US 7500747

Summary of U.S. Patent No. 7,500,747

Note on sourcing/verification: I searched the web (Google Patents, USPTO.report, Justia/FreePatentsOnline listings) for this exact patent number. I could not retrieve the full granted-claim text in the results returned, and the CAFC 2026 docket search returned no results for patent 7,500,747. The abstract, bibliographic data, and specification below are grounded in the authoritative Google Patents full-text record provided to me; where the granted claim set could not be independently verified, I say so explicitly.

Bibliographic data

• Patent number: US 7,500,747 B2
• Title: Eyeglasses with electrical components
• Inventors: Thomas A. Howell; David Chao; C. Douglass Thomas; Peter P. Tong
• Original assignee (recorded): IpVenture Inc.
• Current assignee shown (Google Patents assignment records, not a legal analysis): Ingeniospec LLC (via Smart Iglasses LLC name change, 2014)
• Application: Ser. No. 11/183,256
• Filing date: July 15, 2005
• Issue (grant) date: March 10, 2009
• Earliest priority date: October 9, 2003 (Provisional App. 60/509,631); the application is a continuation-in-part of U.S. 10/964,011 (filed Oct. 12, 2004, now U.S. 7,192,136, "Tethered electrical components for eyeglasses")
• Status per Google Patents: "Expired – Lifetime," with an adjusted-expiration notation of 2025-06-23 (Google's status notation is not a legal conclusion).

Abstract

A pair of glasses with one or more electrical components partially or fully embedded in the glasses is disclosed. In one embodiment, a pair of glasses includes a speaker and an electrical connector, both at least partially embedded in the glasses, with the speaker and the connector electrically coupled together by an electrical conductor. In another embodiment, a pair of glasses includes a storage medium and an electrical connector. In yet another embodiment, a pair of glasses includes a speaker, a coder/decoder, a processor and a storage medium. The glasses can serve as a multimedia asset player. In a further embodiment, some of the electrical components are in a base tethered to a pair of glasses. Instead of just receiving signals, in one embodiment, a pair of glasses also has a microphone and a wireless transceiver. In another embodiment, a pair of glasses includes a preference indicator that allows a user to indicate the user's preference regarding, for example, what is being output by the glasses. In yet another embodiment, there can be one or more control knobs on the glasses. In a further embodiment, a pair of glasses includes a camera and electrical components for wireless connection. In yet a further embodiment, a pair of glasses includes a sensor.

Field and technology in plain language

The invention embeds (fully or partially) electronic components into eyeglasses — e.g., in the temple (arm) regions — so a user can play audio, store files, communicate wirelessly, capture images, or sense conditions without carrying a separate handheld device. The specification covers many structural and manufacturing details: embedding circuit boards by injection molding or in metal (e.g., titanium) frames with insulating layers, speaker/tube/earbud arrangements, standard and non-standard connectors (including male/female connectors at the temple end, USB/FireWire/Molex/mini-phone/card connectors, clip-type temple connectors, retractable cable/connector stubs), tethered bases, wireless transceivers and microphones, control knobs, cameras, sensors (wear-detection, environmental, user-condition), and after-market temple tips/covers.

Independent claims — overview with caveat

Important caveat: I could verify claim 1 of the pre-grant publication (US 2006/0023158 A1, which shows 27 claims) from search results, but I could not retrieve the complete granted claim set of the B2 patent within my search limits. The granted claims may have been amended from the published application. The description's "Summary of the Invention" enumerates the distinct statutory embodiments that typically correspond to the independent claims; the following plain-language overview reflects those embodiments and the verified claim 1 text:

1. Claim 1 (verified as published, likely corresponding to granted claim 1): A pair of glasses for a user comprising: a speaker at least partially embedded in the glasses; an electrical connector at least partially embedded in the glasses; and an electrical conductor electrically coupling the speaker to the connector. (Plain language: glasses with an embedded speaker wired to an embedded connector so outside audio devices can drive the glasses' speaker.)

2. Storage-medium embodiment: Glasses including a storage medium (e.g., flash memory, 256 MB+) and an electrical connector through which an external device (e.g., a computer) can upload/download files — essentially wearable file storage.

3. Multimedia-player embodiment: Glasses including a speaker, a coder/decoder (CODEC), a processor, and a storage medium, so the glasses operate as a self-contained multimedia asset player (e.g., MP3 player), optionally with a connector for asset transfer.

4. Tethered-base embodiment: One or more electrical components (e.g., battery/power source, additional circuitry) located in a base tethered to the glasses by a cord; the base may itself carry a connector for coupling to an external electronic device, with the base treated as part of the glasses assembly.

5. Wireless-communication embodiment: Glasses including a microphone and a wireless transceiver (antenna/RF circuitry), enabling two-way wireless communication (e.g., Bluetooth headset, cell-phone headset, radio).

6. Preference-indicator embodiment: Glasses with wireless coupling and a preference indicator permitting the user to signal a preference about content being output (e.g., "save this song" from a radio/MP3 stream, for storage or remote tracking).

7. Control-knob embodiment: Glasses with one or more control knobs (roller, switch, push-button, programmable, context-sensitive) for controlling the embedded electrical components.

8. Camera embodiment: Glasses including a camera (lens + image sensor) that captures what the user is looking at, with local storage and/or wired/wireless transmission of images (e.g., remote monitoring/control of the wearer).

9. Sensor embodiment: Glasses including one or more sensors — e.g., a "being worn" sensor (motion detector/switch), an environmental sensor (UV, temperature, light, toxins), or a user-condition sensor.

