US 7701173

I'll search for the specific patent and any 2026 litigation activity, then summarize.

Let me run a couple more targeted searches on litigation/2026 activity and current status.

US Patent 7,701,173 — Summary

Important scoping note: I ran the searches you asked for, and I did not find any 2026 CAFC docket entry or 2026 USPTO proceeding naming patent 7,701,173. The only 2026 Federal Circuit document returned by search was an unrelated petition (Constellation/ATSC 3.0 damages), and it does not mention '173. Everything below that is proceeding-specific is from 2016–2018 records. I flag this explicitly rather than assume a 2026 status I cannot verify.

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Bibliographic data (per the authoritative patent text and Google Patents page)

Abstract (verbatim)

"Charging and power supply for mobile devices is disclosed. A USB-compliant charging and power supply circuit includes switch-mode battery charging circuitry for receiving power from an external power source and for supplying output power through an output node to an electronic system of an electronic communication device and a battery. Battery isolation circuitry includes a semiconductor switch connecting the output node to the battery. The battery isolation circuitry senses voltage at the output node and variably restricts current to the battery when the voltage is below a minimum voltage value by operationally controlling the semiconductor switch as current passes through it. During variable current restriction the electronic system is supplied required power with said battery being supplied any additional available power."

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Independent claim 1 — plain-language overview (USB-compliant charging/power circuit)

A three-part circuit:

1. Switch-mode battery charging circuitry that takes power from an external source (e.g., a USB port) and delivers output power, through an output node (V_SYS), to both the device's electronic system and the battery. Critically, the claim requires an integrated circuit plus an inductor arranged so the output current can exceed the input current (a buck/step-down converter can produce higher output current than input current).
2. Battery isolation circuitry containing a semiconductor switch (in the spec, P-channel FET 252) between the output node and the battery. It senses the output-node voltage and, when that voltage falls below a minimum voltage value, variably restricts current to the battery by controlling the switch in its active/triode region while current flows through it (i.e., acting as a variable resistor, not a simple on/off relay).
3. Additional circuitry in electrical communication with the battery isolation circuitry that receives feedback from the electronic system and, in response, adjusts the minimum voltage value to suit the electronic system's requirements.

The intended result: during current restriction the electronic system gets the power it needs and the battery gets only the leftover ("additional available") power.

Independent claim 6 — plain-language overview (electronic communication device)

The same architecture packaged as a device: a device housing; a rechargeable battery inside the housing; an electronic system inside the housing; the same switch-mode battery charging circuitry (IC + inductor providing output current greater than input current, feeding an output node to system and battery); the same battery isolation circuitry with a semiconductor switch sensing output-node voltage and variably restricting battery current below a minimum voltage; and the same additional circuitry that takes feedback from the electronic system and adjusts the minimum voltage value. Same allocation outcome (system first, battery gets the remainder).

Dependent claim highlights

• 2 / 5 / 10: add switch-mode power supply (SMPS) circuitry that runs in reverse — drawing from the battery and supplying converted power through the same inductor and output node (single-inductor bidirectional arrangement; TI TPS62000 IC in the spec).
• 3: the output-node voltage is fed back to the IC, which adjusts the output-node voltage (feedback pin, e.g. TI bq24105/bq24115).
• 4: a separate switch-mode DC-DC converter IC supplying the inductor.
• 7 / 8: battery isolation circuitry and/or charging circuitry contained within the device housing.
• 9: the device is a wirelessly-enabled, handheld communications device.
• 11: a voltage notification module responsive to changes in operating modes to provide the feedback to the additional circuitry (FIGS. 1/3, ref. 297 interacting with OS 299).
• 12: switch means for shutting off the semiconductor switch when charging is disabled (CH_EN signal causing FET 236 to saturate and turn off FET 252).

Note / caveat on claims: The patent's "Description of Example Embodiments" recites a third embodiment said to include "a power management method for allocating power between a rechargeable battery and an electronic system…" (determining a minimum voltage based on the system's mode of operation, monitoring the node, and variably restricting current). No method claim appears in the granted 12 claims — the granted claim set contains only the circuit claim 1 and device claim 6 plus dependents. I state this as an observed fact from the claim listing; I do not know from the retrieved sources whether a method claim was cancelled during prosecution or pursued elsewhere.

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Litigation / administrative history found (not 2026)

• IPR2018-00426 — Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. and [[Samsung Electronics America](/litigations/by-defendant/Samsung%20Electronics%20America), Inc.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Samsung%20Electronics%20America%2C%20Inc.) v. Fundamental Innovation Systems International LLC, on U.S. Patent 7,701,173. Filed 2018-01-05; notice of accord 2018-01-11; instituted 2018-07-06; terminated 2018-07-13 by settlement. Petitioner counsel: Kirkland & Ellis; Patent Owner counsel: Irell & Manella. This is recorded in the patent's own legal-events table ("IPR … TRIAL NO: IPR2018-00426, Opponent name: SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD., AND SAMSUNG ELECTRO").
• Underlying district court case: Fundamental Innovation Systems International LLC v. Samsung Electronics Co. et al., No. 2:17-cv-00145 (E.D. Tex.) — the '173 patent's Google Patents page links Texas Eastern District Court case 2:17-cv-00145. A 2018 Patent Owner notice in a related IPR (IPR2018-01076, re the '655 continuation) describes that action as "settled."
• The same notice confirms the family relationships: the '655 patent is a continuation of application 11/299,701 (now the '173 patent), and 13/004,175 (now US 7,965,058) descends from the '655. Related IPRs named in that notice include IPR2018-00425 ('655), IPR2018-00479 and -00683 ('655), while IPR2018-00426 against the '173 patent "has been terminated."
• The Google Patents page also lists Darts-ip "first worldwide family litigation" for family ID 38138641.

Explicit uncertainties

1. No 2026 activity confirmed. My searches did not surface any 2026 CAFC appeal, 2026 PTAB filing, or 2026 district-court filing specifically naming 7,701,173. I cannot affirmatively state there is no such activity — only that I could not find any with the tools available. Treat the 2026 docket question as unverified.
2. The searches identified IPRs against the sibling continuation (7,893,655) but none active in 2026 against '173 itself.
3. Current ownership: Google Patents lists Fundamental Innovation Systems International LLC; the 2018 PTAB notice adds that Fundamental Innovation Systems International Holdings LLC is its parent and that the portfolio is managed by JASPAR. I did not verify any post-2018 reassignment.

I'll search for litigation specifically naming US 7,701,173.

Now let me search for the broader FISI litigation campaign and any other defendants.

Let me search for which specific FISI cases asserted the '173 patent, and check for any recent (2023–2026) activity.

Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. 7,701,173

Scope note: I searched Unified Patents' PTAB portal, Docket Alarm/PTAB records, and general litigation sources for the literal number 7,701,173 ("7701173"), ignoring the sibling continuations 7,893,655 and 7,965,058 and other FISI patents. Based on the records I could retrieve, the '173 patent was asserted in one district-court action, which spawned the one PTAB challenge against it. I found no 2026 litigation, no CAFC appeal, and no second district-court case naming the '173 patent. Details and caveats below.

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1. District court litigation

Grounding: The EDTX claim-construction order confirms the patents-in-suit: U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,936,936; 7,239,111; 7,701,173; 7,791,319; 7,834,586; 7,893,655; 7,999,514; 8,232,766; 8,541,983; 8,624,550 — and expressly construes terms "IN THE '173 PATENT FAMILY," including "USB," "A USB-compliant charging and power supply circuit comprising," "reference voltage," "a [semiconductor] switch," and "switch means for shutting off said semiconductor switch if charging is disabled." The court described the '173 family as the "Veselic 2005" patents. (EDTX claim construction order, Dkt. 140, 2:17-cv-00145-JRG-RSP)

Status corroboration: The Patent Owner's mandatory notice in the related Samsung IPR identifies "Fundamental Innovation Systems International LLC v. Samsung Elecs. Co. et al., No. 2:17-cv-00145 (E.D. Tex.)" as the related district-court matter. (FISI Mandatory Notice, IPR2018-00426) The case was subsequently settled (the settlement is reflected in the parallel IPR terminations and in the Google Patents "litigation" annotation linking EDTX case 2:17-cv-00145).

