US 7312897

I'll verify this against live sources before summarizing.

Let me pull the claim text and check for any 2026 CAFC activity.

Let me pin down the independent claims of the '897 patent specifically.

US 7,312,897 — verified summary

Identification (all from Google Patents, https://patents.google.com/patent/US7312897/en):

Note the practical consequence of the 1996 priority: although filed in 2005, the term is measured from the 1996 chain root (20 years → 2016‑02‑26).

Abstract

Caveat: the authoritative full text supplied for this patent begins at the "Definitions"/description section and does not include the abstract block, so I could not quote the '897 abstract itself. The abstract of its specification‑sharing sibling, US 8,760,704 B2 (same title, same inventor, same assignee), reads:

"The system provides for controlling color reproduction of input color image data in a network having nodes (or sites). The system distributes the input color image data from one of the nodes to other nodes, and provides data structures in the network. The system has means for providing color calibration data at each node characterizing output colors (colorants) of the rendering device of the node, and means for producing at each node, responsive to the color calibration data of the rendering device of the node, information for transforming the input color image data into output color image data at the rendering device of the node. The rendering device of each node renders a color reproduction responsive to the output color image data, wherein colors displayed in the reproduction at the rendering device of each node appear substantially the same within the output colors attainable by the rendering devices."

(Source: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/55/bf/c8/d19b5ef2ed6bad/US8760704.pdf) This is consistent with the "Summary of the Invention" text in the '897 specification itself, but treat it as the family abstract rather than a verbatim '897 abstract.

Specification summary (verbatim themes from the '897 text): the invention is a system (method and apparatus) for distributing and controlling color reproduction at multiple sites, using a "Virtual Proof" (VP) data structure that holds color‑transformation information shared across network nodes plus local, node‑specific components. Image data is distributed separately from the VP so that color can be revised without retransmitting bulky image files. Rendering devices are calibrated colorimetrically (device‑independent, Standard‑Observer coordinates), and calibration is verified and revised using color measurement instruments (SOM 13 / "imagical" 14) that are themselves under periodic recalibration.

Independent claims — plain language

What I can state authoritatively: I obtained verbatim text of claim 32 from Adobe's IPR petition (Ex. 1004 = the '897 patent, cited at 51:54–52:4):

32. "A method for providing control to a user for processing color images comprising the steps of: providing an interface through which said user is able to select one or more sites, each having one or more color input or output devices, wherein at least one of said sites is capable of being remotely located with respect to said user; providing information regarding identity or location of said one or more sites useable for communication with said sites; and providing information for transforming input color image data into output color image data for the color input or output devices at said sites comprising at least information representing the gamuts or a relationship between the gamuts of said color devices, wherein said information for transforming comprises at least user preferences for color reproduction by at least one of the color devices."

Source: https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1523317](/patent/1523317)/download-documents?artifactId=vhx_p3DQF3tBuiERjkyAP2AqH4DtRIQhUGIYbohQ6MsVp18u4fgpivk

Plain language of claim 32: a user-facing method for remote color work. The user is given a UI to pick printing/proofing sites (at least one remote), is given addressing/routing information for those sites, and is given the color‑conversion information needed to render image data on the devices at those sites — where that conversion information must include gamut information (or gamut relationships) for the devices and must include the user's color preferences.

Claims 33 and 37 were challenged alongside claim 32 in the same IPR and were treated as dependent claims (petition grounds group them as "Claims 32 and 33" and "Claims 32, 33 and 37").

Uncertainty flag — I am not able to give you a reliable plain‑language overview of every independent claim. I did not retrieve the full printed claims (e.g., claim 1) of the '897 patent in this session, so I will not reconstruct them from memory. What is supported by the record:

• The '897 patent has at least 37 claims (claim 37 was challenged).
• Only claims 32, 33, and 37 were asserted/challenged in IPR2019‑00629; the petition addressed claim 32 as the lead claim.
• Do not infer the '897 claim set from related family members' claim numbering. Sibling patents in this family have entirely different claims (e.g., the '735 and '909 patents use claims numbered in the 30s–60s with different scope), and those numbers do not map onto the '897.

If you need the complete independent‑claim set, the authoritative source is the printed claims at columns ~49–53 of the '897 patent (USPTO PatentCenter / Google Patents PDF), which I could not fully extract here.

Litigation and PTAB status (verified)

IPR2019‑00629 — Adobe Inc. v. RAH Color Technologies LLC, U.S. Patent No. 7,312,897 B2.

• Petition filed by Adobe Inc. on 2019‑02‑01; instituted 2019‑09‑04; Final Written Decision issued. Challenged claims 32, 33, 37 under pre‑AIA 35 U.S.C. § 103.
• Grounds asserted: (1) Sugiura + Beretta; (2) Sugiura + Beretta + Anderson; (3) Sugiura + Stone; (4) Newman + Kuwamoto; (5) Newman + Kuwamoto + "the User Guide."
• Concurrent Adobe IPRs: IPR2019‑00627 ('008), IPR2019‑00628 ('444), IPR2019‑00646 ('761).

Discrepancy to note: the Google Patents litigation sidebar labels the PTAB entry only as "IPR2019‑00629 filed (Final Written Decision)" and attributes the record to Unified Patents' data set; the linkage page is https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/ptab/case/IPR2019-00629. The petition document itself names Adobe Inc. as Petitioner, and the Microsoft complaint confirms "Adobe filed for inter partes review against four RAH Color Technologies patents." I treat Adobe as the petitioner. The "Unified Patents" attribution appears to be a data‑source artifact, not the petitioner — flagging in case it matters to you.

District court activity (per the Google Patents family‑litigation list) spans: N.D. Cal. 3:18‑md‑02874 (MDL), 3:18‑cv‑03277, 3:18‑cv‑01612, 3:18‑cv‑07464/‑07465, 3:19‑cv‑00518; N.D. Ill. 1:17‑cv‑02145, 1:17‑cv‑02924, 1:17‑cv‑06813, 1:17‑cv‑00894, 1:18‑cv‑00733, 1:19‑cv‑00275; E.D. Va. 1:18‑cv‑01436; E.D. Tex. 4:20‑cv‑00176 and 2:20‑cv‑00088; E.D. Pa. 2:15‑cv‑05203; E.D. Cal. 3:19‑cv‑00982; W.D.N.Y. 6:18‑cv‑06746, 6:19‑cv‑06112, 6:10‑cv‑06710; E.D. Mich. 2:18‑cv‑00087; W.D. Mich. 1:14‑cv‑00638; Ill. S.D. 1:17‑cv‑04931.

CAFC 2026 docket check — negative finding

I found no Federal Circuit 2026 docket, opinion, Rule 36 judgment, or scheduled argument involving US 7,312,897. Searches of Federal Circuit scheduled‑case materials and 2026 Federal Circuit summary digests returned nothing matching this patent number. This is consistent with the record: the patent lapsed (anticipated expiration 2016‑02‑26, status "Expired – Fee Related"), and the IPR final written decision on its challenged claims would have issued in 2020, well before the 2026 window.

I cannot prove a negative exhaustively — a sealed, dismissed, or Rule 36‑disposed appeal would not necessarily surface in these searches — so treat this as "nothing found," not "confirmed absent."

False positives excluded (per your instruction not to auto‑correct or conflate)

Searches on the bare string "7312897" returned several unrelated items I deliberately excluded: a New Zealand Companies Office letter referencing IRD number 128‑342‑176 / company 7312897 (JXP Trading Limited); French application FR 7312897 (which published as FR2179924, a 1973 vehicle sunroof case); and NMR spectrometer frequencies of "499.7312897 MHz." None relate to US 7,312,897.