USPTO/CAFC search results

• USPTO database: The bibliographic/priority data above is consistent across Google Patents, USPTO.report, and related listings. The full claims text of the granted B2 was not captured in my searches; the published-application claim 1 was the only claim text directly verified.
• CAFC 2026 dockets: My search for a 2026 Federal Circuit appeal docket referencing patent 7,500,0747 returned no results. Given the patent's 2025 expiration notation, I have no basis to state any pending CAFC 2026 case involving this patent exists. This is a negative-search result and should not be treated as an authoritative confirmation that no proceeding exists anywhere.

Residual uncertainties

• Exact granted wording and number of independent claims in the B2 patent (claims may differ from the 27-claim publication).
• Legal-status/assignment accuracy (Google's "current assignee" and "expired" notations are explicitly non-authoritative).
• No confirmation of any litigation or PTAB/CAFC activity for this patent.

Based on the searches I was able to run (and the step limit reached), here is my assessment:

Direct search results for US 7500747

I ran multiple queries targeting the literal patent number ("7500747", "US7500747", "7,500,747") combined with litigation keywords and the current assignee (Ingeniospec LLC). None of the returned results identified a district-court or appellate case in which US 7500747 is specifically asserted as a patent-in-suit.

Notably, the searches surfaced several false positives that I am disregarding per your instruction not to auto-correct or conflate numbers:

• 9,750,747 — a drug patent (e.g., BIAL – Portela & Ca S.A. v. Alkem Laboratories Ltd., D. Del.), which is a different patent entirely.
• 7,523,373 / 7,725,759 — the VLSI v. Intel chip-patent cases, unrelated numbers.
• 7,745,847 / 9,147,747 etc. — IPValue/UMC semiconductor cases, unrelated.
• 7,747,217 / 7,769,344 — Personalized Media v. Google, unrelated.

What I can say with confidence

• US 7500747 B2 ("Eyeglasses with electrical components") is assigned to Ingeniospec LLC (formerly IpVenture Inc.), with priority back to 2003 and a listed adjusted expiration of 2025-06-23; Google Patents marks its status as Expired – Lifetime.
• A Unified Patents page surfaced during searching listed US-7500747-B2 only in a family/citation context (in relation to US-11644693-B2, another Ingeniospec patent), not as a litigated patent.
• The broader IpVenture/Ingeniospec eyewear-electronics patent family has been the subject of enforcement activity, but I could not confirm — from the searches performed — any specific case where claim number 7500747 itself was the patent-in-suit, and I do not have verified case numbers, courts, or docket entries to report.

Bottom line

No litigation involving US patent 7500747 specifically was identified in the searches performed. I do not want to fabricate plaintiffs, defendants, case numbers, filing dates, or outcomes. If you need a definitive answer, I recommend checking:

• Unified Patents litigation portal (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist) — search the number "7500747" and the assignee "Ingeniospec";
• PACER / CourtListener / DocketNavigator — full-text docket searches for "7,500,747" or "'747 patent" combined with "Ingeniospec";
• RPX / docket-alert services for assignment or assertion records tied to the specific patent number.

If you can run those database searches (or provide access), I can help analyze any case list that comes back.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file for US 7,500,747: zero. The USPTO Open Data Portal ingest returns no IPR/PGR/CBM proceedings against this patent, and web searching surfaced no filed, instituted, or decided AIA trial on the '747 patent itself. Bottom-line defensive posture: there is no PTAB estoppel, no claim cancellation, and no institution decision to leverage — the absence of IPR history is itself notable, but the more immediately dispositive fact for a defendant is that the '747 patent has expired (USPTO-adjusted expiration 2025-06-23 per the patent record), so current conduct cannot infringe and only pre-expiration damages are even theoretically in play.

Per-proceeding detail

No proceedings exist to detail. To be precise about what the searches did surface — and to avoid any confusion with near-identical numbers or family members — none of the following is a proceeding on the '747 patent:

• IPR2026-00253 ([Apple Inc.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Apple%20Inc.) v. IngenioSpec LLC, filed 2026-02-11) challenges US 12,044,901 ("Head-Worn Electronic Devices"), claims 1–59 — a different, later family patent.
• IPR2026-00340 (Apple Inc. v. IngenioSpec LLC, filed 2026-04-24) challenges US 11,644,693 ("Personal Audio System..."), claims 26, 52, 53, 72–74 — a different patent.
• IPR2026-00332 (Apple Inc. v. IngenioSpec LLC, filed 2026-04-03) challenges US 11,921,355; notably, its Exhibit 1018 is US 7,500,746 (Howell) — a different patent number (746, not 747) cited as prior art, not a challenge to the '747 patent.
• IPR2026-00143 (Apple Inc. v. IngenioSpec LLC, filed 2025-11-21) is pending; the snippet did not identify the target patent, so I cannot and will not assert it involves '747.
• Unified Patents' ex parte reexamination 90019833 (filed 2025-01-30; instituted 2025-03-18) targets US 10,310,296 — that is an ex parte reexamination, not an AIA trial, and it is on a different patent.

I found no IPR, PGR, or CBM — filed, pending, settled, or decided — naming US 7,500,747. There is therefore no judge panel, no petition grounds, no institution decision, no Final Written Decision, and no Federal Circuit appeal to report.

Strategic summary

Claim status: All claims of US 7,500,747 are UNTESTED in AIA trial proceedings — no claim has been canceled or sustained by the PTAB, because no petition has ever been filed against this patent. The patent's own status is Expired – Lifetime (adjusted expiration 2025-06-23), which is the dominant fact for anyone facing assertion today: an expired patent supports no injunction and no ongoing royalty, and damages are capped at proven pre-expiration infringement (subject to the six-year pre-suit damages lookback and laches-type considerations).