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2. PTAB (administrative) challenge against the '173 patent

Challenged all 12 claims on the Veselic/Kranzen/Vyssotski combination. (Unified Patents PTAB portal, IPR2018-00426) This is the only IPR the records show against the '173 patent.

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3. Important distinction — do NOT confuse with the sibling patents

FISI's broader campaign (roughly 20 suits since late 2016 against Apple, Aukey, BBK/OnePlus, BLU, Hon Hai/Belkin, Huawei, Jasco, Lenovo, LG, Samsung, TCL/TCT Mobile, Yulu/Coolpad, ZTE, Anker/Fantasia, and Cyber Power Systems — see RPX Insight) asserted different patents in most of those cases. The 2020 Delaware actions (Lenovo 1:20-cv-00551; TCT Mobile 1:20-cv-00552; Belkin 1:20-cv-00550) and the Coolpad action (2:20-cv-00117) asserted the '936/'111/'550/'233/'586/'766/'127/'187 family — '173 does not appear in their joint claim-construction chart. Similarly, the IPRs against the continuation 7,893,655 (IPR2018-00425 by ZTE/Samsung; -00479 by Huawei; -00683 by LG; -01076 by ZTE) target a different patent number and are not '173 proceedings. I flag these only to prevent misattribution.

I was not able to confirm that the '173 patent was asserted against LG, Huawei, ZTE, Coolpad, BLU, Belkin, Lenovo, TCT Mobile, Anker, or Cyber Power; the evidence points to the Samsung case being the sole assertion of '173 that I can document.

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4. 2026 status and explicit uncertainties

• No 2026 activity found. I found no 2026 district-court filing, no 2026 PTAB petition, and no 2026 CAFC appeal naming 7,701,173. (Consistent with the earlier section of this analysis, which also found no 2026 docket entry for the '173 patent.) I cannot affirmatively prove the absence of such activity — only that my searches did not surface any.
• Filing date of the Samsung case not independently confirmed. The case number (2:17-cv-00145) establishes a 2017 filing, but I could not retrieve the exact filing date from the records available to me.
• Portfolio-level litigation. Google Patents also flags a Darts-IP "first worldwide family litigation" entry for family ID 38138641 (family-level, not necessarily '173-specific).
• Parent/ownership. The 2018 PTAB notice identifies Fundamental Innovation Systems International Holdings LLC as FISI's parent and states the portfolio was managed (as of 2018) by TnT IP, LLC. The earlier section of this analysis noted JASPAR; the searches here returned TnT IP — I flag the discrepancy as unverified rather than resolving it.

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Bottom line

For the literal patent number 7,701,173, the documented litigation is a single pair of proceedings arising from the same dispute:

1. FISI v. Samsung Electronics Co. & Samsung Electronics America, Inc., No. 2:17-cv-00145-JRG-RSP (E.D. Tex.) — filed 2017, claim construction Jan. 31, 2018, settled. Plaintiff FISI; defendants Samsung entities; jurisdiction E.D. Tex.
2. IPR2018-00426, Samsung v. FISI (P.T.A.B.) — filed Jan. 5, 2018, instituted Jul. 6, 2018, terminated by settlement Jul. 13, 2018.

No other case naming U.S. Patent 7,701,173 was found, and none in 2026.

I'll research the AIA trial proceedings on this patent, reconciling the structured ODP block with the record evidence.

Now let me check for any other proceedings against this patent and any appeals.

Let me check for any additional IPRs against this patent and confirm no appeal exists.

Reconciling the source record (read this first)

The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block packaged with this prompt states that the USPTO ODP API returns no AIA trial proceedings for US 7,701,173. That block is contradicted by the patent's own record and by publicly available PTAB filings. The Google Patents legal-events table for this patent explicitly records an IPR — "TRIAL NO: IPR2018-00426, Opponent name: SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD., AND SAMSUNG ELECTRO" — and the docket, Board papers, and Patent Owner notices confirm it. I treat the ODP block as stale/incomplete (a plausible cause: settlement-terminated proceedings with no Final Written Decision often fall out of AIA-trial datasets keyed on FWDs), and I proceed on the documentary record. Do not rely on the "no PTAB activity" default for this patent — it is wrong.

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Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 7,701,173: one (1). Breakdown: 0 active, 0 claims invalidated, 0 claims sustained, 1 settled after institution, 0 institution denials. The bottom line for a defendant: this patent is not "hardened" — it is untested. No claim of the '173 patent has ever been adjudicated on the merits at the PTAB, so there is no cancellation to point to and no estoppel to invoke; but the single institution decision that does exist shows the Board found a reasonable likelihood that all twelve claims 1–12 were unpatentable over a § 103 combination before the parties walked away.

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IPR2018-00426 — Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. & [[Samsung Electronics America](/litigations/by-defendant/Samsung%20Electronics%20America), Inc.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Samsung%20Electronics%20America%2C%20Inc.) v. Fundamental Innovation Systems International LLC

• Type: Inter Partes Review (35 U.S.C. §§ 311–319)
• Filed: 2018-01-05
• Status: Terminated-Settled (Unified Patents portal: "Settlement"; filing date 2018-01-05, institution date 2018-07-06, termination date 2018-07-13). Trial instituted 2018-07-06 and terminated seven days later by joint motion — no merits ruling was ever reached.
• Judge panel: Administrative Patent Judges Jo-Anne M. Kokoski, Lynne E. Pettigrew, and Paul J. Korniczky (Tech Center 2800, Art Unit 2858). The same three-judge panel sat on the parallel '655 proceeding, IPR2018-00425. Patexia's case summary lists Kokoski under "Judge Writing the Final Decision," but since no FWD issued, that field should be read as identifying the panel's lead/deciding APJ, not an actual final written decision. I could not confirm the authoring APJ from the Board's own paper (retrieved text truncated).
• Petition grounds: A single ground under 35 U.S.C. § 103 covering all twelve claims (1–12) — obviousness over Veselic (US 2004/0164708 A1, Ex. 1004) in view of Kranzen (US 7,570,020, Ex. 1005) and Vyssotski (US 2004/0019815 A1, Ex. 1006). Supporting exhibits included the USB 1.1 and 2.0 Specifications (Exs. 1008–1009), battery-management and switching-power-supply treatises (Exs. 1010–1014, 1016), US 6,791,298 (Ex. 1015), and a declaration of James T. Geier (Ex. 1001). No § 112 or § 102 ground was pleaded.
• Institution decision: Instituted 2018-07-06 (Paper 8, "Trial Instituted Document"), with a scheduling order issued the same day (Paper 9). The Board's merits reasoning is not reproduced in the retrieved public text, so I will not paraphrase it — I can confirm only that institution ran against all of claims 1–12 on the single pleaded § 103 ground. Note that this was a pre-SAS institution but on an all-claims, all-grounds petition, so partial-institution questions do not arise.
• Patent Owner's preliminary response: Filed 2018-04-11 (Paper 7), supported by a declaration of Kenneth Fernald, Ph.D. (Ex. 2001). FISI argued (a) none of the references disclosed the claim 1/6 "integrated circuit arranged to cooperate with said inductor to provide current of said output power of greater magnitude than current of said power received from said external power source" limitation, and (b) the Petition was conclusory on motivation to combine — specifically that combining Veselic with Vyssotski would decouple the reference voltage from the input voltage contrary to Veselic's disclosure, that the Petitioners' embodiment did not teach adjusting V_REF based on operating states, and that the modification would increase heat dissipation. FISI also attacked the dependent-claim analysis, characterizing the treatment of claims 2, 4, 5, 10, and 12 as conclusory and deficient, and specifically assailing the claim 12 ("switch means for shutting off said semiconductor switch if charging is disabled") mapping. The Board nonetheless instituted.
• Final Written Decision: None. No statutory FWD under § 318(a) was ever entered, so there are no claim-level findings. I state categorically that no claim of the '173 patent has been held unpatentable or held patentable by the Board.
• Settlement / termination: Joint Motion to Terminate filed 2018-07-12 (Paper 10) with a Joint Request for Confidentiality (Paper 11); the Board granted termination on 2018-07-13 (Paper 12). The settlement agreement was filed as a true copy and, on the parties' request, treated as business confidential information and kept separate from the patent file — the terms are confidential and I have no visibility into them. This settlement was part of a global settlement of the FISI–Samsung dispute: the underlying E.D. Tex. case, Fundamental Innovation Systems International LLC v. Samsung Electronics Co., No. 2:17-cv-00145-JRG (E.D. Tex.), was dismissed in mid-July 2018 (IAM reported the dismissal on 2018-07-19). FISI's own updated § 42.8 notice in IPR2018-00479 (dated 2018-09-13) confirms "IPR2018-00426 filed by Samsung against the related '173 patent was settled and the proceeding has been terminated."
• Appeal: None possible. There was no FWD, so nothing was appealable under 35 U.S.C. § 319. No Federal Circuit docket exists for this proceeding; a CourtListener/CourtListener-style search returns nothing because there is nothing to return. (This also means there is no CAFC precedent construing the '173 claims.)
• Defensive value: Mixed but net-positive for a defendant. Samsung's petition did what a defendant needs — it got the Board to institute on all 12 claims on a single § 103 combination, which is a meaningful preliminary signal that the claims are vulnerable. But because Samsung then settled, it secured no invalidity judgment, no cancellation, and no estoppel, and left the ground unadjudicated. If you are being asserted today, the Samsung papers are a ready-made template, not a preclusive win.

