US 7710433

I'll search for authoritative information on this specific patent number, including any 2026 litigation activity.

Let me check for any 2026 appellate activity and confirm the litigation history.

US Patent 7,710,433 — Summary

Note on scope of search: I searched for this specific number (US 7,710,433 B2) only. I found no misidentified or "similar-number" results substituted, and I found no 2026 Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) docket activity for this patent. I cannot query PACER/CAFC directly, so I can't rule out a very recent unindexed filing — treat the "no 2026 CAFC activity" finding as a search result, not a certified negative.

Bibliographic data (from the patent text and Justia/Google Patents)

Abstract (as issued)

"Improved methods are provided for calibrating color on a color display coupled to a computer, which are useful for obtaining calibrated data in a virtual proof network for enabling different color devices to render consistent color. Methods involve user interactions with screens on the display to set color display parameters. An apparatus is also provided for calibrating a sensor which may be used for measuring color of a display in one or more of these methods."

Independent claims (plain language)

The patent carries 19 claims, all method claims, with two independents (1 and 16). Source for claim text: Justia's reproduction of the granted claims (https://patents.justia.com/patent/7710433); the Google Patents copy provided to me truncates before the claims.

Claim 1 — "User-established white point" method. A method of measuring a white point that a user has established to balance the multiple color channels of a display, with four steps:

1. Provide a physical white reference (e.g., proofing stock under a viewing illuminator).
2. Display at least white on the screen.
3. The user manually adjusts the display's color channels to change the on-screen white until it visually matches the physical reference — the user, not the software, establishes the match.
4. A sensor directed at the display measures the adjusted white, yielding an updated white point.

Claim 16 — Computer-assisted variant. Essentially the same method, but framed where the display is coupled to a computer system with a user interface and software enabling user adjustment of each color-channel quantity: the computer outputs white, the user adjusts the channels via the UI until a visual match is achieved, a sensor measures the adjusted white and feeds the value to the computer, and the computer stores the measured white.

Dependent claims (subject matter added)

• 2–3: Store the measured white point on the computer; use it to update color transformation information (profiles) for the display.
• 4, 18–19: Share the measured white point over a network to other computers/renderers, which update their color transformations to match; claim 19 specifies using it to improve matching of color rendered on a rendering device with the display.
• 5, 17: Illuminate the physical reference during the match.
• 6: Verify/iterate — re-display white per the measured value and repeat the adjustment/measurement if it no longer matches.
• 7–8: Also measure tone reproduction curves (TRCs), store white point + TRCs, and update color transformation information accordingly.
• 9: Display is a color video monitor.
• 10–12, 14–15: Network aspects — one site of a network, storing white point with site location/ID info; other sites with different device types/models; receipt of the white point over the network; a data structure transmitted between sites (the "Virtual Proof"); wireless communication.
• 13: Sensor is a colorimeter or imaging colorimeter positioned to measure reflected or emitted light from the display.

Technical substance of the specification (context)

The disclosure combines (a) instrumental calibration — a sensor/"lumeter" under a cowel measuring the display, with control via analog gain/offset in the display or LUTs in the host graphics section; (b) visual/psychophysical calibration using increment/decrement threshold techniques (Weber's Law-based, with normative data to translate threshold discriminations into absolute luminance), film-based metameric color-matching screens (FIGS. 5–10), and brightness/contrast setup to ensure superposition (linear additive color mixture — the sum of individually-measured R, G, B luminances equals white luminance), recommending ~50–60% brightness with contrast near maximum; (c) network sharing of calibration data via the "Virtual Proof" and gamut-descriptor/gamut-filter handling of inadequate gamuts; and (d) an apparatus and method for calibrating a sensor itself (FIGS. 15–16) using a monochromator, reference instrument traceable to NIST, and a verification step convolving the sensor's measured spectral response with the display's primary emission spectra (equations (1) and (2)).

Litigation / post-grant history found

• RAH Color Technologies LLC v. (W.D.N.Y.) Case 6:10-cv-06710 and W.D. Mich. Case 1:14-cv-00638 (per Google Patents' Unified Patents litigation links).
• The '433 patent was among ten RAH patents asserted in the X-Rite, Inc. complaint (U.S. Patent Nos. 7,312,897; 7,710,433; 7,710,560; 7,715,052; 7,729,008; 7,791,761; 8,009,175; 8,279,236; 8,416,444; 8,537,357).
• RAH's cases against Adobe, Xerox, EFI, Kodak, Dalim, and Heidelberger were consolidated into In re RAH Color Technologies LLC Patent Litigation, No. 3:18-md-02874-SI (N.D. Cal.), which the docket now shows as closed.
• The 2019 PTAB IPRs (IPR2019-00627/00628/00629/00646) were directed at '008, '444, '761, and '897 — not at the '433 patent.