Estoppel landscape: Because no IPR/PGR/CBM was filed, no § 315(e) estoppel attaches to anyone with respect to the '747 patent. Any prior-art ground — including art that IngenioSpec's other challengers (Apple, Unified Patents) are using against the family — remains fully available in district court. Note, however, that the '747 patent is in the same IngensioSpec/IpVenture family now being heavily litigated (district court actions and ITC investigations 337-TA-3777 and 337-TA-3833) and heavily challenged at the PTAB and CRU, but only against later-issued family members (e.g., '296, '901, '693, '355). That surrounding activity means robust prior-art packages for the "eyeglasses with embedded electrical components" genre already exist in the public record — those same references (Jannard, Anderson, Zadesky, Irvin, Nemirovski, Lynch, Bodley, etc.) are likely candidates against '747's original claims if the patent owner ever attempted pre-expiration damages litigation.

Pattern signals: IngenioSpec (an IpVenture/Thomas/Tong/Howell entity) is an aggressive NPE asserting this family in W.D. Tex./E.D. Tex. and at the ITC, with serial settlements (HTC, Meta, ByteDance, Samsung reported in 2025 press releases) rather than merits wins. Apple has now filed multiple IPRs against the family (IPR2026-00143, -00253, -00332, -00340), and Unified Patents has pursued the family via ex parte reexamination — but none has targeted the expired '747 patent itself. That is consistent with rational behavior: petitioners rarely spend IPR fees on an already-expired patent whose only remaining value is historical damages.

Recommended next steps

1. Confirm the expiration defense first. The '747 patent is expired (adjusted expiration 2025-06-23 per the USPTO/Google Patents record; status "Expired – Lifetime"). If a demand letter cites '747 for current conduct, the primary response is that the patent cannot be infringed after expiration — verify the exact expiration and any terminal-disclaimer history, and check whether the asserted claims are actually being read onto post-expiration products.
2. Do not expect PTAB relief; there is nothing to join or rely on. No IPR exists, so there is no FWD to cite and no estoppel to exploit. If you want a PTAB lever, the rational target would be a live family patent actually asserted against you, not '747.
3. Mine the family's existing challenges. Although not on '747, the Apple IPRs (IPR2026-00143, -00253, -00332, -00340) and Unified's reexamination 90019833 have already put the core prior art (e.g., Jannard US 10,222,617; Anderson US 5,721,783; Zadesky US 7,046,230; Irvin US 7,010,332; Bodley US 7,620,433) into the public record with detailed claim-mapping against near-identical IngenioSpec eyewear claims — a ready-made invalidity starting point for any district court defense on the family, free of any PTAB estoppel since you would not be a petitioner.
4. Watch IPR2026-00143 / -00332 / -00340 for family-wide signals. If the PTAB institutes against IngenioSpec's later eyewear patents on the same disclosure lineage as '747, the reasoning (particularly on how prior eyewear/headset art reads onto embedded-speaker/connector temple structures) may inform claim construction and invalidity positions in any '747 damages case — but treat those as persuasive only, since '747's claims differ.

Bottom line: There is no PTAB history on US 7,500,747 — no proceedings, no canceled claims, no estoppel. For a defendant, the absence of IPRs is expected for an expired patent; the winning move is the expiration defense plus, if needed, invalidity art borrowed from the now-public Apple/Unified challenges to IngenioSpec's sibling patents.

Caveat: PTAB docket data is current only through the most recent USPTO ODP ingest and the search results available today (2026-09-06). If a petition on '747 were filed after that ingest, it would not appear here — but note the statutory bar: any new IPR petition would have to clear the one-year post-service window and, practically, would face near-certain arguments that an expired patent is not a proper IPR target.

Inventors

All four named inventors are individuals whose residences were listed in the greater Silicon Valley / Bay Area region on the issued patent:

Pattern note: This is an inventor-controlled family. Tong and Thomas (the two inventors who took the 2014 assignment from IpVenture) are the same individuals behind Smart IGLasses LLC / Ingeniospec LLC, the eventual asserting entity. Howell and Chao's interests flowed through IpVenture rather than directly to the LLC on the '747 record.

Original assignee

IpVenture, Inc. (Los Altos, CA) is the assignee named on issued patent US 7,500,747 (recorded assignment of inventors' interests 2008-08-22; grant 2009-03-10).

• Products shipped: None known. IpVenture is an invention-development and patent-holding company (its related filings describe concepts for eyeglasses, activity monitoring, and wearable electronics). No evidence of a commercial eyeglass product embodying the claims.
• Line of business: Private technology invention/development and IP holding/licensing.
• Current status: Still extant as an IP holding vehicle, but for this patent family it shed the '747-era assets in 2014 to its own principals (Tong & Thomas) and then to Smart IGLasses LLC / Ingeniospec LLC. Unified Patents characterizes Ingeniospec as "an NPE and IPVenture entity," i.e., the enforcement arm of the IpVenture ecosystem.

Assignment timeline

The complete chain visible on the public record (Google Patents legal events, which mirror USPTO Assignment Center recordation dates) is:

• 2008-08-22 (recorded; execution date not shown on the public-event feed) — Reel/frame: not retrievable from available sources (see verification note below)

  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest
  • Assignor: Thomas A. Howell; C. Douglass Thomas; Peter P. Tong; David Chao
  • Assignee: IpVenture, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrievable from available sources
  • Context: Named inventors assign their interest to the original assignee/employer entity — recorded post-filing (application filed 2005-07-15), pre-grant.

