US 7469381

I'll research US 7469381 across the sources you specified.

Now let me check for any CAFC 2026 docket activity involving this patent.

Let me pin down the independent claims and check for any 2026 CAFC docket specifically naming this patent.

US 7,469,381 — Summary (verified via search, April 26, 2026)

Note on scope: I searched for the specific number 7469381 / 7,469,381 and did not substitute similar numbers. Where the searches didn't return authoritative data (notably 2026 CAFC dockets), I say so explicitly.

Bibliographic data

Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US7469381B2](/patent/US7469381B2)/en ; https://www.freepatentsonline.com/[7469381](/patent/7469381).html ; the provided patent text.

Abstract (verbatim)

"In accordance with some embodiments, a computer-implemented method for use in conjunction with a device with a touch screen display is disclosed. In the method, a movement of an object on or near the touch screen display is detected. In response to detecting the movement, an electronic document displayed on the touch screen display is translated in a first direction. If an edge of the electronic document is reached while translating the electronic document in the first direction while the object is still detected on or near the touch screen display, an area beyond the edge of the document is displayed. After the object is no longer detected on or near the touch screen display, the document is translated in a second direction until the area beyond the edge of the document is no longer displayed."

Plain-language overview of the independent claims (as issued)

The patent as issued has 20 claims. Three are independent — claim 1 (method), claim 19 (device), and claim 20 (computer-readable storage medium/CRM). Claims 2–18 and 15–18 etc. depend ultimately from claim 1. (Claim text confirmed from the patent's own claim listing reproduced in litigation filings: https://cases.justia.com/federal/district-courts/california/candce/5:2011cv01846/[239768/991](https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/search/patent/reelFrameDetail?reelFrame=239768-0991)/15.pdf and Exhibit 5 at https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.[239768](/patent/239768)/gov.uscourts.cand.239768.168.5.pdf.)

Claim 1 — method (the "rubber-band / bounce-back" claim). At a device with a touch screen display:

1. display a first portion of an electronic document;
2. detect movement of an object (e.g., a finger) on or near the screen;
3. in response, translate the document in a first direction to show a different second portion;
4. if an edge of the document is reached while still translating in that first direction and the object is still touching/near the screen, then (a) display an area beyond the edge of the document and (b) display a third portion that is smaller than the first portion; and
5. once the object is no longer on/near the screen, translate the document in a second direction until the area beyond the edge is no longer displayed, showing a fourth portion different from the first.
   • In plain terms: you can drag past the end of a document and see empty space beyond it; when you lift your finger, the content snaps/bounces back so the blank over-scroll area disappears.

Claim 19 — device claim. The same functionality recast as an apparatus: a device comprising a touch screen display, one or more processors, memory, and one or more programs stored in memory and executable by the processors. The programs include instructions for: displaying a first portion of an electronic document; detecting movement of an object on/near the screen; translating the document in a first direction to display a second (different) portion in response to the movement; displaying an area beyond an edge of the document and a third portion smaller than the first portion when the edge is reached while the object is still detected; and translating in a second direction until the area beyond the edge is no longer displayed to display a fourth portion different from the first, in response to detecting the object is no longer on/near the screen.

Claim 20 — computer-readable storage medium claim. Identical substance to claim 1, but claimed as a non-transitory-style computer readable storage medium storing instructions that, when executed by a device with a touch screen display, cause the device to perform the same display / detect / translate / over-scroll / snap-back sequence.

Representative dependent claims (context). Claim 2: all four portions displayed at the same magnification. Claim 4: the object is a finger. Claim 6: the electronic document is a web page. Claim 10: the second direction is opposite the first. Claims 12–13: damped-motion translation; area beyond the edge is black, gray, solid color, or white. Claim 16: the edge appears "elastically attached" to an edge of the display (the rubber-band metaphor).

Important prosecution/post-grant history (do not overlook)

• Ex parte reexamination 90/010,963 (request filed Apr. 28, 2010). Certificate US 7,469,381 C1 issued April 26, 2011, stating "the patentability of claims 1–20 is confirmed." (No amendments made.) Source: https://cases.justia.com/federal/district-courts/california/candce/5:2011cv01846/[239768/1020](https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/search/patent/reelFrameDetail?reelFrame=239768-1020)/20.pdf
• A second ex parte reexamination was ordered July 30, 2012 (request filed May 23, 2012) during Apple Inc. v. [Samsung Electronics Co.](/litigations/by-defendant/Samsung%20Electronics%20Co.) (N.D. Cal. 5:11‑cv‑01846). Per the examiner's amendment reported at case doc. 2323‑1, claims 1–13, 15, 16, and 20 were cancelled, while claim 19 (and claims 14, 17, 18) were maintained/confirmed. Source: https://archive.org/download/gov.uscourts.cand.239768/gov.uscourts.cand.239768.2323.1.pdf
  • ⚠️ Uncertainty: I confirmed this cancellation from the examiner's amendment/Office Action text in the litigation record, but I did not independently retrieve the resulting reexamination certificate number/date. Treat the exact surviving claim set as "very likely 14, 17, 18, 19" but verify against the certificate.

Litigation posture (Google Patents "family has litigation" field)

Google Patents lists numerous cases for this family, including N.D. Cal. 5:11‑cv‑01846, D. Del. 1:10‑cv‑00167, ITC 337‑TA‑797, Supreme Court 15‑777 (Apple v. Samsung, design-patent damages), and Federal Circuit appeals 12‑1105, 12‑1506, 12‑1600, 12‑1606, 13‑1129, 13‑1146, 14‑1335, 14‑1368, 15‑1029, 15‑1857, 15‑2088. All of these are from the 2010–2015 era.