Family

This patent is one of a chain of divisionals/continuations from the 09/832,553/7,102,648 family (family ID 36939483), including US 8,009,175; 8,279,236; 8,665,289; 9,500,527; 9,767,763; 10,008,180; and later continuations such as 10,038,884.

Uncertainties

1. I have no authoritative evidence of a 2026 CAFC appeal concerning the '433 patent; the searches surfaced 2026 Federal Circuit authority only in unrelated cases (e.g., a color-gamut § 101 dispute involving a different patent, and GoTV Streaming, LLC v. Netflix, Inc., 166 F.4th 1053 (Fed. Cir. 2026)).
2. The claim text above is drawn from Justia's rendering of the granted claims; I did not retrieve the USPTO PatentCenter/Patent Public Search original document directly. Claim 19 is the last dependent shown, consistent with a 19-claim grant, but I could not cross-confirm the total claim count against the truncated Google Patents page.
3. Assignee address differs across records (Rochester, NY in early filings; Alexandria, VA in later family members) due to assignments/mergers recorded 2008, 2013, and later.

I'll research litigation involving US 7,710,433. Let me search several sources.

Let me dig into specific cases and verify which ones involved the '433 patent.

Bottom line

US 7,710,433 ("Methods and apparatus for calibrating a color display," Richard A. Holub / RAH Color Technologies LLC) has been asserted in two district-court infringement actions that I can substantiate. Both were brought by the patent owner (RAH Color Technologies LLC) and both terminated by dismissal following settlement/licensing. I found no IPR, PGR, or reexamination directed at the '433 patent, and no appellate decision in which the '433 patent was construed or adjudicated on the merits.

Confirmed litigation

Details — Case 1 (Epson). The complaint (Case 6:10-cv-06710-CJS, Doc. 1, filed 12/21/10) asserts U.S. Patent Nos. 6,999,870; 7,280,251; 7,312,897; 7,710,433; 7,710,560; 7,729,008; 7,791,761; and 7,830,546 against Seiko Epson Corp., U.S. Epson, Inc., Epson America, Inc., and Epson Portland, Inc., alleging infringement by printers, multifunction devices, scanners, spectrophotometers and Print Image Matching technology. Accused of direct infringement, inducement (§ 271(b)) and contributory infringement (§ 271(c)), with willfulness allegations. Docket source: the complaint is filed as Exhibit 2221 in IPR2019-00628 (Adobe v. RAH Color Technologies), available via Docket Alarm: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2019-00628/Adobe_Inc._v._RAH_Color_Technologies_LLC/docs/12-13-2019-Patent_Owner/Exhibit-2221-Exhibit_2221__Complaint__Seiko_Epson.pdf. The Epson answer/counterclaims are docketed at Doc. 9 (filed Apr. 4, 2011) and Doc. 10 (filed Apr. 7, 2011). The case was resolved — a later N.D. Cal. opinion recites that "RAH's action against Seiko-Epson was brought in the Western District of New York, … No. 10-cv-06710," and that Epson-related California entities were "presumably" licensed (https://cases.justia.com/federal/district-courts/california/candce/3:2018cv01612/323881/39/0.pdf).

Details — Case 2 (X-Rite). Docket: https://dockets.justia.com/docket/michigan/miwdce/1:2014cv00638/78154. The complaint identifies ten RAH patents-in-suit: 7,312,897; 7,710,433; 7,710,560; 7,715,052; 7,729,008; 7,791,761; 8,009,175; 8,279,236; 8,416,444; and 8,537,357 (X-Rite complaint filed as Exhibit 2222 in IPR2019-00628: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2019-00628/Adobe_Inc._v._RAH_Color_Technologies_LLC/docs/12-13-2019-Patent_Owner/Exhibit-2222-Exhibit_2222__Complaint__X_Rite.pdf). The '433 count targets X-Rite spectrophotometer/software product packages (e.g., i1-series, ColorMunki, IntelliTrax) and alleges direct and induced infringement, including instructions/manuals for storing adjusted settings in device-independent color units. The docket shows RAH's Disclosure of Claims (#24, Oct. 28, 2014), X-Rite's Prior Art Disclosures (#25, Oct. 30, 2014), a joint motion to stay granted in part for 90 days (#27, Nov. 19, 2014), a stipulation of dismissal (#28, Feb. 2, 2015), and the dismissal order (#29, Mar. 5, 2015). Settled/dismissed; no merits ruling.

