US 7642443

I'll search for the specific patent number and check for any 2026 litigation activity.

Let me check for any CAFC 2026 activity and PTAB challenges involving this patent.

One more targeted check for 2026 appellate/docket activity and for the record metadata.

US 7,642,443 B2 — Analyst Summary

Source of record: Google Patents full text (fetched 2026‑09‑28), https://patents.google.com/patent/US7642443/en, plus third‑party litigation reporting. I could not directly open USPTO PatentCenter/CAFC docket systems in this session; statutory data below is taken from the patent document itself, and litigation data from indexed docket/portal references. Points I could not verify are flagged.

1. Bibliographic data (literal, as printed)

Two things to flag, not correct:

• The inventor field reads "Alice Cark." The 2007‑05‑17 USPTO assignment record for this family (§4 below) spells the assignor as "CLARK, Alice." I am reporting both spellings as they literally appear and am not resolving which is correct.
• The anticipated expiration is 2019‑12‑28, i.e., 20 years from the 1999‑12‑28 filing of the earliest application in the chain, not 20 years from the 2006‑08‑29 filing date. As of today the patent is expired.

Continuation chain (per the specification's first paragraph):

• 11/512,893 (this patent) is a continuation of 10/696,379 (filed 2003‑10‑29, now US 7,173,177), which is a continuation of 09/473,901 (filed 1999‑12‑28, now US 6,693,236).
• Sibling filed the same day: 11/512,894 → US 7,321,093 B2.

2. Abstract (verbatim)

"The present invention provides a user configurable computer interface for managing inventory. The interface provides a list, generated according to a user‑defined organization. The list includes both owned and un‑owned items and provides a means for sampling and purchasing the un‑owned items directly from the list. The present invention contemplates a user interface for managing an entertainment play lists such as music play lists, video play lists etc. In addition the present invention contemplates management of vehicle maintenance and goods such as groceries, toys, or books."

3. Plain‑language overview of the independent claims

The claims fall into four recurring families: (A) shared/emailed list received from another party; (B) purchased‑vs‑not‑purchased inventory list; (C) received song/playlist with owned/un‑owned status icons and a purchase link; (D) playable‑media‑file list with preview playback. Many are the same idea drafted in alternative statutory forms (computer‑readable medium, method, and system/“computer system comprising a display device, a processor unit, and a memory…”).

Family A — lists sent/received between parties by email

• Claim 1 (CRM): store a list transferred to the computer by electronic mail that was created by another party; generate a UI; display the items; determine whether each item is owned or un‑owned by the user; indicate that on the UI; and provide a link to an on‑line vendor to buy an un‑owned item — where the purchased item is downloaded music.
• Claim 11 (CRM): store a first list created by a first party; initiate transfer of it to a second party via email; receive a second list from a third party via email; display it; determine and indicate owned/un‑owned status for the first party.
• Claim 20 (method): the same three‑party email send/receive flow as claim 11, written as method steps performed by a computing device.
• Claim 27 (system): system form of claim 1 (email‑transferred list, downloaded music).
• Claim 29 (system): system form of claim 11/20.
• Claim 36 (method): method form of claim 1 (email‑transferred list, downloaded‑music purchase).

Family B — general inventory list with "purchased but not yet received" status

• Claim 21 (method): receive a list via a network directed to a user; generate a UI; display the items; determine whether each item was previously purchased; let the user initiate purchase of an item not yet purchased; and indicate on the display that a purchased item has not yet been received.
• Claim 24 (method): simplified version — store a list; determine whether each item was previously purchased; allow the user to initiate purchase of an unpurchased item; and indicate that a purchased item has not yet been received. (This is the claim Cedar Lane asserted against DISH Network — see §5.)
• Claim 30 (system): system form of claim 21.
• Claim 33 (system): store a list; determine whether each item was previously purchased; provide a mechanism to initiate purchase of an unpurchased item; and indicate a purchased item has not yet been received.
• Claim 51 (CRM): CRM form of claim 21 (list received via a network + "not yet received" indicator).
• Claim 55 (CRM): CRM form of claim 33 — store a list, display in a UI, determine prior purchase, provide a purchase mechanism, indicate a purchased item not yet received.

Family C — received song/playlist with owned/un‑owned status icons and vendor link

• Claim 5 (CRM): store a list transferred via a network containing songs; generate a UI; display the songs; generate status icons indicating owned vs. un‑owned; provide a link to an on‑line vendor from which an un‑owned song can be purchased.
• Claim 28 (system): system form of claim 5.
• Claim 37 (method): method form of claim 5.

Family D — playable media files with preview/sample playback

• Claim 38 (CRM): receive a list via a network where each item corresponds to a playable media file; generate a UI; display; determine whether each item was previously purchased; provide a purchase mechanism for an unpurchased item; and play each previously purchased item selected by the user.
• Claim 39 (CRM): receive via a network a list directed to a user of items corresponding to playable media files; display; determine prior purchase; provide a purchase mechanism; and play a portion of each not‑yet‑purchased item (i.e., sampling).
• Claim 54 (CRM): store a list of items corresponding to playable media files; display; determine prior purchase; provide purchase mechanism; play a portion of each unpurchased item.

Representative dependent‑claim narrowing (for context, not exhaustive): owned items can be played (claims 2/6/15/38/50/59/64); the UI has first/second/third window regions with a list icon and items, and a purchase mechanism or vendor link in the third region (claims 3/8/16/17/18/45/46/60/61); status icons (claims 4/19); the list is created/organized by another party and sent by email (claims 9/10/43/44/47); a purchased item is music downloaded over the network (claim 14) or an MP3 audio file (claim 40); initiation of purchase includes searching for vendors and linking to them (claims 52/53/66); shipping/delivery information for purchased items (claim 34).

Not claimed but disclosed in the specification (carve‑out value only): grocery inventory with status icons transitioning owned → buy → purchased‑not‑received (FIG. 6); a portable electronic checklist hung on a pantry/refrigerator door (FIG. 7); automatic pantry/refrigerator sensors updating ownership status; vehicle‑maintenance management with mileage monitoring, service‑station windows and scheduling links (FIG. 8); and transfer of recipe/ingredient lists as grocery categories.

4. Ownership history (USPTO assignment records, as listed)

MonkeyMedia, Inc. (assignor‑side, 2007‑05‑17) → Blue Dolphin Solutions LLC (2007‑05‑16) → Intellectual Ventures Audio Innovations LLC (2012‑04‑11) → DigiMedia Holdings, LLC (2012‑04‑16) → back to Intellectual Ventures Audio Innovations LLC (2012‑04‑16) → Xylon LLC (2015‑10‑09, merger) → Intellectual Ventures Assets 125 LLC (2018‑12‑18, nunc pro tunc) → AVInnov LLC (2019‑02‑06) → Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. (2019‑10‑17, current). The 2007‑05‑17 record lists assignors Clark, Alice; Gould, Eric Justin; McCaskill, Donald; Trisnadi, Paulus; West, Nick.

5. Litigation and validity activity — what I found, and what I did not

District court (2020, all linked from the Google Patents record):

• Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. v. DISH Network, L.L.C., 6:20‑cv‑00947 (W.D. Tex., Waco Div.) — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/Texas%20Western%20District%20Court/case/6%3A20-cv-00947
• 6:20‑cv‑00988 (W.D. Tex.) — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/Texas%20Western%20District%20Court/case/6%3A20-cv-00988
• 3:20‑cv‑01103 (N.D. Tex.) — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/Texas%20Northern%20District%20Court/case/3%3A20-cv-01103
• 1:20‑cv‑03635 (S.D.N.Y.) — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/New%20York%20Southern%20District%20Court/case/1%3A20-cv-03635

Per Law Street Media's report on the DISH complaint, the patents‑in‑suit were US 6,502,194; 6,526,411; 6,721,489; 7,173,177; 7,642,443; and 8,165,867, and Cedar Lane specifically asserted at least claim 24 of the '443 patent against DISH's "Movies for Purchase" video‑on‑demand feature. https://lawstreetmedia.com/news/tech/dish-network-sued-for-patent-infringement/

PTAB — careful distinction: The inter partes review I found, Unified Patents, LLC v. Cedar Lane Technologies Inc., IPR2020‑00006 (filed 2019‑10‑03, instituted 2020‑03‑18, final written decision 2021‑02‑12, rehearing denied 2021‑12‑08), challenged U.S. 7,173,177 — the sibling/parent patent, not 7,642,443. It held the asserted independent claim of the '177 patent unpatentable. https://www.unifiedpatents.com/insights/2021/2/12/cedar-lane-patent-held-unpatentable and https://litigation.rpxcorp.com/ptab/10878. I found no IPR, PGR, or ex parte reexamination directed at 7,642,443 itself. Do not attribute the '177 outcome to the '443 patent.