Confidence and open items

• High confidence: patent number, title, inventor, assignee, application number, filing date, issue date, 1996 priority date, expiration date, claim 32 verbatim text, IPR2019‑00629 identification, petitioner (Adobe), challenged claims and grounds.
• Medium confidence: the abstract wording (quoted from the sibling US 8,760,704, not from the '897 itself).
• Not verified — do not rely on without checking: the outcome of the IPR2019‑00629 Final Written Decision (i.e., whether claims 32/33/37 were held unpatentable or upheld); the full text of the '897 independent claims other than 32; the precise parent‑application chain linking the 2005‑10‑07 filing back to 1996‑02‑26; and whether "Expired – Fee Related" reflects a maintenance‑fee lapse versus ordinary end‑of‑term.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 7312897 using multiple targeted searches.

Let me research the specific cases and their outcomes.

I've completed my research using the sources you specified. Below is what I found. I've flagged where the record is clear versus where I could not confirm the specific patent's inclusion.

Litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 7,312,897 ("the '897 patent")

Owner/patentee: RAH Color Technologies LLC (Alexandria, VA), assignee of record per USPTO and Google Patents. Inventor: Richard A. Holub.

Important caveat: The '897 patent is one of a large family of Holub/RAH patents sharing a common specification and title. Many RAH suits asserted several family patents together. Where I can only confirm the family was at issue (not the '897 patent specifically), I say so. Live search results are the ground truth below.

A. Cases where the '897 patent was expressly asserted

1. RAH Color Technologies LLC v. Adobe Inc.

• Court: U.S. District Court, Northern District of California
• Case No.: 3:18-cv-03277-SI
• Filed: January 31, 2018 (served February 1, 2018)
• Patents: '897 (plus '008, '761, '444)
• Status: Transferred into MDL No. 2874 (N.D. Cal. 3:18-md-02874). At the claim-construction stage, RAH advised the court it intended to remove the '897 patent from the litigation. (CourtListener brief, cand.327437 dkt. 120)

2. Adobe Inc. v. RAH Color Technologies LLC (Inter Partes Review)

• Forum: USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board
• Case No.: IPR2019-00629
• Filed: February 1, 2019
• Challenged: claims 32, 33, and 37 of the '897 patent under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 103
• Outcome: Final Written Decision entered October 8, 2020 (public version). PTAB data lists additional companion IPRs filed concurrently: IPR2019-00627 (’008), IPR2019-00628 (’444), IPR2019-00646 (’761).
• Note: This is a patentability challenge, not an infringement suit, but it is directly and exclusively about the '897 patent.

3. RAH Color Technologies LLC v. Quad/Graphics, Inc.

• Case No.: 2:18-cv-00087-JPS (originally filed in N.D. Ill.; transferred to the Eastern District of Wisconsin)
• Filed: originally January 2018 (N.D. Ill.); First Amended Complaint filed March 15, 2018 in E.D. Wis.
• Patents: '870; '897; '008; '704; '357
• Status: Centralized/coordinated with the RAH MDL pretrial proceedings; later coordinated via CTO into N.D. Cal.

4. RAH Color Technologies LLC v. R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company

• Court: U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois
• Case No.: 1:17-cv-00894
• Filed: February 2, 2017
• Patents: '870; '897; '008; '704; '546; '314; '357

5. RAH Color Technologies LLC v. X-Rite, Inc.

• Court: U.S. District Court, Western District of Michigan
• Case No.: 1:14-cv-00638
• Patents: ten RAH patents including '897 ('897; '433; '560; '052; '008; '761; '175; '236; '444; '357)
• Status: Presumptive (older case; I could not confirm a final disposition from available results)

B. Related RAH cases where the '897 patent "or related patents" were at issue

Per the Adobe IPR2019-00629 petition, "the '897 patent or related patents are also at issue" in the following — so '897's specific inclusion is not individually confirmed in each:

6. RAH Color Technologies LLC v. Xerox Corporation

• Court: U.S. District Court, Western District of New York
• Case No.: 6:18-cv-06746
• Status: Closed (09/24/2018 per docket-aggregator data); centralized into MDL 2874 (N.D. Cal.)

7. Electronics For Imaging, Inc. v. RAH Color Technologies LLC

• Court: U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Virginia
• Case No.: 1:18-cv-01436
• Nature: Declaratory judgment action by EFI (manufacturer of the accused Fiery print servers) against RAH
• Status: Centralized into MDL 2874

8. RAH Color Technologies LLC v. Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG

• Court: U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois
• Case No.: 1:19-cv-00193
• Status: Conditional Transfer Order issued January 25, 2019 to centralize in N.D. Cal.

9. RAH Color Technologies LLC v. Dalim Software GmbH

• Court: U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois
• Case No.: 1:19-cv-00275
• Status: Conditional Transfer Order to centralize in N.D. Cal.

10. In re: RAH Color Technologies LLC Patent Litigation (MDL No. 2874)

• Court: U.S. District Court, Northern District of California
• Case No.: 3:18-md-02874 (Judge Susan Illston)
• Consolidates Adobe ('897 asserted), Xerox, EFI, and later Heidelberger and Dalim

C. Cases listed for the patent family where '897 involvement is unconfirmed

The Google Patents family page lists these additional matters. I could not confirm that the '897 patent specifically was asserted in each:

• RAH Color Technologies LLC v. [Microsoft Corp.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Microsoft%20Corp.) — E.D. Tex. 4:20-cv-00176 (filed Mar. 5, 2020; voluntarily dismissed Mar. 11, 2020). The complaint in this matter asserted claims of the '870 patent; '897 inclusion not confirmed.
• RAH Color Technologies LLC v. Microsoft Corp. — E.D. Tex. 2:20-cv-00088 (filed Mar. 24, 2020).
• W.D.N.Y. 6:19-cv-06112 (filed Feb. 8, 2019); W.D.N.Y. 6:10-cv-06710; N.D. Ill. 1:17-cv-02145, 1:17-cv-02924, 1:17-cv-06813, 1:18-cv-00733; S.D. Ill. 1:17-cv-04931; N.D. Cal. 3:18-cv-01612, 3:18-cv-07464, 3:18-cv-07465, 3:19-cv-00518; E.D. Cal. 3:19-cv-00982.

One case I specifically checked and excluded: RAH Color Technologies LLC v. Ricoh Americas Corp. / Ricoh USA, Inc. — E.D. Pa. 2:15-cv-05203 (filed Sept. 16, 2015; terminated Feb. 16, 2017). The patents-in-suit were the '870, '251, '008, '546, '444, '704, and '314 patents — the '897 patent was not among them, despite the family listing.

Summary of key outcomes/status

On outcomes generally: The record I retrieved shows that these cases were largely resolved through the coordinated MDL pretrial proceedings or dismissed/withdrawn rather than by a final infringement judgment on the '897 patent. The only merits-type adjudication I confirmed specifically on the '897 patent is the PTAB IPR2019-00629 Final Written Decision (Oct. 8, 2020). I did not find a confirmed final district-court judgment of infringement or invalidity on the '897 patent. The patent's legal status per Google Patents is "Expired – Fee Related."

Accuracy note: I was unable to verify the disposition of several older/parallel matters (e.g., X-Rite, the second Microsoft case 2:20-cv-00088, and the various unlabeled docket numbers in Part C) within this research session. Those items should be confirmed against PACER or the Unified Patents litigation portal before being relied upon. I did not fabricate any case numbers; every number above is drawn verbatim from the retrieved sources.

I'll reconstruct the AIA-trial picture from the structured block plus live sources, since the prompt flags that the ODP ingest may lag.

Let me pin down the panel, the institution reasoning, and any Federal Circuit appeal.

Let me confirm the FWD panel for the '897 specifically and check for any Federal Circuit appeal.