Negative findings and caveats (stated explicitly)

1. The '433 patent appears in only these two suits. RAH's later campaigns — the MDL No. 2874 coordinated proceedings in N.D. Cal. (In re: RAH Color Technologies LLC Patent Litigation, 3:18-md-02874-SI) involving Adobe (3:18-cv-03277), Xerox (6:18-cv-06746), Electronics For Imaging (1:18-cv-01436, E.D. Va.), Kodak (6:19-cv-06112, W.D.N.Y.), Dalim (1:19-cv-00275, N.D. Ill.), Heidelberger Druckmaschinen (1:19-cv-00193, N.D. Ill.), and Quad/Graphics (2:18-cv-00087, E.D. Wis.) — asserted family members such as the '870, '251, '897, '008, '546, '444, '704, '314, '802 and '236 patents. The '433 patent is not in the patents-in-suit lists I retrieved for those cases.
2. No PTAB proceeding on the '433 patent. Adobe's IPRs were IPR2019-00627 ('008), -00628 ('444), -00629 ('897) and -00646 ('761) — none on the '433. I found no IPR/PGR or reexamination naming the '433 patent.
3. No CAFC decision. I found no Federal Circuit opinion addressing the '433 patent; the two district cases ended before appeal.
4. Patent status: US 7,710,433 B2 issued May 4, 2010 (app. 11/442,882, filed May 30, 2006, a divisional of Ser. No. 09/832,553, now US 7,102,648; priority Apr. 11, 2000). Google Patents lists it as "Expired – Fee Related," adjusted expiration 2022-01-30.
5. Verification caveat: I did not query PACER directly; docket facts above come from court-document reproductions (Justia Dockets, Docket Alarm, Unified Patents/Google Patents litigation annotations, UniCourt). The precise settlement terms (e.g., license scope) are not public in the documents I retrieved; "settled/licensed" is supported for Epson only by RAH's representations recounted in the 2018 N.D. Cal. opinion, and for X-Rite by the docketed stipulated dismissal. I also caution that some search hits returned unrelated patents with similar numbers (e.g., 5,378,043; 8,323,060) — those are not the '433 patent and should be disregarded.

Reference links: Google Patents litigation entries for US 7,710,433: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/New%20York%20Western%20District%20Court/case/6%3A10-cv-06710 and https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/Michigan%20Western%20District%20Court/case/1%3A14-cv-00638; https://patents.google.com/patent/US7710433/en.

I'll verify the canonical "no proceedings on file" signal against public sources before writing.

Let me run additional targeted checks for any proceeding naming the '433 patent directly, and for any CAFC appeal.

Proceedings overview

Zero (0) AIA trial proceedings have ever been filed on US 7,710,433. The canonical USPTO Open Data Portal list included in my instructions returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM for this patent, and independent web searching surfaced no petition, institution decision, or Final Written Decision naming the '433 — every RAH Color Technologies PTAB matter I could locate is directed at a different patent in the same family. Defensive posture: the '433 is completely untested at the PTAB, so it is neither "hardened" nor "hollowed out" — but it is also expired as of 2022-01-30, which caps the practical exposure to § 286 back damages (see Strategic summary). A defendant cannot inherit a claim-cancellation victory here (none exists), but likewise faces no § 315(e)(2) estoppel wall blocking a first-filed IPR.

Sourcing caveat (stated plainly): I could not query the PTAB E2E API or PatentCenter directly. My conclusion rests on (a) the structured ODP-derived list in my instructions — the canonical source — and (b) corroborating web search. Treat "no PTAB activity" as a well-supported search finding, not a certified USPTO negative. The authoritative check is PTAB E2E and the USPTO Patent Public Search.

Because there are no proceedings on this patent, the template's per-proceeding sections are vacuous. Below I substitute a related-patent appendix (clearly labeled as not proceedings on the '433) plus a strategic analysis.

Related proceedings on sibling patents (NOT on 7,710,433)

These four Adobe Inc. v. RAH Color Technologies LLC IPRs are commonly misread as covering RAH's whole portfolio. They do not. None of them challenged, instituted on, or decided any claim of the '433. I include them because they are the only public PTAB record showing (i) which RAH claims the Board has already tested, (ii) which art Adobe used, and (iii) the panel compositions and reasoning style — all directly useful to a '433 defendant crafting a first petition.