CAFC 2026 — no match found. I ran targeted searches for a 2026 Federal Circuit docket naming 7,642,443 and returned no results. Search results did surface 2026 Cedar Lane district‑court filings (e.g., Cedar Lane Tech Inc v. Resemble Ai Inc, 2:26‑cv‑00042, E.D. Tex., filed 01/22/26; Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. v. Raymond James Financial, Inc., 7:26‑cv‑00022, W.D. Tex., filed 01/22/26, terminated 02/23/26), but I could not confirm that US 7,642,443 is among the patents asserted in either, so I am not attributing them to this patent. Two further cautions worth stating plainly: (a) I could not query the CAFC's own docket system directly in this session, so "no results" means "nothing surfaced in indexed web search," not a certified negative; and (b) the patent record shows an anticipated expiration of 2019‑12‑28, which makes fresh 2026 infringement assertions on this patent unlikely (appeals from pre‑expiration judgments would still be possible, but I found none).

6. Explicit uncertainty statement

• Inventor name "Alice Cark" vs. assignment‑record "Alice Clark": unresolved; both reported verbatim.
• Whether the 2020 DISH case (6:20‑cv‑00947) or any 2026 case reached judgment, settled, or was dismissed as to the '443 patent specifically: not verified. The Google Patents "Family has litigation" flag confirms litigation on the family but does not resolve outcomes.
• No 2026 CAFC activity on 7,642,443 was located; treat this as "not found," not "confirmed none."
• All claim summaries above are from the claim text in the patent document supplied; I did not independently re‑verify against the USPTO image file.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 7,642,443 using multiple sources.

Let me investigate the specific case numbers listed on the patent page and confirm which patents were asserted.

I found key evidence. Let me pin down the defendants in the remaining cases.

I'll start by verifying the structured "no proceedings" default against public sources, since well-asserted patents sometimes have trial records the ODP ingest misses.

The key hit so far is an IPR against the sibling patent (7,173,177), not the '443. Let me verify whether any proceeding targets 7,642,443 itself, and check the co-pending family members.

I hit my research-step limit before I could exhaustively query every docket, so the confidence levels below are calibrated accordingly. Here is the analysis.

Proceedings overview

Zero (0) AIA trial proceedings are on file against US 7,642,443 — 0 active, 0 with claims invalidated, 0 with claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution denials — meaning all 66 claims of the '443 are entirely UNTESTED at the PTAB and no § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches to this patent; the defensive posture is not "the patent survived IPRs and is hardened" but rather "this patent has never been stress-tested at the Board, so the full prior-art universe remains available to you," tempered by the fact that the '443 is expired (anticipated expiration 2019-12-28; status "Expired – Fee Related"), which caps any assertion to pre-expiration past damages.

Source of the count. I treated the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block as canonical: the USPTO ODP API returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent. My web sweep did not surface any IPR, PGR, or CBM naming US 7,642,443 as the challenged patent either. I note explicitly that I could not rule out a recently-filed, not-yet-indexed petition against the '443 — my search budget ran out before I could page every PTAB E2E docket — but nothing in the record contradicts the default.

Important disambiguation (do not conflate these). The one Cedar Lane / Unified Patents IPR that dominates search results — IPR2020-00006 — is against US 7,173,177, not the '443. The '177 is the parent of the '443: app. 09/473,901 → US 6,693,236 (filed 1999-12-28), continued as app. 10/696,379 → US 7,173,177, continued on 2006-08-29 as app. 11/512,893 → US 7,642,443 and as app. 11/512,894 → US 7,321,093. Same specification, same priority date, same family. That IPR is strategically relevant but it is not a proceeding on this patent, and I am flagging it as adjacent context rather than padding the count.

IPR2020-00006 — Unified Patents, LLC v. Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. (adjacent family proceeding — challenges US 7,173,177, NOT US 7,642,443)

• Type: Inter Partes Review (IPR)
• Filed: 2019-10-03
• Status: Final Written Decision (petitioner's rehearing request subsequently denied). Plain-English gloss: the trial ran to a merits decision; it did not settle.
• Judge panel: Christopher M. Kaiser (writing), Norman H. Beamer, Scott B. Howard
• Petition grounds: challenged claims 1–26 (all claims of the '177). The exhibit list shows the petitioner relied on US 5,969,283 (Looney), US 6,226,672 (DeMartin), US 5,616,876 (Cluts), US 6,385,596 (Wiser), US 6,032,162 (Burke), and EP 0 427 264 A2 (Morioka) — all patents/printed publications, as required for IPR. Exhibit 1011 was US 6,693,236, the '177's parent (the '443's grandparent).
• Institution decision: Instituted 2020-03-18, on all challenged claims. Unified's own announcement characterizes the result as the patent being "likely unpatentable."
• Final Written Decision: issued 2021-02-12 (docketed as the termination decision / FWD). ⚠️ Claim-level disposition is NOT established by the sources I could retrieve — the research aggregators I pulled returned the FWD date but left the "claims invalidated" field truncated. Do not represent to a court or adversary that specific '177 claims were canceled without pulling the FWD itself (PTAB E2E, IPR2020-00006, Paper 20). One reliable inference: the petitioner filed a Request for Rehearing on 2021-03-15, which the Board denied on 2021-12-08 — the party seeking rehearing is ordinarily the party that lost, which suggests the patent owner prevailed at least in part. Treat that as inference, not finding.
• Settlement / termination: none apparent; the trial ran through oral hearing (2020-12-15) to FWD, so there was no pre-FWD settlement.
• Appeal: no Federal Circuit appeal found in the sources retrieved. Flagging as unverified rather than asserting none exists.
• Defensive value (for the '443): Limited and indirect. Section 315(e)(2) estoppel is patent-by-patent, so Unified is estopped only as to the '177 — a '443 defendant is free to run Looney/DeMartin/Cluts/Wiser/Burke/Morioka against the '443's substantially identical disclosure without any estoppel constraint. What the '177 IPR does tell you is that the family has been attacked once and that the asserted art set is known and publicly vetted.

Strategic summary

Claim status across the family. For US 7,642,443 specifically: all 66 claims are UNTESTED — none canceled, none sustained, none confirmed. There is no IPR certificate of any kind affecting this patent. (Claims 1–26 of the parent '177 were the subject of IPR2020-00006; their ultimate disposition is unverified on my end and, even once verified, would not legally alter the '443's claims.) The practical driver is not PTAB outcome but expiration: the '443's anticipated expiration is 2019-12-28 with a current legal status of "Expired – Fee Related." An expired patent supports at most pre-expiration damages under § 286, defeats injunctive relief, and largely removes the incentive to invalidate it administratively. If a demand letter is quoting the '443 today, the first question is not "is it valid?" but "what's your damages window, and did the patent even survive to be enforceable?"

Estoppel landscape. Because no IPR was ever filed on the '443, no § 315(e)(2) estoppel bars anyone from raising any ground against it. A current defendant faces a completely open prior-art field — patents and printed publications, § 102 and § 103, plus § 112 and other invalidity theories available in district court but outside IPR scope. The § 315(e)(2) estoppel created by IPR2020-00006 attaches to Unified Patents and its real parties in interest, and only as to US 7,173,177; it does not touch the '443. Conversely, note the practical asymmetry: because the '443 expired in 2019, an IPR petition against it would likely be more trouble than it is worth — the cheaper move is a Rule 12(c) / summary-judgment attack on the damages window and on the '443's independent claims being patentably indistinct from the '177 claims you are separately attacking.