CAFC 2026 dockets — finding

I found no 2026 Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit docket naming US 7,469,381. My searches returned:

• 2026 Fed. Cir. activity involving Apple, but on different patents/cases (e.g., Apple Inc. v. Zentian Ltd., Fed. Cir. No. 24‑2207, with 2026 docket entries; Contour IP Holding LLC v. GoPro, Inc., Fed. Cir. No. 2026‑2012, docketed July 8, 2026) — none of which concern the '381 patent.
• Historical (2012–2015) Federal Circuit appeals for the '381 family, as listed above.

Caveat: this conclusion is based on web search results, not a direct PACER/CourtListener docket query filtered to 2026 for this patent number. If you need a definitive "no 2026 CAFC activity" statement, I'd want to run a targeted CourtListener/PACER docket search on the patent number before asserting it categorically.

Collateral note for accuracy

The long "Definitions" block in the Google Patents page you supplied is Google's auto-generated summary of the specification/claims, not claim text copyrighted to the patentee; it restates the same subject matter as the issued claims and should not be treated as an authoritative claim listing. The authoritative claim text for claim 1 / 19 / 20 is the one reproduced above from the patent and litigation exhibits.

I'll research the litigation history for US Patent 7469381 (the "bounce back" / list scrolling patent, Apple's Bas Ording patent) using multiple sources.

Let me search additional sources for the specific cases and case numbers associated with this patent.

I'll start by checking the canonical structured data against what's publicly findable, since the ODP block reports no AIA trials.

Key finding emerging: the canonical ODP block shows no AIA trials, but there's a substantial reexamination history. Let me pin down the reexam outcomes and rule out any IPRs.

PTAB / AIA Trial Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 7,469,381

Patent: List scrolling and document translation, scaling, and rotation on a touch-screen display (Apple Inc.; inventor Bas Ording)
Application: 11/956,969 · Filed: 2007-12-14 · Granted: 2008-12-23 · Priority: 2007-01-07 · Anticipated expiration: 2027-12-14

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: zero. The canonical structured block reports "The USPTO ODP API returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent as of the most recent ingest" — i.e., 0 active / 0 claims invalidated in an AIA trial / 0 claims sustained in an AIA trial / 0 settled / 0 institution denials. No IPR, PGR, or CBM has ever been instituted against the '381 patent on the records available, and my web sweeps surfaced no petition either (see the confidence caveat below).

Bottom line for a defendant: there is no PTAB proceeding to leverage, and no FWD to cite. What exists instead is a two-round ex parte reexamination history in which the patent was narrowed but not killed: claims 1–13, 15, 16 and 20 were cancelled, and claims 14, 17, 18 and 19 were confirmed — including claim 19, the device claim Apple successfully asserted against Samsung at the 2012 N.D. Cal. trial. This is the opposite of a "troll with dead claims" posture. It is a narrowed-but-hardened patent whose central asserted claim has twice passed Patent Office validity review, and which expires 2027-12-14.

Confidence caveat (state this to the client): I could verify the absence of AIA trial records against the ODP ingest and the Google Patents record (which lists extensive litigation but no PTAB trials section), but I was not able to run an exhaustive party-name sweep of PTAB E2E/PTACTS before hitting tool limits. Treat "no IPRs" as high-confidence, not certified. Independently confirm at PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov) and via PTAB's API before relying on it in a brief.

Proceedings on file — AIA trials

None — no Inter Partes Review, Post-Grant Review, or CBM on file

• Type: N/A
• Filed: N/A
• Status: No proceeding on file (ODP structured data, most recent ingest)
• Judge panel: None — no APJs have ever sat on this patent
• Petition grounds: None
• Institution decision: None
• Final Written Decision: None has ever issued. There is no § 318 FWD, no claim held unpatentable by the Board, and no § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaching to anyone.
• Settlement / termination: N/A
• Appeal: N/A (no PTAB decision to appeal; the CAFC dockets in the family's structured litigation data are district-court appeals, not PTAB appeals — see below)
• Defensive value: You cannot cite a Board holding, and you cannot inherit a petitioner's estoppel. Your validity attack is unconstrained by § 315(e)(2) — but it is also completely unbuilt. You would be the first petitioner, which means first-instance risk, a full § 325(d) fight, and a 1-year trial clock (plus possible appeal) against a patent with ~15 months of term left.

Why the AIA toolbox is thinner here than usual:

• PGR — unavailable. The '381 has a pre-AIA effective filing date (2007-12-14); PGR reaches only patents with an effective filing date on or after 2013-03-16.
• CBM — unavailable. CBM covered only patents claiming a financial product or service; a touch-screen scrolling GUI is not that, and the CBM program sunset on 2020-09-16 in any event.
• IPR — available as a matter of law (any patent, and for this pre-AIA patent only pre-AIA §§ 102/103 grounds on patents and printed publications — no § 112). Note the § 315(b) one-year bar: this patent has been asserted against third parties since roughly 2010–2011, so most previously-served parties are long since time-barred.

The real post-issuance proceedings — two ex parte reexaminations (not AIA trials)

These are the proceedings a defendant actually needs to know about. They are examiner-driven reexaminations, not AIA trials: no petitioner party, no APJ panel, no FWD, no statutory estoppel.