AIA Trial Proceedings — U.S. Patent No. 7,312,897

Sourcing note / discrepancy flag. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block in this prompt returns no AIA trial proceedings for US 7,312,897 from the USPTO Open Data Portal. That is an ODP ingest gap, not the truth. A full IPR was filed, instituted, tried to a Final Written Decision, and never appealed. I have reconstructed the proceeding below from the Board's own papers (via the PTAB/PTACTS document server and the PTAB docket mirrors) and cross-checked it against the district court record. I flag each field I could not verify directly.

Proceedings overview

One (1) AIA trial proceeding exists on US 7,312,897 — IPR2019-00629 (Adobe v. RAH Color Technologies) — and it is closed with the challenged claims adjudicated unpatentable; there are no active, settled, or institution-denied proceedings, and no Federal Circuit appeal. The bottom-line defensive posture for a defendant today: the patent is expired (anticipated expiration 2016-02-26) and the three claims the patent owner actually asserted (32, 33, 37) are dead — any demand letter or complaint resting on those claims has no case, though claims 1–31, 34–36 remain formally untested and challengeable.

IPR2019-00629 — Adobe Inc. v. RAH Color Technologies LLC

• Type: Inter Partes Review (35 U.S.C. §§ 311–319; pre-AIA § 103 statutory basis, pre-AIA patent)

• Filed: 2019-02-01 (the PTAB docket and the Board's institution decision for the consolidated sibling IPR2019-00646 both recite 2019-02-01; note that the Final Written Decision in that same sibling proceeding recites "January 31, 2019" for its petition — an internal inconsistency in the Board's own papers. I use 2019-02-01, the docket date.)

• Status: "Final Written Decision" (per the Law360 PTAB case record) — closed, claims adjudicated unpatentable, no appeal taken. Plain-English gloss: final adverse judgment against the patent on the challenged claims; no further review.

• Judge panel: ELENI MANTIS MERCADER, FRANCES L. IPPOLITO, and JOHN A. HUDALLA, Administrative Patent Judges. (Verified as the panel for the consolidated Adobe proceedings, including a discovery order expressly captioned "Case IPR2019-00629 (Patent 7,312,897 B2)" — Paper 15, 2019-04-25. I did not separately extract the caption line of the '897 Final Written Decision itself; the three-judge panel is the same across the consolidated group, so this is high confidence, not certain.)

• Petition grounds: Challenged claims 32, 33, and 37 under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 103. The grounds asserted in the petition, per the RAH/Adobe briefing and the Board's handling:

  1. Sugiura + Beretta
  2. Sugiura + Beretta + Anderson
  3. Sugiura + Stone
  4. Newman + Kuwamoto
  5. Newman + Kuwamoto + the Photoshop 3.0 User Guide (Ex. 1015)

  Claim 33 (neutral-colorant/black-utilization preference) and claim 37 (annotation objects separable from image data and shareable among sites) were mapped to Photoshop 3.0 separation-setup and text-layer functionality. I have not verified which specific instituted ground carried each individual claim; do not rely on a claim-to-ground map.

• Institution decision: Instituted 2019-09-04 (Board paper entered in the consolidated group; likely Paper 35 for the '897 docket — I could not confirm the paper number). The Board declined to institute on the Sugiura + Stone ground because Petitioner failed to establish that "Stone" (Ex. 1022) qualified as a prior-art printed publication — a § 102 evidentiary failure on authentication/public accessibility, not a § 103 merits ruling. The Board also rejected Patent Owner's real-party-in-interest challenge, finding RAH had not shown that Quad/Graphics, Dalim, Xerox, Heidelberger, or EFI were unnamed RPIs that should have been named.

• Final Written Decision: Issued 2020-10-08 (public version; Paper 121, with Paper 119 Erratum dated 2020-10-01 and Paper 120 redaction order dated 2020-10-08). Asserted and instituted claims 32, 33, 37. Verbatim disposition:

  "For the reasons we identify below, we determine that Petitioner has demonstrated by a preponderance of the evidence that claims 32, 33, and 37 of the '897 patent are unpatentable."

  Claim-level result:

  • Claim 32 (independent) — UNPATENTABLE
  • Claim 33 (depends from 32) — UNPATENTABLE
  • Claim 37 (depends from 32) — UNPATENTABLE
  • No claim was sustained. All three challenged claims fell.
  • The FWD also reaffirmed the RPI finding, holding for the same reasons as institution that Quad, Dalim, Xerox, Heidelberger, and EFI are not RPIs.
  • The consolidated oral hearing was held 2020-05-28 jointly with IPR2019-00627, -00628 and -00646.

• Settlement / termination: None. The proceeding ran to a Final Written Decision; there is no adverse judgment, no termination, and no settlement on the record.

• Appeal: No appeal. The joint claim-construction brief in the co-pending MDL (N.D. Cal. 3:18-md-02874, dkt. 120) states that RAH "has not appealed the decision regarding the '897 Patent, and states in the opening claim construction brief that it intends to remove the '897 Patent from the current litigation." No Federal Circuit docket number exists for this FWD. Consequence: the FWD is final and non-reviewable, and the unpatentability of claims 32/33/37 is not subject to further challenge or reversal.

  • Source: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.[327437](/patent/327437)/gov.uscourts.cand.327437.120.0.pdf

• Defensive value: Claims 32, 33, and 37 are adjudicated unpatentable and unappealed — any infringement theory built on them is dead on arrival, and a demand letter citing them is bluff. The patent itself expired 2016-02-26, so there is no injunctive exposure and any recovery is past-damages only. For a defendant facing assertion of the remaining claims (1–31, 34–36), the FWD is highly useful persuasive evidence of the family's invalidity but is not binding — those claims were never before the Board. Note the structural point: claim 36 depends from claim 32 (per the EFI declaratory-judgment complaint, RAH asserted "claims 32-33 and 36-37"), so the adjudicated death of claim 32 leaves claim 36's validity badly compromised even though it was never itself challenged.

Strategic summary

Canceled vs. sustained vs. untested. The '897 patent has at least 37 claims. Exactly three have been adjudicated: claims 32, 33, and 37 — all UNPATENTABLE as of 2020-10-08, no appeal, now final. No claim of this patent has ever been sustained by the Board. The remainder are UNTESTED: claims 1–31, 34, 35, and 36 were never challenged in any AIA trial. Two caveats on that untested pool: (i) claim 36 depends from claim 32, so its independent validity is structurally undermined by the FWD; and (ii) because the three asserted claims are all in the 32–37 range, the file history suggests RAH's enforcement posture on this patent has concentrated on the tail-end claims, and the MDL record shows RAH withdrew the '897 patent from the litigation entirely after the FWD. The practical read is that the commercially relevant claims of this patent are the dead ones.

Estoppel landscape. Under 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2), Adobe — and its privies — are estopped from asserting, in district court or the ITC, any ground they raised or reasonably could have raised in IPR2019-00629, as to claims 32, 33, and 37. That estoppel is now largely academic (the claims are unpatentable and the patent has expired), but it matters in two ways. First, it does not run against a new defendant or a new petitioner — a fresh party retains the full § 102/§ 103 toolkit. Second, the estate's exhaustion of Adobe's grounds does not burden a new petitioner, but § 325(d) discretionary denial and the General Plastic follow-on-petition factors are live risks if a new petitioner simply re-runs Adobe's Sugiura/Beretta/Newman/Kuwamoto combination (the Office has already considered and adjudicated that art). A new petition is best built on different art, or on the untested claims, and any new defendant should remember the § 315(b) one-year bar running from service of an infringement complaint. Also note: PGR is unavailable (the patent is pre-AIA), CBM review is unavailable (the program sunset 2020-09-16 and the patent is an expired technological invention), and because the patent has expired, a patent owner can no longer amend claims in any IPR — which removes the patent owner's usual escape hatch but also means an IPR today would be fought purely on the existing claim text.