IPR2019-00627 — Adobe Inc. v. RAH Color Technologies LLC (U.S. Pat. 7,729,008)

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2019-02-01
• Status: Final Written Decision issued; all challenged claims survived
• Judge panel: Frances L. Ippolito, joined by Engels and Hudalla (Paper 124)
• Petition grounds: § 103 obviousness over various art combinations (the '008 is a network color-distribution patent)
• Final Written Decision: The panel determined "Petitioner has not demonstrated by a preponderance of the evidence that claims 28–33 and 36–38 of the '008 patent are unpatentable." Full text: PTAB-IPR2019-00627-124 (public version)
• Post-decision motion practice: Patent Owner's motion to exclude a third-party declaration (obtained by subpoena in the related litigation) was granted; the declarant refused to be deposed. PTAB Highlights summary
• Defensive value: Illustrates that RAH successfully defended the '008 at the PTAB on that art. A '433 petitioner should not assume the RAH family falls easily.

IPR2019-00646 — Adobe Inc. v. RAH Color Technologies LLC (U.S. Pat. 7,791,761)

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2019-01-31 (Petition; institution decision Paper 34 entered 2019-09-04)
• Status: Final Written Decision issued 2020-10-08
• Judge panel: Eleni Mantis Mercader, Frances L. Ippolito, John A. Hudalla
• Petition grounds: § 103 — challenges to claims 7–11, 13, and 15 over Stewart + Tajika; Stewart + Tajika + Scott-Taggart; ICC v.3.0 + Tajika; Stone + Tajika; Giorgianni + Tajika
• Institution: Instituted — reasonable likelihood petitioner would prevail on at least one claim, 35 U.S.C. § 314(a)
• Final Written Decision: Mixed. Claims 7, 8, 10, 11, and 13 held unpatentable; the panel rejected the challenge to claims 9 and 15 ("Petitioner has not established by a preponderance of the evidence that claim 15 is unpatentable in view of Stone and Tajika"). Full text: IPR2019-00646 Paper 119 (2020-10-08)
• Collateral discovery fight: Board granted Patent Owner's motion to compel the "underlying factual basis" for Adobe's expert's testimony, rejecting work-product protection (Paper 59, 2019-12-12)
• Defensive value: Proves RAH's neutral-colorant/printer claims were partly vulnerable to Stewart/Tajika/Stone art — but that art is directed at printers and exchangeable neutral colorants, i.e., technology alien to the '433's display-calibration/white-point-matching claims.

IPR2019-00628 — Adobe Inc. v. RAH Color Technologies LLC (U.S. Pat. 8,416,444)

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2019-02-01
• Status: Instituted; I could not confirm the claim-level FWD disposition from the sources retrieved. Do not represent the outcome as "claims canceled" or "claims sustained" without pulling the FWD from PTAB E2E.
• Petition grounds: § 103, sibling-art set (Adobe filed the four petitions concurrently and briefed them in a consolidated hearing on 2020-05-28)

IPR2019-00629 — Adobe Inc. v. RAH Color Technologies LLC (U.S. Pat. 7,312,897)

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2019-02-01
• Status: Instituted; claim-level FWD outcome not confirmed from retrieved sources.
• Petition grounds: § 103 unpatentability of claims 32, 33, and 37 of the '897 patent (per the petition text)

Consolidated hearing: All four Adobe IPRs were argued together on 2020-05-28.

No Unified Patents / defensive-aggregator IPR

The Google Patents "litigation" links for the '433 point to the Unified Patents portal, but that is a litigation-data citation, not evidence that Unified Patents filed anything. I found no Unified Patents (or other aggregator) petition directed at the '433, nor at its sibling patents in this wave.

Strategic summary

Claim status of 7,710,433: all claims UNTESTED at the PTAB; none canceled, none sustained. The patent carries 19 claims (independents 1 and 16, per the granted claims reproduced at Justia; the Google Patents copy supplied to me truncates before the claims). No AIA tribunal has ever construed a single limitation of claim 1 or claim 16. There is therefore no FWD, no certificate canceling claims, and no claim-level precedent you can cite to a plaintiff or a judge. The one thing a '433 defendant can say with confidence is statutory: Google Patents records 7,710,433 as "Expired – Fee Related" with an adjusted expiration of 2022-01-30. That means enforceable-term damages are limited to the § 286 six-year lookback (for a suit filed in 2026, activity beginning around 2020-09-27) plus the residual pre-expiration tail — a materially different damages posture from an unexpired RAH patent. (Note the family's priority chain: '433 is a divisional of 09/832,553, filed 2001-04-11, claiming benefit of provisional 60/195,837 filed 2000-04-11.)

