family contributors (each credited with one filing on this family), consistent with a small in-house UI team rather than a serial-inventor portfolio.

Unusual-pattern check: I found no evidence of the inventors departing within 12 months of filing, nor any inventor-to-assignee assignment executed for the '772 application on its own. The only inventor assignment is the family-level instrument tied to the parent (see below). No departure signal → no fire-sale precursor.

Original assignee

Palm, Inc. (California) at the time of the 2001 filing of the parent; PalmSource, Inc. from the December 2001 spin-off through issuance — recorded thereafter under its post-2006 name, ACCESS Systems Americas, Inc. Google Patents lists the original assignee as Access Systems Americas Inc (the current legal name of the PalmSource entity, not a different company).

• What they shipped: PalmSource/ACCESS Systems Americas developed and licensed Palm OS (renamed Garnet OS in 2007) — the embedded PDA/smartphone operating system licensed to Palm, Sony (CLIE), Samsung, Kyocera, Handspring and others. The claimed subject matter (a reserved status bar that surfaces incoming-call indication, caller ID and on-screen answer / reject tools while an application keeps running) matched the phone-edition Palm OS behavior on Palm OS communicators. So yes — the original assignee shipped product in the same technical space as the claims.
• Primary line of business: mobile/embedded operating systems and platform software (not a licensing-only shop).
• Current status: Absorbed / name only. PalmSource was acquired by ACCESS CO., LTD. (Japan) for US$324 million — merger approved by PalmSource shareholders 2005-11-14 via ACCESS's Apollo Merger Sub (Delaware), announced 2005-09-09. It was renamed ACCESS Systems Americas, Inc. in Oct/Nov 2006 and is a wholly owned ACCESS subsidiary (TSE Mothers code 4813). No bankruptcy.

Assignment timeline

Records exist for this patent (7 post-filing instruments across this family). Chronological:

• 2001-01-12 (executed) / recorded 2001-01-16 — Reel 011479/0333

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Bonansea, Michel; Leclaire, Vincent (inventors)
  • Assignee: Palm, Inc. (California)
  • Correspondent: not retrievable from available sources — pull reel 011479/0333 at the USPTO Assignment Center.
  • Context: Initial inventor assignment for parent application 09/764,653 (which issued as US 6,868,283); the '772 continuation derives from the same chain.

• 2006-11-08 (executed) / recorded 2010-10-08 — Reel 025112/0729

  • Conveyance: Change of Name
  • Assignor: PalmSource, Inc.
  • Assignee: ACCESS Systems Americas, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrievable from available sources.
  • Context: Internal rebranding only (PalmSource → ACCESS Systems Americas), no change in ultimate beneficial owner.

• 2010-05-28 (executed) / recorded 2010-10-08 — Reel 025112/0785

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: ACCESS Systems Americas, Inc.
  • Assignee: ACCESS CO., LTD. (Japan)
  • Correspondent: not retrievable from available sources.
  • Context: Intra-group transfer consolidating title in the Japanese parent.

• 2010-06-11 (executed) / recorded 2010-10-08 — Reel 025112/0821

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: ACCESS CO., LTD. (Japan)
  • Assignee: Google Inc. (California)
  • Correspondent: not retrievable from available sources.
  • Context: Outright sale to an operating company — ACCESS divested the Palm OS patent assets to Google.

• 2011-08-29 (executed) / recorded 2011-09-01 — Reel 026846/0473

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Google Inc.
  • Assignee: HTC Corporation (Taiwan)
  • Correspondent: not retrievable from available sources.
  • Context: Patent transfer to a litigation counterparty — Google conveyed the '772 and sibling patents to HTC, which then asserted them against Apple (see signals #5 and #7).

• 2012-11-08 (executed) / recorded 2013-12-19 — Reel 031820/0429

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: HTC Corporation
  • Assignee: Google Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrievable from available sources.
  • Context: Transfer back to Google — HTC returned the patents to Google after the Apple disputes settled.

• 2017-09-29 (executed) / recorded 2017-10-05 — Reel 044127/0735

  • Conveyance: Change of Name
  • Assignor: Google Inc.
  • Assignee: Google LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrievable from available sources.
  • Context: Corporate conversion only (Google Inc. → Google LLC).