Pattern signals. There is no serial-petitioner pattern on this patent — Adobe is the only entity ever to file an AIA petition on the '897 patent, and it filed exactly one. Adobe did, however, run a coordinated four-patent campaign against the same family on the same day (2019-02-01), which is a strong signal that the family, not this patent, was the target:

That mixed record is the key strategic insight: Adobe did not sweep the family. On the '897 it won; on the '008 it lost outright; on the '761 it lost on claim 15. The '897 outcome should therefore be read as claim-specific, not as evidence that the family's claims generally are invalid. On the defensive-aggregator question: Unified Patents appears in the Google Patents record as the source of the PTAB case link, but that is a data-provenance attribution — the petitioner of record is Adobe Inc., not Unified Patents. There is no Unified Patents-filed IPR against this patent in the record I retrieved, and no defensive aggregator appears in the ownership chain (the patent is held by RAH Color Technologies LLC, an asserting, inventor-owned NPE). RAH did not pursue a Federal Circuit appeal of the '897 FWD; the district court brief confirms the absence of any appeal.

Recommended next steps

1. If a demand letter or complaint cites claims 32, 33, or 37, you have a dispositive answer. The Board held all three unpatentable in the Final Written Decision of 2020-10-08 (Paper 121) in Adobe Inc. v. RAH Color Technologies LLC, IPR2019-00629:

   "we determine that Petitioner has demonstrated by a preponderance of the evidence that claims 32, 33, and 37 of the '897 patent are unpatentable."

   No appeal was taken (confirmed by RAH's own statement in the MDL claim-construction brief), so the decision is final. Asserting those claims after 2020-10-08 is not merely weak — it invites a Rule 11 exposure argument. The unified PTAB portal entry is at https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/ptab/case/IPR2019-00629; retrieve the FWD from PTAB E2E (https://e2e.uspto.gov) or the PTAB Decisions database (https://developer.uspto.gov/ptab-web/) under IPR2019-00629, Paper 121.

2. If the letter cites claims 1–31, 34, 35, or 36, the FWD helps but does not finish the job. Pull the printed claims for those numbers and chart the FWD's reasoning onto them; claims 1–31 were never adjudicated. Flag claim 36 separately — it depends from claim 32, and the death of claim 32 is a strong, though not automatic, invalidity argument for the dependent claim.

3. If you intend to file your own IPR, watch three traps. (a) § 315(b): the one-year clock runs from service of a complaint asserting the patent. (b) § 325(d): re-running Adobe's Sugiura/Beretta or Newman/Kuwamoto/Photoshop combination invites discretionary denial because the Office already considered that art — bring different art or a materially different theory. (c) Expiration: the patent expired 2016-02-26, so the patent owner cannot amend; expect the fight to be on the face of the existing claims.

4. Obtain the primary documents I could not fully extract. Specifically: the FWD's caption line (to confirm the panel of Mercader, Ippolito, and Hudalla for the '897 itself); the institution decision's paper number and its claim-by-claim and ground-by-ground institution table; and the full printed claims 1–37 from the '897 patent (columns ~49–53) so the untested claims can be charted.

5. Do not rely on the ODP "no proceedings" result. The structured block is wrong for this patent — an IPR was filed, instituted, tried, and decided, and the missing entry should be reported as an ODP indexing gap if the record matters to your analysis.

Provenance for the FWD language and procedural history: PTAB Final Written Decision, IPR2019-00629, Paper 121 (2020-10-08), as served through the USPTO PTACTS document repository (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1523317](/patent/1523317)/download-documents) and mirrored on the PTAB docket aggregators (https://www.docketalarm.com/search/?q=patent:(7312897); https://ipverse.greyb.com/ptab-web/cases/case-details/IPR2019-00629). One caution: the hearing transcripts in the consolidated group contain a recurring clerical mis-numbering ("IPR2020-00627/628/629/646" where the proceedings are IPR2019-00xxx). Do not treat those strings as separate proceeding numbers.

I'll research the assignment chain for US 7,312,897 using the USPTO Assignment Center and cross-references.

Let me search for the specific assignment records and correspondent details.

Let me try to retrieve the specific reel/frame records from assignment databases.

I hit the tool-step limit before I could pull the assignment-document PDFs, so I want to be transparent up front about one gap: I confirmed that recorded assignments exist and captured their content and dates from Google Patents legal events, but I could not retrieve the reel/frame numbers or the "correspondent" field from the assignment documents themselves. I flag that specifically rather than fill it in. I will not invent reel/frame numbers.

Inventors

Pattern notes:

• No co-inventors across this family — a single-inventor portfolio.
• No "inventor-departure" pattern. The usual fire-sale tell (all inventors leaving the original corporate assignee within 12 months) does not apply: there was no corporate employer. The one entity formed to commercialize the work, Imagicolor Corporation (1998), "was eventually dissolved" after investment failed to materialize (RAH pleaded this). The patents did not pass through Imagicolor — they were moved to RAH Color Technologies LLC.
• The inventor's prior employers (Eikonix/Kodak 1983–1990, Agfa/Bayer 1990–1993, SuperMac 1993–1994) are all pre-dating the 1994–1995 conception work, and none is an assignee of record.

Original assignee

RAH Color Technologies LLC (also styled "RAH Color Tech LLC" / "RAH COLOR TECHNOLOGIES, LLC" in USPTO records). Original assignee on the issued patent and still the assignee of record.

• Products embodying the claims: No. RAH never shipped a product. Its predecessor vehicle, Imagicolor Corporation (1998), built a soft-proofing/display-calibration prototype but "investment did not materialize and Imagicolor was eventually dissolved." RAH's own pleading states: "In 2005, RAH Color Technologies LLC was formed as a vehicle for an on-going licensing program for companies whose products depend on Dr. Holub's innovations."
• Primary line of business: patent licensing / assertion. Not manufacturing. RAH is the named plaintiff in roughly 20+ district-court matters and is the focal entity in MDL No. 2874 (In re RAH Color Technologies LLC Patent Litigation, N.D. Cal.).
• Corporate form: Virginia limited liability company; Dr. Holub is the sole member (so stated in Adobe's IPR papers: "the sole member of RAH"). Address of record shifted over time — Rochester, NY on earlier family members (e.g., US 8,279,236, assignee "Rah Color Technologies LLC, Rochester, NY") and 7012 Colgate Drive, Alexandria, VA 22307 from ~2013 onward (e.g., US 8,917,394; the Quad/Graphics complaint).
• Status: operating as a licensing/assertion entity (not dissolved, not in bankruptcy). The '897 patent itself is Expired – Fee Related (term ran from 1996-02-26 to 2016-02-26), but the assignee entity persists for the rest of the portfolio.

Assignment timeline

Two recorded conveyances are reflected in Google Patents' legal-events data for the '897 patent (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7312897/en). Reel/frame numbers and the recorded "correspondent" were not retrievable in this session — see the caveat at the end of this section.

• Executed 2005 (recorded 2005-12-19) — Reel NNNNNN/NNNN — not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignor's interest ("ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)")
  • Assignor: Richard A. Holub
  • Assignee: RAH Color Technologies, LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrieved. Attorney of record for prosecution across the RAH/Holub family is Kenneth J. LuKacher, Reg. No. 38,539, Kenneth J. LuKacher Law Group, 3136 Winton Road South, Rochester, NY 14623 (address of record also appears as "South Winton Court, 3136 Winton Road South, Suite 301"). This is a repeat-player on the RAH portfolio (patentbots lists him as affiliated with "RAH COLOR TECHNOLOGIES LLC"; he is the named attorney on family members including US 8,279,236). Whether he was also the recorded assignment correspondent is unverified.
  • Context: transfer from individual inventor to his own single-member licensing vehicle — the founding conveyance that put the asset into RAH.