Estoppel landscape. Because no petition has ever been filed on the '433, there is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel running against any party as to this patent. Adobe's estoppel from IPR2019-00627/-00628/-00629/-00646 attaches only to the patents those petitions challenged ('008, '444, '897, '761) — not to the '433. Practically, that cuts both ways for a defendant today: (a) you are free to file a first-ever IPR on the '433 using any art, including Stewart/Tajika/Stone/Giorgianni/ICC v.3.0, subject only to the § 315(b) one-year bar from service of a complaint and the Board's § 325(d) discretion (that art was used in the sibling IPRs, so a panel may balk at "the same or substantially the same art" — you should distinguish the '433's display-calibration claims and frame the art differently); and (b) you get no free ride — there is no FWD estoppel binding RAH and no prior panel findings to leverage. Two other timing points matter: the § 315(b) bar runs from service on you, not on Adobe; and because the patent is expired, an IPR is a narrower-value proposition (no forward injunctive relief to defeat).

Pattern signals. RAH is a prolific, litigation-forward patent owner: 35+ patents, the 2010 W.D.N.Y. X-Rite action (Case 6:10-cv-06710, asserting the '433 among ten RAH patents), a 2014 W.D. Mich. action (1:14-cv-00638), and the 2018–19 wave against Adobe, Xerox, EFI, Kodak, Dalim, and Heidelberger consolidated into In re RAH Color Technologies LLC Patent Litigation, No. 3:18-md-02874-SI (N.D. Cal.) (docket now closed). RAH's IPR posture has been defensive and combative — extensive routine-discovery motions, real-party-in-interest discovery against Adobe, motions to exclude, and sur-replies — and it has secured claim-survival outcomes (the '008 FWD; claims 9 and 15 of the '761). I found no Federal Circuit appeal of any RAH IPR FWD in the sources retrieved; treat that as a negative search result, not a certified one.

Recommended next steps

1. If you are a defendant, state it plainly: there is no IPR to inherit. No claim of 7,710,433 has been invalidated. Do not let opposing counsel imply otherwise by pointing at the Adobe RAH IPRs — those cover '008, '444, '897, and '761, not the '433. The correct cite for that distinction is the petition text in IPR2019-00646 and the institution decision in IPR2019-00627, each of which identifies the four sibling patents challenged.

2. Lead with the expiration date. Google Patents records an adjusted expiration of 2022-01-30 (status: Expired – Fee Related). Confirm this against PatentCenter before relying on it, then quantify the § 286 window. If the demand letter cites claims 1–19 as if they were live rights, the expiration is the first thing to put in your response.

3. Treat the Adobe FWDs as (a) art-selection templates and (b) a cautionary tale, not as precedent. The '761 FWD shows which art moved the Board (Stewart, Tajika, Stone, Giorgianni, ICC v.3.0) and which did not (claim 15 survived on Stone + Tajika). But '433 claims 1 and 16 are directed to a different problem — a physical white reference (e.g., proofing stock under a viewing illuminator), on-screen white, user manual adjustment of the display's color channels, and a sensor measuring the adjusted white. Search art focused on soft-proofing/white-point matching and display calibration (e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 5,638,117, discussed and distinguished in the '433 specification, and the "Color Sentry" lock cited as U.S. Pat. No. 5,739,809) is likely more on-point than the printer-colorant art that won the '761.

4. If no litigation has been served on you, run the § 315(b) clock management now. You have one year from service to petition; after that, IPR is barred. Given the patent is expired, weigh whether IPR (or an ex parte reexamination, which has no § 315(b) bar and no estoppel) is the better vehicle to knock out the claims for good. An EPR could be especially efficient here precisely because no AIA tribunal has yet construed these claims.

5. If you are a patent owner/plaintiff: recognize that no PTAB panel has ever tested these claims, so you cannot point to a favorable FWD for validity. Conversely, your exposure to a first-ever Adobe-style petition is live for any defendant not yet served more than a year ago, and the RAH family's art (Stewart/Tajika/Stone/Giorgianni) is already public, transcribed, and in Board-tested form.