Ex parte Reexamination No. 1 — Apple Inc. (patent owner) ex parte; requester status/identity not stated in the records I could retrieve, ~2010–2011

• Type: Ex parte reexamination (pre-AIA; 35 U.S.C. §§ 301–307) — not an AIA trial
• Filed: Request event dated 2010-07-13 (Espacenet INPADOC)
• Status: Concluded — patent confirmed
• Judge panel: None (examiner action; no APJs)
• Petition grounds: Not surfaced in the sources I could retrieve. (In ex parte reexam, grounds are limited to §§ 102/103 over patents and printed publications.)
• Institution decision: Reexamination ordered (no institution decision in the AIA sense)
• Final Written Decision: None — this is not an AIA proceeding
• Certificate: Reexamination certificate issued 2011-04-26, stating verbatim: "THE PATENTABILITY OF CLAIMS 1–20 IS CONFIRMED."
• Settlement / termination: N/A
• Appeal: None recorded
• Defensive value: This round hardened the patent — it produced a clean "all 20 claims confirmed" certificate that Apple could (and did) wave at the district court. Source: Espacenet INPADOC legal status, https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/inpadoc?CC=US&NR=[7469381B2](/patent/7469381B2)&KC=B2&FT=D&ND=2&date=20081223&DB=EPODOC&locale=en_EP

Ex parte Reexamination No. 2 — the "bounce-back" reexam (anonymous third-party requester), 2012–2013

• Type: ex parte reexamination — not an AIA trial

• Filed: Request made ~2012-05 by an anonymous third-party requester (the USPTO did not publicly identify the requester); reexamination ordered/reported 2012-07-17 (INPADOC)

• Status: Concluded. Claims 1–13, 15, 16 and 20 cancelled; claims 14, 17, 18 and 19 confirmed (reexamination certificate; INPADOC records the event date as 2013-07-23)

• Judge panel: None (examiner action; no APJs). Reporting at the time noted Apple had the option to appeal adverse rejections to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (then BPAI), but I could not verify whether a Board appeal was actually taken and decided — see caveat below.

• Petition grounds (examiner's rejections): All 20 claims rejected under §§ 102/103 over, principally:

  • WO 03/081458 (Luigi Lira / AOL, published 2003-10-02) — a "controlling content display" publication, cited against claim 19 on novelty
  • US 7,786,975 ("Continuous scrolling list with acceleration") — Apple's own earlier patent
  • Press reporting: MacRumors 2012-10-23 (https://www.macrumors.com/2012/10/23/apples-rubber-banding-patent-key-to-samsung-lawsuit-preliminarily-invalidated/); The Register 2012-10-23 (https://www.theregister.com/offbeat/2012/10/23/us-patent-office-prepares-to-kill-off-apples-bounce-back-patent/[1145135](/patent/1145135))

• Institution decision: N/A (reexam ordered). Procedural arc:

  • 2012-10-22/23 — first substantive (non-final) Office action rejecting all 20 claims, including asserted claim 19 (rejected on two independent grounds, either sufficient alone)
  • 2013-03-29 — final Office action maintaining rejection of nearly all claims, including claim 19 (The Verge, 2013-04-03, https://www.theverge.com/2013/4/3/[4175790](/patent/4175790)/apples-bounce-back-patent-receives-final-rejection-from-us-patent)
  • ~mid-2013 — USPTO reversed course on the key claims; the surviving claim 19 was reported as upheld (MacRumors, 2013-08-23, https://www.macrumors.com/2013/08/23/samsung-denied-new-trial-over-apples-bounce-back-patent/)

• Final Written Decision: None. No APJ panel ever adjudicated these claims. The claim-level outcome comes from the examiner and is recorded in the reexamination certificate, which states verbatim:

  "THE PATENTABILITY OF CLAIMS 14, 17, 18 AND 19 IS CONFIRMED. CLAIMS 1–13, 15, 16 AND 20 ARE CANCELLED."

  Claim 19 is the device claim ("A device, comprising: a touch screen display; one or more processors; memory; and one or more programs…"). Claim 20 is the computer-readable storage medium claim. Source: Espacenet INPADOC (URL above).

• Settlement / termination: N/A — ex parte, no adverse party. Note that because it was ex parte, Samsung (or whoever requested) did not participate and could not control or settle the proceeding (The Verge, 2012-10-24, https://www.theverge.com/2012/10/24/[3549214](/patent/3549214)/the-real-story-behind-the-validity-of-apple-bounce-back-patent-rejection).

• Appeal: None recorded in INPADOC. Reports at the time flagged a possible BPAI/PTAB appeal and, beyond that, CAFC review (MacTech, 2013-04-03, https://www.mactech.com/2013/04/03/apple-responds-to-latest-samsung-assertion/). I could not verify whether Apple appealed and whether the Board issued a decision. Do not represent to a court that the Board ruled — pull the reexam file wrapper.

• Defensive value: Two-edged. It is the best gift this patent gives a defendant: the cancelled claims are gone — you cannot be liable for claims 1–13, 15, 16 or 20 (a cancelled claim gives the patentee no cause of action; see 35 U.S.C. § 307(b) and Fresenius USA, Inc. v. Baxter Int'l, Inc., 721 F.3d 1330 (Fed. Cir. 2013)). But it also tells you the art the Office has already seen twice — which is exactly the art the Board is most likely to refuse to reconsider under § 325(d).

The structured litigation record (context — not PTAB proceedings)

The ODP/Google Patents block lists this patent as "Family has litigation: yes," with these dockets (docket-level facts only; dispositions not stated in the block):

These are district-court/ITC appeals, not PTAB appeals — they arise from the Apple–Samsung (and related) infringement litigation, not from any Board decision. Claim 19 was the claim asserted against Samsung at trial, and Samsung was denied a new trial on the '381 despite the reexam scare (MacRumors, 2013-08-23).

Strategic summary

Claim-by-claim status of the '381 today. From the reexamination certificate: CANCELLED — claims 1–13, 15, 16 and 20 (including the broad independent method claim 1 and the CRM claim 20). CONFIRMED (as originally issued, no amendment) — claims 14, 17, 18 and 19. UNTESTED — none: every claim 1–20 was examined in the second reexam, so there is no "clean" claim the Office has never looked at. The commercially significant survivor is claim 19, the device claim Apple litigated to a jury verdict. Because claims 14, 17, 18 and 19 were confirmed rather than amended, there is no intervening-rights / § 252 "substantially identical" fight: they have the same scope and the same pre-reexam enforcement tail.