• Executed/recorded 2013-05-14 — Reel NNNNNN/NNNN — not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Merger ("MERGER (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)")
  • Assignor: RAH COLOR TECHNOLOGIES LLC
  • Assignee: RAH COLOR TECHNOLOGIES LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrieved.
  • Context: internal reorganization / re-domestication, not an arm's-length transfer. The nominal same-name assignor and assignee, together with the simultaneous change of record address from Rochester, NY to Alexandria, VA, point to a merger of two same-named RAH entities (or a conversion/re-domiciliation) rather than a sale. Flagged: I could not read the underlying document to confirm.

Caveat (do not treat as verified): No further assignments are recorded for the '897 patent in the Google Patents legal events — i.e., the chain has two links only (2005 inventor→RAH; 2013 RAH internal merger), and RAH Color Technologies LLC remains the assignee of record. Because I could not open the Assignment Center documents, I cannot supply the reel/frame or the recorded correspondent, which the task specifically asks for. To close this: run a patent-number search for 7312897 (or application 11/246,965) at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ or https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html and read the "Correspondent" block on each of the two entries. That is the authoritative source and it is the one field I am leaving open.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7312897
    1996 : Priority application filed by Holub
    1998 : Imagicolor Corp formed to commercialize
    2005 : Continuation filed by RAH Color Tech
         : Holub assigns to RAH Color Technologies
    2007 : US 7312897 issues
    2013 : Merger recorded within RAH
    2016 : Patent term expires

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — PRESENT (with a nuance). The '897 patent is held by RAH Color Technologies LLC, a single-member Virginia LLC whose sole member is the inventor, formed expressly "as a vehicle for an on-going licensing program," with no products in commerce (the only commercialization attempt, Imagicolor Corp., dissolved). Evidence: RAH's own complaint background (¶¶ 21–22 of the Quad/Graphics First Amended Complaint; ¶¶ 14–15 of the E.D. Pa. complaint) and Adobe's IPR statement that Holub is "the sole member of RAH." Nuance: this is not the classic "operating company sells to a shell" fact pattern — there never was an operating assignee, so the "transfer" is inventor→own licensing LLC. That distinction matters and I am flagging it rather than letting the label do the work.

2. Known asserter in the chain — PRESENT. RAH Color Technologies is a documented high-frequency patent plaintiff: it is the plaintiff in MDL No. 2874 (N.D. Cal. 3:18-md-02874) plus ~20 district-court matters, and it appears in the RPX and Unified Patents litigation datasets that Google Patents itself indexes on the '897 family page. It is not on the classic named list (Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, Wi-LAN, Conversant, etc.), but that list is illustrative, not exhaustive; RAH's own litigation footprint places it squarely in the asserter category.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — PRESENT at the portfolio level; UNCONFIRMED on the assignment records. Kenneth J. LuKacher (Reg. 38,539, Kenneth J. LuKacher Law Group, Rochester, NY) is counsel of record across the RAH/Holub patent family and is listed as the attorney on RAH patents; Global IP Law Group, LLC appears as RAH's licensing/assertion counsel (the Feb. 2, 2016 demand letter to Quad/Graphics). A single law group carrying both prosecution and enforcement for an inventor-owned portfolio is a recognizable NPE-adjacent tell. I could not confirm LuKacher (or any attorney) as the recorded assignment correspondent because the reel/frame correspondence field was not retrieved — so this signal rests on portfolio-level recurrence, not on the assignment documents.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT. Two assignments spanning ~8 years (2005 and 2013), no chained LLCs, no transfers within 24 months of each other.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT. The 2013-05-14 merger predates the earliest identified '897 suit (RAH v. X-Rite, W.D. Mich. 1:14-cv-00638) but the gap appears to exceed six months, and the founding 2005 assignment predates '897 litigation by roughly nine years. (Exact X-Rite complaint date not confirmed in this session — flagged.)

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. No Chapter 7/11 proceeding. Imagicolor was "dissolved," but the patents moved into RAH rather than being sold in a bankruptcy estate.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT. There is no operating-company transferor asserting through a proxy; the patent was never held by an operating company.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — NOT PRESENT. The chain terminates at RAH Color Technologies LLC, an asserting entity. No RPX / AST / LOT / Unified / OIN link appears.

Verdict

NPE — high confidence.

Two strong signals drive the call: (i) the '897 patent sits in RAH Color Technologies LLC, a single-member Virginia LLC owned solely by the inventor, formed in 2005 "as a vehicle for an on-going licensing program," with no products in commerce (per RAH's own pleadings and the Adobe IPR record), and (ii) RAH is a documented high-volume patent plaintiff (MDL No. 2874 plus ~20 district-court matters). The chain is only two links long (2005 inventor→RAH assignment; 2013 same-name RAH merger) and ends with the asserting entity still owning the patent — no defensive aggregator neutralizes it. Important qualification: this is an inventor-owned licensing entity, not a classic acquired-from-an-operating-company troll shell, and I could not verify the reel/frame or assignment-correspondent fields, so my high-confidence call rests on the entity's admitted licensing-only purpose and its litigation footprint, not on a reconstructed shell-entity paper trail.

Verify the open item at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent 7312897 / application 11/246,965) — read the reel/frame and Correspondent fields on the two entries. The companion index is https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html.

I'll research this carefully. First, let me be clear about my tools and constraints, then search.

Important caveat up front: I have a general web-search tool, not direct USPTO/PatentCenter API access. So I can retrieve the USPTO record and third-party mirrors, but I cannot run a native USPTO "references cited" query. I'll flag anything I can't verify.

Let me run several targeted searches.

I have some leads. Let me now retrieve the actual front-page citation list for US 7,312,897 specifically, and verify the IPR petitioner.

Bottom line first

I could not fully complete this as specified, and I want to be precise about why before giving you what I can substantiate:

1. My tool is a general web search, not a USPTO API. I can reach the USPTO/PTAB document servers and third-party mirrors (Google Patents, FreePatentsOnline, IPVerse), but I cannot execute a native "References Cited" query against PatentCenter for application 11/246,965. So I cannot give you a 100%-verified, verbatim front-page citation list for US 7,312,897.
2. The authoritative full text you supplied does not include the claims of US 7,312,897. It is the specification/Definitions portion only (cutting off mid-Step 9 of Fig. 5). Anticipation under 35 U.S.C. § 102 requires a single reference disclosing every element of a claim. Without the issued claim text, any "this reference anticipates claim X" statement would be fabrication. I therefore give a reference-by-reference relevance analysis tied to claim categories, flagging that a true 1:1 mapping requires the claims.
3. I did run the search and I am excluding same/similar-number false positives (see the last section), per your instruction.

Below is everything I could ground, with provenance marked.

1. Bibliographic confirmation of the target patent (authoritative, from your supplied text)

Provenance note on the IPR: The Google Patents page you supplied lists IPR2019-00629 with a blank petitioner field. A search hit (IPVerse/GreyB) identifies it as Adobe Inc. v. RAH Color Technologies, LLC, IPR2019-00629. I could not independently pull the Board's institution/FWD text or the specific prior-art grounds, so treat that petitioner attribution as search-derived, not confirmed from the PTAB record.

2. What the citation list actually is (and the caveat)

Because 11/246,965 is a continuation in a large Holub family, the inventor/applicant filed nearly identical Information Disclosure Statements (IDS) across the family. The most complete machine-readable list I could retrieve is the IDS filed in related application 12/802,609 (another Holub continuation of the same disclosure), plus the front-page reference lists of sibling patents US 8,760,704 and US 8,917,394.

⚠️ Two caveats you must carry forward:

• This is a proxy list. The examiner's actual "References Cited" on the face of US 7,312,897 should be confirmed against PatentCenter for 11/246,965.
• The IDS I retrieved is a scanned/OCR document; some numbers render with obvious transcription noise (e.g., "4441120" for 4,441,120; "Grembeir" for "Schreiber," "Litt" for "Mui," "Gruvenkamp" for "Greivenkamp"). I have normalized the obvious ones but flag that dates/names should be verified.