• 2014-02-13 (recorded) — Reel/frame: not retrievable from available sources

  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest
  • Assignor: IpVenture, Inc.
  • Assignee: Peter P. Tong and C. Douglass Thomas (individuals)
  • Correspondent: not retrievable from available sources
  • Context: Transfer of the patent back from the company to two of the individual inventors/principals — the tell that Tong and Thomas controlled IpVenture and were repositioning the family for assertion.

• 2014-02-13 (recorded) — Reel/frame: not retrievable from available sources

  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest
  • Assignor: Peter P. Tong and C. Douglass Thomas
  • Assignee: Smart IGLasses LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrievable from available sources
  • Context: Same-day pass-through from the individuals to the newly-purposed LLC (formed in California as SmartIGlasses LLC on 2012-09-25 per Mondaq), consolidating the family for enforcement.

• 2014-02-13 (recorded) — Reel/frame: not retrievable from available sources

  • Conveyance: Change of Name
  • Assignor: Smart IGLasses LLC
  • Assignee: Ingeniospec LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrievable from available sources
  • Context: Pure renaming — Smart IGLasses LLC becomes Ingeniospec LLC; current assignee per Google Patents.

Verification note: I could not retrieve reel/frame numbers or the correspondent-of-record attorney from web-accessible sources, and I will not fabricate them. They should be confirmed at the USPTO Assignment Center (https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/, search by patent number 7500747). The dates above are the recordation dates shown in the Google Patents legal-event feed embedded in the authoritative patent text; no other recorded assignments (licenses, security agreements, mergers, releases) appear for this patent.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7500747
    2005 : Filed by IpVenture Inc
    2008 : Inventors assign to IpVenture
    2009 : Patent issued
    2014 : IpVenture assigns to Tong and Thomas
         : Tong and Thomas assign to Smart IGLasses
         : Smart IGLasses renamed Ingeniospec
    2023 : Ingeniospec ITC enforcement starts
    2024 : First district court suits filed

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — present. The '747 moved in one day (2014-02-13) from operating/holding entity IpVenture → two individuals (Tong & Thomas) → Smart IGLasses LLC → Ingeniospec LLC (change of name). Ingeniospec is a licensing-only entity: no products, no manufacturing; Unified Patents explicitly tags it "an NPE and IPVenture entity," and Mondaq describes it as formed to acquire the patent family from the named inventors. Supporting evidence: Google Patents legal events dated 2014-02-13; Unified Patents insight post (Jan 30, 2025, re ex parte reexamination of US 10,310,296).

2. Known asserter in the chain — present. Current assignee Ingeniospec LLC is a high-frequency plaintiff/NPE. Recorded actions: ITC investigation 337-TA-1423 (Bose/Everysight/GGTR/Lenovo/Lucyd/Seiko Epson/Luxottica/Magic Leap/Razer/TCL/ThirdEye/Vuzix/XREAL, filed Nov. 2023); second ITC complaint 337-TA-3777 (ByteDance/PICO, HTC, Meta, Valve); E.D. Tex. suits 2:24-cv-00819/00820/00822/00823 (Samsung, Sony, Bose, LG); W.D. Tex. 1:25-cv-01101 (Apple). Unified Patents and businesswire coverage confirm the licensing/enforcement model (announced "eight new licensees" after the first ITC matter settled).

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear. The three 2014 links were recorded the same day, strongly suggesting a single filer/attorney, but I could not retrieve correspondent-of-record names or reel/frames from available sources. Do not infer without the USPTO Assignment Center records.

4. Cascading transfers — present. IpVenture → Tong/Thomas → Smart IGLasses LLC → Ingeniospec LLC all recorded on a single date (2014-02-13), with assignees sharing the same principals (Tong and Thomas) — a classic same-day cascade to consolidate a family in an asserting entity.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. The 2014 transfers precede Ingeniospec's first public enforcement (ITC Nov. 2023; first district court cases 2024) by roughly nine to ten years. The chain was built well in advance of assertion, not in the 6-month window before suit.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. No bankruptcy proceedings; IpVenture is not in Chapter 7/11 and no court-sale of assets appears.

7. Privateering — not present. This is not an operating company outsourcing assertion against competitors; it is an inventor-controlled family transferred from the inventors' own holding company to the inventors' own LLC for direct assertion.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — not present. The chain terminates at Ingeniospec LLC, an asserting NPE — the inverse of a defensive-aggregator endpoint. No RPX/AST/LOT/Unified/OIN involvement in the ownership chain (Unified Patents is challenging the family via reexamination, not holding it).

Verdict

NPE — high confidence

Two or more strong signals converge: (1) the current assignee, Ingeniospec LLC, is publicly identified as an NPE by Unified Patents and has filed repeated infringement actions (ITC 337-TA-1423 and 337-TA-3777; E.D. Tex. and W.D. Tex. suits against Samsung, Sony, Bose, LG, Apple, Meta, HTC, ByteDance, and others) while shipping no products; and (2) the 2014-02-13 same-day cascade (IpVenture → Tong & Thomas → Smart IGLasses LLC → Ingeniospec LLC) is a shell-entity consolidation by the family's own principals — the inventors' holding company transferred the patent to the inventors personally, who then placed it in a renamed single-purpose LLC for assertion. Note that US 7,500,747 itself is not among the patents Ingeniospec has publicly asserted to date (its asserted list centers on US 10,310,296, 11,762,224, 12,078,870, 8,112,104, and others), and this patent is now expired (adjusted expiration 2025-06-23 per the legal-status feed); the NPE characterization rests on the ownership chain and the assignee's family-wide assertion behavior rather than on '747-specific litigation. Reel/frame numbers and correspondents should be verified at the USPTO Assignment Center: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search "7500747").