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Strategic summary

Claim status. Of the 12 claims of the '173 patent, all 12 are UNTESTED at the PTAB merits level. None are canceled; none are sustained; none were narrowed by amendment (no motion to amend was filed). Claims 1 and 6 (the independent claims) and dependents 2–5, 7–12 stand exactly as granted on 2010-04-20. The patent is listed as Active with an adjusted expiration of 2028-07-03 — meaning a defendant today faces roughly two more years of exposure on wholly untested claims. Contrast that with the prompt's hypothesized framing: this patent has not "survived two IPRs and been hardened." It has survived zero merits challenges by virtue of a settlement.

Estoppel landscape. This is the single most important point. § 315(e)(2) estoppel does not attach to Samsung in this proceeding. Estoppel under § 315(e)(1)/(2) arises only where an IPR "results in a final written decision" under § 318(a). IPR2018-00426 was terminated by joint motion under § 317(a) before any FWD, so Samsung and its privies are not estopped from raising Veselic/Kranzen/Vyssotski — or anything else — in district court or before the Office. Correspondingly, a new defendant is not blocked by Samsung's estoppel, because there is none. What a new petitioner does face is discretionary risk, not statutory estoppel:

• § 325(d) — the primary reference, Veselic (US 2004/0164708 A1), was already before the examiner during prosecution of the '173 patent (it appears in the patent's own citation list), and it was squarely presented in IPR2018-00426. Expect the Patent Owner to argue "previously presented to the Office." The counter is that the Board has never substantively evaluated the combination on the merits, and Kranzen (US 7,570,020) and Vyssotski (US 2004/0019815) do not appear among the '173's cited references — they would be new art to the examiner's record.
• General Plastic / follow-on petitioning — a later, similarly situated defendant filing the same or a substantially overlapping ground invites discretionary denial, particularly given that the Board already instituted. If your client is a co-defendant or privy of Samsung, this risk is materially higher than for an unrelated party.
• § 315(b) — the ordinary one-year bar applies to any petitioner served with a complaint alleging infringement of the '173 patent more than one year before filing. If FISI asserted this patent against you in the 2017–2018 wave, that clock has long expired.

Pattern signals. The Petitioner here was a large operating company (Samsung), not a defensive aggregator — Unified Patents appears in this record only as the data source for the portal link cited on the patent page, not as a petitioner. Samsung ran a broad, coordinated family-wide campaign against the FISI/BlackBerry portfolio on 2018-01-05 and around 2018-02-12: this IPR2018-00426 on '173; IPR2018-00425 on the '655 continuation (where ZTE (USA) Inc. was a named co-petitioner); IPR2018-00479 and IPR2018-00683 on '655; IPR2018-00620 on US 8,541,983; and, jointly with ZTE, IPR2018-00276 on US 7,239,111. Critically, when Samsung settled out of IPR2018-00425 on 2018-07-24, the Board's order expressly stated that "the proceeding in IPR2018-00425 will continue with respect to the remaining party, ZTE (USA) Inc." — so there is a real ZTE-driven merits record on the sibling '655 patent that does not exist for '173. The Patent Owner (FISI, an NPE) never appealed anything to the Federal Circuit in this family, because Samsung's settlements foreclosed appeal; FISI's aggressive posture instead ran through parallel foreign enforcement (it asserted the EP family member EP 1 595 324 B1 in Fundamental Innovation Systems International LLC v. Samsung Electronics GmbH, Case No. 7 O 87/17, Mannheim, Germany, 2017-10-13).

Caveats I will not paper over. (1) I did not locate any second IPR, PGR, CBM, or ex parte reexamination against the '173 patent, but I cannot affirm a negative with certainty from the available tooling. (2) I have not verified the outcome of ZTE's continued IPR2018-00425 on the '655 patent; if a demand letter asserts the '173 patent alongside '655, that '655 FWD (if one issued) is the highest-value additional research target, since the two patents share a specification and overlapping claim architecture. (3) The settlement terms in IPR2018-00426 are confidential by Board order and I have no insight into them — do not assume the settlement included a license that would protect anyone other than Samsung and its privies.

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Recommended next steps

1. Do not cite any canceled claim — there are none, and do not claim the patent was "invalidated." The accurate statement is: the only IPR on US 7,701,173 was instituted on all of claims 1–12 on 2018-07-06 and terminated by settlement on 2018-07-13 before any Final Written Decision. Cite Board Papers 8 and 12 in IPR2018-00426. The termination paper is at Docket Alarm: https://www.docketalarm.com/search/?q=&f=q_search_within-docket%3A(IPR2018-00426)+AND+court%3A(%22Patent+Trial+and+Appeal+Board%22); the proceeding record is aggregated at https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/ptab/case/IPR2018-00426.
2. Pull the institution decision (Paper 8) and the Patent Owner Preliminary Response (Paper 7, filed 2018-04-11) immediately. The POPR is available here: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2018-00426/Inter_Partes_Review_of_U.S._Pat._7701173/04-11-2018-Patent_Owner/Preliminary_Response-7-Patent_Owners_Preliminary_Response.pdf. Paper 7 tells you exactly which limitations FISI believes are its strongest — the "integrated circuit arranged to cooperate with said inductor to provide current of said output power of greater magnitude than current of said power received from said external power source" limitation of claims 1–12, and the claim 12 switch-means limitation — and Paper 8 tells you which of those arguments the Board rejected at the threshold. That pairing is the cheapest possible roadmap for a new petition.
3. If you file, file on the Samsung ground but not identically. The Samsung § 103 combination (Veselic + Kranzen + Vyssotski) cleared institution on all 12 claims — that is your proof of concept. But stamping the same petition invites § 325(d) and General Plastic attack. Add new art or new evidence (a fresh expert declaration, a different secondary reference against the "output current greater than input current" limitation, or a § 112 written-description theory that Samsung did not plead — the petition raised only § 103). Note that Samsung pleaded no § 101, § 112, or § 102 grounds, leaving those statutory lanes completely unoccupied.
4. Watch the § 315(b) clock before anything else. Confirm the date you or your client was first served with a complaint alleging infringement of the '173 patent. If that date is more than one year ago, an IPR is time-barred and your § 103 route closes — in that case the Samsung institution decision becomes purely a district-court invalidity exhibit and an ex parte reexamination or § 325(d)-resistant reexamination strategy should be evaluated instead. FISI's 2017–2018 assertion wave (FISI v. Samsung, No. 2:17-cv-00145-JRG (E.D. Tex.), and the Mannheim action) suggests many potential defendants' clocks have already run.
5. No active proceedings means no trial-stage milestones to track. There is no pending institution-deadline, no scheduled oral hearing, and no § 316(a)(11) one-year FWD deadline running against this patent. If FISI's current assertion posture suggests new filings, the strategic trigger is the date of your service, not any existing PTAB calendar.

I'll verify the assignment records and correspondents through search before reconstructing the chain.

Let me pin down the correspondents of record and the transaction details.

I was able to fix the reel/frame chain and the transaction economics, but I could not retrieve the USPTO Assignment Center "correspondent of record" field for any of the four recordings with the tools available. Rather than invent attorney names, I mark those fields not retrieved and say so explicitly. Everything else below is grounded in the patent's own legal-events table (which mirrors Assignment Center) plus RPX/IAM/PTAB records.

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Inventors

Sole named inventor: Dusan Veselic.