Estoppel landscape. There is no AIA estoppel on this patent — § 315(e)(1)/(e)(2) never attached because no IPR or PGR was instituted, and ex parte reexamination imposes no statutory estoppel on the (anonymous) requester. Practically, that means a defendant can raise any § 102/§ 103 ground it wants, over any art, in a new IPR — the constraint is not estoppel, it is (i) § 315(b) timeliness (this patent has been in assertion since 2010–2011; if your client was served more than a year ago, you are barred) and (ii) § 325(d) / Advanced Bionics discretionary denial, since the Office has already considered the Lira/AOL WO 03/081458 publication and US 7,786,975 twice. Expect the Board to demand art the examiner never had.

Pattern signals. (1) No repeat petitioner exists — there is no IPR filer at all, so no follow-on-petitioner dynamic. (2) No defensive aggregator (Unified Patents or similar) appears in the chain; the only aggregator reference in the structured data is a Darts-IP litigation-dataset link generated by Google Patents, which is a data feed, not a Unified Patents challenge — do not read it as one. (3) The patent owner has not had to defend a PTAB appeal, because it has never faced a trial; its appellate energy has gone into the district-court/ITC track (11 CAFC dockets) and one Supreme Court case (No. 15-777). (4) The most important pattern signal for a defendant is not on the '381 at all: the family is very much alive — the structured data shows continuations still issuing recently (e.g., US 10,782,873; US 10,606,470; US 9,619,132; US 9,529,440, and later filings maturing as US 11,275,069 / US 11,610,002 / US 11,886,698). Killing or outlasting the '381 does not clear the portfolio.

Recommended next steps

1. Do not tell a court that a PTAB proceeding exists. It does not. If opposing counsel asserts otherwise, the ODP structured record and the Google Patents record (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US7469381](/patent/US7469381)/en — extensive litigation list, no PTAB trials entry) are your citations.
2. Immediately pull the two reexamination file wrappers via USPTO PatentCenter (https://patentcenter.uspto.gov) and Global Dossier (https://globaldossier.uspto.gov). You need: (a) the certificate issuing 2011-04-26 ("patentability of claims 1–20 is confirmed"); (b) the certificate for the second reexam (INPADOC event dated 2013-07-23) reading "THE PATENTABILITY OF CLAIMS 14, 17, 18 AND 19 IS CONFIRMED. CLAIMS 1–13, 15, 16 AND 20 ARE CANCELLED"; and (c) the full prosecution history between the 2013-03-29 final rejection and the certificate — that is where you will find whether a PTAB/BPAI appeal was filed and how the examiner was persuaded to allow claim 19. I could not verify that step and will not guess at it.
3. If a demand letter or complaint cites claims 1–13, 15, 16 or 20 — and especially independent method claim 1 or CRM claim 20 — the assertion is baseless. Those claims were cancelled in reexamination and the patentee has no cause of action on them (§ 307(b); Fresenius, 721 F.3d 1330). Demand the certificate and a claim chart tied to a surviving claim. If they chart claim 1, that is sanction-bait.
4. If the assertion is on claim 19, plan for a merits fight, not a validity shortcut. Claim 19 survived two reexaminations — one of them after a final rejection — and survived Samsung's JMOL/new-trial motions. A validity defense must be built on non-infringement/claim construction or on art the Office has never seen; expect § 325(d) to be invoked against the Lira/AOL and "continuous scrolling list with acceleration" references.
5. Fix your § 315(b) date before you spend a dollar on a petition. Because the '381 has been asserted since roughly 2010–2011 across the Apple–Samsung/HTC/Motorola/ITC campaigns, many parties are time-barred. If your client is outside the one-year window, an IPR is off the table and the fight is a district-court invalidity case.
6. Weigh the remaining term hard. The patent is Active with an anticipated expiration of 2027-12-14 — roughly 15 months out. A petition filed now would face a ~12-month statutory trial clock plus possible CAFC appeal, likely resolving at or after expiry. An IPR may be strategically unattractive compared with a stay-and-litigate posture or a design-around; document that calculus.
7. Map the live family before assuming the '381 is the whole risk. Continuations from the same disclosure have issued within the last several years. Ask for the full family tree and the current assertion targets.

Sources: USPTO ODP structured record (via the provided block); Google Patents, https://patents.google.com/patent/US7469381/en; Espacenet INPADOC legal status, https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/inpadoc?CC=US&NR=7469381B2&KC=B2&FT=D&ND=2&date=20081223&DB=EPODOC&locale=en_EP; The Verge 2012-10-24 and 2013-04-03; MacRumors 2012-10-23 and 2013-08-23; The Register 2012-10-23. PTAB E2E: https://ptacts.uspto.gov. CourtListener: https://www.courtlistener.com.

I'll verify the assignment record before writing anything.

Good — one authoritative hit. Let me confirm there are no post-issuance recordings and check the reexam/litigation context.

Ownership Reconstruction — US 7,469,381 B2

Patent: List scrolling and document translation, scaling, and rotation on a touch-screen display
App. No. 11/956,969 · Filed 2007-12-14 · Issued 2008-12-23 · Art Unit 3992
Earliest priority 2007-01-07 (provisional 60/883,801 et seq.)

Bottom line up front: this is a single-hop ownership chain. One recorded assignment exists — inventor to employer — and nothing else. There is no NPE chain to reconstruct here, because there is no chain. Anyone representing a multi-link ownership history for the '381 patent is fabricating it.

Inventors

Unusual-pattern check — no red flags. This is a sole-inventor patent, so the classic "all inventors depart within 12 months" precursor to a portfolio fire-sale cannot apply. The opposite pattern holds instead: Ording was still an Apple-side witness in Apple's 2011 Samsung litigation, four years after filing. There was no inventor exodus around the 2007 filing, and no assignor-side distress signal.

Caution: I have not verified Ording's later career moves against a primary source and will not assert a departure date. It is irrelevant to the chain in any event, since his interest was fully assigned before filing.