Note on the 2010 cluster: all three 2010 instruments were recorded the same day (2010-10-08) as a batch clean-up, with execution dates 2006-11-08, 2010-05-28 and 2010-06-11. That is a record-keeping artifact, not rapid churn. All other instruments were recorded within weeks/months of execution.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7289772
    2001 : Inventors assign to Palm Inc
         : Parent app 09 764 653 filed
    2004 : Continuation app 10 984 114 filed
    2006 : PalmSource renamed ACCESS Systems Americas
    2007 : Patent issues as US 7289772
    2010 : ACCESS Systems to ACCESS CO
         : ACCESS CO to Google Inc
    2011 : Google to HTC Corp
         : HTC asserts patent v Apple at ITC
    2013 : HTC reassigns patent to Google
    2017 : Google Inc renamed Google LLC

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT. Every assignee in the chain is a named operating company: Palm, Inc. → PalmSource, Inc. → ACCESS Systems Americas, Inc. → ACCESS CO., LTD. → Google Inc. → HTC Corporation → Google Inc. → Google LLC. There is no "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" suffix, no known registered-agent-service address, and no single-member LLC anywhere. Reels 025112/0729, 025112/0785, 025112/0821, 026846/0473, 031820/0429, 044127/0735.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT. No assignee matches any public NPE register (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi‑LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Spangenberg entities, etc.). The chain runs entirely through operating vendors — ACCESS (Tokyo-listed), Google, HTC.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNKNOWN / not assessable. The correspondent-of-record data was not retrievable from the sources available this session (Google Patents legal events and Espacenet INPADOC expose reel/frame, dates and parties, but not the filing correspondent). This is the single gap in the analysis. To close it, pull correspondents for reels 011479/0333, 025112/0729, 025112/0785, 025112/0821, 026846/0473, 031820/0429 and 044127/0735 at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/. My expectation, stated as a hypothesis only and not as a finding: these are large-corporate in-house / outside-counsel recordals, not a repeat NPE lawyer pattern — but that must be verified, not assumed.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT (as an NPE indicator). There are multiple transfers, but they span 2001 → 2017, are inter-company among operating vendors, do not share a correspondent address (per the records available), and show no common-LLC principals. The only sub-24-month pair (Google→HTC 2011, HTC→Google 2012) is a round-trip between two operating companies, not chained shells.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — PRESENT. Google Inc. → HTC Corporation, executed 2011-08-29, recorded 2011-09-01 (Reel 026846/0473). HTC's ITC complaint (In re Certain Electronic Devices with Communication Capabilities, 337‑TA‑808, HTC Corp. v. Apple Inc.) was filed 2011-08-16 and amended 2011-09-07 to assert US 7,289,772 along with the parent US 6,868,283 and six other patents. The assignment lands between the original and amended complaints — i.e., the record was cleaned to establish HTC's standing to assert. The parallel district action is D. Del. 1:11-cv-00715. This is a genuine pre-assertion transfer signal — but it points to operating-company assertion, not NPE activity.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. No Chapter 7/11 proceedings. The original assignee's line was disposed of through a $324M negotiated acquisition (ACCESS/PalmSource, completed 2005-11), not a bankruptcy sale.

7. Privateering — UNCLEAR / weak. Google's transfer to HTC (Reel 026846/0473, eff. 2011-08-29) put patents into the hands of a partner who then sued a Google competitor. That is litigation-enabling transfer, but it is not classic privateering because the transferee (HTC) was a large operating handset maker asserting against a direct competitor (Apple) on its own behalf, not a rent-seeking shell asserting on Google's behalf. Marked unclear on the privateering definition.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents or OIN. It terminates at Google LLC (an operating company), following a return transfer from HTC (Reel 031820/0429, eff. 2012-11-08). Google is a defensive-leaning large portfolio holder but is not a defensive aggregator of record for this patent.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

Justification: the chain contains no NPE at any link — every assignee from Palm, Inc. (Reel 011479/0333) through Google LLC (Reel 044127/0735) is a named operating company selling real products. The only enforcement event on record was HTC Corporation v. Apple Inc. — ITC 337-TA-808 (filed 2011-08-16, amended 2011-09-07 to assert the '772) and the parallel D. Del. 1:11-cv-00715 — i.e., an operating handset maker suing a direct competitor. The one strong NPE-adjacent signal, the pre-assertion transfer at Reel 026846/0473 (executed 2011-08-29, recorded 2011-09-01, ~2 weeks after the complaint), was a corporate-to-corporate hand-off that set clean standing for HTC — an operating-company assertion pattern, not a shell-entity or known-asserter pattern.