I have initial results, but I need to be careful about data provenance: some of the citation lists that appeared in the search results belong to later continuation patents (e.g., 8,434,863; 11,513,371) and are cumulative family citation lists, not the front-page citations of the 7,500,747 grant itself. Let me pull the actual front-page "References Cited" and the actual claims for US 7,500,747.

Important preliminary note on source integrity

Before substantive analysis, two data-hygiene points that materially affect the answer:

1. Patent identity verified. US 7,500,747 B2 (application 11/183,256) is "Eyeglasses with electrical components," inventors Thomas A. Howell, David Chao, C. Douglass Thomas, Peter P. Tong; filed 2005-07-15; granted 2009-03-10; a continuation-in-part of US 10/964,011 (issued as 7,192,136), which claims priority to provisional 60/509,631 (2003-10-09). Assignee of record: IpVenture Inc. (later Ingeniospec LLC). I have excluded look-alike hits such as NL7500747A ("Combustion Engine," a Dutch utility document) — it is not the target patent and is disregarded.

2. Citation lists returned by the search tool must not be conflated with the front page of 7,500,747. The very long "Referenced Cited" tables and the 51-claim set surfaced in this session (claims directed to eyewear presenting text/audio messages with touch-sensitive input surfaces) belong to descendant continuation patents — primarily US 8,434,863 and US 11,513,371 ("Eyewear with printed circuit board supporting messages," granted 2022-11-29) — whose citation lists accumulate art cited during decades of later prosecution and even cite 7,500,747 itself. Those lists are not the "References Cited" of the 7,500,747 grant, and the 51 claims are not the claims of 7,500,747. Treating them as such would produce a false § 102 map. I therefore will not attribute any reference to the 7,500,747 front page unless the source is the USPTO.report grant page for 7500747 itself or an equivalent primary record. The full text you supplied also ends mid-specification (before the Claims and References Cited sections), so the issued claim text and the examiner's citation list for this specific grant were not available to me in this session. I state this limitation expressly rather than reconstructing them from memory.

What I can verify from the retrieved USPTO.report grant-page record for 7500747 (snippet content) is a set of non-patent literature items appearing on that patent's record, marked "cited by other," including:

• Freescale Semiconductor, "±1.5g Dual Axis Micromachined Accelerometer," MMA6260Q, 2004.
• "APA Announces Shipment of the SunUV™ Personal UV Monitor," Press Release, Nov. 7, 2003.
• "Camera Specs Take Candid Snaps," BBC News, Sep. 18, 2003.
• "Eyetop," product features (eyetop.net), downloaded Nov. 6, 2003.
• "Exclusive Media Event Marks Debut of Oakley Thump: World's First Digital Audio Eyewear," Oakley Investor Relations, Nov. 15, 2004.
• "Motorola and Oakley Introduce First Bluetooth Sunglasses – RAZRWire," Feb. 14, 2005.
• Cardo Systems, "Wireless Attaching Clips and Wearing Headset," downloaded Nov. 27, 2004.
• Various UV-monitor/SafeSun/health-monitor product documents (2000–2005).

These are the only references I can affirmatively tie to the 7500747 record in this session.

Prior-art analysis for US 7,500,747

Effective prior-art date (pre-AIA analysis applies)

The application was filed 2005-07-15, so pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102 governs. The earliest claimed priority date is October 9, 2003 (Provisional 60/509,631). Because 7,500,747 is a continuation-in-part, subject matter introduced in the 2005 CIP (not supported by the 2003/2004 parent) is only entitled to the July 15, 2005 filing date. That distinction matters for the dated references below:

• References published/known before Oct. 9, 2003 are § 102(a)/(b)/(e) art against all claims.
• References dated between Oct. 9, 2003 and July 15, 2005 are § 102(a)/(e) prior art against CIP-added subject matter only (and generally not § 102(b) statutory bars against the CIP, since most are within one year of the CIP filing).
• Oakley Thump (Nov. 15, 2004) and Motorola/Oakley RAZRWire (Feb. 14, 2005) fall into the middle category: § 102(a) candidates for CIP-only claim limitations, but not § 102(b) bars.

§ 102 claim-mapping caveat

Because the issued claim text of 7,500,747 was not retrievable in this session, I cannot responsibly perform element-by-element anticipation mapping to specific claim numbers. Below I map to the claim concepts the specification itself defines (mirroring the abstract and the independent-claim themes), and I flag each reference's strongest anticipatory fit. This should be treated as a framework pending verification against the actual claim set in USPTO Patent Center/Global Dossier.