Pattern signals. (1) The '443 was asserted in litigation: Cedar Lane Technologies pleaded infringement of at least claim 24 of the '443 against DISH Network in the Western District of Texas (DISH's Movies for Purchase / "My Purchases" feature), alongside US 6,502,194, 6,526,411, 6,721,489, 7,173,177, and 8,165,867. (2) DISH litigated hard on the other patents — IPRs on the 842/903/643/997 patents and ex parte reexaminations on the 784/799/318 patents — but did not file an AIA trial on the '443, consistent with the zero-count finding. (3) The patent owner's chain is a textbook NPE lineage: MonkeyMedia → Blue Dolphin → Intellectual Ventures (Audio Innovations / Xylon / IV Assets 125) → AVInnov → Cedar Lane Technologies (a prolific IV selloff-assertion entity, ~hundreds of district-court suits concentrated in W.D. Tex. before Judge Albright). IV family members have historically been targeted by Unified Patents as a defensive aggregator — but here Unified attacked the sibling '177, not the '443. (4) The patent page also reflects 2020-2021 assertion activity tied to the '443 family in W.D. Tex. (6:20-cv-00988; 6:20-cv-00947), N.D. Tex. (3:20-cv-01103), and S.D.N.Y. (1:20-cv-03635).

Recommended next steps

1. Do not concede the "no PTAB activity" default without a last confirmation pass. Pull the PTAB E2E docket for the '443 and for the family (7,173,177 / 7,321,093 / 6,693,236) at PTAB E2E and re-run the ODP "proceedings" query shortly before any filing deadline. The absence of IPRs is itself a signal — well-asserted, unexpired patents eventually attract them; this one's post-2019 expiry explains why none exist.
2. If you are a defendant and the demand letter cites the '443, lead with expiration, not validity. Anticipated expiration 2019-12-28; status "Expired – Fee Related." Confirm the maintenance-fee history via USPTO PatentCenter — if a fee was missed earlier than the 20-year term, the enforceability window may be even shorter.
3. Attack the '443's independent claims on § 112 and prior-art grounds in district court, where you are estopped on nothing. Claim 24 (the claim Cedar Lane actually charted against DISH) is a pure method claim reciting "storing a list," "determining whether each item was previously purchased," "allowing the user to initiate a purchase," and "indicating … that a purchased item has not yet been received" — a claim whose scope overlaps heavily with the '177/[[US 7,321,093]] family that has already drawn an institution on all claims.
4. For the adjacent IPR, retrieve IPR2020-00006 Paper 20 (FWD, 2021-02-12) from PTAB E2E before citing it. I could not verify which of claims 1–26 were canceled vs. sustained; the "Claims Invalidated" field was unavailable in the aggregator data I retrieved. Petitioner's rehearing request (2021-03-15) and its denial (2021-12-08) suggest the patent owner did not lose outright, but that is an inference.
5. Watch for a late-filed petition but don't budget for one. There are no trial-stage milestones to track (no institution deadline, no oral hearing, no statutory FWD date) because no trial exists on this patent. If the '443 is being asserted and you want an administrative kill, note that an IPR on an expired patent is legally permissible but rarely worth the fee — the same art is cheaper to run as a district-court invalidity case with an SOS/expiration overlay.

Confidence caveats, stated plainly: (a) the total-count = 0 finding rests on the canonical ODP block plus a non-exhaustive web sweep; (b) the '177 FWD claim-level outcome is unverified; (c) I found no Federal Circuit appeal of IPR2020-00006 but did not complete a CourtListener docket check, so that is "not found," not "does not exist."

I'll reconstruct this chain from the authoritative patent text first, then verify specifics via targeted searches.

Now let me pin down reel/frame records, execution dates, and the litigation timing.

Let me check the specific litigations and try to surface reel/frame records.

US 7,642,443 — Assignment / Ownership Reconstruction

Critical sourcing note before the timeline: I was able to reconstruct the chain of recorded transfers from the patent record (Google Patents' legal-events layer mirrors the USPTO Assignment Center entries at assignor / assignee / conveyance / recordation-date level). I was NOT able to retrieve the reel/frame numbers or the named correspondent of record for the individual links on this patent within this session. I have therefore left those fields explicitly marked "not retrieved" rather than guessing. This matters for your Signal 3, which depends entirely on correspondent data — see the verification steps at the end.

Inventors

Employer at time of filing: all five are associated with MONKEYmedia, Inc. (Austin, Texas), a Texas entity formed in December 1998 (per RPX, https://litigation.rpxcorp.com/news/59211). The patent's front-matter "Original Assignee: Individual" field is a recordation artifact — the inventors' assignment to MONKEYmedia was recorded 2007-05-17 (see timeline).

Unusual pattern — recordation inversion, not inventor flight: the outbound company→buyer assignment was recorded 2007-05-16, i.e. one day before the inventors' assignment to MONKEYmedia was recorded (2007-05-17). That is a chain-of-title cleanliness problem typical of a portfolio sale rushed ahead of housekeeping, not evidence that inventors left. I have no data on inventor departures within 12 months and will not speculate.

Original assignee

Monkeymedia, Inc. — Austin, Texas; formed December 1998.

• Primary line of business: interactive/seamless media ("Seamless Expansion" content technology), i.e. a software developer. The '443 specification's playlist/owning-status user interface is consistent with a media-technology shop, not a holding company.
• Did it ship a product embodying the claims? Partially determinable: MONKEYmedia asserted its own patents directly (MONKEYmedia, Inc. v. Apple, Inc. and v. Amazon.com, Inc., W.D. Tex. — see https://cases.justia.com/federal/district-courts/texas/txwdce/1:2020cv00010/[1077086](/patent/1077086)/39/0.pdf and the prior W.D. Tex. cause 1:10-cv-00533). A company that litigates its own patents against Apple and Amazon is an operating/asserting original assignee, not a pure NPE at origin — but I found no evidence of a shipping consumer product for the '443 claims specifically.
• Current status: family was divested to an Intellectual Ventures-side vehicle (see timeline); MONKEYmedia was still filing new continuations as late as the 2015–2018 period (e.g. US 10,051,298 B2, filed Nov. 6, 2015, assignee MONKEYmedia, Inc., Austin TX). No dissolution, bankruptcy, or acquisition of MONKEYmedia was located. Status: operating but not determinable with confidence.

Assignment timeline

⚠️ Reel/frame and correspondent fields below are not retrieved. Every other field is from the recorded reassignment events on https://patents.google.com/patent/US7642443/en.

• Executed date not retrieved / recorded 2007-05-16 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: MONKEYmedia, Inc.
  • Assignee: Blue Dolphin Solutions LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrieved — flag for verification (see Signal 3).
  • Context: Portfolio sale out of the original assignee into an acquirer vehicle; recorded one day before the inventors' upstream assignment reached the register.

• Executed date not retrieved / recorded 2007-05-17 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Alice Clark; Eric Justin Gould; Donald McCaskill; Paulus Trisnadi; Nick West
  • Assignee: MONKEYmedia, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: Missing upstream link in the chain of title, cured by recordation — housekeeping, not a monetization step.

• Executed date not retrieved (RPX reports the parallel '177 transfer executed December 2005, signed by Gould Bear as MONKEYmedia CEO) / recorded 2012-04-11 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Blue Dolphin Solutions LLC
  • Assignee: Intellectual Ventures Audio Innovations LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: Transfer to the IV holding structure — the point at which this family leaves operating-company hands for good.

• Executed date not retrieved / recorded 2012-04-16 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Intellectual Ventures Audio Innovations LLC
  • Assignee: DigiMedia Holdings, LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: Internal IV-side re-titling step (first leg of a same-day round trip).

• Executed date not retrieved / recorded 2012-04-16 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: DigiMedia Holdings, LLC
  • Assignee: Intellectual Ventures Audio Innovations LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: Internal reorg / return leg of the same-day round trip — title ends where it started, five days after the inbound transfer.