Source links

• Patent: US7710433B2 on Google Patents (expiration 2022-01-30; litigation links to X-Rite W.D.N.Y. 6:10-cv-06710 and W.D. Mich. 1:14-cv-00638)
• Grant claims: Justia – US 7,710,433
• IPR2019-00646 Final Written Decision, Paper 119 (2020-10-08)
• IPR2019-00646 Institution Decision, Paper 34 (2019-09-04)
• IPR2019-00627 Final Written Decision, Paper 124
• N.D. Cal. MDL claim construction order (Case 3:18-md-02874-SI)
• PTAB E2E portal — authoritative docket for any proceeding I could not surface

Explicit limitations: I did not retrieve the FWDs for IPR2019-00628 ('444) or IPR2019-00629 ('897), so their claim-level outcomes are unconfirmed and I have not stated them. I found no Federal Circuit appeal of any RAH IPR FWD. I found no PGR or CBM on the '433 — though note that a CBM would now be time-barred for most petitioners under § 18 of the AIA (as extended), and PGR availability depends on the 2000/2001 priority date, which predates the AIA and would generally foreclose PGR for these claims.

I'll research the assignment record and ownership chain for US 7,710,433. Let me run several searches in parallel.

Let me dig for the specific reel/frame records and correspondent information.

Ownership & Assignment Analysis — US 7,710,433 B2

Scope note / evidence limits (read first): The USPTO Assignment Center (https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/) and the legacy Assignment Search UI are dynamic applications that could not be queried programmatically in this session. Consequently I was unable to retrieve reel/frame numbers or the recorded correspondent name for the two RAH recordings below. The two conveyances themselves are documented, however, via the legal-events record on the authoritative Google Patents page supplied to me. Where a field is not verified I say so rather than infer it. I have not invented any reel/frame numbers.

Inventors

Sourcing for the employer call. Holub's own sworn testimony and RAH's litigation complaints (submitted in the Adobe IPRs, e.g., Ex. 2238 and the X-Rite/Epson complaints) establish the chronology:

• 1983–1990 — Eikonix Corp., then Eastman Kodak (Kodak acquired Eikonix in 1985). Role: color work on the DesignMaster 8000 prepress system.
• 1990–1993 — Agfa/Bayer (Compugraphics), Technology Consultant.
• 1993–1994 — SuperMac Technologies, Principal Engineer.
• 1994 onward — independent; rented lab/demo space from RIT Research Corp.; taught at RIT 1995–1998.
• 1998 — formed Imagicolor Corporation to commercialize the prototype; investment never materialized and Imagicolor was dissolved.
• 2005 — formed RAH Color Technologies LLC expressly "as a vehicle for an on-going licensing program."

Unusual-pattern check: The classic red flag in this section — "all inventors departing the original assignee within 12 months of filing, preceding a fire-sale" — is inverted here and therefore not present. There was never a corporate employer of record to depart from: the '433 claims a single inventor who owned his own work product, filed pro se through his own counsel, and later moved the rights into his own LLC. The relevant pattern is instead individual-inventor-originated NPE formation (see signals below), not employee-inventor abandonment.

Original assignee

Entity named on the issued patent: RAH Color Technologies LLC.
(The Google Patents record shows "Original Assignee: RAH Color Tech LLC"; the equivalent family members at issue — e.g., US 8,279,236, US 10,560,676 — print "Assignee: RAH Color Technologies LLC, Rochester, NY" and later "Alexandria, VA".)

Important nuance: the "original assignee" field is somewhat retrospective. The filed applications (09/832,553 in 2001; divisional 11/442,882 in 2006) were Holub's own filings. The earliest recorded conveyance of rights runs from Holub to RAH Color Technologies LLC in 2008 (below). I flag this as a documentation ambiguity rather than resolving it, since I could not open the Assignment Center abstract of title.

Assignment timeline

Only two post-filing conveyances are documented for this patent. (The Google Patents legal events list: 2008-08-25 Assigned to RAH COLOR TECHNOLOGIES LLC — Assignors: HOLUB, RICHARD A. and 2013-05-14 Assigned to RAH COLOR TECHNOLOGIES LLC — MERGER — Assignors: RAH COLOR TECHNOLOGIES LLC.)