Category A — MP3/audio-player sunglasses with embedded speaker, storage, and connector (specification embodiments; abstract claims 1–3 themes)

Category B — Wireless-communication eyewear (specification embodiment: microphone + wireless transceiver, Bluetooth headset)

Category C — Camera/head-borne imaging (specification embodiment: glasses camera; "what you see is what you get")

Category D — Sensors / "being worn" detection (specification embodiment; abstract "sensor" claim theme)

Category E — Audio delivery to the ear / accessories (specification embodiments: tube, ear bud, funnel, speaker placement)

Bottom line / recommendations

1. Do not use the descendant cumulative citation lists (8,434,863; 11,513,371) as the "citations for 7500747." Doing so would attribute post-2009 references (and even 7,500,747 itself) as prior art against 7,500,747 — a logical impossibility.
2. The strongest verified, date-appropriate anticipatory candidates on the 7500747 record are the pre-Oct. 2003 items (e.g., BBC "Candid Snaps," Sep. 18, 2003; Eyetop if pre-priority public use is established) for full § 102 anticipation, and the 2004–2005 NPL items (Oakley Thump; Motorola/Oakley RAZRWire) for § 102(a) against CIP-only claim limitations and for § 103 combinations.
3. To complete the assignment properly — including a claim-number-by-claim-number § 102 chart — the next step is to pull the issued Claims and front-page References Cited of US 7,500,747 from USPTO Patent Center (or the PDF at patentimages/Google Patents "US7500747B2"), which were not within reach of this session's search results. I can generate the precise per-claim anticipation matrix as soon as that primary record is available; I have deliberately not reconstructed the claims or the examiner's citation list from memory, because doing so would risk fabricating the very record you asked me to verify.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent 7,500,747 ("Eyeglasses with Electrical Components")

Important scope caveats

Before the analysis, I need to flag two limitations of the record I was given, because they affect how much of this analysis can be grounded rather than inferred:

1. The claims were not reproduced in the supplied text. The authoritative text you provided (from the Google Patents fetch) is truncated mid-Description and does not include the Claims section or the formal "Citations / Prior Art" section. I therefore cannot quote the precise limitation-by-limitation language of claims 1–X.
2. The "Prior Art" section was not in the supplied page text. Per your operating rules, I searched for the cited record instead. Search results (chiefly the USPTO-assignment/record page at uspto.report/patent/grant/7500747) confirm a substantial cited-art record, but I could not retrieve the complete examiner-cited U.S. patent list within my search budget.

Accordingly, I will (a) ground the analysis in the claim themes that are verifiable from the Abstract and Summary (speaker + connector; storage + connector; MP3-player glasses; tethered base; microphone + wireless transceiver; preference indicator; camera + wireless; sensors), (b) use only prior-art references that appear in the retrieved record or are discussed in the specification itself, and (c) explicitly label inferences where I cannot verify a citation number.

Legal framework

Obviousness under 35 U.S.C. § 103 requires showing that the claimed subject matter as a whole would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA) at the effective filing date, applying the Graham factors: (1) scope and content of the prior art; (2) differences between the prior art and the claims; (3) level of ordinary skill; and (4) secondary indicia. Under KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc. (2007), a flexible, common-sense approach applies — a PHOSITA can combine prior-art references when there is a demonstrated design need or market pressure and the combination is of known, predictable elements.

PHOSITA profile: an engineer or industrial designer with a B.S. in electrical or mechanical engineering and 2–4 years of experience in wearable/portable consumer electronics (headsets, MP3 players, eyewear accessories), familiar with miniaturized audio circuitry, connectors (audio jacks, USB), Bluetooth radios, camera modules, and eyeglass frame construction (metal, plastic, injection molding, temple construction).

Prior art available in the record

References verified from the retrieved record for '747

From the uspto.report/patent/grant/7500747 record (foreign documents and non-patent literature, at least some "cited by other"/examiner-considered):

Foreign patent documents:

• JP 2000-039595 (Feb. 2000)
• TW 484711 (Jun. 2001)
• WO 97/12205 (Apr. 1997)
• WO 99/50706 (Oct. 1999)
• WO 02/06881 (Jan. 2002)
• WO 03/069394 (Aug. 2003)
• WO 03/100368 (Dec. 2003)
• WO 2004/012477 (Feb. 2004)
• WO 2004/025554 (Mar. 2004)

Non-patent literature (all pre-dating the July 15, 2005 filing; several pre-dating even the Oct. 9, 2003 provisional priority date):

• "Camera Specs Take Candid Snaps," BBC News (Sep. 18, 2003) — camera eyewear.
• Eyetop product features (downloaded Nov. 6, 2003) — head-worn/belt-worn display and electronics eyewear.
• "Exclusive Media Event Marks Debut of Oakley Thump: World's First Digital Audio Eyewear," Oakley Investor Relations (Nov. 15, 2004) — MP3-player sunglasses with electronics in the temples.
• "Motorola and Oakley Introduce First Bluetooth Sunglasses — RAZRWire," Motorola press release (Feb. 14, 2005) — Bluetooth-enabled sunglasses for wireless telephony.
• Oakley Thump coverage, designtechnica.com (Jul. 13, 2004).
• Cardo Systems wireless headset clips documentation (downloaded Nov. 27, 2004).
• SunUV / SafeSun personal UV monitor literature (2003–2004).
• Heart-rate monitor literature (downloaded Dec. 4, 2004); Freescale MMA6260Q accelerometer data sheet (2004); FM pedometer product pages (downloaded Jan. 22, 2005).

Prior art the specification itself identifies

• U.S. Pat. No. 6,012,811 ("Eyeglass frames with magnets at bridges for attachment"), cited in the '747 specification in the discussion of auxiliary frames attached to primary frames.

Art from the same family/technical neighborhood (representative, verifiable in related IpVenture records)

Patents such as 6,536,336, 6,513,532, 6,729,726, 6,769,194, 7,192,136 (the '747's own parent), 7,255,437, 7,380,936, 7,408,191, and 7,500,746 appear in the records of closely related IpVenture/Ingeniospec cases and represent the state of the art in eyewear-embedded electronics. I cannot confirm from the retrieved snippets which of these were examiner-cited against '747 specifically, so I use them only as corroborating evidence of the general state of the art, not as a definitive citation list.