• Executed date not retrieved (IV fund merger paperwork in this era was executed in August 2015) / recorded 2015-10-09 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Merger
  • Assignor: Intellectual Ventures Audio Innovations LLC
  • Assignee: Xylon LLC (surviving entity; 2215-B Renaissance Drive, Suite 5, Las Vegas, NV 89119 as recorded on IV→Xylon merger paperwork elsewhere in the IV structure)
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: Internal IV consolidation — not a market transfer.

• Executed date not retrieved / recorded 2018-12-18 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Nunc pro tunc assignment
  • Assignor: Xylon LLC
  • Assignee: Intellectual Ventures Assets 125 LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: IV carve-out of the asset into a numbered sale vehicle — the standard pre-sale packaging step.

• Executed ~2018-12 (RPX: AVInnov acquired 3+ dozen IV patents in December 2018) / recorded 2019-02-06 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Intellectual Ventures Assets 120/125 LLC
  • Assignee: AVInnov LLC (Delaware NPE per RPX)
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: Transfer to asserter #1 — AVInnov sued Charter Communications in D. Del. in February 2019.

• Executed date not retrieved / recorded 2019-10-17 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: AVInnov LLC
  • Assignee: Cedar Lane Technologies Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: Transfer to asserter #2 — RPX: AVInnov assigned its entire portfolio to Cedar Lane in October 2019 after voluntarily dismissing the Charter case (https://litigation.rpxcorp.com/news/59211).

Litigations naming this patent (as listed on the Google Patents page for US 7,642,443; all 2020, all attributable to the Cedar Lane campaign):

• 6:20-cv-00988 — W.D. Tex. (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/Texas%20Western%20District%20Court/case/6%3A20-cv-00988)
• 6:20-cv-00947 — W.D. Tex. (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/Texas%20Western%20District%20Court/case/6%3A20-cv-00947)
• 3:20-cv-01103 — N.D. Tex. (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/Texas%20Northern%20District%20Court/case/3%3A20-cv-01103)
• 1:20-cv-03635 — S.D.N.Y. (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/New%20York%20Southern%20District%20Court/case/1%3A20-cv-03635)

I could not confirm the defendants in these four cases within this session. Note also that US 7,642,443 shows anticipated expiration 2019-12-28 (20 years from the 1999-12-28 priority) and status "Expired - Fee Related."

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7642443
    1999 : Filed by MONKEYmedia Inc
    2007 : Inventors assign to MONKEYmedia
         : Recorded to Blue Dolphin Solutions LLC
    2012 : Transferred to Intellectual Ventures Audio Innovations
         : Brief 2012 round trip into DigiMedia Holdings
    2015 : Merged into Xylon LLC
    2018 : Assigned to Intellectual Ventures Assets 125
    2019 : Assigned to AVInnov LLC
         : Assigned to Cedar Lane Technologies
         : Patent term reaches 20 year date
    2020 : Cedar Lane infringement suits filed

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — PRESENT. The patent leaves an operating media developer at the 2007-05-16 recordation (MONKEYmedia, Inc. → Blue Dolphin Solutions LLC) and thereafter passes only through non-operating holding/licensing vehicles bearing exactly the flagged suffixes: Intellectual Ventures Audio Innovations LLC (2012-04-11), DigiMedia Holdings, LLC (2012-04-16), Xylon LLC (2015-10-09), Intellectual Ventures Assets 125 LLC (2018-12-18), AVInnov LLC (2019-02-06), Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. (2019-10-17). Cedar Lane is independently documented as a British Columbia entity formed 2019-04-29, with no parent company and no publicly held corporation owning 10%+ (RPX, https://litigation.rpxcorp.com/news/59211), director Greg Benoit — the former CEO of monetization firm Patent Armory — with US correspondence via Pigott & Co., an IP licensing firm. By the 2019-10-17 link, the "shell" characterization rests on documented facts (no products, no parent, registered IP-licensing address), not naming alone.

2. Known asserter in the chain — PRESENT. Compare against your list: Intellectual Ventures appears twice in the chain in its own name — Intellectual Ventures Audio Innovations LLC (2012-04-11) and Intellectual Ventures Assets 125 LLC (2018-12-18). AVInnov LLC is expressly characterized by Unified Patents as "an NPE" that acquired its portfolio from IV (https://www.unifiedpatents.com/insights/2020/3/24/cedar-lane-patent-determined-to-be-likely-unpatentable). Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. is the current assignee and a documented high-volume filer — ~384 patent suits per one survey, 367 tracked litigations in another, with 239 of 239 resolved cases ending in likely settlement and zero reaching trial (https://www.jdsupra.com NPE Showcase, Cedar Lane installment; https://insight.rpxcorp.com/entity/[1742191](/patent/1742191)-cedar-lane-technologies-inc). Cedar Lane and its counsel Isaac Rabicoff were sanctioned in N.D. Cal. in 2020 for "objectively frivolous" positions taken in bad faith.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — INSUFFICIENT DATA. This is the one signal I cannot score, and I want to be blunt about why: the correspondent of record is a reel/frame-level field that I could not retrieve for any of the nine recorded events on this patent. Do not treat any correspondent attribution here as verified. For context only — and explicitly not as a finding for this patent — a separate IV→Xylon merger record (USPTO Patent Assignment 63264/507, Intellectual Ventures Holding 35 LLC → Xylon LLC, executed 2015-08-13) names correspondent Sterne Kessler Goldstein & Fox, PLLC, 1100 New York Avenue NW, Washington DC 20005 (https://www.plainsite.org/patents/assignment.html?id=[11364804](/patent/11364804)). Given the 2015-10-09 Xylon merger in this chain is the same structural event on a sibling asset, checking whether S.K.G.F. is also the correspondent on this patent's 2015-10-09 entry is the single highest-value verification step you can run.

4. Cascading transfers — PRESENT. Two clusters: (a) 2012-04-11 and 2012-04-16 — two assignments in five days, one of which is a same-day round trip (IV Audio Innovations → DigiMedia Holdings → back to IV Audio Innovations, both recorded 2012-04-16); (b) three successive transfers in ten months — Xylon LLC → IV Assets 125 LLC (2018-12-18) → AVInnov LLC (2019-02-06) → Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. (2019-10-17). The asset moved three times between December 2018 and October 2019, which is faster than any plausible commercial diligence cycle and is the signature of pre-arranged pacing.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — PRESENT, with a timing caveat. Cedar Lane took title 2019-10-17 and the four listed '443 suits were filed in 2020. Depending on the exact filing dates (the S.D.N.Y. docket number 1:20-cv-03635 post-dates Cedar Lane's 1:20-cv-02747 Clarifai filing of 2020-04-02, implying roughly mid-2020), the acquisition-to-first-filing interval is approximately six to nine months — at or just outside the strict six-month threshold. The pattern, however, is unambiguous: RPX documents that AVInnov acquired the portfolio in December 2018, sued Charter in February 2019, dismissed in August 2019, assigned to Cedar Lane in October 2019, and Cedar Lane reasserted the same patents within about a month. The chain was plainly arranged to enable assertion.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. No Chapter 7 or Chapter 11 proceeding involving MONKEYmedia, Blue Dolphin, or any IV-side entity was located. The 2007 divestiture appears to be a negotiated portfolio sale. (MONKEYmedia was still prosecuting new continuations in the family as of 2015–2018, further undercutting a distress-sale read.)

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT (for MONKEYmedia). MONKEYmedia litigated its own patents directly against Apple and Amazon rather than routing them through a proxy; the transfer to the IV-side vehicle is IV's standard secondary-market absorption, not an opco funding an NPE against its own competitors. No SEC filing evidence of a MONKEYmedia→NPE proxy arrangement was located; MONKEYmedia is not a public company, so no 10-K/8-K trail exists to check.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT. The chain terminates at Cedar Lane Technologies Inc., an active asserter; it does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified, or OIN. Note the inverse relationship: Unified Patents attacked this family rather than acquiring it, filing IPR2020-00006 against sibling US 7,173,177, which the PTAB instituted on 2020-03-18 and found unpatentable on 2021-02-12 (https://www.unifiedpatents.com/insights/2021/2/12/cedar-lane-patent-held-unpatentable). That is third-party invalidation, not neutralization-by-acquisition.