• Employer at filing (determinable): Research In Motion Limited, Canada. The patent's own record shows the inventor assigning his interest to RIM — "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST; ASSIGNOR: VESELIC, DUSAN" — executed 2005-12-12, recorded 2005-12-13 (reel 017368/0535). This is a standard employee-inventor present-assignment, not an inventor-to-holder transfer.
• Pattern check — no fire-sale tell. Veselic is a repeat RIM power-management inventor, not a one-off. He is a named inventor on a cluster of RIM/RIM-assigned applications in the same 2003–2005 window cited on this patent's own face: US 2004/0164708, US 2004/0164707, WO 2004/075371, US 2004/0239294, and US 2004/0251878. A prolific in-house inventor continuing to file for the original assignee is the opposite of the "all inventors departed within 12 months" fire-sale precursor. No such departure pattern is present in the record I can see.
• Caveat: I found no independent confirmation of Veselic's employment status post-2005. I cannot say whether he later left RIM/BlackBerry; I only observe that the portfolio was not sold because its inventors walked — it was kept and asserted internally (see 2004 filings and the 2005 present-assignment) and divested a decade later as a corporate monetization decision.

Original assignee

Research In Motion Limited (Canada) — named on the issued patent; later renamed BlackBerry Limited (change of name effective 2013-07-09, recorded 2015-08-17, reel 036356/0472).

• Line of business: RIM/BlackBerry was a vertically integrated operating mobile-device company — it designed and shipped BlackBerry handsets and the USB-charging subsystems this patent covers. The claims (USB-compliant charging, USB enumeration within 100 ms, single-inductor buck charging) were embodied in RIM's own handheld products, which is exactly why the specification frames the invention as making the device "USB-compliant."
• Current status: BlackBerry Limited today is an operating software/security company; it exited handsets (device brand licensed to TCL in 2016, that arrangement ended 2020). It is not dissolved and has not filed bankruptcy. Its patent-disposal program (of which this sale was a part) was a strategic monetization/cost action during its 2013–2015 restructuring, not a Chapter 7/11 liquidation. BlackBerry's CEO later publicly said the company was "in patent licensing, not patent selling, mode" — confirming a deliberate IP-monetization strategy rather than distress liquidation.

Assignment timeline

Four recorded instruments are reflected in this patent's legal-events table (the same records surfaced by Assignment Center, https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/):

• 2005-12-12 (executed) / recorded 2005-12-13 — Reel 017368/0535

  • Conveyance: Assignment (of assignor's interest)
  • Assignor: Veselic, Dusan
  • Assignee: Research In Motion Limited (Canada)
  • Correspondent: not retrieved — Assignment Center correspondent field not available via my tools. (This conventional employee present-assignment is the one recording in the chain with no NPE relevance.)
  • Context: Original inventor-to-employer acquisition at filing.

• 2013-07-09 (executed) / recorded 2015-08-17 — Reel 036356/0472

  • Conveyance: Change of Name
  • Assignor: Research In Motion Limited
  • Assignee: BlackBerry Limited (Ontario)
  • Correspondent: not retrieved.
  • Context: Internal corporate reorg only — RIM rebranded to BlackBerry; no change in beneficial ownership. Note the ~25-month recording lag (executed 2013, recorded 2015), which is itself unremarkable but explains why the name-change record appears alongside the 2015 sale.

• 2015-11-19 (executed) / recorded 2015-12-17 — Reel 037324/0978

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: BlackBerry Limited
  • Assignee: Fundamental Innovation Systems International LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrieved.
  • Context: Transfer-to-asserter / privateering. This is the core divestiture — the USB-charging portfolio sale from operating company BlackBerry to a licensing-only NPE (see signals below).

• 2015-11-18 (executed) / recorded 2016-12-01 — Reel 040792/0483

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: BlackBerry Limited
  • Assignee: Fundamental Innovation Systems International LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrieved.
  • Context: Confirmatory / corrective assignment. This is a second assignment between the same two parties conveying to the same assignee. Its execution date (2015-11-18) is one day earlier than the first-recorded instrument, but it was recorded a full year later. Read literally, this looks like a clean-up recording (e.g., a confirmatory assignment covering omitted assets or correcting the first instrument) rather than an economic second transfer. I flag this as an unresolved anomaly — I cannot confirm from the retrieved materials whether it conveyed additional assets, corrected an error in 037324/0978, or was required by the buyer's financing/standing arrangements. It should be read alongside, not as a new owner.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7701173
    2005 : Veselic assigns to Research In Motion
         : Recorded reel 017368 frame 0535
    2010 : Patent issues as US 7701173
    2013 : RIM changes name to BlackBerry Limited
    2015 : BlackBerry sells USB portfolio to FISI
         : Recorded reel 037324 frame 0978
         : Name change recorded reel 036356 frame 0472
    2016 : Confirmatory assignment recorded
         : Recorded reel 040792 frame 0483
         : FISI begins suits against LG and Huawei
    2017 : FISI sues Samsung in EDTX
    2018 : Samsung IPR settled and dismissed

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — PRESENT. Reel 037324/0978 moves the patent out of an operating device maker (BlackBerry Limited) into Fundamental Innovation Systems International LLC. Evidence beyond the name suffix: RPX describes FISI as an NPE "asserting former BlackBerry patents"; FISI is a Delaware LLC formed in 2015, registered to do business in Texas in November 2016, that has filed ~20 suits since late 2016 while shipping no products. Its own litigation posture — a portfolio of 18 patents-in-campaign and licensing program — is licensing-only. The single-purpose-LLC tell is satisfied by its formation date and no-product commerce.

2. Known asserter in the chain — PRESENT. The current assignee (FISI) is listed on the Unified Patents PTAB portal as patent owner classified "NPE (Patent Assertion Entity)" (IPR2018-00426), and on RPX as an active NPE campaign. It is not on the classic Acacia/Marathon/IV lists, but it is a recognized high-frequency NPE in the RPX/Unified directories, backed by private-equity firm Centerbridge Partners and managed by JASPAR. This is a directory-confirmed asserter, not a naming inference.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNRESOLVED / not a finding. I could not retrieve the correspondent-of-record for reels 017368/0535, 036356/0472, 037324/0978, or 040792/0483. Because the signal is predicated on recurrence of a named attorney/firm, and I have no correspondent names, I cannot mark this present or not present. No inference drawn. (For completeness, the FISI litigation counsel of record — Irell & Manella for patent owner, Kirkland & Ellis for Samsung — are PTAB counsel, not assignment correspondents, and should not be conflated with the recording agents.)

4. Cascading transfers — WEAK / PARTIAL. There is no <24-month chain of multiple distinct LLCs; the patent passes through only one LLC (FISI). However, there are two FISI recordings 12 months apart (037324/0978 in Dec 2015; 040792/0483 in Dec 2016) for the same pair, executed one day apart in Nov 2015. If the second recording reflects a genuine second conveyance it would be a mild cascade tell; if confirmatory (more likely), it is not. Marked weak/partial, pending the actual instrument text.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — PRESENT, with a timing caveat. The economic transfer was executed 2015-11-18/19 (reels 037324/0978 and 040792/0483). FISI's first suits in this campaign followed in late 2016 (LG and Huawei, E.D. Tex. Nos. 2:16-cv-01425 / -01424) and January 2017 (Samsung, 2:17-cv-00145). That is roughly 11–14 months post-assignment — clearly arranged for assertion, but it exceeds the strict "within 6 months before first suit" formulation. I therefore mark the signal present on the pattern (assignment to an asserter immediately preceding a campaign) while noting it does not meet the 6-month calibration.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. BlackBerry was an operating company undergoing restructuring in 2013–2015, but there is no bankruptcy and no court-supervised asset sale in the record. The 2015 transfer was a negotiated, private multi-million-dollar transaction with Centerbridge (disclosed secondhand in the Ocean Tomo/Friedman dispute), not a Chapter 7/11 liquidation.

7. Privateering — PRESENT. Operating company BlackBerry kept a monetization interest in its patent program and sold this USB portfolio to a Centerbridge-backed vehicle that then asserted it against BlackBerry's competitors and downstream device/charger makers — Apple, Samsung, Huawei, LG, ZTE, Lenovo, TCL, Coolpad, BLU, Belkin/Hon Hai, Anker/Fantasia, Cyber Power, and others. BlackBerry publicly stayed in "patent licensing mode," and Samsung separately settled and licensed in 2018. This is the textbook operating-company-to-NPE privateering posture.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT. The chain terminates at FISI (an asserter), not at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified, or OIN. The '173 patent has not been neutralized; it was asserted and covered by a confidential settlement (IPR2018-00426 terminated 2018-07-13 under § 317(a)).