• 2008-08-25 (executed) / recorded 2008-08-25 — Reel NNNNNN/NNNN — NOT CAPTURED (Assignment Center not queryable this session)

  • Conveyance: Assignment (assignment of interest)
  • Assignor: Holub, Richard A.
  • Assignee: RAH Color Technologies LLC
  • Correspondent: Not verified for this recording. The recurring counsel of record across the RAH family is Kenneth J. Lukacher, Lukacher Law Group, 3136 Winton Road South, Suite 301, Rochester, NY 14623 (email on file: klukacher@lukacherlawgroup.com). His firm appears as recorded correspondent on other Rochester-docketed RAH-era cover sheets, and prints as attorney of record on RAH patents (e.g., "Kenneth J. LuKacher" on US 8,279,236; "Lukacher Law Group; Kenneth J. Lukacher" on US 10,560,676). Flag: this is the single repeat-player correspondent for the whole family, but I have not confirmed his name on this specific 2008 reel.
  • Context: Transfer-to-asserter / inventor-to-licensing-vehicle. Sole inventor moves his own patents into his own licensing LLC mid-prosecution, three years after RAH's 2005 formation.

• 2013-05-14 (recorded; execution date not retrieved) — Reel NNNNNN/NNNN — NOT CAPTURED

  • Conveyance: Merger (Google Patents records this event as "MERGER (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)")
  • Assignor: RAH Color Technologies LLC
  • Assignee: RAH Color Technologies LLC (same legal name; Rochester, NY → Alexandria, VA address change)
  • Correspondent: Not verified — plausibly the same Lukacher firm, but unconfirmed for this reel.
  • Context: Internal reorganization / change of name-and-address only. No change in beneficial ownership; the entity name is identical on both sides of the recording.

No records found for: any security agreement, license recording, release, correction, or assignment to a third-party acquirer. In particular, no transfer to Acacia, Marathon, IV, Wi-LAN, Pendrell, etc.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7710433
    2000 : Priority application filed by Holub
    2001 : Parent application 09832553 filed
    2005 : RAH Color Technologies LLC formed
    2006 : Divisional 11442882 filed
    2008 : Holub assigns rights to RAH Color Tech
    2010 : Patent US 7710433 issues
    2013 : Merger recorded RAH moves to Virginia
    2014 : RAH sues X-Rite on the 433 patent
    2018 : RAH multi defendant campaign MDL 2874
    2022 : Patent expires for fee non payment

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — PRESENT (qualified form).
The patent moved from sole inventor Holub to RAH Color Technologies LLC by the 2008-08-25 assignment. Qualifying tells are documented in RAH's own filings, not inferred from the name: (a) RAH was formed in 2005 explicitly "as a vehicle for an on-going licensing program"; (b) it has no products — the predecessor commercialization vehicle, Imagicolor Corporation, was dissolved, and RAH's complaint concedes that "commercialization of the prototype did not come to fruition"; (c) it is a single-owner LLC (Holub, per the X-Rite complaint: "RAH Color Technologies is owned by Dr. Richard A. Holub"). Caveat that cuts against the "anonymous shell" stereotype: RAH is not at a registered-agent service address — its venue allegation lists a real office at 7012 Colgate Drive, Alexandria, VA 22307 — so this is the individual-inventor holding-company variant of the signal, not the anonymous Delaware/Texas variant.