3. U.S. patent documents cited (candidate "patent citations")

Dates are month/year as listed. "Bears on" = the claim category a reference could plausibly be asserted against; §102 theory keyed to the 1996-02-26 priority date (pre-AIA): a reference is §102(b) if published/patented before 1995-02-26, and §102(a)/(e) if before 1996-02-26 (U.S. patents also §102(e) as of their filing dates).

Highest-value single-reference targets: Nos. 24, 30, 31, 33, 35, 37 (the ones the inventor himself distinguished in the specification) — each is directed to one of the system's core novel elements, so these are where a §102 or §103 attack would most plausibly focus.

Specification-confirmed prior art (from your authoritative text), by name and number:

• U.S. 5,272,518 – Vincent ("portable spectral colorimeter … system-wide calibrations"; but no distributed-calibration implementation, no self-check/verification).
• U.S. 5,107,332 – Chan and U.S. 5,185,673 – Sobol ("closed-loop control of digital printers"; desktop-oriented; scanner-based).
• Kipphan et al. (color-bar → ink-density correction; off-line, not reading image area, no calibration self-check).
• U.S. 5,319,437 – Van Aken et al. (spectrophotometer; cited as the SOM example).
• Sodergard et al. (frame-grabbing from moving web; newspaper; insufficient precision).
• Garini / SpectraCube (spectral imaging).
• Eouzan et al. (= U.S. 5,231,481).
• Bonino et al. ("No. 5,309,257").

4. Non-patent literature cited

Foreign patents appearing on sibling front pages: EP 0 562 973 (03/1993) and EP 0 579 224 (01/1994) — both §102(b)-eligible foreign patent documents.

5. Honest §102 assessment (and its limits)

• I did not have the issued claims of US 7,312,897, so I am not asserting that any reference anticipates a specific numbered claim. Under §102, that requires element-by-element identity in a single reference — impossible to state accurately without the claim text.
• Date framework: Given the 1996-02-26 priority date, nearly every listed patent (through Van Aken, 06/1994) and most listed publications qualify as §102(b) statutory-bar art (before 1995-02-26). Van Aken (5,319,437) and Bonino (5,309,257) are §102(a)/(e)-type art.
• Where the art actually lands: The specification itself frames the invention as an improvement over Chan/Sobol (desktop closed-loop), Kipphan (off-line color-bar press control), Vincent (undistributed colorimeter), Eouzan/Bonino (non-colorimetric display control), and ICC/MCT (profile formats). That framing is a strong signal that these are the references a §102/§103 case would be built on — and equally that the applicant believed each lacked a limitation (e.g., distributed calibration, calibration verification, ≥4-colorant handling, image-area measurement, the "Virtual Proof" shared/local data structure).
• For a definitive anticipation opinion you must obtain: (a) the exact granted claims of US 7,312,897 from PatentCenter; and (b) the certified "References Cited" list from the 11/246,965 file wrapper (including any examiner-cited art not on my proxy IDS list). I can help analyze either if you supply them.

6. False positives I deliberately excluded (per your instruction)

The string "7312897" also matches, and I am not returning these as the patent:

• FR 7312897 A — a French application number (for publication FR 2179924 A1, a 1973 sunroof-locking device). Different jurisdiction, different subject matter.
• "DECOUPLE H1, 499.7312897 MHz" — an NMR spectrometer frequency in chemistry supporting-information PDFs.
• New Zealand company number 7312897 (JXP Trading Limited).
• "7,457,897 to Lee et al." in an unrelated Micron IPR exhibit.

If you want, tell me which of these outputs you'd like expanded — e.g., I can attempt to pull the IPR2019-00629 petition/FWD to identify the actual art Adobe asserted, or work through a supplied copy of the claim set to produce a true element-by-element §102 chart.

I'll ground this analysis with live searches before writing, since the fetched page is truncated before the claims and the prior-art citations in it need verification.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 7,312,897

"System for Distributing and Controlling Color Reproduction at Multiple Sites"
Inventor: Richard A. Holub · Assignee: RAH Color Technologies LLC · App. 11/246,965 (filed 2005‑10‑07) · Granted 2007‑12‑25 · Priority 1996‑02‑26 · Status: Expired – Fee Related (anticipated expiration 2016‑02‑26)
Source page: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US7312897](/patent/US7312897)/en

I. Evidentiary basis — and an important limitation on this opinion

What the source page actually gave me. The Google Patents page as fetched contains full bibliographic data, the classification set, the litigation/prosecution timeline, and the auto‑extracted "Definitions" section (which is the algorithmic summary of the Background of the Invention and Summary text), plus the figure list. It truncates inside the description (the text ends mid‑sentence in Step 9 of the calibration flow, FIG. 5). The claims are not present in the fetched text.

What I therefore treated as "the Prior Art section" of this page:

1. The "Prior art keywords" field: color, user interface, sites, user, image data (note: this is a machine‑generated keyword string, not a legal prior‑art designation — it should not be cited as § 102/§ 103 art).
2. The "Prior art date": 1996‑02‑26.
3. The substantive prior‑art discussion in the Background, which expressly cites: Hardy & Wurzburg (1948); Neugebauer (TAGA 1956) and U.S. Pat. No. 2,790,844; Schreiber U.S. Pat. No. 4,500,919; Pobboravsky (1962); Schwartz et al. (1985); Boll, A color to colorant transformation for a seven ink process, SPIE 2170 (1994); Gordon et al., On the rendition of unprintable colors, TAGA (1987); Holub et al., Color systems calibration for Graphic Arts, J. Imag. Technol. (1988); Vincent U.S. Pat. No. 5,272,518; Chan U.S. Pat. No. 5,107,332; Sobol U.S. Pat. No. 5,185,673; Kipphan et al. (Heidelberg on‑press colorimetry); Södergård et al. (1993 and 1995, TAGA); Garini (SpectraCube); Eouzan et al.; Bonino et al.; the Metric Color Tag (MCT) Specification, Rev. 1.1d (1993), Electronics for Imaging; the ICC Profile Format v3.01 (May 8, 1995); Van Aken et al. U.S. Pat. No. 5,319,437; CIE Publication 15.2 (1986); and ANSI IT8.7/2‑1993.

Caveat I will not paper over. Because the claim text is absent from the fetched page, I verified the operative language of claims 32, 33 and 37 against the PTAB record for Adobe Inc. v. RAH Color Technologies, LLC, IPR2019‑00629 (which I independently retrieved). I do not have the full text of independent claim 32 or of claims 1–31/34–37+ and I will not fabricate it. Any statement about those claims is flagged as an inference.

II. Governing law and the critical date

• The application was filed 2005‑10‑07, before the AIA first‑to‑file provisions took effect, and it claims § 120 benefit back through 08/606,883 (filed 1996‑02‑26, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,034,909), via 09/229,995 / 10/040,664, etc. (pre‑AIA 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)) governs.
• The patent's stated prior‑art date is 1996‑02‑26, and the Office's anticipated expiration is 2016‑02‑26 — consistent with a 1996 effective filing date for the disclosure.
• Two‑date problem worth flagging. The claims as issued in 2007 were prosecuted in continuation applications; if any claim is not supported by the 1996 disclosure under § 112 ¶ 1, its effective date slides to 1999, 2002 or 2005 — which would sweep in a much larger body of art (this is precisely why the IPR petitioner relied on mid/late‑1990s printed publications such as Scott‑Taggart and Stone, and on the 1994 Photoshop 3.0 User Guide). Priority is a § 112 issue, not a § 103 issue, but it determines which art is available. The PTAB instituted only on grounds where the art predated 1996, so my § 103 analysis below assumes the 1996 date — the conservative, patent‑owner‑friendly assumption.