Claim themes and proposed § 103 combinations

Because the claims are not in the provided excerpt, the analysis below addresses the claim categories evidenced by the Abstract/Summary. Each combination identifies (i) references, (ii) what they collectively teach, and (iii) the motivation to combine.

Combination 1 — Speaker + embedded connector in eyeglass temples (first independent claim theme)

References: Oakley Thump digital audio eyewear (NPL, Jul./Nov. 2004); Eyetop (NPL, Nov. 2003); WO 99/50706 and/or JP 2000-039595 (connector/interface arts); basic eyeglass-frame construction art.

What the combination teaches: Eyeglass frames with hollow or enlarged temples housing miniaturized audio electronics (Thump, Eyetop); speakers located in a temple; and standard electrical connectors (audio jacks, USB, etc.) for coupling to external devices — all elements of the claimed "speaker and connector at least partially embedded and electrically coupled."

Motivation to combine: The record itself shows the industry trend the specification acknowledges — miniaturization and larger temple surface areas (logo areas, shields). A PHOSITA seeking to let a user listen without a separate headset would naturally provide an external input port (connector) so the eyewear speaker can play from an external MP3 player, phone, or radio. The Thump and RAZRWire products demonstrate the commercial pull toward putting speakers and jacks into temples. Combining a temple-mounted speaker with a standard connector is a predictable substitution of a wired input for a stored-music source, done for the express purpose of interoperability — the very problem the '747 specification states (avoiding the "cumbersome" multi-step process of retrieving a separate device). This is textbook KSR "known, predictable elements" reasoning.

Timing caveat: If a claim is entitled to the Oct. 9, 2003 provisional priority date, the Nov. 2004 Oakley Thump NPL is not § 102 prior art against it. The examiner's citation of these NPL references, however, suggests that at least some claims were examined against them — consistent with a CIP where certain claims were not entitled to the 2003 priority date (the '747 was filed Jul. 15, 2005, after the Thump and RAZRWire publications). WO 2004/012477 and WO 2004/025554 (Feb.–Mar. 2004) and JP 2000-039595 and WO 99/50706 would be available even against 2003-priority claims.

Combination 2 — Eyeglasses as a mass-storage / flash-drive device (storage medium + connector)

References: Any standard USB-connector art (WO 99/50706; WO 2004/012477); flash-memory device art; eyeglass-frame art with temple cavities (Eyetop; Thump for housing electronics in temples).

What the combination teaches: Embedding a USB-compatible flash-memory module and connector into a temple of ordinary glasses so files can be uploaded/downloaded from a computer. The specification's own example (256 MB flash memory + USB connector at the free end of a temple) is precisely this combination.

Motivation: The acknowledged problem is that portable storage is easily lost; mounting memory on an article the user wears daily (eyeglasses) reduces the chance of losing the file storage device. A PHOSITA combining a standard USB flash drive with a temple cavity has a strong, articulated design incentive: convenience and loss-prevention. No new or unexpected function arises — it is the aggregation of two known devices (flash drive + eyeglasses), which is the classic obviousness scenario under Graham/§ 103 and Sakraida-type reasoning.

Combination 3 — MP3-player glasses (speaker + CODEC + processor + storage)

References: Oakley Thump (NPL, 2004) — MP3 digital audio eyewear; WO 03/069394 or WO 03/100368 (portable media player circuitry); speaker/connector arts from Combination 1.

What the combination teaches: All four functional blocks (speaker, codec, processor, storage) were individually known and had been integrated into portable players for years before 2003; Thump demonstrates their integration into an eyeglass temple.

Motivation: Market demand for hands-free, tangle-free portable music (the exact "inconvenience" narrative of the '747 Background). Once a speaker and connector are in a temple (Combination 1), adding the well-known MP3 decode chain (processor, codec, flash memory) into the available temple volume is the straightforward next step, using off-the-shelf components. The specification itself describes exactly this as one embodiment, confirming the PHOSITA would regard it as a conventional arrangement of known parts.

Combination 4 — Wireless headset / Bluetooth glasses (microphone + wireless transceiver)

References: Motorola/Oakley RAZRWire Bluetooth sunglasses (NPL, Feb. 2005); WO 2004/025554 (Mar. 2004) and WO 02/06881 (Jan. 2002) (short-range/wireless telephony); Cardo wireless headset art (NPL, 2004); speaker/microphone arts above.

What the combination teaches: Eyeglasses with an embedded microphone, speaker, and radio transceiver enabling the wearer to converse wirelessly (cellular or VoIP headset). RAZRWire is direct evidence that the market had already combined Bluetooth radios with sunglasses by Feb. 2005.

Motivation: The specification's stated benefit — "drive, eat or perform other functions without getting tangled in a pesky wire" — is a well-known design goal for hands-free telephony (see also contemporaneous Bluetooth headset proliferation). Combining a known Bluetooth radio module with a microphone and speaker already mounted in glasses requires only routine selection of components, driven by regulatory and market pressure for hands-free operation while driving. Any claim limited to generic "wireless transceiver + microphone in glasses" maps nearly one-to-one onto the RAZRWire disclosure.

Combination 5 — Camera eyewear with image capture/storage/transmission

References: BBC News "Camera Specs Take Candid Snaps" (Sep. 18, 2003) — camera glasses; Eyetop (Nov. 2003); WO 03/100368 and/or WO 2004/012477 (wireless image transmission); camera module and CCD arts.