Original assignee

Apple Inc., Cupertino, CA (the printed patent renders it "Cuperino, CA" — an OCR/printing artifact, not a distinct entity; the assignment record states "APPLE INC., CALIFORNIA").

• Primary line of business: consumer electronics, computer hardware, and software; at the relevant time the iPhone/iOS platform.
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Yes, unambiguously. The claimed "rubber-banding"/overscroll-bounce behavior was implemented in iOS on iPhone and iPad. Apple's own infringement expert in Apple v. Samsung identified the feature in Apple's devices and in the accused Samsung products (N.D. Cal. 5:11-cv-01846, Dkt. 2760-4, ¶¶ 261–271). Apple also asserted the patent against Nokia, HTC, Motorola, and Samsung, and licensed it to Nokia and IBM.
• Current status: Operating, and still the owner. Large-entity maintenance fee for the 12th year was paid 2020-06-11; Google Patents lists the patent as Active with anticipated expiration 2027-12-14. Apple Inc. is a publicly traded going concern (CIK 0000320193); no bankruptcy, dissolution, or acquisition of the assignee has occurred.

Assignment timeline

Exactly one assignment is recorded against US 7,469,381. The public Assignment Center index surfaces nothing else — no security agreements, no license recordations, no corrective assignments, no post-issuance transfers.

• 2007-12-07 (executed/effective) / recorded 2008-08-15 — Reel 021397/0743
  • Conveyance: Assignment — "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST"
  • Assignor: ORDING, BAS (sole inventor)
  • Assignee: APPLE INC., California
  • Correspondent: Not exposed by the public indexes I queried. I will not guess at a name. Note for the record: the attorney/agent of record on the face of the printed patent is Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP — that is prosecution counsel, which is a different role from the correspondent who filed the assignment recording. I could not verify that Morgan Lewis filed the recording, and the two should not be conflated. The USPTO's recorded-index pages behind a signed-in session typically display the correspondent; a logged-in Assignment Center pull is required to fill this cell, and I flag the gap rather than fill it with an inference.
  • Context: Routine employee-invention assignment — inventor-to-employer, executed seven days before the nonprovisional application was filed (2007-12-14). Not an acquisition, not a fire-sale, not a securitization.

Everything else on the docket is prosecution or litigation, not ownership. For clarity, since these are frequently mistaken for ownership events:

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7469381
    2005 : Invented by Bas Ording at Apple
    2007 : Ording assigns rights to Apple Inc
         : Nonprovisional application filed
    2008 : Assignment recorded reel 021397/0743
         : Patent issued to Apple Inc
    2010 : Nokia requests ex parte reexamination
    2011 : Reexam confirms all claims
         : Apple sues Samsung for infringement
    2012 : Jury finds Samsung infringes the patent
    2013 : Second reexam cancels many claims
    2027 : Anticipated expiration

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

The entire recorded chain is a single employee-invention assignment — reel 021397/0743, executed 2007-12-07 and recorded 2008-08-15, conveying Bas Ording's sole interest to Apple Inc. — and nothing has moved since, with Apple still paying large-entity maintenance fees as of 2020-06-11 and the patent listed Active through 2027-12-14. Apple ships products embodying the claims (iOS overscroll bounce) and asserted the patent in its own name against actual competitors in Apple v. Samsung (N.D. Cal. 5:11-cv-01846), ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-797, and against Nokia, HTC, and Motorola. Every one of the eight NPE signals is not present or non-assessable; there is no second hop in the chain for a shell-entity or privateering theory to attach to.

One genuine caveat worth recording: the correspondent of record on the sole assignment could not be retrieved from the unauthenticated public indexes, and I have deliberately left that field blank rather than infer it from the prosecution firm of record (Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP), which occupies a different role. This does not affect the verdict — a correspondent field cannot create a signal on a one-entry chain.

Verify at:

• USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent 7469381; the legacy interface https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html indexes the same records)
• Google Patents legal events — https://patents.google.com/patent/[US7469381B2](/patent/US7469381B2)/en
• Espacenet INPADOC legal status (source of the reel/frame string) — https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/inpadoc?CC=US&NR=[7469381B2](/patent/7469381B2)&KC=B2&ND=2

I'll research the prior art cited for US patent 7469381. Let me search for authoritative sources.

I need the actual examiner-cited references from the patent's front page. Let me search for those specifically.

Let me get the specific examiner-cited references and the reexamination prior art details.

Prior-Art Analysis — US7469381

1. Patent under analysis (identity confirmed)

Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7469381/en ; Espacenet citing list: https://be.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/citingDocuments?CC=US&NR=[7469381B2](/patent/7469381B2)&KC=B2&FT=D&ND=3&date=20081223&DB=EPODOC&locale=en_be

Important provenance note (interpreted literally, no auto-correction): One secondary source I surfaced (a Chinese patent-analysis compilation) lists US7469381 | 20011106 | 20080722 | System for ensuring encrypted communication after handover. That title/date does not match the authoritative record for US7469381 and appears to be a spreadsheet mis-attribution in that secondary source. Per the operating rule that the authoritative full patent text governs over search snippets, I treat the title/date above as correct and flag that table row as an error, not as a "correction" of the patent number.

2. Method and a candid limitation

I could not retrieve the complete verbatim "References Cited" front-page list from the authoritative text provided (the OCR/text supplied in the prompt is truncated before the front-page citation block). What follows is reconstructed from: (a) the USPTO ex parte reexamination record for the '381 patent, (b) the applicant's own 2008 Information Disclosure submissions, and (c) Espacenet. Where I could not verify an exact title or date from a primary source, I say so explicitly rather than inventing it.