Verdict

NPE — high confidence.

Two or more strong signals are documented in the record: (i) a transfer-to-asserter shell at reel 037324/0978 (BlackBerry Limited → Fundamental Innovation Systems International LLC, a 2015 Delaware LLC with no products), reinforced by the confirmatory recording at reel 040792/0483; and (ii) directory-confirmed NPE status — Fundamental Innovation Systems is classified "NPE (Patent Assertion Entity)" in the Unified Patents portal and is an active RPX-tracked plaintiff running ~20 suits on the former BlackBerry USB-charging portfolio, with privateering against BlackBerry's competitors and a 2018 Samsung settlement (IPR2018-00426 terminated by settlement, district case dismissed with prejudice). The two signals that would deepen the call — correspondent recurrence and the exact scope of the second 2016 recording — remain unresolved because I could not pull the Assignment Center correspondent fields. Note the patent remains Active with an adjusted expiration of 2028-07-03, so the asserted chain is still live.

Verify at: USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent 7701173) and the indexed public view https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html. Pull reel/frame 017368/0535, 036356/0472, 037324/0978, and 040792/0483 to capture the correspondent-of-record fields I could not retrieve.

I'll start by pulling the USPTO record for 7,701,173 and then work through each cited reference.

Good — I now have the IPR and prosecution record. Let me pull details on the key prior-art references.

I hit the tool-call limit partway through the reference-by-reference retrieval, so I'll report what I verified and flag explicitly what I could not. Note on scope: the following is grounded in (a) the authoritative full patent text/Google Patents record you supplied, (b) the prosecution record (Ex. 1003 file history) and the IPR2018-00426 petition/exhibits that surfaced in search, and (c) search returns for the references I did retrieve. For references I could not pull full text on, I say so rather than inventing content.

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1. USPTO record for 7,701,173 (confirmed)

Matches the earlier section — I won't repeat it. Two newly confirmed items from the file history and IPR record that build on the prior section:

• The method claim question is now resolved. The file history (Ex. 1003) shows original claims 17–19 were method claims ("A power management method for allocating power … claim 17; … claim 19. A charging and power supply circuit for carrying out the power management method of claim 17") and that they were cancelled during prosecution — the granted set is 12 claims (1–12), circuit claim 1 + device claim 6. So the earlier section's caveat ("no method claim in the granted set") is confirmed and explained: the method claims were prosecuted and then dropped, not overlooked.
• The examiner's actual § 103 rejection was: claims 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 9, 12, 13, 15, 16 rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) over U.S. Patent 6,188,199 to Beutler et al. in view of U.S. Patent 6,741,066 to Densham et al. The applicant's response was framed "in light of … KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex." Those two primary references correspond to US 6,188,199 (Eldec / "Battery charge optimizing system" — citation #11 below) and US 6,741,066 (O2Micro / "Power management for battery powered appliances" — citation #12), per the face-citation table's assignee/title data. (I state the numeric correspondence as an inference from the matching numbers; the file-history excerpt names "Beutler" and "Densham" while Google's citation list names Eldec and O2Micro as assignees.)

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2. The anticipation framework (why §102 is a hard sell here)

For a single reference to anticipate under §102 it must disclose every element of claim 1 (or claim 6). Claim 1's independent-claim elements, stripped down, are:

Element C — a closed loop that takes feedback from the electronic system and adjusts the minimum system-voltage threshold — is the element that separates the '173 from all the pre-2005 charger art. My assessment: none of the 21 face citations discloses A+B+C in a single reference, so none anticipates claims 1 or 6. Every one of them is properly an obviousness (§103) / background reference, which is consistent with how the examiner and the petitioner actually used them (i.e., in combinations). What follows rates each reference by how much of A/B/C it supplies.

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3. Patent citations on the face of 7,701,173

Tier A — the references actually used to attack the claims

A1. US 2004/0164708 A1 — Veselic, "Circuit and method of operation for an electrical power supply"

• Citation: U.S. Pub. No. 2004/0164708 A1 (app. filed 2003-02-21; published 2004-08-26); same inventor (Dusan Veselic), RIM.
• Description (verified from the IPR record): discloses a power supply for a portable device with voltage-sensing feedback. Figure 6 embodiment uses a linear battery charge controller (identified in the record as model NCP1800); "opamp 52 restricts current through Q3" when the node voltage drops below a reference; resistors R5/R6 scale the node voltage to V_REF. The record also notes V_REF "may be received from outside," and that the device may have different operating modes with different minimum voltages.
• Timing note (important): published 2004-08-26, i.e. more than one year before the 2005-12-13 filing → pre-AIA §102(b) prior art, and therefore not shielded by the §103(c) common-ownership provision. This is why Petitioners used it as the primary reference.
• §102 / anticipation: This was the primary reference of Ground 1 in IPR2018-00426 (with Kranzen '020 and Vyssotski '815). It is a strong §103 reference against claims 1–12. It does not anticipate claim 1 by itself: it is a linear charger (the record stresses linear chargers cannot produce output current exceeding input current), so it fails element A (switch-mode IC + inductor current gain). The record's own analysis maps '708 to the node-voltage / variable-current-restriction concepts, not to the switch-mode current-gain limitation. Potentially anticipates: none if element A is given effect; most relevant to the B/C-type limitations of claims 1 and 6.

A2. US 6,188,199 B1 — Beutler et al. / Eldec Corporation, "Battery charge optimizing system"

• Citation: U.S. Patent 6,188,199 B1 (priority 2000-03-31; issued 2001-02-13).
• Description: charger/system that optimizes the charging process — as cited by the examiner, the primary §103 reference against claims 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 9, 12, 13, 15, 16, combined with Densham.
• §102 / anticipation: Used in a §103 combination, not as a standalone anticipation. I could not retrieve the full text in this session, so I will not assert which specific elements it discloses. Based on how it was used, treat it as a §103(a) reference, not an anticipatory one. Potentially anticipates: none asserted.

A3. US 6,741,066 B1 — Densham et al. / O2Micro International, "Power management for battery powered appliances"

• Citation: U.S. Patent 6,741,066 B1 (priority 2000-09-21; issued 2004-05-25).
• Description: power management for battery-powered appliances — cited by the examiner as the secondary reference in the same §103(a) rejection of claims 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 9, 12, 13, 15, 16.
• §102 / anticipation: §103(a) reference (secondary). I could not retrieve full text this session; I won't assert specific anticipatory disclosure. Potentially anticipates: none asserted.

A4. (Not a face citation, but the most material third-party art found) IPR Ground 1's other references

The IPR petition (Ex. 1004–1006 set) relied on two references not on the patent face:

• US 7,570,020 — Kranzen et al. ("Kranzen") — Petitioner Exhibit 1005.
• US 2004/0019815 A1 — Vyssotski ("Vyssotski") — Petitioner Exhibit 1006. Vyssotski is described in the record as teaching that a reference voltage can be received from the electronic system based on the system's operating state (i.e., a supply reference selected per processor power state).

This is your best "relevance" lead beyond the face citations: the only combination a third party ever thought could reach the claim-1 element C was Veselic '708 + Vyssotski (electronic-system-driven reference voltage) + Kranzen. The Patent Owner's response argued these are incompatible (Vyssotski teaching sub-1 V processor rails vs. Kranzen teaching ≥3 V rails), and the IPR terminated by settlement 2018-07-13 before an institution merits decision was reached. So the anticipation/rejection question was never finally adjudicated.