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

Based on the field and the art cited on the page, the POSITA is a color imaging scientist/engineer with (a) a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, computer science, imaging science or physics, and (b) roughly 2–3 years' experience in graphic arts color management, colorimetry, or digital printing/proofing systems; or a master's degree plus ~1 year. The POSITA is familiar with CIE colorimetry (Pub. 15.2), device‑independent color spaces (CIELAB/CIEXYZ), polynomial/regression models of colorant mixture (Pobboravsky; Schwartz; Boll), colorant‑to‑colorant transformation tables, ICC profiles and the metric color tag concept, spectral and imaging colorimetry, and conventional LAN/WAN data transfer. This definition is consistent with the technical level of the art cited on the page and with the level implicitly applied in the IPR.

IV. The claim limitations at issue

Verbatim text recovered from the IPR record:

• Claim 33 (depends from 32): "The method according to claim 32 wherein said user preferences include at least one aspect of the utilization of one or more neutral colorants." — https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1523317](/patent/1523317)/download-documents?artifactId=vhx_p3DQF3tBuiERjkyAP2AqH4DtRIQhUGIYbohQ6MsVp18u4fgpivk
• Claim 37 (depends from 32): "The method according to claim 32 wherein said user preferences are capable of being expressed at least in part by annotations to the image data, said annotations being displayable with but separable from said image data and shareable between two or more said sites." — https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/1523317/download-documents?artifactId=0oY_K7TNmrEgnrXA0gi_Jkxwi47pMeH6yANA0qx519Zet_o24WAQUK8
• Claim 32 (independent; partial): "…providing an interface through which said user is able to select one or more sites, each having one or more color input or output devices, wherein at least one of said sites is capable of being remotely located with respect to said user" — https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/1523317/download-documents?artifactId=4QAZis-8F8_CofFAk1rfhDFNExBq6jml1uhp3hHXzUitOB0z71jHsVU

From the Board's and the parties' treatment, claim 32 further involves networked color management: selection of sites/devices over a network, user preferences for color reproduction, at least one color transformation for the selected device(s), and gamuts of the color devices. I treat those as the operative limitations; a final opinion would require the issued claim text.

V. The references from the page's prior‑art discussion — what each teaches, and what the patent says is missing

The single most damaging admission on the page. Speaking of production nodes, the patent states that the node circuitry "interfaces with inking control systems of the production rendering device to maintain its color quality during volume reproduction … by supporting on‑line colorimetry from a CMI within image areas of printed sheets. Analysis of the CMI data can be used to produce error signals in CIELAB color difference units … suitable for interface to commercially available inking control systems." That is the patent describing its own production‑node feature as an interface to existing commercial equipment. It is a powerful obviousness admission for any claim directed to measurement‑in‑image‑area + CIELAB error + press control.

VI. Grounds of rejection under § 103

Legal framework applied: Graham v. John Deere, 383 U.S. 1 (1966); KSR Int'l v. Teleflex, 550 U.S. 398 (2007) (predictable variation; "obvious to try" with a finite number of identified, predictable solutions; design incentives/market forces); In re Kahn / KSR (articulated reasoning with rational underpinning); MPEP § 2143 (exemplary rationales: (A) combine prior art elements according to known methods to yield predictable results; (B) simple substitution of one known element for another; (C) use of known technique to improve similar devices in the same way; (D) applying a known technique to a known device ready for improvement; (E) obvious to try; (F) known work in one field prompting variations for use in the same or different field based on design incentives; (G) some teaching, suggestion or motivation in the prior art).

Ground 1 — Vincent + ICC Profile Format + Chan/Sobol (+ Bonino, Van Aken)

Mapping. Vincent supplies the color measuring instrument at a node and the express objective of consistent color across a network. ICC v3.01 supplies the transform data structure / profile — a data table containing color‑conversion information that is transmissible between machines and separable‑but‑associable with image data — which is exactly the "information for transforming the input color image data into output color image data … stored in the data structure in different ones of the shared and other components" concept. Chan/Sobol supply the closed loop: render a calibration form, measure it, compare to expectation, derive correction coefficients, revise the transform. Bonino supplies harmonizing output across multiple, networked devices. Van Aken supplies an instrument design that is self‑referencing and therefore verifiable.

Motivation (rationales A, C, F). Vincent names the problem (consistent color across a network) but does not implement it; ICC supplies the industry‑standard vessel (a profile file) for carrying transformation data between nodes; Chan/Sobol supply the conventional measurement‑driven correction loop to keep each node in tolerance; Bonino supplies the multi‑device harmonization objective. These are interrelated teachings addressing the same problem, and the combination is a predictable aggregation with no change in the function of any element (KSR; MPEP 2143(A)). A POSITA would also be led to it by design incentive: the page's own background states that distributed printing "from site to site" causes color variation with "only limited means of coordinating control of product appearance among sites."

Reasonable expectation of success. High. Every element was known to work; the only engineering step is choosing a storage/transport format, and ICC was the recognized standard.

Weak spot. The patent argues Vincent provides "no provision for verification of calibration." That is a gap‑in‑one‑reference argument, which Chan/Sobol's closed loop closes; it does not negate the combination.

Ground 2 — Kipphan + Södergård (+ Vincent; ± the commercial inking control systems)

Mapping. Kipphan: measurement in CIE color coordinates, comparison to aim values, conversion to ink corrections, delivery to press inking controls, and SPC — i.e., "means for verifying … that the information … properly transformed the input color image data" and "means for revising." Södergård: image‑area capture on a running press, keyed to the digital page description, closing the loop to production machinery. Together they give the "control and coordinate multiple‑site parallel volume production … by interfacing with feedback control for production machinery" recited in the patent's own objects.

Motivation (rationales B, D, F — and a nearly perfect complementarity argument). The two references solve mirror‑image halves of the same problem: Kipphan is colorimetrically rigorous but off‑line and blind to the image area; Södergård sees the image area but is not precise enough for high‑quality color reproduction. The patent itself states both deficiencies. Combining a precise marginal color‑bar measurement with image‑area imaging to obtain precise image‑area colorimetry is the paradigmatic "simple substitution of one known element for another" and "use of a known technique to improve a similar device in the same way." The POSITA would additionally be driven by the express demand of the market (startup waste, regional quality variation) recited in the background.

Expectation of success. High. Both systems were in commercial/industrial use; combining them changes neither function. The patent's own preferred embodiment (an imagical on the press feeding CIELAB error signals to commercially available inking control systems) is a description of this combination.

Ground 3 — Neugebauer (U.S. 2,790,844) / Schreiber (U.S. 4,500,919) + ICC + Vincent (soft‑proof / display nodes)

Mapping. Neugebauer expressly discloses soft proofing by projecting video images onto the actual paper stock, with matched surround illumination and viewing conditions — the direct ancestor of the claimed prototype nodes comprising a video display rendering device. Schreiber discloses matching hard copy to the monitor (the reverse direction), i.e., the two‑way correspondence a POSITA needs to represent one device with another. Vincent supplies the display‑measurement instrument; ICC supplies the profile exchange. This addresses the display‑node and cross‑device ("device A represents device B") aspects of the claimed system, and the "3 or 4 colorants, and more than four" aspect is supplied by Boll (7‑ink) in combination with Schwartz (GCR/multiple colorimetrically equivalent solutions).

Motivation (rationales A, C, E, F). Representing a press on a display is the stated purpose of the reference set; the soft‑proof objective and the network‑distribution objective are complementary, and the finite set of known implementations (projection soft proof, hard‑copy proof, display calibration) makes the selection an "obvious to try" among predictable solutions.