3. The most relevant prior art — USPTO reexamination grounds (2012)

The strongest and most directly on-point prior art for US7469381 comes from the ex parte reexamination (anonymous request; non-final Office action dated on/about 15 October 2012). The examiner rejected all 20 claims over two references: Lira and Ording. Reported rejections:

• Rejection A: Claims 1–6, 8–12, 16, 19, 20 anticipated by Lira
• Rejection B: Claims 7, 13–15 obvious over Lira
• Rejection D: Claims 1–5, 7–13, 15–20 anticipated by Ording

(Rejections C and any further grounds were not shown in the sources I retrieved.)

Sources: https://www.iipta.com/apples-rubber-band-patent-rejected/page/2 ; https://iknow.stpi.niar.org.tw/Post/Read.aspx?PostID=6376 ; https://www.tuttoandroid.net/samsung/samsung-vs-apple-il-brevetto-bounce-back-dichiarato-invalido-per-ora-72061/

3.1 Lira — WO 03/081458

Confidence: high that WO 03/081458 is the "Lira" reference and the claim mapping above; moderate on the exact publication day (secondary sources state 2 Oct 2003). I could not independently pull the WO document itself in this session.

3.2 Ording — U.S. Patent No. 7,786,975

Sources: https://www.iipta.com/apples-rubber-band-patent-rejected/page/2 ; Italian summary (filed 2005, granted 2010): https://www.tuttoandroid.net/samsung/samsung-vs-apple-il-brevetto-bounce-back-dichiarato-invalido-per-ora-72061/

Confidence: high on the patent number, title and inventor list; moderate on the precise filing date (2005) — I did not retrieve the '975 front page directly.

Why these two dominate: The '381 patent's core inventive concept is the "bounce"/rubber-band behavior when a scroll reaches a list terminus or document edge (claims 1 and 19, the latter the claim used against Samsung). Both Lira and Ording were applied squarely to that concept, which is why the reexam touched all 20 claims.

4. Applicant-submitted prior art (Information Disclosure, 2008-04-30)

As part of the original prosecution the applicant submitted a comparison document (reproduced in a Taiwan IPO analysis, Table 12) listing these references against the '381 claims:

Sources: https://tiponet.tipo.gov.tw/downloads/module030/information_2.pdf (Tables 12 and the claim-by-claim comparison)

Claim-mapping indicated by that comparison:

• Claim 1 / 3 / 4 (detect movement on/near touch screen) — Miller discloses finger/stylus input on a touch-screen device, but the applicant argued Miller does not disclose detecting movement of an object on/near the display and responding to it. That gap is the pivot on which the '381 distinguishes Miller.
• Claim 1 / 13 (area beyond the edge is white/black/gray/solid) — Miller's blank-at-top / truncated-last-item behavior was cited as the closest to "area beyond the terminus."
• Claim 9 (list of items) — Miller's vertically scrolled list (Figs. 6–8).
• Claims 19–20 (device + memory + touch screen) — Miller's PDA/cellphone hardware.

Confidence: high on the four references and that they were submitted by the applicant; moderate on the exact titles of US 5,495,566 and US 2005/0012723, which I could not verify from a primary document in this session.

5. Honest gaps / what I could not confirm

• The complete front-page "References Cited" list (U.S. patent documents and foreign/other publications as printed on US7469381) was not retrievable in this session; the authoritative text supplied stops before that block. I therefore cannot enumerate every examiner-cited item verbatim.
• Rejection "C" in the 2012 reexam (and any additional art) was not surfaced.
• Exact bibliographic dates for US 5,495,566, US 2005/0012723, US 6,690,387 and the Ording '975 filing year are stated with the confidence noted above; treat them as provisional until the front pages are pulled.
• Reexamination outcome: secondary reporting indicates Apple responded by amending/cancelling the original claims and the patent ultimately survived in narrowed form — I cannot state the final reexam certificate terms with high confidence and flag this as unverified.

6. Bottom line (which prior art is most relevant to which claims)

The two references that actually drove the invalidity challenge to all twenty claims — and therefore the most relevant prior art for US7469381 — are Lira (WO 03/081458) and Ording (US 7,786,975). Claim 19 specifically (the claim used to support the 2012 Apple v. Samsung damages verdict) was among the claims the examiner found anticipated by Lira.

I'll research the prior-art references cited against US 7,469,381 before building the §103 analysis.

Good grounding. Now let me pin down the specific prior-art references and the Lira/Ording disclosures.

Now let me confirm the third reference and the final reexamination certificate outcome.

§103 Obviousness Analysis — US 7,469,381 B2

Date of analysis: April 26, 2026. (Note: my system clock reads 2026‑09‑30; I'm using the task date but flagging the discrepancy per your instruction to surface contradictions.)

Scope note / contradiction check. The "Prior Art" citation list on the Google Patents page itself was not captured in the supplied page text (the fetch returned the bibliographic block, classifications, and the auto-generated "Definitions" block, but not the Cited References / Similar Documents tables). I therefore ground this analysis in the prior-art of record from the two ex parte reexaminations and from original prosecution, which I was able to verify from the patent's own litigation file. This is the same art the Office actually treated as the "prior art section" for this patent. Also: my earlier section flagged the surviving claim set as "very likely 14, 17, 18, 19 — verify against the certificate." That is now resolved and confirmed by the Notice of Intent to Issue Ex Parte Reexamination Certificate in control no. 90/012,304 and multiple contemporaneous reports: claims 14, 17, 18, 19 survive; claims 1–13, 15, 16, 20 were cancelled by Examiner's Amendment.

1. The claims at issue

Only claim 19 (independent, device) and its confirmed dependents 14, 17, 18 remain live. Claim 19 is the one the jury found infringed and the one that carried the $1.05B verdict. Its substance:

Claim 19's survival rests almost entirely on element F — specifically the "instructions for … until the area beyond the edge … is no longer displayed" stop condition. That was the express agreement recorded at the 13 May 2013 interview. Everything else in claim 19 was treated as disclosed. This means the entire obviousness question collapses to element F (plus the "third portion smaller than the first portion" sub‑element of E, which was never seriously contested).