Tier B — power-sharing / system-vs-battery allocation art (supplies elements B/D concepts, not A+C)

B1. EP 0 623 985 A1 — SGS-Thomson Microelectronics Pte Ltd, "Power Sharing detector"

• Citation: EP 0623985 A1 (priority GB 1993-05-05; published 1994-11-09). U.S. counterpart: US 5,583,417 A ("Power sharing detector for use with a battery charger and an auxiliary device," issued 1996-12-10).
• Description (verified): a power-sharing detector for a circuit where a supply feeds both a battery charger and an auxiliary device (e.g., a portable computer). A voltage-detection circuit senses a voltage representative of the power supplied to the auxiliary device and, on detecting a drop (auxiliary device turned on), switches the charger to a lower charging rate, releasing power for the auxiliary device. Explicitly motivated so the power converter can run "up to its maximum capacity."
• §102 / anticipation: conceptually the closest face citation to the '173's power-allocation idea (elements B/D), and it does switch charging in response to a sensed line voltage. But it selects one of two discrete charging rates, uses a conventional (non-switch-mode-gain) charger topology, and has no semiconductor switch sensing the system output node and acting as a variable resistor in its triode region, and no electronic-system feedback adjusting a minimum voltage. Potentially anticipates: none; strong §103 background for the power-sharing concept of claims 1/6.

B2. US 6,222,347 B1 — Gong / Apple Computer, "System for charging portable computer's battery using both the dynamically determined power available based on power consumed by sub-system devices and power limits from the battery"

• Citation: U.S. Patent 6,222,347 B1 (app. 09/070,489 filed 1998-04-30; issued 2001-04-24).
• Description (verified): dynamically determines how much power is available for charging by subtracting subsystem consumption from the supply, and charges the battery "in accordance with the lesser of the determined amount of power and the power limits," explicitly so the device "will not be starved for power during its operation" (claim 4: as available power drops, charge power drops so draw "never exceeds the available power").
• §102 / anticipation: This squarely supplies the "don't starve the system, throttle the battery" motivation (element D) and even the mode/subsystem-awareness theme that claim 11's voltage-notification-module concept echoes. But it is a method/architecture reference: no switch-mode IC+inductor current gain (A), no output-node-sensing variable-resistance semiconductor switch (B's structural core), no adjustable minimum voltage fed back from the system (C). Potentially anticipates: none. Highly relevant §103 background, especially against claim 11.

B3. US 6,118,254 A — Compaq Computer Corp., "Battery charge control architecture for constant voltage maximum power operation"

• Citation: U.S. Patent 6,118,254 A (priority 1999-07-30; issued 2000-09-12).
• Description: charge-control architecture for constant-voltage, maximum-power operation — a "system-aware" charging scheme.
• §102 / anticipation: I could not retrieve full text this session. Given the title, it is at most §103 background for adaptive charging; no anticipation identified. Potentially anticipates: none asserted.

B4. US 6,300,744 B1 — Siliconix Inc., "High-efficiency battery charger"

• Citation: U.S. Patent 6,300,744 B1 (priority 2000-02-10; issued 2001-10-09).
• Description: high-efficiency (i.e., switching-type) charger.
• §102 / anticipation: I could not retrieve full text this session. Potentially supplies element A-like efficiency/switching concepts; no single-reference anticipation identified. Potentially anticipates: none asserted.

B5. US 6,031,359 A — Chartec Laboratories A/S, "Digitally controlled switch mode power supply for charging rechargeable batteries"

• Citation: U.S. Patent 6,031,359 A (priority 1996-10-10; issued 2000-02-29).
• Description: digitally controlled switch-mode supply for charging.
• §102 / anticipation: Relevant to element A (switch-mode charging) and possibly to the feedback/control loop generally; but a charger-side SMPS control reference, with no electronic-system output node / variable-resistance isolation switch / system-feedback minimum-voltage limitation. No anticipation identified.

B6. US 5,698,964 A — Dell USA, "Adaptive power battery charging apparatus" (Family Cites Family)

• Citation: U.S. Patent 5,698,964 A (priority 1995-10-20; issued 1997-12-16).
• Description: adaptive power battery charging.
• §102 / anticipation: Charger-side adaptivity only; no anticipation identified. Cited as a family citation, so weaker relevance.

Tier C — battery-charge-control / feedback chargers (battery-side only; fail elements A, B-structure, C)

C1. US 5,179,335 A — Nor / Norvik Inc., "Battery charger"

• Citation: U.S. Patent 5,179,335 A (CA priority 1987-10-09; issued 1993-01-12).
• Description (verified): a feedback charger that repeatedly interrupts charging current, measures the internal-resistance-free battery voltage during the interruption, compares it to a preselected reference voltage, and gradually reduces charging power to hold that voltage at the reference. It is a battery-only charger.
• §102 / anticipation: Supplies a generic "sense a voltage, compare to a reference, reduce charging current" control loop — the same generic loop that appears in the '173's Figure 2 op-amp 248/FET 252 arrangement. But: (i) it senses the battery, not a system output node; (ii) it reduces charge power, it does not isolate the battery with a variable-resistance semiconductor switch to protect a live electronic system; (iii) no switch-mode IC+inductor current gain; (iv) no system-feedback minimum voltage. Potentially anticipates: none.

C2. US 5,432,427 A — Chiang, "Battery charging control system"

• Citation: U.S. Patent 5,432,427 A (priority 1993-11-23; issued 1995-07-11).
• Description: battery charging control system.
• §102 / anticipation: Generic battery charge control; no anticipation of claims 1/6. I did not retrieve full text this session.

C3. EP 0 752 748 A1 — STMicroelectronics S.r.l., "Multiple function battery charger, self-configuring as supply voltage regulator for battery powered apparatuses"

• Citation: EP 0752748 A1 (priority 1995-06-07; published 1997-01-08).
• Description: a battery charger that can reconfigure itself to act as a supply voltage regulator for the battery-powered apparatus.
• §102 / anticipation: Arguably the most conceptually interesting of Tier C because it bridges "charger" and "system supply regulator" — but it is a linear/self-configuring charger-regulator, not a switch-mode current-gain converter, and has no system-feedback minimum-voltage adjustment. Potentially anticipates: none.

C4. US 5,694,022 A — Selfcharge, Inc., "Variable pulse recharging battery pack"

• Citation: U.S. Patent 5,694,022 A (priority 1995-12-18; issued 1997-12-02).
• Description: variable-pulse recharging battery pack.
• §102 / anticipation: Battery-side pulse charging; no anticipation. Not retrieved in full this session.

C5. US 6,100,664 A — Motorola Inc., "Sub-miniature high efficiency battery charger exploiting leakage inductance of wall transformer power supply, and method therefor"

• Citation: U.S. Patent 6,100,664 A (priority 1999-03-31; issued 2000-08-08).
• Description: compact high-efficiency charger using transformer leakage inductance.
• §102 / anticipation: Charger-topology reference; no anticipation of the claim 1 combination.

Tier D — the applicant's own earlier family art (RIM/Veselic)

D1. US 2004/0164707 A1 — Veselic, "Circuit and method of operation for an adaptive charge rate power supply"

• Citation: U.S. Pub. No. 2004/0164707 A1 (filed 2003-02-21; published 2004-08-26). → pre-AIA §102(b) (more than one year before the '173 filing).
• Description: adaptive charge-rate power supply (the sibling of A1).
• §102 / anticipation: Directly on point for adaptive/limited charge rate from a constrained source (the USB-limited-power problem the '173 addresses). Still charger-side; no anticipation of the full claim-1 combination, but a strong §103 reference alongside A1.

D2. WO 2004/075371 A1 — Research In Motion Ltd., "Circuit and method of operation for an electrical power supply"

• Citation: PCT publication (priority 2003-02-21; published 2004-09-02). → §102(b).
• Description: the PCT counterpart of the A1/D1 family.
• §102 / anticipation: Same disclosure family as A1; no standalone anticipation, but §102(b) art usable in §103.

D3. US 2005/0046391 A1 — Research In Motion Ltd., "Circuit and method of operation for an adaptive charge rate power supply"

• Citation: U.S. Pub. No. 2005/0046391 A1 (priority 2003-02-21; published 2005-03-03). → within one year of the '173 filing (i.e., not §102(b); potentially §102(e)/(a)).
• Description: continuation-family member of the adaptive charge-rate disclosure.
• §102 / anticipation: Same family; no anticipation.

D4. US 2004/0239294 A1 — Veselic, "Method and apparatus for handling a charging state in a mobile electronic device"

• Citation: U.S. Pub. No. 2004/0239294 A1 (priority 2003-05-27; published 2004-12-02). → §102(b) (before 2004-12-13).
• Description: charging-state handling in a mobile device (USB suspend/resume, enumeration-related charging states).
• §102 / anticipation: Related to the USB-compliance/handshake theme the '173 leans on for its "USB-compliant" preamble and the 100 ms enumeration discussion, but it does not disclose the switch-mode output node + variable-resistance isolation switch + system-feedback minimum voltage. No anticipation.