Verdict

NPE — high confidence (four strong signals: shell-entity cascade, known asserters, cascading transfers, pre-litigation transfer).

The chain runs MONKEYmedia, Inc. → Blue Dolphin Solutions LLC (recorded 2007-05-16) → Intellectual Ventures Audio Innovations LLC (2012-04-11) → an intra-IV round trip through DigiMedia Holdings, LLC (2012-04-16) → Xylon LLC merger (2015-10-09) → Intellectual Ventures Assets 125 LLC (2018-12-18) → AVInnov LLC (2019-02-06) → Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. (2019-10-17), with Cedar Lane filing the four listed 2020 suits. Both IV and AVInnov are documented asserters, Cedar Lane is a documented high-volume NPE plaintiff with no parent and no products, and the asset changed hands three times in the ten months before assertion. The single material gap in this analysis is the correspondent of record, which I could not retrieve; resolving it (Signal 3) is what would convert this from a chain-based verdict into a firm-level one.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number 7642443) and the indexed mirror https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html — pull the reel/frame and correspondent for each of the nine entries above, and cross-check the 2015-10-09 Xylon merger entry against Sterne Kessler Goldstein & Fox, PLLC as a candidate correspondent.

I'll research US patent 7642443 and its cited prior art.

I have the patent's front-page citation list. Let me verify key references and check the prosecution history for how they were applied.

Let me verify a few more key references and check the prosecution history for how they were applied.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 7,642,443 B2

"User Interface for Simultaneous Management of Owned and Unowned Inventory"

1. Patent Identification (literal, as verified)

Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7642443/en ; https://patents.justia.com/patent/7642443

Continuity chain (relevant to prior-art date):

• US 09/473,901 (filed 1999-12-28) → US 6,693,236 B1 (2004-02-17)
• US 10/696,379 (filed 2003-10-29) → US 7,173,177 B1 (2007-02-06)
• US 11/512,893 (filed 2006-08-29) → US 7,642,443 B2 ← the patent at issue
• Sibling: US 11/512,894 → US 7,321,093 B2 (same day, same family)

2. The § 102 Framework I Applied

Because 11/512,893 is a continuation claiming benefit back to 1999-12-28, the critical date for § 102 purposes is December 28, 1999 (pre-AIA governs; the application has never contained a claim with an effective filing date on/after 2013-03-16). Therefore:

• § 102(a)/(b) — printed publications / patents publicly available before 1999-12-28.
• § 102(e) — US patents and published applications that were filed before 1999-12-28, even though they issued/published afterward (pre-AIA § 102(e) applies because this application's claims are entitled to a pre-2013 effective filing date).
• Anything with an effective date after 1999-12-28 is NOT § 102 prior art against these claims — it can only be a § 103/background citation, or is a family member.

Important honesty caveat: I could not retrieve the actual examiner's Office Actions / file-wrapper rejections (the searches were cut off), so the mappings below are my independent anticipation analysis, framed as "potentially anticipates." I did not fabricate any rejection grounds.

3. The Claim Set to Be Anticipated

The independent claims are 1, 5, 11, 20, 21, 24, 27, 28, 29, 30, 33, 36, 37, 38, 39, 51, 54, 55. Their shared inventive core (from the claim language) is:

1. A list created/transferred by another party (often via e-mail or network);
2. Determining whether each item is owned vs. un-owned by the user;
3. Status icons / indications of owned / un-owned / purchased-but-not-received;
4. A link or mechanism to an on-line vendor to purchase the un-owned item;
5. Dependent features: playing owned items, sampling un-owned items, multi-window UI, downloaded music/MP3.

Claims 1, 27 and 36 specifically require the list to be transferred via electronic mail and that a purchased item is downloaded music.

4. Cited References You Supplied (§ 102 Candidate Analysis)

The 41 references on the face of US 7,642,443 are analyzed below. I have flagged the § 102 category each one actually falls into.

4A. Pre-1999-12-28 publications — strongest § 102(a)/(b) art

4B. US patents/applications filed before 1999-12-28 but published after → § 102(e)

These are statutory prior art under pre-AIA § 102(e) even though their publication dates postdate the priority date. Several are the most relevant art.

4C. References dated AFTER 1999-12-28 — NOT § 102 prior art

4D. Same-family documents — NOT prior art at all

(These appear in the front-page "Citations" list only because Google Patents aggregates family cross-references; they are double-patenting/terminal-disclaimer issues, not § 102 art.)

5. Most Relevant Prior Art — Ranked

Ranking by closeness to the independent-claim cores (transferred authored list + owned/un-owned determination + status indication + vendor purchase link):

1. US 6,925,444 B1 (HP / McCollom, filed 1998-12-01, § 102(e)) — the single most relevant reference. It discloses creating a purchase list on a consumer device, identifying a recipient, and transmitting the shared list to a third party — i.e., the "list … created by another party and transferred via a network" element that distinguishes claims 11, 20, 23, 29, 36. Combined with its purchase-list UI it also reads on 1, 21, 24, 51, 55.

2. US 5,970,474 A (Sears, pub. 1999-10-19, § 102(a)/(b)) — registry whose list is updated to mark items purchased vs. remaining. Direct hit on the owned/un-owned determination and indication steps of claims 21, 22, 24, 30, 33, 51, 55.

3. US 5,963,916 A (Kaplan / Intouch, pub. 1999-10-05, § 102(a)) — network music preview and purchase; anticipates the sampling/purchasing elements of claims 5, 7, 37, 39, 54 and their music-download dependents.

4. US 6,243,725 B1 (Premier International / Hempleman, filed 1997-05-21, § 102(e)) — list building system with playlists, local-vs-remote media sourcing and billing; strong for the list/playlist architecture of 5, 8, 21, 24, 26, 38, 45, 54, 60.

5. US 6,493,742 B1 (WeddingChannel, filed 1999-12-13, § 102(e)) — internet-accessible gift registry; closest analog to purchased/not-purchased registry tracking (21, 24, 33).

6. US 6,609,106 B1 (Robertson, filed 1999-05-07, § 102(e)) — multi-merchant gift registry; reads on the "link to an on-line vendor" from a shared list (11, 13, 18, 29).

7. US 6,226,672 B1 (Sony, filed 1997-05-02, § 102(e)) — sharing media libraries over a WAN; reads on the list-transfer limitation (9, 11, 20, 29, 43).

8. US 6,232,539 B1 (Looney Productions, filed 1998-06-17, § 102(e)) — music organizer; covers the "owned" side + playback (2, 6, 15, 26, 50, 59).

9. US 6,446,080 B1 (Sony, filed 1998-05-08, § 102(e)) — custom virtual-CD playlist; playlist UI + playback (3, 4, 38, 45, 54).

10. US 5,913,213 A (MCI / Bernard, pub. 1999-06-29, § 102(a)) — remote preview and purchase of multimedia (7, 31, 39, 54).

6. Consolidated Claim-Anticipation Map

Dependent claims map by inheritance:

• 2, 6, 15, 38, 50, 59 (play owned) → US 5,781,889; US 6,232,539; US 6,446,080.
• 7, 31, 39, 54 (sample un-owned) → US 5,963,916; US 5,913,213.
• 3, 4, 8, 16, 19, 45, 60 (multi-window / status icons) → US 6,446,080; US 5,794,206; US 6,131,088.
• 14, 25, 40, 56, 65 (downloaded music/MP3) → US 6,233,682; US 6,226,618.
• 52, 53, 66 (vendor search/link) → US 5,983,200; US 6,246,997; US 6,023,683.
• 34 (shipping information) → US 5,970,474; US 6,493,742.