⚠️ Uncertainty: I could not independently verify the verbatim text of claims 14, 17, 18. Because they depend from the surviving independent claim, they rise or fall with claim 19; treat the claim-specific discussion below as directed to claim 19.

2. The prior art of record

Sources: https://archive.org/download/gov.uscourts.cand.[239768](/patent/239768)/gov.uscourts.cand.239768.1898.5.pdf ; https://archive.org/download/gov.uscourts.cand.239768/gov.uscourts.cand.239768.2323.1.pdf ; https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/cc/dc/b3/7fe9bb667f708a/WO2003081458A1.pdf ; https://www.iipta.com/apples-rubber-band-patent-rejected/page/2 ; https://appleinsider.com/articles/12/10/23/uspto-invalidates-apples-rubber-band-patent-asserted-against-samsung

What each reference actually teaches

Lira (WO 03/081458). Reformats a web page/document for a small display into columns no wider than the window (p. 11, ll. 10–17; column width ↔ display width 425 at col. 10, ll. 1–5). Navigation is by tracking motion of an input tool (pen stylus or finger) on a touch screen, moving the visible portion of the page in correspondence with the tool, applying a threshold and a multiplier. Critically, on pen lift the display is animated to "snap on column" from an off-column position (p. 15, ll. 18–31). Because the column equals the window width, the snap terminates at the exact instant the area beyond the column edge ceases to be displayed. The examiner expressly relied on this: "when the window snaps back to the column, corrective scrolling is stopped when the display is centered over the column … where at the exact instance that the window is centered the area beyond the edge ceases to be displayed (same result)."

Ording '975 (US 7,786,975). Shares a common specification lineage with the '381 — its text is near-verbatim to the '381 on the rubber-band point: "the displayed portion of the list of items may appear to bounce off of a boundary of the window … when a beginning or an end of the list of items is reached"; the bounce "corresponds to a simulation of a viscous or elastic ball having momentum in a first direction striking an immovable and/or inelastic object, such as a wall"; "a parameter corresponding to the friction term … may be adjustable, allowing the ball to reach equilibrium in contact with the wall … or displaced from the wall." Claim 5 of '975: "reversing a direction of scrolling in response to the scrolling intersecting a virtual boundary corresponding to a terminus of the list." Fig. 7A–7B "illustrate the scrolling of a list of items to a terminus."

Miller (1999). As summarized in the TIPO comparison chart: "when a scrolled list is at the very top, half a blank is left on the left side of the screen so the user can understand that it has been scrolled to the top. If there is still other information to scroll, the last item will be shown only half … When the list is at the bottom, the bottom will present blank and the topmost item will be truncated." Miller thus discloses display of a blank area beyond a list terminus, a truncated/partially displayed item, and — expressly — the purpose of informing the user the end has been reached. What Miller lacks: it uses fixed soft "scroll up/down" buttons, not detection of object movement on the screen; and it has no release-triggered return.

Pallakoff. Finger-based direct manipulation on a touch-sensitive portable screen (drag content with the finger). Supplies element C/D for a touch screen but not the snap-back.

3. Combination grounds

Ground 1 — Lira alone (anticipation; §103 fallback)

This was the Office's Rejection A (claims 1–6, 8–12, 16, 19, 20 anticipated by Lira) and Rejection B (claims 7, 13–15 obvious over Lira). Mapping: Lira's touch screen + tracked pen/finger motion → C; motion→position change × multiplier → D; column narrower than page so that when the window reaches the column edge an "off-column" area is displayed and part of the document is pushed off-window (the smaller "third portion") → E; animated snap-on-column upon pen lift, terminating exactly when the beyond-edge area vanishes → F.

If Lira is read to disclose a stop tied to the beyond-edge area (the examiner's reading), claim 19 falls in anticipation and no §103 analysis is needed. Apple's successful rebuttal was that Lira "snaps to center the column" — same effect, different cause — and that Lira contains no instruction whose termination condition is the disappearance of the beyond-edge area. That is a §112/§102 argument about what the reference "teaches," not a §103 argument. A §103 fallback over Lira would additionally need the motivation rationale in §4.

Ground 2 — Ording '975 alone

The Office's Rejection D: claims 1–5, 7–13, 15–20 anticipated by Ording '975 (under §102(e), miscited as §102(b) in the 15 Oct 2012 action and corrected by Office communication of 26 Oct 2012). Ording '975's "reverse direction in response to intersecting a virtual boundary corresponding to a terminus" plus the elastic-ball/striking-a-wall disclosure maps onto E and F almost element-for-element — unsurprising, since both patents describe the same feature in nearly identical words.

Ground 3 — Lira + Ording '975

Combination rationale: Lira supplies a different-inventive-entity, §102(b) touch-drag + lift-triggered animated return on a small touch screen; Ording supplies express disclosure that the return is triggered by intersecting a terminus/virtual boundary and that the motion is a damped elastic bounce. Legal defect: Ording '975 is, on its face, prior art only under §102(e). Both it and the '381 were Apple-owned / subject to an obligation of assignment to Apple. Under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 103(c)(1), §102(e)/(f)/(g)-only art "shall not preclude patentability" under §103 where common ownership existed when the invention was made. A Lira + Ording §103 rejection is therefore subject to outright disqualification of the Ording prong. (It remains fully available for §102(e) anticipation — which is why the Office pleaded it that way.)

Ground 4 — Lira + Miller ← strongest §103 ground

• Lira: touch screen, finger/pen tracking, content moves with the object (C, D), lift-triggered animated return (F, movement half).
• Miller: display of blank space beyond the terminus of a list plus a truncated item, and the express statement that this is done so the user understands the end has been reached (E, and the purpose of F).
• Together: every element of claim 19, with the motivation supplied by Miller's own stated purpose. Both are §102(b) art, so §103(c) is not available to Apple here.