D5. US 2004/0251878 A1 — Veselic, "Universal Serial Bus charger for a mobile device"

• Citation: U.S. Pub. No. 2004/0251878 A1 (priority 2003-06-11; published 2004-12-16). → within one year (not §102(b)).
• Description: USB charger for a mobile device.
• §102 / anticipation: Background for the USB-charging context; no anticipation of the claim-1 combination.

Tier E — peripheral / low-relevance citations

E1. JP 2003-032910 A — Mitsubishi Electric Corp., "Terminal device"

• Citation: JP 2003-032910 A (priority 2001-07-13; published 2003-01-31).
• §102 / anticipation: A terminal-device reference; I did not retrieve it and cannot assert any anticipatory disclosure. On the title alone, low relevance; treat as §103 background at most.

E2. US 6,003,226? → US 2006/0022640 A1 — Peter Frith, "Power supply circuit for portable battery powered device"

• Citation: U.S. Pub. No. 2006/0022640 A1 (filed 2004-07-26; published 2006-02-02).
• Timing note: although it published after the '173 filing, its filing date (2004-07-26) precedes the '173 filing, so it is potentially pre-AIA §102(e) prior art.
• Description: power supply circuit for a portable battery-powered device (Frith — a known RIM-associated inventor).
• §102 / anticipation: Not retrieved in full this session; on the title it is a power-supply-circuit reference that could bear on element A generalities, but I cannot assert it anticipates any claim. Treat as §103 background pending full-text review.

E3. US 7,208,892 B2 — The Hoover Company, "Power management system for a floor care appliance"

• Citation: U.S. Patent 7,208,892 B2 (priority 2003-05-23; issued 2007-04-24).
• Description: power management for a floor-care appliance (vacuum). Cited only incidentally (examiner-cited).
• §102 / anticipation: Different field; no relevance to claims 1–12 beyond generic power-management language. No anticipation.

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4. Non-patent citations (7) — and a date problem

Flag: items 1 and 2 are dated after 2005-12-13 and therefore are not anticipatory prior art against the '173 claims. Their appearance in the record is likely as IDS/search-report material rather than §102 art. The TI datasheets (items 5–7) are the only true printed-publication prior art among the NPOs, and they are §103 corroboration (they show the off-the-shelf switch-mode and USB-supply-management building blocks the '173 assembles), not anticipatory references — none of them describes the claimed system-feedback-adjustable minimum voltage.

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5. Bottom line — §102 assessment by claim

• Claim 1 (circuit) and claim 6 (device): No single face citation anticipates. Each falls short of at least element C (additional circuitry receiving feedback from the electronic system and adjusting the minimum voltage value), and several also fall short of element A (switch-mode IC + inductor producing output current greater than input current — e.g., Veselic '708 is explicitly a linear charger per the IPR record) and element B's specific structure (a semiconductor switch in the current path operated as a variable resistance while current flows).
• Dependent claims:
  • Claims 2, 5, 10 (reverse/bidirectional SMPS through the same inductor): closest art is the switch-mode charger references (US 5,179,335; US 6,031,359; US 6,300,744) plus the TI DC-DC datasheet — but none shows the single shared inductor bidirectional arrangement; no anticipation.
  • Claim 3 (output-node voltage fed back to the IC to adjust output voltage): the feedback-charger art (Norvik '335; the Veselic '708 op-amp loop) is the nearest; no anticipation.
  • Claim 4 (separate switch-mode DC-DC converter IC feeding the inductor): no anticipation identified.
  • Claims 7, 8 (circuitry inside the housing): packaging limitations; no anticipation.
  • Claim 9 (wirelessly-enabled handheld communications device): no anticipation.
  • Claim 11 (voltage notification module responsive to operating-mode changes): closest is US 6,222,347 (Apple/Gong) — mode/subsystem-aware power allocation — but it lacks the "adjust the minimum voltage" feedback-to-isolation-circuitry link; no anticipation.
  • Claim 12 (switch means shutting off the semiconductor switch when charging is disabled): generic; no anticipation, though the record notes the Petition's claim-12 analysis was itself contested as "conclusory and wrong."

In short, and stated plainly: the face-of-patent citations for 7,701,173 are §103 (obviousness) and background references, not anticipatory references. The most relevant to the inventive core are, in order: (1) US 2004/0164708 (Veselic '708) — the primary IPR reference and the only one the challenger paired with an electronic-system-driven reference voltage; (2) US 2004/0019815 (Vyssotski) and US 7,570,020 (Kranzen) — the non-face IPR references that were the only art ever asserted against element C; (3) EP 0 623 985 / US 5,583,417 (SGS-Thomson power sharing) and (4) US 6,222,347 (Apple/Gong) — the best face citations on power allocation between a system and a battery; and (5) US 6,188,199 (Beutler/Eldec) in view of US 6,741,066 (Densham/O2Micro) — the examiner's actual §103 combination against claims 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 9, 12, 13, 15, 16.

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6. Explicit uncertainties (so you don't over-read this)

1. Full text not retrieved in this session for: US 6,188,199, US 6,741,066, EP 0 752 748, US 5,694,022, US 6,100,664, US 6,118,254, US 6,300,744, JP 2003-032910, US 2006/0022640. For these I relied on the face-citation titles/assignees/dates and general knowledge, and I have flagged each rather than assert specific disclosure. A conclusive §102 element-by-element comparison requires their full specifications.
2. Assignee/inventor cross-mapping: I inferred that "Beutler et al. (6,188,199)" = the Eldec "Battery charge optimizing system" citation and "Densham et al. (6,741,066)" = the O2Micro citation, based on matching numbers. I did not independently verify the inventor names against the grants.
3. No live USPTO/PTAB API was queried; "USPTO database" results here come from Google Patents' rendering of the USPTO record, the PTAB/docket documents, and secondary sources. The bibliographic data you supplied (the authoritative patent text) is treated as controlling where it conflicts.
4. The IPR was settled, not decided (terminated 2018-07-13), so there is no Board institution or final written decision holding any claim anticipated or obvious — the only merits assessment in the record is the Patent Owner's preliminary response and Dr. Fernald's declaration, both of which are advocacy, not findings.

I'll ground this analysis in the actual content of the cited prior-art references. Let me pull the key ones.

Excellent — this surfaced the actual IPR prior-art record for the family. Let me pull the remaining key references.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 7,701,173 B2

Claimed invention: "Charging and power supply for mobile devices" (Veselic; RIM; filed/priority 2005‑12‑13; granted 2010‑04‑20).
Statute: 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) pre‑AIA (application filed 2005‑12‑13; the AIA first‑inventor‑to‑file provisions apply only to applications filed on/after 2013‑03‑16).
Sources relied on: the "Prior Art" section of the Google Patents page for US 7,701,173 (Citations, Non‑Patent Citations, Family Cites Families), plus the publicly posted PTAB record for the sibling continuation (US 7,893,655), which uses a materially identical specification.

Grounding caveat. The patent's family IPR against the '173 itself (IPR2018‑00426, Samsung v. Fundamental Innovation) terminated by settlement in July 2018 and produced no final written decision. I therefore have no PTAB obviousness holding on the '173 to cite. What I do have is (a) the '173's own face citations and (b) adversarial obviousness contentions and rebuttals litigated against the same specification in the '655 IPRs. I flag where I rely on (b) and note that I did not independently parse the full text of every reference.

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1. Legal framework applied

Obviousness is evaluated under the Graham v. John Deere factors as refined by KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007):

1. Scope and content of the prior art;
2. Differences between the prior art and the claims;
3. Level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art;
4. Secondary considerations (objective indicia).

Under KSR, a combination is obvious where the elements come from the same field, address the same problem, and involve "a finite number of identified, predictable solutions." Id. at 421. A mere "application of a known technique to a piece of prior art ready for the improvement" is obvious. Id. at 417. Where the patent's own specification supplies the motivation, that is the applicant's own admission and is highly probative.

Critical point for this patent: the '173 specification contains an express, self‑inflicted obviousness admission — "it would be practical, in a number of circumstances, to combine the functionality of the IC 212 and the functionality of the IC 220 within a single IC, thereby reducing the number of needed ICs by one." This is relevant to claims 2, 4, 5 and 10.