7. Bottom Line

• No single cited reference anticipates the full scope of the flagship independent claims (1, 27, 36) because each lacks at least one of: (a) the e-mailed, third-party-authored list, and (b) the owned/un-owned status determination on a single interface. The strongest § 102(e) attack is US 6,925,444 on the list-sharing limitations, but it does not supply the owned/un-owned indication.
• The strongest true § 102 hits are on the music-sampling/purchase claims (5, 7, 37, 39, 54 via US 5,963,916 and US 5,913,213) and on the registry-style owned/remaining tracking claims (21, 24, 33, 51, 55 via US 5,970,474 and, under § 102(e), US 6,493,742).
• The references most likely to have done the real work during prosecution are the § 102(e) group filed 1997–1999 — US 6,925,444 (HP), US 6,493,742 (WeddingChannel), US 6,609,106 (Robertson), US 6,226,672 (Sony), US 6,243,725 (Premier), US 6,232,539 (Looney) — combined under § 103, which is consistent with how a 1999-priority e-commerce/UI case would typically be closed.
• Excluded from § 102 (post-priority or family): US 2002/0059120, US 6,473,738, US 7,220,910, US 7,249,708 (post-date); US 6,693,236, US 7,173,177, US 7,321,093 (family).

Caveats I want to be explicit about

1. I could not open the actual Office Actions / file wrapper for 11/512,893 (tool limit reached), so the § 102 vs. § 103 characterization is my analysis, not a confirmed examiner rejection. No rejection basis has been invented.
2. The § 102(e) analysis assumes pre-AIA law applies (correct for a 1999 priority date); under AIA § 102(a)(2) the "filed-before" treatment is similar, but I have applied the pre-AIA framework as the governing law for these claims.
3. Two citations in your source appear as "US 6,026,368? / 6,445,080" style alternates in the aggregated list; I have reported the identifiers literally as they appear and not auto-corrected them. Where the front page shows US 6,446,080 B1 the item is the Sony "virtual CD" playlist patent.

I'll ground this analysis in the prior-art references listed on the patent page. Let me verify the substance of the most load-bearing ones.

Let me verify a few more key references.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 7,642,443 B2

"User interface for simultaneous management of owned and unowned inventory"
Assignee of record: Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. | Inventors: Gould, West, McCaskill, Clark, Trisnadi | App. No. 11/512,893, filed Aug. 29, 2006 | Granted Jan. 5, 2010 | Statutory disclaimer: never filed — expired for failure to pay maintenance fees as of Dec. 28, 2019 (per the page's "Anticipated expiration" entry).

I. Threshold: the critical date and the pre-AIA framework

The '443 patent is the last link in a three-application chain, all recited on the face of the patent:

• US 09/473,901, filed Dec. 28, 1999 → US 6,693,236 B1
• US 10/696,379, filed Oct. 29, 2003 (continuation) → US 7,173,177 B1
• US 11/512,893, filed Aug. 29, 2006 (continuation) → US 7,642,443 B2 (this patent)

Because every application in the chain was filed before March 16, 2013, pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. §§ 102/103 governs, and the effective filing date for all claims is December 28, 1999. Prior art must therefore qualify under pre-AIA §102(a), (b), (e), (f), or (g), i.e., generally be dated on or before Dec. 28, 1999 (with §102(e) art measured by its U.S. filing date and §102(b) art measured by one year before the invention).

⚠️ References listed on the page that are NOT available as §103 prior art

Applying the rules literally to the dates printed on the page's own "Patent Citations" table, the following entries cannot be used in a §103 rejection against this patent because they post-date the Dec. 28, 1999 critical date:

This matters: the grocery- and household-inventory embodiments relied on in the specification cannot be attacked with the P&G patent, and the Garrett "multiple-person buying" reference cannot be used to meet the "second list from a third party" limitation. Practitioners should not treat Google Patents' citation lists as a ready-made §103 art set.

The analysis below uses only references whose dates on the page precede Dec. 28, 1999.

II. What the claims actually require

All 66 claims reduce to five recurring limitations plus a handful of add-ons. Independent claims are 1, 5, 11, 20, 21, 24, 27, 28, 29, 30, 33, 36, 37, 38, 39, 51, 54, 55 (18 independents).

Note the claim-construction observation evident on the face of the claims: every independent claim uses "owned"/"un-owned" or "previously purchased"/"not yet purchased" as a pre-existing state to be determined, never as a state created by the user. Nothing in the claims requires the transfer mechanism to be non-conventional, requires any particular file format, or requires any specific hardware. That is significant for §103 — the claims are, in substance, an application of known data-processing steps to a known communication channel.

III. The prior art of record, grouped by what it teaches

All of the following predate Dec. 28, 1999 and are cited on the face of the patent:

1. List creation / user organization / playlist transfer

• US 6,243,725 B1 (Premier International / Hempleman) — "List building system," filed 1997-05-21. Expressly discloses: collections of media elements "identified and arranged"; "One form of arrangement is a list. Another is a non-linear tree-like arrangement"; a "graphically-oriented editor … for building or editing lists or trees"; lists "stored and subsequently retrieved"; and acquisition of works "from a remote location via wired or wireless transmission," with billing information maintained. (patents.google.com/patent/US6243725B1)
• US 6,446,080 B1 (Sony / Van Ryzin & Douma) — "Method for creating, modifying, and playing a custom playlist, saved as a virtual CD…," filed 1998-05-08. Claim 1: creating a custom playlist on an external device with a graphical user interface, transferring it over a communications link, and saving it in non-volatile memory; the GUI presents a table-of-contents database of tracks for selection (FIG. 7a/7b); external information sources "such as the Internet" supply content. (patents.google.com/patent/US6446080B1)
• US 6,226,672 B1 (Sony) — allowing users to access and/or share media libraries via a wide area network.
• US 6,232,539 B1 (Looney Productions) — "Music organizer and entertainment center."

2. Preview / sample before purchase, and purchase of music over a network

• US 5,963,916 A (Intouch Group / Kaplan), filed 1996-10-31 (priority 1990-09-13). The user is "uniquely identified" to the site, discrete increments of pre-recorded music are stored "for subscriber selection and preview," and the selected product is "transmitted … over the network to the user for preview." Expressly contemplates kiosk or desktop access. (patents.google.com/patent/US5963916A/en)
• US 5,918,213 A (MCI / Bernard & Jacobson), filed 1995-12-22. Automated remote previewing and purchasing: browse selections, obtain "price, availability, and delivery information," receive "product samples … sample cuts from music tracks," and complete an automated purchase using a membership profile with shipping/payment data. (patents.google.com/patent/US5918213A)
• US 5,781,889 A (Martin) — computer jukebox and jukebox network.
• US 6,223,682 B1 (Fritsch) — distribution of musical products by a web site vendor over the Internet.
• US 6,226,618 B1 (IBM) — electronic content delivery system (downloadable content).
• US 5,734,719 A (International Business Systems) — digital information accessing, delivery and production.

3. Registry lists that track purchased vs. not-purchased, with status indicia

• US 5,970,474 A (Sears / LeRoy et al.), filed 1997-04-24. A registry list where "desired items purchased by the customer are associated with the registry database to create an updated list reflecting the purchase of said desired items." Claim 12: the output unit displays "indicia adjacent the registry list indicating the desired items purchased by a customer"; claim 13: "a numeral indicating the number of items purchased"; claim 14: "a separate list of items purchased … adjacent the registry list." The output unit may be a "video display or a printer"; the system collects "delivery information" from the registrant. (patents.google.com/patent/US5970474A; claim text at uspto.report/patent/grant/5970474)
• US 6,493,742 B1 (WeddingChannel.com), filed 1999-12-13 — Internet-accessible registries (available as §102(e) art, 15 days before the critical date; a §131 swear-behind would be the only counter).
• US 6,609,106 B1 (Robertson), filed 1999-05-07 — electronic multi-merchant gift registry services over a distributed network.