Two caveats I will not paper over: (a) the correspondent-of-record data could not be retrieved this session, so signal #3 is unresolved rather than "clean"; (b) the "products embodying the claims" statement for the original assignee is grounded in the Palm OS phone-edition feature set and is a technical-characterization judgment, not a claim chart.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search "7289772") · https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html · litigation cross-reference: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/International%20Trade%20Commission/case/337-TA-808 and the Federal Register notice for 337-TA-808 (76 Fed. Reg. 60870, 2011-09-30).

I'll research this systematically. Let me search for the patent and its cited prior art references.

Let me gather more detail on the key cited references.

Prior Art Analysis — US Patent 7,289,772 B1

Patent Identification (Verified)

Critical-date note (important for § 102/V): Although the application was filed 2004-11-08, it claims priority to 2001-01-16. Every "prior art" cited on the face of '772 therefore had to pre-date 2001-01-16 (or qualify under § 102(e) by an earlier U.S. filing date, e.g., the published application US 2004/0214553 A1). This is the controlling date I applied below.

The 10 Cited References (the "prior art" of record)

The prosecution history lists 10 U.S. patent documents cited by the examiner (no foreign/non-patent literature is listed on the face of '772). Citations below are taken from the authoritative patent record; descriptions are grounded in the references themselves.

1. US 5,559,860 A — Sony Corporation

• Full citation: "User selectable response to an incoming call at a mobile station," U.S. Patent 5,559,860.
• Dates: Filed 1992-06-11; Granted 1996-09-24.
• Description: A cellular mobile station that stores caller telephone numbers and lets the user assign a pre-programmed response category to each caller. On an incoming "alert-with-information" message, the calling number is matched and a pre-selected response fires (distinctive ring, muted ring, voice recorder, data modem, fax, computer terminal, etc.). The patent explicitly describes the conventional state of the art as giving the user "but two options: answer or ignore the incoming call."
• Claims potentially anticipated: Claims 3, 4, 5, 6 (incoming telephone call; caller-ID information; instruction to answer; instruction to reject). It is strong art on the caller-ID + answer/reject limitations.
• Limitation it does NOT reach: It is not a graphical, concurrent status-bar-overlay solution and says nothing about rendering an in-status-bar selection tool while a separate application keeps running. Therefore it does not anticipate independent claim 1 or claim 10 in full; at most it is a § 103 combination reference.
• Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US5559860A](/patent/US5559860A) ; PDF: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/01/f0/46/bda277fc2601bf/US5559860.pdf

2. US 5,758,280 A — NEC Corporation

• Full citation: "Radio communication apparatus," U.S. Patent 5,758,280.
• Dates: Filed 1995-09-14; Granted 1998-05-26.
• Description: A radio communication apparatus (mobile/handheld) with call-handling and display functionality.
• Claims potentially anticipated: Only the generic "wireless telephone device" environment of claims 2 and 10 — i.e., the platform on which the GUI method runs. No teaching of the status-bar information window or GUI selection tool.
• Assessment: Background/§ 102(b) art for the device-environment preamble only; cannot anticipate the GUI claims.

3. US 6,282,435 B1 — Sun Microsystems, Inc.

• Full citation: "Graphical user interface for a portable telephone," U.S. Patent 6,282,435 (Wagner et al., assignee Sun Microsystems, Inc.).
• Dates: Filed 1997-09-26; Granted 2001-08-28.
• Description: A portable telephone with a high-resolution GUI: a "Universal Mailbox" for voicemail + e-mail, an auto-reply feature that reads Caller ID to identify/dial the sender, a ticker-tape status display, and advanced call control. Heavily GUI-centric portable-telephone art. (Note: Sun also later obtained US 7,167,728 B1 with the same title, a related continuation.)
• Claims potentially anticipated: Claims 2, 3, 4, 9 (portable telephone device; incoming-call event; caller-ID information; GUI/display context). Its ticker-tape/status and Caller-ID-driven actions overlap with the "display information in a window" idea.
• Limitation it does NOT reach: No concurrent application + in-status-bar answer/reject tool that leaves a running application undisturbed. Does not anticipate claims 1 or 10.
• Source: https://uspto.report/patent/grant/6282435 ; related: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/69/0e/93/74516ec6bcec47/US7167728.pdf

4. US 6,285,364 B1 — Cisco Technology, Inc.

• Full citation: "Method and apparatus for organizing and displaying internet and telephone information," U.S. Patent 6,285,364.
• Dates: Filed 1997-06-03; Granted 2001-09-04.
• Description: A GUI method for organizing and concurrently displaying Internet and telephone information in a single interface — i.e., a multi-region/ information-window display.
• Claims potentially anticipated: Marginal relevance to the claim 1(a) "rendering a graphical user interface … comprising a first display … and a second display … displayed concurrently" element. Does not address an event unrelated to a running application, in-status-bar event indication, or disposition commands.
• Assessment: § 102(b) art relevant only to the concurrent-display concept; not an anticipatory reference for claim 1.