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

A POSITA as of December 2005 would have had a B.S. in electrical engineering (or equivalent) plus 2–3 years of experience designing battery‑charging and power‑management circuits for portable/handheld electronic devices, or a higher degree with less experience. That person would be familiar with: USB power budgets (100 mA "one unit" / 500 mA "five units" per USB 2.0), Li‑ion CC‑CV charging, buck/step‑down converters, and the trade‑off between linear (LDO) and switch‑mode (SMPS) regulation. (The '173 specification itself recites this trade‑off and the USB spec current limits.)

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3. The prior art of record and what each reference teaches

The references below are drawn from the '173's own Prior Art section. Availability dates are computed against the 2005‑12‑13 filing/priority date.

Two NPL citations are not prior art to the '173 and I flag this explicitly:

• Maxim, "Charging Batteries from USB" — published 2006‑08‑25.
• Summit Microelectronics press release — published 2006‑02‑21.

Both post‑date the '173's 2005‑12‑13 filing. They appear to be counterpart‑prosecution (EP 05112066.5 / PCT CA2006/002025) materials and cannot be used in a § 103 rejection against the '173. The European Search Report and International Search Report listed as NPL are also prosecution documents, not prior art.

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4. Claim 1 — element‑by‑element mapping

Claim 1 (independent, USB‑compliant charging and power supply circuit):

Claim 1 is disclosed, or obvious, by the combination. The whereby clause is not merely suggested but copied in substance from Veselic '708, the applicant's own earlier published application.

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5. Grounds of rejection (combinations and motivation)

Ground 1 — Veselic '708 + TI bqSWITCHER/bqTINY‑II + Vyssotski

• '708 supplies elements (a), (b), and the whereby clause (substantially verbatim), plus the express recognition that a portable device has multiple operating modes with different power requirements.
• TI bqSWITCHER + bqTINY‑II supply the switch‑mode IC + inductor requirement (a′) and the USB power‑path management context (USB‑compliant). These are not obscure; they are the exact commercial parts the '173 spec names and their datasheets are of record.
• Vyssotski supplies the mechanism for varying the reference/minimum voltage according to the device's operating mode (registers + decoder per state) — i.e., element (c).

Motivation (KSR): (i) all three are in the same field (powering portable electronic devices) and address the same problem — keeping system voltage above a minimum from a limited power source; (ii) the '708 itself frames the problem as one of power dissipation in the pass device (noting a semiconductor's dissipation capability scales with area), which is a direct, express reason to substitute a switch‑mode converter for a linear controller; (iii) substituting a known switch‑mode converter for a linear one and adding a known dynamic‑reference circuit is the "application of a known technique to a piece of prior art ready for the improvement" (KSR, 550 U.S. at 417); (iv) the solution space was small and predictable — buck converter topologies with an FB pin and mode‑dependent references were commodities by 2005.

Ground 2 — Shum '744 + Veselic '708 + TI bqTINY‑II

• Shum '744 independently discloses the core "battery‑isolation‑against‑system‑undervoltage" function and its result ("power supplied preferentially to the load").
• Veselic '708 supplies the semiconductor‑switch implementation, the USB context, the mode‑dependence, and the "additional available power" language.
• TI bqTINY‑II / bqSWITCHER supplies the switch‑mode IC + inductor requirement and USB supply management.

Motivation: Shum's trigger voltage is explicitly fixed, whereas Veselic '708 expressly notes systems with multiple operating modes. A POSITA seeking to reduce wasted power / extend battery life in a multi‑mode handheld had an obvious reason to make the trigger reference variable and to source it from the electronic system. This is precisely the rationale advanced in the family IPR ("a POSA would have recognized that, to power such a multi‑mode device, the reference voltages establishing the minimum voltage would be received from the electronic system").

Ground 3 — O2Micro '066 + TI bqSWITCHER + EP '985

• O2Micro '066 supplies the switch‑mode efficiency teachings and — critically — feedback from the portable device to the power source to adjust the delivered DC output to the device's requirements (element (c)).
• EP '985 supplies the power‑sharing function: sensing a system‑side voltage and reducing the battery charging rate in response.
• TI bqSWITCHER supplies the IC‑plus‑inductor charging stage.

Motivation: EP '985 identifies the exact problem ("when the computer is suddenly turned on … the charger can be switched to the slower charging rate, thereby releasing 10 W of extra power for computer usage"), and O2Micro '066 supplies the feedback‑control mechanism for doing so with a switch‑mode converter. Combining a known power‑sharing detector with a known switch‑mode charger is a predictable, low‑risk engineer's solution.

Ground 4 — Frith '640 + Shum '744 + Veselic '708 (examiner‑cited)

• Frith '640 is a portable power‑supply reference in the same field addressing bus‑powered operation with a discharged battery, a "voltage level adjusting circuit," and pass devices that isolate the battery — the examiner already found it relevant.

Frith is best used as a secondary reference confirming that variable voltage level adjustment in a USB/bus‑powered portable device was known, rather than as the primary teaching of the isolating switch.

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6. Dependent claims

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7. Secondary considerations (objective indicia)

I found no evidence in the record of unexpected results, long‑felt but unsolved need, industry praise, copying, or commercial success attributable to the claimed subject matter (as opposed to the BlackBerry product line generally). Absent a nexus between the objective evidence and the claimed combination, such evidence would not rebut the strong prima facie case above. This should be flagged as a gap requiring discovery in any real validity challenge, not as an affirmative finding.

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8. Procedural posture and explicit uncertainties

1. No PTAB ruling on the '173 exists. IPR2018‑00426 (Samsung Electronics) was terminated by settlement on 2018‑07‑13 (per the patent's own legal‑events table and the earlier-generated summary), so there is no institution decision or final written decision on the '173's claims. Institution decisions from sibling IPRs are not binding and carry no preclusive effect.
2. Prior‑art asymmetry: Kranzen and Vyssotski are not on the '173's face. Vyssotski (US 2004/0019815) is § 102(b) art to the '173 and is usable; I did not retrieve Kranzen's patent number and will not guess it.
3. Two NPL citations post‑date the '173 filing (Maxim 2006‑08‑25; Summit Micro 2006‑02‑21) and are not available as prior art to the '173 — a distinction that matters for any rejection built from the NPL block.
4. Unverified reference texts: I retrieved substantive content for Veselic '708, O2Micro '066, EP '985, Frith '640, and the family‑IPR characterizations of Shum '744 and Vyssotski. I did not independently verify the full text of US 6,222,347 (Apple), US 6,118,254 (Compaq), the Hoover '892 patent, or the TI datasheets; my characterizations of those rely on their titles as listed on the '173 face plus the family IPR record.
5. No 2026 activity confirmed — consistent with the prior section, I found no 2026 challenge to the '173.

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9. Conclusion

On the record available, claims 1 and 6 of US 7,701,173 would have been obvious under pre‑AIA § 103(a) over Veselic '708 in view of a switch‑mode charger reference (TI bqSWITCHER/bqTINY‑II) and a dynamic‑reference reference (Vyssotski, or O2Micro '066 / Apple '347). The chief vulnerabilities are:

• the substantially verbatim correspondence between the claim's "whereby" clause and Veselic '708's own disclosure of "the portable device receiving the power it needs to operate and the rechargeable battery receiving any additional available power";
• Veselic '708's express discussion of mode‑dependent power requirements (sleep vs. awake), which supplies the rationale for variable, system‑driven minimum‑voltage adjustment (element (c));
• the '173 specification's own admission that merging the charging and system‑supply ICs is "practical" (claims 2/4/5/10);
• the fact that the switch‑mode ICs recited (bq24105/bq24115, TPS62000) and their USB supply‑management siblings are pre‑filing printed publications of record.

The dependent claims add only predictable implementation details (FB pins, shared inductors, housing integration, a notification module, and a charge‑disable switch), each of which is disclosed or suggested in the same field. The strongest counter‑arguments a patent owner would raise — that Veselic '708 is arguably a linear charge controller and thus not "switch‑mode," and that no single reference teaches adjusting the minimum voltage in response to system feedback — are answerable by the secondary references, but those counter‑arguments are also the correct places for a challenger to focus its proof (e.g., an express motivation to substitute switch‑mode for linear, evidenced by Veselic '708's own power‑dissipation discussion).