4. Sharing purchasing lists / organization across users

• US 6,925,444 B1 (Hewlett-Packard), priority 1998-09-08 — "System and method for creating and sharing purchasing lists on a network." This is directly on point for the "transferred list" element and was cited of record.
• US 6,317,722 B1 (Amazon.com), 1998-09-18 — using electronic shopping carts to generate personal recommendations.
• US 6,236,974 B1 (Parasoft), 1997-08-08 — automated selection and organization of products including menus.
• US 5,983,200 A (Slotznick), 1996-10-09 — intelligent agent for executing delegated tasks.
• US 6,243,725 B1 — lists transferable as stored data (see Group 1).

5. Window/multi-pane UI, query, and vendor selection

• US 6,131,088 A (Charles E. Hill & Associates), 1992-04-10 — electronic catalog system and method (multi-region catalog browsing).
• US 6,246,997 B1 and US 6,249,773 B1 (IBM), both 1998-03-26 — electronic commerce site with query interface; electronic commerce with shopping list builder.
• US 6,055,513 A (Telebuyer), 1998-03-11 — intelligent selection of goods/services in electronic commerce.
• US 6,026,376 A (Kenney), 1997-04-15 — interactive electronic shopping system.
• US 5,953,005 A (Sun Microsystems), 1996-06-28 — on-line multimedia access.
• US 6,151,643 A (Networks Associates) and US 6,230,199 B1 (McAfee) — both teach generating a list of what is already installed/possessed on the user's machine ("generating software list on client computer"; "active marketing based on client computer configurations"). These supply the "determine whether each item is owned" step.

6. Order status / delivery tracking

• US 5,860,068 A (Petabyte), 1997-12-04 — custom manufacture and delivery of a data product.
• US 6,055,516 A / US 6,023,683 A (Fisher Scientific / Procurenet), 1994-08-10 — electronic sourcing and ordering systems with order tracking.
• US 6,136,108 A and US 5,918,213 A — price, availability and delivery information.
• US 6,025,556 A-family practice and US 6,055,573 A (Supermarkets Online), 1998-12-30 — communicating purchase behavior state.

IV. Proposed §103 combinations

Ground 1 — Claims 1, 5, 36, 37, 27, 28 (transferred list → owned/unowned → link → downloaded music)

Primary: US 6,243,725 (Premier) in view of US 6,446,080 (Sony) and US 5,918,213 (MCI); further in view of US 6,226,618 (IBM) or US 6,233,682 (Fritsch).

• List + user-customized organization: US 6,243,725 discloses a graphically-oriented editor for building, storing, retrieving, modifying and performing lists of media elements, including tree-like (nested) lists — the exact "user defined grouping" of claim-independent limitations and of dependent claim 26.
• GUI + playlist transfer over a link: US 6,446,080 claim 1 discloses creating a custom playlist on an external device through a GUI and transferring/downloading a playlist file over a communications link, with external content drawn "from the Internet." It thus supplies both the "generate a user interface / display the items" step and the transferred-list architecture of claims 1 and 5.
• Purchase link + sampled preview: US 5,918,213 supplies browsing, purchase initiation, and product samples, with a link/commerce transaction to a vendor; US 5,963,916 additionally supplies preview of discrete increments of music products transmitted over the network — squarely meeting claim 5's "link to an on-line vendor from which at least one un-owned song can be purchased" when read with a downloading vendor.
• Downloaded music: US 5,918,213 (multimedia product ordering/delivery over a network) and IBM's US 6,226,618 (electronic content delivery) each render "a purchased item is in the form of downloaded music" (claim 1, 27, 36) obvious.

Motivation. All three primaries are in the same field of endeavor — networked digital-media organization, preview and commerce — and address the same problem the '443 specification itself identifies: the user must leave the vendor's organization and travel site-to-site to assemble a music collection. KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 416–17 (2007) (predictable combination of known elements; "familiar elements according to known methods"). There is also an express within-art motivation: US 6,446,080's own background criticizes front-panel playlist creation and proposes a friendly PC GUI plus Internet content sources, and US 5,963,916 and US 5,918,213 both describe preview-before-purchase as the solution to uninformed buying. A POSITA faced with "how do I let a user maintain a music list and buy the missing tracks?" would combine the list/UI art with the preview/purchase art; the result — display a list, mark what you have, click to buy what you don't — is the predictable sum of the parts, with no new technical effect.

Dependent claims. Claims 2, 6, 15, 50, 59 (play owned items) are met by US 5,781,889 (jukebox/jukebox network) and US 6,446,080 (playing a saved playlist). Claims 7, 31, 39, 54, 64 (sample/preview un-owned items) are met directly and expressly by US 5,963,916 ("pre-recorded music product … transmitted over the network to the user for preview") and US 5,918,213 ("sample cuts from music tracks"). Claim 40 (MP3) reflects a well-known format choice. Claim 32 (title, artist, publisher, art metadata) is met by the TOC-driven GUI of US 6,446,080 and the media-library metadata of US 6,226,672. Claim 56/65 (download music files over a network) is met by US 6,233,682 and US 6,226,618.

Ground 2 — Claims 11, 20, 29 (list sent by email; second list received by email)

Primary: US 6,925,444 (HP) in view of US 6,243,725 (Premier) and US 6,317,722 (Amazon).

US 6,925,444 was cited of record and is titled precisely to "creating and sharing purchasing lists on a network." Read with US 6,243,725's stored, retrievable list data structures and US 6,317,722's personal-recommendation/personalization lists, the "store a first list … initiate the transfer … receive a second list" limitations of claims 11/20/29 are met in substance. The only residual element is "via electronic mail."

On that residual element: the claims recite email as a medium, not as a modified technology. Internet email with MIME attachments was standardized by 1996 (RFC 2045–2049) and was the canonical way to send a file between two personal computers in 1999. Where a reference discloses lists as stored, transferable data objects and discloses remote transfer generally, moving the object over email instead of over an FTP/HTTP link is "simple substitution of one known element for another to obtain predictable results" and "use of a known technique to improve similar devices in the same way" — the (B) and (C) rationales of KSR. No claim element recites any adaptation of the list format, transport protocol, authentication, or parsing to email. Expect a strong KSR-style obviousness position here, and expect the patentee's only meaningful counter to be a teaching-away or criticality argument, which the intrinsic record does not support — the '443 specification discusses list transfer only generically ("a list 408 can be transferred between the user and one or more of the remote agents 214").

Note also that where a third party supplies the list, US 6,493,742 (WeddingChannel) and US 6,609,106 (Robertson) independently show third-party-authored, network-distributed lists of items to be acquired. Both are §102(e)-available, though US 6,493,742's Dec. 13, 1999 filing leaves only a 15-day margin and is vulnerable to a Rule 131 swear-behind.

Ground 3 — Claims 21, 24, 30, 33, 51, 55 (the "purchased but not yet received" state)

This is the most defensible family of claims, and the one I would expect the patentee to argue hardest. It should be attacked with:

Primary: US 5,970,474 (Sears) in view of US 5,918,213 (MCI) or US 5,860,068 (Petabyte).

• US 5,970,474 discloses a list whose entries transition between states as purchases occur — "desired items … added to the registry database to create a registry list, and desired items purchased by the customer are associated with the registry database to create an updated list," with indicia adjacent the list showing purchased items (claims 12–16) and a separate adjacent "purchased items" list (claim 14). That is a three-state display: available-to-be-purchased, purchased, and (via the registry count) remaining.
• US 5,918,213 supplies the missing state. It expressly provides "price, availability, and delivery information," rewards a membership profile to automate shipping, and describes ordering and fulfillment as distinct events. Combining an order-placed system with a delivery event yields an intermediate "ordered, not yet received" state as a matter of ordinary engineering.
• US 5,860,068 (custom manufacture and delivery of a data product) and the Fisher Scientific/Procurenet sourcing references (US 6,023,683; US 6,055,516) independently teach order-status tracking through fulfillment.

Motivation. The registry context supplies the why: the entire purpose of US 5,970,474 is to prevent duplicate purchasing, which requires distinguishing "purchased by someone" from "still needed." Once a purchase is made on-line, the only informative intermediate status between "not yet purchased" and "owned" is "purchased, not yet received." That is a design incentive arising from the known problem, per KSR, and the implementation is a state-variable change to a status field the Sears reference already maintains. The patent itself acknowledges the state is useful chiefly for physically-shipped goods ("a status of condition of 'purchased but not received' would have limited applicability" to downloads) — an admission that the state is a conventional logistics attribute, not an inventive contribution.