Ground 5 — Pallakoff + Miller (+ Lira)

Pallakoff supplies direct finger dragging of content on a portable touch screen (C, D); Miller supplies the beyond-terminus blank/truncation (E); Lira supplies the animated snap-back on lift (F). This is a permissible alternative if Apple attacks Lira's status as a touch-screen (as opposed to stylus) reference — a weak attack, since Lira expressly recites both pen and finger.

Ground 6 — Van Den Hoven + Lira + Miller

Van Den Hoven was the third reference in the reexam request, presumably as small-screen scrolling/zoom art. ⚠️ I could not retrieve its disclosure and cannot responsibly map it. Flagged as unresolved.

4. Motivation to combine (KSR rationales)

1. Same field, same problem, same solution. All references address navigating an electronic document/list on a small display, including PDAs and phones (Lira, Miller, Pallakoff). Lira's own background section frames the problem as "viewing and navigation aid for displaying information on an electronic device having limited display capability."
2. Express statement of the shared purpose. Miller says the blank/truncated display is to tell the user the end has been reached. The '381 states its own purpose identically: "The method 500 provides a simple visual indicator to a user that a terminus of a list has been reached." Where the prior art articulates the very purpose of the claimed feature, the combination is a textbook "known technique to address the same problem" rationale.
3. Predictable, mechanical result. Combining a lift-triggered animated return (Lira) with a beyond-terminus blank indication (Miller) yields nothing more than the expected sum of two known behaviors — no change in principle of operation (cf. KSR "predictable variation"; Sakraida).
4. Design choice / obvious to try. Lira already snaps the window back on lift; whether the animation stops on "column centered" or on "beyond-edge area no longer displayed" is, mechanically, the same endpoint, and choosing which event to code as the termination condition is a design choice between two express options disclosed by the reference itself ("equilibrium in contact with the virtual boundary, or displaced from the virtual boundary" — Ording '975).
5. Ordinary skill and the state of the art corroborate. The examiner's interviews show that overscroll behavior was already a live, well-known design discussion (Zimmerman, MS Word screenshots, Photo Mesa, Collins, Jaeger). Ording '975's near-identical specification (Dec 2005) further evidences that the bounce-back technique was within the ordinary artisan's repertoire before the '381's Jan 2007 priority — usable as evidence of the level of ordinary skill even if disqualified as §103 art.

5. Where the claim survives — and the counter-case

Apple's nonobviousness position, much of which actually worked:

1. The §103(c) kill-shot (against any Ording-based §103 ground). Ording '975 is §102(e)-only, commonly owned with the '381. For §103 purposes it must be disregarded. A carefully pleaded obviousness case must therefore be Lira + Miller (or Pallakoff + Miller), not Lira + Ording.
2. "Same effect, different cause." Lira's snap-back is aimed at centering the column, not at removing an overscroll indication. Claim 19's element F recites an instruction whose termination condition is the disappearance of the beyond-edge area. Apple argued — and the Office ultimately accepted — that a result reached as a byproduct of a centering instruction is not "instructions for translating … until the area beyond the edge … is no longer displayed." This is the single most defensible distinction. It is stronger as a §102 argument than as a §103 argument: for §103, the question is not whether Lira intended the result but whether it would have been obvious to a POSITA to code the stop condition directly — and the answer is plainly yes, given Lira's own express endpoint.
3. Purpose mismatch in Lira. Lira is a column-reformatting reference for web pages; its off-column state arises from document reformatting, not from a user deliberately dragging past the end. A POSITA seeking to signal end-of-document would not naturally look to Lira's reformatting engine.
4. The "third portion smaller than the first portion" has no clean antecedent in Lira (Lira's columns are sized to the window so nothing should be "smaller"); Miller's "top item truncated / last item shown only half" supplies it more directly. Hence the Lira + Miller pairing is better than Lira alone.
5. Objective indicia. Commercial success of the iPhone/iPad; copying by Samsung (documented at trial and in Samsung's own design reviews); the jury's finding that claim 19 was infringed by 21+ devices; the notorious Android "blue glow" workaround (evidence competitors had to design around it); and, per contemporaneous reporting, royalty-bearing licenses to multiple device makers. ⚠️ I have not verified the licensing claim or the nexus evidence; both need checking before being asserted.
   • Counterweight: the §101 of the story — the EPO Opposition Division's July 2014 preliminary opinion held independent claim 1 of EP 2 126 678 lacked novelty over Lira (and a second reference the snippet truncated), while nonetheless finding the subject matter technical. That is strong corroboration that the technical core of the '381 was known.

6. Bottom line

Net assessment: Claim 19 is obvious over Lira in view of Miller — a two-reference, same-field, same-problem combination where the secondary reference states the identical informational purpose the patent itself claims, and where the primary reference discloses the same release-triggered animated return to the same endpoint. The only genuine point of novelty, element F's "instructions for … until," was preserved by a drafting (structural/"instructions for") distinction rather than a technical one, and that distinction is precisely the type of thing a POSITA would arrive at by ordinary design choice among endpoints the prior art itself enumerates. Expect a §103 challenge to survive only if it is pleaded without Ording '975; any ground that leans on Ording '975 for §103 is legally exposed under §103(c)(1).

What I could not verify in this session (explicit): (i) the literal text of claims 14, 17, 18; (ii) the issuance date/number of the final ex parte reexamination certificate C2 itself (the Notice of Intent to Issue is confirmed; the certificate document is not); (iii) the disclosure of WO 01/029702 (Van Den Hoven); (iv) the specific teachings of Zimmerman US 6,690,387, Kwatinetz US 5,495,566, and Pallakoff US 2005/0012723, for which I have only the applicant's characterisation as "the references most closely related to the subject matter claimed," not the references themselves; (v) the second reference in the EPO Opposition Division's July 2014 preliminary opinion (my search snippet truncated it).