What the combination teaches: A forward-facing camera mounted on eyeglasses capturing what the wearer sees; local storage; and wired/wireless transfer to a remote site — including the '747's own police-patrol embodiment (pictures transmitted from the officer's glasses to a vehicle hub and then to a station).

Motivation: Documented public interest in "what you see is what you get" hands-free photography (BBC piece, Sep. 2003 — before the earliest priority date), plus the well-known desire of law-enforcement and journalism for covert or hands-free image capture. Combining a known miniature camera module with known wireless transmission components in eyewear is an obvious application of existing technology to a known use, driven by the articulated monitoring/remote-guidance use case (the '747's FIGS. 15–16 paramedic and police scenarios). A PHOSITA would combine these references because each supplies a missing, well-known block (optics, storage, radio) and the references themselves point to eyewear as the platform.

Combination 6 — Sensor-equipped glasses (being-worn, UV/environmental, physiological)

References: SunUV / SafeSun personal UV monitors (NPL, 2003–2004); Freescale MMA6260Q accelerometer data sheet (2004); heart-rate monitor literature (2004); FM-pedometer product literature (2005); WO arts for sensor signal processing.

What the combination teaches: Miniature UV sensors, accelerometers (motion detection → "being worn" determination), and physiological sensors were all commercially available as standalone wearable products. Mounting such a sensor on eyewear — including on a temple tip or auxiliary frame — is a routine relocation of a known sensor to a known platform.

Motivation: Health-and-lifestyle monitoring (UV exposure, activity, heart rate) was an active market (the record's EPA SunWise, APA Optics, and healthgoods.com items). The specification's own "being worn" sensor via hinge switch or motion detector is a design choice a PHOSITA would make to save battery power — a well-recognized motivation. Combining a UV sensor with sunglasses is particularly obvious because sunglasses are the natural platform for UV-exposure measurement (the lenses are literally UV-protective), a point the related '746 patent family develops.

Combination 7 — After-market temple tips, covers, and fit-over temples with electrical components

References: U.S. Pat. No. 6,012,811 (auxiliary-frame attachment to primary frames — cited in the '747 itself); the standard after-market temple-tip art (interchangeable, friction-fit temple tips were old); sensor/audio arts above.

What the combination teaches: Because temple tips and covers were known to be removable/replaceable for fit and style, putting a small electrical component (speaker, sensor, connector) into such a replaceable tip or slip-on cover is an obvious design choice that converts any ordinary eyeglass frame into a host for electronics.

Motivation: After-market customization is a documented retail practice (the '747 specification describes resellers offering replacement tips in different colors/shapes). A PHOSITA motivated to add electronics without redesigning the whole frame would choose the replaceable temple tip because it is the portion of the frame already designed to be swapped. This is "obvious to try" in the strongest sense — a finite set of known, expected solutions.

Additional § 103 considerations

KSR "obvious to try": Several claim themes (connector placement, knob configurations, speaker counts, sensor types) are presented in the specification as a menu of design choices ("the location and the number of knobs vary depending on the applications"). A claim that merely selects among known options with predictable results is the paradigm of obviousness.

Design need / market pressure: The record's own NPL (Oakley Thump, Motorola RAZRWire, Eyetop, Cardo, BBC camera piece) demonstrates contemporaneous market pressure to integrate MP3, Bluetooth telephony, cameras, and sensors into eyewear. Under KSR, such market pressure is an express motivation to combine.

Aggregation vs. combination: For the storage-device and sensor embodiments, the claimed inventions largely aggregate known components without new interactions — e.g., a USB flash drive in a temple does not change how the flash memory or the glasses function. This supports obviousness under the "aggregation of known elements" line of cases.

Secondary considerations: Based on the record before me, there is no showing of unexpected results, long-felt but unmet need, industry skepticism, or copying that would rebut the strong prima facie case. Commercial success of Oakley Thump/RAZRWire-type products actually cuts against patentability here because it evidences that others independently reached the same combinations promptly once components were miniaturized.

Conclusion

Based on the claim themes verifiable from the Abstract and Summary, and the cited art recoverable from the record, the core claim categories of US 7,500,747 — (i) eyeglasses with an embedded speaker electrically coupled to an embedded connector, (ii) eyeglasses with storage and a connector, (iii) MP3-player eyeglasses, (iv) microphone + wireless-transceiver eyeglasses, (v) camera eyeglasses, (vi) sensor eyeglasses, and (vii) after-market temple-tip electronics — would each have been obvious to a PHOSITA under 35 U.S.C. § 103. In each category, the record contains a reference already practicing the core function in eyewear (Thump for MP3 audio; RAZRWire for Bluetooth; BBC/Eyetop for cameras/display electronics), and the remaining elements (connectors, codecs, radios, sensors, storage) were known, off-the-shelf building blocks whose incorporation into temple cavities was driven by documented market pressure and the design-goal narrative the specification itself acknowledges.

Confidence note: This conclusion is strongest for the embodiments corroborated by the Thump (Nov. 2004), RAZRWire (Feb. 2005), Eyetop (2003), and BBC (Sep. 2003) disclosures. It is weakest where a claim may be entitled to the Oct. 9, 2003 provisional priority date, because the post-2003 NPL would then be unavailable and the analysis would need to rest on the WO/JP references and U.S. patents, whose complete '747 citation list I could not fully retrieve. A definitive claim-by-claim § 103 chart requires the actual claim text and the full PTO "References Cited" page, neither of which was in the supplied excerpt.