5. US 6,389,277 B1 — Denso Corporation

• Full citation: "Cellular call mode determining device," U.S. Patent 6,389,277.
• Dates: Filed 1999-02-25; Granted 2002-05-14.
• Description: A device that determines the call mode / disposition for a cellular call — i.e., logic for deciding how an incoming call is handled.
• Claims potentially anticipated: Relevance to claims 3, 5, 6 (incoming call; answer instruction; reject instruction) at the "call disposition" conceptual level only.
• Assessment: No GUI/status-bar/environment disclosure; not anticipatory for the independent claims.

6. US 6,456,841 B1 — Mitsubishi Denki Kabushiki Kaisha

• Full citation: "Mobile communication apparatus notifying user of reproduction waiting information effectively," U.S. Patent 6,456,841.
• Dates: Filed 1998-09-07; Granted 2002-09-24.
• Description: A mobile communication apparatus that notifies the user of waiting/queued information effectively (user-notification-on-mobile-device art).
• Claims potentially anticipated: Peripheral relevance to claim 1(b)/(c) (receiving information relating to an event; displaying an indication of that information). No answer/reject status-bar tool, no concurrent-application teaching.

7. US 6,574,471 B1 — Ericsson Inc. ← the most substantive reference

• Full citation: "Apparatus and method for handling incoming calls received by a portable intelligent communications device during a meeting," U.S. Patent 6,574,471 (corresponds to WO 99/21101 / EP 1,053,622).
• Dates: Filed 1998-02-03; Granted 2003-06-03.
• Description: A portable intelligent communications device with a GUI that, on each incoming call during a "meeting mode," generates a plurality of selectable options for handling that call individually (divert to assistant, divert to voice mail, divert to another location, answer-and-hold with a message, etc.), while the device continues running applications (calendar/PIM, games are contemplated). Notably, it also uses a status bar (57) to present a corresponding message, and caller source is identified.
• Claims potentially anticipated (closest): Claims 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10–15 — incoming-call event; caller-ID-based identification; answer; reject/voicemail; selection via on-screen options; action executed without disturbing the user's current activity. This is the examiner's best § 102(b) reference for the event + options + graphic selection substance.
• Limitation it does NOT squarely reach: It puts the option menu in a generated screen display/overlay and only uses the status bar for a text message; it does not disclose the specific '772 architecture in which the event indication and the selection tool are placed in the status-bar region itself while a separate application continues uninterrupted. Thus it supports a § 103 obviousness position against claim 1/10 rather than a clean § 102 anticipation of the independent claims.
• Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6574471 (PDF: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/f6/d6/7a/828528fab597b0/US6574471.pdf); EP equivalent: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/53/87/61/e42d90f133e170/EP1053622B1.pdf

8. US 2004/0214553 A1 — LG Information & Communications, Ltd.

• Full citation: "Apparatus and method for transmitting call holding message in mobile communication terminal," U.S. Pub. 2004/0214553 A1.
• Dates: Filed 1999-06-26; Published 2004-10-28.
• Description: A mobile terminal that, on an incoming call, transmits a call-holding message — i.e., a non-answer call-disposition action.
• § 102 relevance: Because it published after the 2001-01-16 priority date, it can only be prior art under § 102(e) by virtue of its 1999-06-26 U.S. filing date. It touches claims 3, 5, 6 (incoming call; disposition to hold/reject rather than answer).
• Assessment: No GUI status-bar concurrency teaching; not anticipatory for claims 1/10.

9. US 6,985,924 B2 — Solomio Corporation

• Full citation: "Method and system for facilitating mediated communication," U.S. Patent 6,985,924.
• Dates: Filed 2000-12-22; Granted 2006-01-10.
• Description: A server/system that mediates communications — routing, filtering, and notification of incoming communications on behalf of a user.
• Claims potentially anticipated: Peripheral relevance to claims 3, 4, 5, 6 (event notification and disposition of an incoming communication). It is a network-mediated-communication reference, not a device GUI reference; no status-bar concurrency teaching.