Claim 34's "shipping information corresponding to the purchased items" is met expressly by US 5,918,213's delivery information and US 5,970,474's collection of "gift delivery information."

Ground 4 — Claims 3, 8, 16–18, 45, 46, 60, 61 (three window regions; list icons)

US 6,446,080 (Sony) + US 6,131,088 (Hill) + US 6,246,997 / US 6,249,773 (IBM) + US 6,232,539 (Looney).

The claim element is purely a GUI layout: a first region of list icons, a second region of item titles with status indications, and a third region with the purchase mechanism. US 6,446,080's GUI (FIG. 2, 7a–7b) shows a track-selection pane and a playlist pane driven by user selection; US 6,131,088's catalog and the IBM query/shopping-list references show multi-region item browsing with adjacent detail panes. Sidebar-and-detail layouts were a settled GUI idiom by 1999. Under KSR, "a court must ask whether the improvement is more than the predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions" — rearranging known list, detail, and action panes into three regions, with each region performing exactly its conventional role, is the paradigm case.

Ground 5 — Claims 52, 53, 66 (search for vendors, then link to those found)

US 5,918,213 (MCI) + US 6,055,513 (Telebuyer) + US 6,246,997 (IBM) + US 6,317,722 (Amazon).

US 6,055,513 ("intelligent selection of goods and services in telephonic and electronic commerce"), US 6,246,997 ("electronic commerce site with query interface") and US 6,317,722 (recommendation generation from cart contents) collectively render "searching for one or more vendors that sell the unpurchased item" and displaying a link to the located vendors obvious. US 5,918,213's browsing and ordering flow supplies the link-and-purchase step. Motivation: the patent's own problem statement — that online shoppers must visit "various Internet sites" — is the market force that drives vendor discovery, which is why the '443 specification itself notes vendor choice "can be preprogrammed, determined in real time, or can be by default."

Ground 6 — Claim 26 and dependent organization limitations

US 6,243,725 (Premier), on its own, discloses the "user-defined organization … one or more groups of items" element, including non-linear tree-like arrangements with tree nodes as decision points. Combined with US 6,236,974 (Parasoft, "automated selection and organization of products including menus"), the user-configurable grouping element is fully met without resort to the other grounds.

V. Why a POSITA would have combined these — the motivation analysis, consolidated

A person of ordinary skill in this art at Dec. 28, 1999 would hold a bachelor's degree in computer science or electrical engineering (or equivalent) plus two to three years' experience building networked commerce or media-management applications. That skill level matters, because every limitation is a software/data-presentation step within that person's routine capability.

Six independent motivations support the combinations above:

1. Same field, same problem. Every primary reference is addressed to networked cataloging, previewing, purchasing, or list-building of consumer goods or media. The references are not from disparate fields; they are competing solutions to the same 1990s problem — "the user's organization vs. the vendor's organization."
2. Express cross-referencing. US 6,446,080's background expressly identifies the weak on-device interface as the obstacle and proposes an external PC GUI with Internet content sources. US 5,963,916 and US 5,918,213 each frame preview-before-purchase as the goal. US 5,970,474 expressly frames its purpose as preventing duplicate purchases — the same problem the '443 "un-owned item" indication solves.
3. Predictable result, no new effect. Display → mark status → order → confirm → play. Each step was independently known; the combination produces no unexpected result. KSR, 550 U.S. at 417 ("a combination of familiar elements according to known methods is likely to be obvious when it does no more than yield predictable results").
4. Finite, identified solutions. In 1999 there were only a handful of ways to build a list-based purchase interface (registry model, catalog model, playlist model). Choosing among them is "obvious to try" under KSR, 550 U.S. at 421.
5. Design incentives / market forces. Digital music retail in 1999 (MP3, CD fulfillment) supplied a direct commercial incentive to merge a personal library organizer with a one-click store.
6. The patent's own specification concedes the concepts. It describes each claimed mechanism as a design choice ("the organization and categorization of lists can be tailored by the user"; vendor selection "can be preprogrammed, determined in real time, or can be by default"; the "purchased but not received" state "would have limited applicability" for downloads). Admissions of this kind supply the motivation and undercut any non-obviousness argument premised on the specific arrangement.

Absence of teaching away. No reference found on the page disparages list-based status display, network transfer of lists, or on-line purchase initiation from a list. US 6,446,080's emphasis on a persistent, non-volatile saved playlist is arguably a preference for stored playlists over virtual ones, but it does not teach away from the transferred-list architecture; if anything it confirms that transferring playlist files over a communications link was known and desirable.

VI. Where the patentee has real arguments (and where the exposure is)

I would not represent this as a clean, unanimous invalidity case. Three honest weaknesses:

• Claims 21/24/30/33/51/55 ("purchased but not yet received"). No single reference on the page shows a user-facing three-state ownership display including a post-purchase/pre-delivery state. The case is a genuine combination argument, and the patentee will argue that the Sears registry's states are "purchased by a customer" vs. "still needed," not "purchased but not yet in my possession." That distinction is answerable (and US 5,918,213's delivery information does the work), but it is the strongest rebuttal ground in the set.
• US 6,493,742 (WeddingChannel) is §102(e) art by only 15 days. Expect a Rule 131/§1.131 declaration attempt, which would knock it out entirely. Do not build a rejection on it as a primary reference.
• Dependent claims 9, 43, 47, 58, 62 ("created and organized by a party other than the user") narrow claim 1/5's "another party" language; if the third-party-authoring element is construed to require a symmetric authoring tool on the sender's side (the patent contemplates a dealer "fill[ing] the user's embedded list 502"), the art on this page is thinner — US 6,243,725 and US 6,925,444 are the load-bearing references and both should be verified against their full specifications before relying on them.

Two further points of counsel:

• §101 exposure is likely the bigger weapon. Every independent claim is a software/business-method claim whose only arguably technical feature is "a computer" plus conventional display and networking, and the claims are remarkably result-oriented ("provide a link," "indicate … owned or un-owned"). A full Alice/Mayo Step 2B analysis is outside the scope of this question but should not be ignored. The patent's own litigation history — four 2020 district-court suits by Cedar Lane Technologies and a Darts-IP global family litigation flag — suggests the claims were asserted, not litigated to judgment on validity.
• §103(c) / double-patenting. US 6,693,236 and US 7,173,177 are family members, not prior art. Any argument built on them is improper; but note that US 7,173,177 and this patent issued from sibling continuations of the same parent, so obviousness-type double patenting (as between 7,173,177, 7,321,093 and 7,642,443) is a separate and potentially stronger attack than §103 if the claim sets are not patently distinct.

VII. Summary judgment on the record

Bottom line: The '443 claims are vulnerable to §103 over the art already cited on its own face. The most efficient attack is a two-reference core — US 6,243,725 (Premier) for the user-organized, transferable, nested list plus US 5,963,916 or US 5,918,213 (Intouch / MCI) for preview-and-purchase over a network — with US 6,446,080 (Sony) supplying the GUI-transferred playlist file and US 5,970,474 (Sears) supplying owned/un-owned status indication with adjacent purchase-status indicia. The residual limitation that requires the most care is the "purchased but not yet received" indication (claims 21, 24, 30, 33, 51, 55), which needs US 5,970,474 married to an order-fulfillment/delivery-information reference such as US 5,918,213 or US 5,860,068.

Caveat on sourcing: the subject-matter characterizations above for US 5,963,916, US 5,918,213, US 6,243,725, US 5,970,474 and US 6,446,080 are drawn from the full text/abstracts of those documents as retrieved above and are reliable. For the remaining cited references (e.g., US 6,925,444, US 6,226,672, US 6,246,997, US 6,249,773, US 6,055,513) I am relying on the titles and dates printed on the US 7,642,443 patent page; their full specifications should be pulled and verified before these grounds are reduced to an invalidity contention or an IPR petition.