Ground 4 — Sugiura + Beretta (as actually asserted in IPR2019‑00629) — claim 32

Mapping. Beretta discloses a graphical user interface for constructing gamut mappings adapting image colors to specific printers with narrower gamuts, previewing the result, and printing to a network printer — this covers the "gamuts of said color devices" and "interface" elements plus a color transformation. Sugiura discloses a network allowing printers/scanners to be shared among heterogeneous host computers, including protocols for selecting an SP server (site) and a destination printer when an application requests printing — this covers "select one or more sites, each having … color input or output devices, … remotely located with respect to said user."

Motivation (rationales A, C, F). Both address printing color images from a computer; Beretta requires a network printer but does not say how it is selected, and Sugiura supplies precisely that selection mechanism. Petitioner's articulated rationale — a technique used to improve one device deployed to improve a similar device in the same way, uniting old elements with no change in function — was accepted at institution and the Board instituted on this ground. https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/1523317/download-documents?artifactId=4QAZis-8F8_CofFAk1rfhDFNExBq6jml1uhp3hHXzUitOB0z71jHsVU

Patent owner's counter. RAH argued Beretta and Sugiura say nothing about "standard color space conversion" being actually applied (Sugiura's discussion being exploratory and uncited to figures) and that the transforms were inadequate for high‑quality work. The Board's institution reasoning — and the general rule that prior art need not be a superior implementation, and that a POSITA dissatisfied with a disclosed transform knows how to substitute a better known transform — cuts strongly against that argument.

Ground 5 — Newman + Kuwamoto (+ Photoshop 3.0 User Guide) — claims 32, 33 and 37

Mapping. Newman supplies a color image processing/calibration system operating in a device‑independent database color encoding, with network workstations. Kuwamoto supplies a user interface for selecting network input/output devices. The Photoshop 3.0 User Guide supplies:

• Claim 33 (neutral colorant utilization preference): the "Separation Setup" dialog with Gray Component Replacement / Undercolor Removal settings, including Maximum/Medium/Custom levels and an adjustable black generation curve — i.e., the user specifying "aspect[s] of the utilization of one or more neutral colorants." Independently corroborated by Schwartz et al. (1985) (multiple colorimetrically equivalent 4‑colorant solutions differing in black) and Boll (1994) (GCR in >4‑colorant separation).
• Claim 37 (separable, shareable annotations): the Type tool writes text over an image without altering the underlying image data; combined with Newman/Sugiura's network file transfer, the annotation is "displayable with but separable from said image data and shareable between two or more said sites."

Motivation (rationales A, C, D, F). Newman expressly contemplates "further 'input' processing" of stored images, creating a specific design need that Photoshop meets; Kuwamoto's device‑selection interface supplies what Newman's system lacks; and GCR/UCR preferences are the standard, documented way a user controls black utilization when preparing separations. The Board instituted on this ground for all three claims. Notably, the patent's own description states that conferencing "may use video displays 17 (soft proofs) of the page layouts using remote annotation software, such as imagexpo," and that shared components of the Virtual Proof "store color preferences selected by a user" — i.e., the specification itself treats remote annotation software and user color preferences as known, off‑the‑shelf elements.

Ground 6 — "Obvious to try" / system‑level ground (KSR rationale E)

Stepping back: every element of the claimed system was individually known — (i) device characterization via spectral measurement (Vincent; Van Aken; ANSI IT8.7/2‑1993); (ii) forward models of colorant mixture and their inversion by gradient/Newton search (Hardy & Wurzburg; Pobboravsky; Schwartz; the patent's own Step 4–Step 6 description, which relies on Newton‑Raphson, Simplex, simulated annealing — all textbook numerical methods); (iii) gamut operators and gamut descriptors (Gordon 1987; the patent's FIG. 14 discussion); (iv) profile/transform exchange formats (MCT 1993; ICC v3.01 1995); (v) network distribution of pages and profiles to remote sites (Vincent's network remark; ICC embedding; the general WAN/LAN/Internet state of the art); (vi) closed‑loop press control (Kipphan; Chan; Sobol; Södergård); and (vii) user preference capture via a GUI (MCT; ICC; commercial separation dialogs). Where the invention lies is in the architectural assembly — a distributed, verifiable, transform‑carrying data structure shared among nodes. Under KSR, combining a finite, identified, predictable set of known solutions to a recognized problem (site‑to‑site color variation), where the art itself supplies the direction (Vincent's network remark; the ICC profile's purpose), is obvious to try.

VII. Corroboration from the actual adjudicative record

This is not a hypothetical. IPR2019‑00629 (Petitioner: Adobe Inc.) was filed 2019‑02‑01, instituted on claims 32, 33 and 37, and the Board's Final Written Decision (8 Oct 2020, Paper 121) held that Petitioner demonstrated by a preponderance of the evidence that claims 32, 33 and 37 of the '897 patent are unpatentable. See https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/ptab/case/IPR2019-00629 and the docket entry for Paper 121 at https://www.docketalarm.com/search/?q=patent:(7312897). The institution decision declined to institute on the Sugiura+Stone grounds because Stone was not shown to qualify as a prior‑art printed publication — a § 102 evidentiary failure, not a § 103 merits holding. I have not verified which specific instituted ground carried each of the three claims; I will not assert one.

Two practical consequences:

1. The § 103 conclusion below is not merely an analyst's prediction — it has been adjudicated, on a subset of claims only.
2. Only claims 32, 33, and 37 were adjudicated. A complete § 103 opinion on the patent must chart the remaining issued claims (the patented family member U.S. 8,760,704, for example, recites 42 claims), and each independent claim must be assessed on its own limitations. My conclusion for claims 32/33/37 is high‑confidence; for the unchallenged claims it is provisional.

VIII. Secondary considerations and the patentee's likely rebuttals

IX. Bottom line, with explicit confidence levels

1. Claims 32, 33 and 37 are obvious under pre‑AIA § 103(a). Confidence: high — the Board so held on this record (FWD, 2020‑10‑08), on grounds including Sugiura + Beretta and Newman + Kuwamoto + Photoshop 3.0 User Guide.
2. Combinations drawn solely from the sources cited in the patent's own prior‑art discussion also render the disclosed system obvious, independent of the IPR references: Vincent + ICC Profile Format + Chan/Sobol (+ Bonino, Van Aken) for the distributed measurement/transform/verification architecture; Kipphan + Södergård for image‑area colorimetric press control; Neugebauer/Schreiber + ICC + Boll/Schwartz for cross‑device soft/hard proofing, GCR and >4‑colorant rendering. Confidence: moderate‑to‑high for these grounds as prima facie § 103 rejections; the mapping would need to be re‑run against the issued claim text limitation by limitation.
3. Weakest links in any rejection: (a) any claim requiring verification of the CMI itself (self‑calibration of the measuring instrument and traceable re‑calibration), for which Vincent was expressly criticized and Van Aken's dual‑beam design is the best available answer; (b) any claim requiring annotation objects separable from image data and shareable across sites, where the art is thinner and the best support is the specification's own reference to imagexpo-type software plus general network file sharing; (c) any claim whose full scope I have not seen.
4. What would change my view: (i) proof that the 1996 disclosure does not support the issued claims, which would move the critical date forward and add art (raising the obviousness risk); (ii) claim constructions of "sites," "appear substantially the same," or "user preferences" that import geographic/structural limitations not present in the art (the district court in N.D. Cal. identified "sites," "appear substantially the same," and "interactive conference" as requiring construction, and no PTAB decision construed them); (iii) a properly authenticated, pre‑1996 record of unexpected results or industry praise with nexus.

Note on the patent's status: the page lists the '897 patent as Expired – Fee Related, with anticipated expiration 2016‑02‑26. Even so, the IPR FWD means claims 32, 33 and 37 were adjudicated unpatentable, and any validity analysis of the remaining claims should start from that record rather than from the presumption of validity alone.