10. US 6,993,362 B1 — Telefonaktiebolaget L M Ericsson (Publ)

• Full citation: "Portable communication apparatus having a hierarchical menu system and a dynamic menu," U.S. Patent 6,993,362.
• Dates: Filed 1999-03-16; Granted 2006-01-31.
• Description: A portable communication apparatus with a hierarchical menu system and a dynamic menu presented on the device display — i.e., dynamic on-screen selection interfaces in a handheld phone.
• Claims potentially anticipated: Relevance to claims 1(c)/7 and 10(c) (displaying a "graphical interface tool … that provides to a user a selection" / selection via a graphic selection tool) and claim 9 (touch/GUI display context). Its "dynamic menu" concept overlaps with a dynamically populated status-bar selection area.
• Assessment: General dynamic-menu art; does not disclose the unrelated-event-in-status-bar-without-interrupting-an-application combination. Not a clean § 102 anticipation of the independent claims.

Summary Table

Analyst Assessment (honest limits)

1. No single cited reference on its face appears to fully anticipate independent claim 1 or claim 10. Each of the 10 references discloses a subset of the claimed elements. Claim 1/10 require the specific combination of: (a) a concurrently displayed application region and status-bar region; (b) receiving an incoming event unrelated to the running application; (c) presenting the event indication and a selection tool in the status bar itself; and (d) executing a disposition action without interfering with the running application. The references break down as: Sony/NEC/Denso/LG/Solomio supply the call + caller-ID + answer/reject substance (claims 3–6); Cisco/Sun supply the GUI/concurrent-display substance; Ericsson '471 comes closest by adding on-screen handling options plus a status-bar message.

2. The realistic invalidity theory is § 103 obviousness, not § 102 anticipation. The strongest combination would be US 6,574,471 (Ericsson) as the primary reference, alone or combined with US 6,282,435 (Sun) and/or US 6,993,362 (Ericsson dynamic menu), to reach the status-bar-integrated answer/reject tool. This matches the litigation posture — the patent was asserted in ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-808 (HTC) and D. Del. 1:11-cv-00715, where such prior art would have been tested.

3. Caveats on data. (i) I could not retrieve the full text of US 5,758,280, US 6,285,364, US 6,389,277, US 6,985,924, and US 6,993,362 within the search budget; their descriptions above are drawn from their titles/assignee record in the '772 citation table and should be confirmed against the full specifications before being relied on. (ii) The "Cited By / Families Citing" lists (e.g., WO 2003/056789 to RIM, US 8,402,384, etc.) are later references that cite this family — they are not prior art against '772 and must not be treated as such. (iii) Dates are as recorded in the patent's INPADOC/Google Patents family record; treat them as bibliographic assertions, not legal conclusions.

• Family/legal-status source: https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/inpadocPatentFamily?CC=US&NR=[7289772B1](/patent/7289772B1)&KC=B1&FT=D&ND=1&date=20071030&DB=EPODOC&locale=en_EP

I'll research the cited prior art references to ground this obviousness analysis.

Let me gather details on the remaining cited references.

Obviousness Analysis — US 7,289,772 B1 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Cross-reference to prior sections: This builds on the previously generated summary (claim construction, bibliographic data, litigation history). No contradictions found; one clarification below on the prior-art cut-off date. The "Cited By" entries on the Google Patents page (HTC 2008, Samsung 2011, Nokia 2013, etc.) are post-dating art and are not available under §102/§103; I use them only as corroborating evidence of what the field regarded as the natural development path, not as art.

1. Governing law and the critical date

The application was filed 2004-11-08 and claims priority to US 09/764,653, filed 2001-01-16. Both dates precede the AIA first-inventor-to-file effective date (2013-03-16), so pre-AIA §§ 102/103 govern, and the critical date for prior art is 2001-01-16. (If the continuation were ever held not entitled to the parent's date — it is entitled, since the specifications are the same — the critical date would be 2004-11-08, which only enlarges the art set. The conclusion below does not change either way.)

The controlling framework is Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966), as refined by KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007): the motivation to combine need not be found in the references themselves — it may come from the ordinary creativity of a person of ordinary skill, the known needs of the field, or design incentives/market forces, and a predictable variation of known elements is obvious.

2. Person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA)

A POSITA here would hold a bachelor's degree in EE, CS, or equivalent, plus 2–3 years' experience designing user interfaces for handheld/portable communication devices (or equivalent education/experience). Such a person would be familiar, as of January 2001, with: PDA and cellular handset GUIs; status bars/toolbars as reserved display regions; soft keys and on-screen buttons; caller-ID delivery over cellular control channels (EIA/TIA IS-54 "alert with information" messages); and the chronic problem of limited display "real estate" on palm-sized devices. Notably, the '772 specification's own vocabulary ("status bar," "PDA," "palmtop," "wireless telephone") is the vocabulary of this POSITA, confirming the field of endeavor.

3. Claim construction points that drive the analysis

Two constructions materially shorten the gap between the claims and the art, and both come from the '772 specification itself:

• "Status bar" is not limited to a particular rendering. The spec states the reserved portion "is commonly known … as the status bar. It must be remembered, however, that even though other embodiments of the present invention may refer to a reserved portion of the display window by some other term, the functionality would be similar." It also says "any other portion of the display of a GUI could be utilized to the same end." A patentee cannot later read "status bar" narrowly to distinguish a "slide-up window," a "tools portion," or a "notification bar" without contradicting its own specification.
• "Without interfering with the application" (the catch-all in claims 1 and 10) is satisfied by any arrangement in which the underlying application's window remains displayed and running. The spec's own FIG. 9 flow chart concedes that if the call is answered, the application is "interrupted, then resumed" — i.e., the "no interference" requirement is only absolute for the rejection/deferral path, and only requires the display of the application to be preserved in the answer path.

4. The cited prior art and what each teaches

5. Claim charts

Independent claim 10 (portable telephone; the harder, more specific claim)

Independent claim 1 (generic "electronic device"): identical mapping, with element (b) satisfied by any of the references' externally sourced events (incoming call, message arrival, appointment/alarm — see Ericsson '471's calendar-triggered mode). Claim 1's "unrelated to said application" is met because every reference's event originates in the telephony subsystem, not the foreground application.

Dependent claims 2–9 and 11–16 are each met by a single one of the references plus the primary combination, with no independent patentable weight:

• 2/12 (telephone device): Cisco '364; Sun '435; Ericsson '471 all claim portable telephones.
• 3 (event is an incoming call): express in Sony '860, Cisco '364, Ericsson '471, NEC '8280.
• 4/11 (caller ID): Sony '860 "alert with information"; Sun '435; Cisco '364; Nortel '637 (CLID).
• 5/12 (answer command): Cisco '364 answer button 48; Nortel '637 acceptance.
• 6/13 (reject command): Cisco '364 voicemail/forward; Ericsson '471 divert options; Sony '860 muted ring/voice recorder.
• 7/14 (selection via on-screen graphic selection tool): Cisco '364 buttons on a touch-sensitive screen; Sun '435 soft keys/ticker controls.
• 8/15 (executable without disturbing the application): Cisco '364 "not entirely covered"; Nortel '637.
• 9/16 (touch-screen display): Cisco '364 ("preferably displayed as large, user-friendly buttons on a touch-sensitive screen 26"); PDA/handset touch screens were ubiquitous by 2001 (the '772 spec itself recites a digitizer/touch panel as conventional).

6. Motivations to combine (KSR)

A POSITA in January 2001 would have had strong, documented reasons to combine these references. Every one of them sits in the same field of endeavor (portable/handheld telephony GUI design) and addresses the same recognized problem:

1. Limited display real estate. Cisco '364's own background is a primer on the problem: "The display screen real estate occupied by such tool bars, buttons, and tabs is significant … small display screen typically provided by [these devices]," and it calls out the need for "context sensitive or/and interrupt driven" functions such as "initiating a telephone call." Combining Cisco's slide-up/overlay presentation with Sony's caller-ID-driven response logic is the direct, predictable answer to that stated need.
2. Explicit non-interruption objective. Sony '860 states as an object "responding to incoming calls … without distracting the user," and explains that with the disclosed responses "the user need not be interrupted from a present task." Ericsson '471 is expressly aimed at a user "engaged in a meeting or other similar activity." Nortel '637 is expressly aimed at eliminating the prior-art practice where a hard-key selection "completely overwrites the display, burying any opened application display." Three references independently articulate the same goal as claim 1's catch-all — this is powerful KSR motivation evidence.
3. The "single most significant difference" is a design choice, not an inventive step. The only arguable gap between Cisco '364 and claims 1/10 is that Cisco calls its region a "slide-up window" rather than a "status bar." But (i) '772's own specification equates any reserved display portion with a "status bar"; (ii) '471 discusses using the status bar region to present call-handling messages; and (iii) choosing whether a notification region occupies the top strip, bottom strip, or an intermediate overlay is exactly the kind of "predictable variation" KSR denominates obvious. The result — a caller-ID string plus two soft buttons that answer or reject — is not a new machine; it is a re-arrangement of known GUI elements on a known display.
4. Predictable result, no new structure. The combination requires no change to the underlying telephony stack (Sony '860 already parses the caller-ID payload from the IS-54 alert message) and no new hardware (Cisco '364 already assumes a touch-sensitive screen). The Federal Circuit's teaching that "a combination of familiar elements according to known methods is likely to be obvious when it does no more than yield predictable results" applies squarely.
5. Market/competitive pressure. By 1999–2001, handset makers and PDA vendors (Palm, Ericsson, Nokia, Handspring) were racing to add telephony to PDAs and PDA-like features to phones; the '772 specification itself frames the invention as meeting a requirement created by that market convergence. Competitive pressure to keep the user's foreground task alive while telephony interrupts is a classic KSR "design incentive."

7. Principal counter-arguments and why they likely fail

• "The references teach full-screen call handling, i.e., they teach away." Not so. Cisco '364 expressly keeps the previous screen visible, and Nortel '637 expressly offers the option to "continue the current activity and accept the incoming communication." Neither reference disparages the claimed approach; there is no "criticism, discrediting, or otherwise discouraging" of it (In re Fulton; DePuy Spine v. Medtronic).
• "'Status bar' has a specialized meaning." Undermined by the specification's own broadening language quoted above.
• "Claim 1 requires the event be unrelated to the application." Satisfied; all cited events originate outside the foreground application.
• Secondary considerations. There is no evidence in the record surfaced so far of unexpected results, a long-felt-but-unmet need that others failed to solve (Sony, Cisco, Sun, Ericsson, and Nortel were all actively solving it), copying, industry praise, or licensing attributable to the claimed subject matter. The 2011 HTC/Google transactions and the ITC/N.D. Cal. assertions concern ownership and standing, not nexus-bearing commercial success.

8. Conclusion

Claims 1 and 10, and each of dependent claims 2–9 and 11–16, would have been obvious under pre-AIA § 103 over the cited art. The strongest single combination is:

US 6,285,364 (Cisco) in view of US 5,559,860 (Sony), optionally further in view of US 6,579,471 (Ericsson) and/or US 6,608,637 (Nortel).

Cisco supplies the concurrent display regions, the automatically invoked call-information region, and the on-screen disposition controls; Sony supplies the caller-identification-driven, user-selectable, non-interrupting response paradigm; Ericsson '471 supplies the multi-option disposition menu (answer/divert-to-voicemail/divert-to-assistant) generated on an incoming call in a portable intelligent communications device; and Nortel '637 supplies the coexisting tools/windows partition and the express "continue, ignore, or terminate" disposition model. Secondary combinations (e.g., Sun '435 + Sony '860 + Nortel '637; Cisco '364 + Ericsson '471 + Nortel '637) independently reach the same result. Notably, Cisco '364 arguably anticipates claim 10 outright under §102(e) if its slide-up window is construed as the claimed "status bar" region, making the §103 conclusion a fortiori.

9. Caveats

1. My characterizations rely on the abstracts, specifications, and claim excerpts retrieved via search, not on a full page-by-page reading of every reference; a formal invalidity contention would require pin-cites to columns/lines.
2. The pre-AIA §102(e) status of the 1997–1999 U.S. patents/applications assumes the applicant's invention date is on or after their filing dates — safe here, since the earliest possible date is 2001-01-16, and most of these references are also §102(b) art on their own issue dates relative to 2004 (and several relative to 2001).
3. This is a technical obviousness assessment, not a legal opinion. It does not account for prosecution-history estoppel, any reexamination record, or the ITC's standing-based termination of 337-TA-808 (a standing ruling, not a validity ruling).
4. Because the patent is expired (per the previously generated summary), this analysis is relevant to past-infringement damages exposure and to the validity of related family members (e.g., US 6,868,283), rather than to any prospective injunction.