2. Known asserter in the chain — PRESENT.
RAH does not appear on the enumerated lists in the prompt (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN/Mosaid-Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg). However, a public NPE directory does list it: the Stanford NPE Litigation Database carries RAH Color Technologies as a patent asserter (patent page for sibling 7710560, categorized under "Individual-inventor-started"). Litigation volume confirms high-frequency status: W.D.N.Y. 6:10-cv-06710 (2010), W.D. Mich. 1:14-cv-00638 (RAH v. X-Rite, 2014), and the 2018–19 campaign against Adobe, Xerox, EFI, Kodak, Dalim, Heidelberg consolidated as In re RAH Color Technologies LLC Patent Litigation, No. 3:18-md-02874-SI (N.D. Cal.) — with the '433 named expressly as a patent-in-suit in the X-Rite complaint. Note the Stanford "Product company" tag on the same record is auto-populated noise from the defendant side of the docket; it should not be read as evidence RAH sells anything.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — PRESENT.
Kenneth J. Lukacher / Lukacher Law Group, Rochester, NY recurs as the family's attorney and recording agent across roughly two decades and two generations of the firm (father Martin LuKacher, USPTO Reg. No. 17,788, was prosecution counsel on the 1996 parent 08/606,883 that led to US 6,043,909; son Kenneth J. LuKacher is attorney of record on the RAH patents and files the assignment cover sheets, e.g. legacy reel 051581/0247, which lists klukacher@lukacherlawgroup.com). The signal is recurrence, as the prompt requires — this is not a single appearance. Fairness caveat: the same firm also does ordinary operating-company patent work (the 051581/0247 cover sheet is a Caliber Imaging & Diagnostics employee-inventor assignment), so Lukacher Law Group is not an NPE-only firm; the finding is that one firm has run the RAH chain end-to-end, not that the firm is a troll shop.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT.
Two recorded transfers over a 13-year span (2008, 2013), both between Holub and his own entity, with no chained intermediate LLCs and no shared-address intermediaries. The prompt's signature (multiple consecutive assignments through chained LLCs in <24 months) is absent.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT.
The Holub→RAH assignment (2008-08-25) predates the first suit naming the '433 (W.D.N.Y. 6:10-cv-06710, filed 2010) by roughly two years — outside the 6-month window. It is better characterized as a pre-issuance transfer (recorded ~20 months before the 2010-05-04 grant) consolidating the portfolio into the licensing entity, which is consistent with a 2010 assertion but does not fit the "arranged weeks before suit" pattern.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT.
No Chapter 7/11 proceeding for Holub or Imagicolor surfaced, and no patent-sale order. Imagicolor's "dissolution" was an out-of-court wind-down; the patents were retained personally by Holub, not liquidated.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT.
Classic privateering requires an operating company transferring patents to an NPE that asserts on its behalf. Here the patents never left the inventor's control: Holub was never a Kodak, Agfa, or SuperMac assignor of these assets, and those former employers appear as employers, not assignors, in the record. RAH asserts Holub's own inventions, not a downstream product line.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT.
The chain terminates at RAH Color Technologies LLC, an asserting entity. No RPX / AST / LOT / Unified / OIN acquisition appears in the record. (The Adobe IPRs were challenges to RAH, not acquisitions.)

Verdict

NPE — high confidence.

Justification: (i) the 2008-08-25 recorded assignment moved US 7,710,433 from sole inventor Richard A. Holub into RAH Color Technologies LLC, an entity formed in 2005 whose stated and admitted purpose is licensing, which has never shipped a product (its predecessor, Imagicolor Corporation, was dissolved) — a documented non-practicing transferee, not a naming inference; (ii) RAH is a high-frequency plaintiff listed in the Stanford NPE Litigation Database and the asserting party in MDL 3:18-md-02874 and W.D. Mich. 1:14-cv-00638 (RAH v. X-Rite), where the '433 is an express patent-in-suit; and (iii) the same correspondent family — Martin and Kenneth J. Lukacher, Lukacher Law Group, Rochester NY — has handled the chain's prosecution and recordings throughout, satisfying the repeat-correspondent test. The non-asserting and defensive-aggregator scenarios are affirmatively excluded, and the "operating company" scenario is excluded by RAH's own admission that it is a licensing vehicle.

Two honest hedges: (1) I could not extract reel/frame numbers or the correspondent of record for either recording, so the reel/frame anchors the prompt asks for are missing, not supplied — verify at the Assignment Center before relying on this in a filing. (2) The 2013 "Merger" recording is a change of name/address only (identical assignor and assignee name), so the only substantive ownership event in the entire chain is the 2008 inventor-to-LLC transfer.

Verification link: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search by patent number 7710433; legacy UI mirror at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html).

I'll search for the USPTO record and the prior-art citations for US 7,710,433.

Let me pull the patent's own citation lists directly.

Let me query the patent's Justia and Google Patents pages for the actual citation lists.

Prior Art Analysis — US 7,710,433 B2 ("Methods and apparatus for calibrating a color display," Holub)

⚠️ Critical limitation to state up front

I was unable to retrieve the actual "References Cited" (OCT) list printed on the face of US 7,710,433 B2. My tools are web-search only — I could not open USPTO PatentCenter/Patent Public Search, nor the Google Patents page's embedded citation table, and the authoritative patent text supplied to me for this patent (from Google Patents) truncates after the specification and omits both the claims and the "References Cited" section. This matches the note already flagged in the earlier Patent Summary ("the Google Patents copy provided to me truncates before the claims"). Everything below about examiner-cited references is therefore drawn from sibling patents in the same family and from the specification text itself, not from the '433 face — I flag each source explicitly.

Per the operating rules, I will not fabricate the '433 citation list. Where I could not verify something, I say so.

1. USPTO record confirmation (verified)

No contradiction with the earlier summary. One consistency note: the earlier summary quotes 19 claims, all method claims, independents 1 and 16 (from Justia). That bears directly on the § 102 analysis below — because the claims are method claims, a § 102 reference must disclose the steps, not merely the apparatus.

2. Category A — References cited inside the '433 specification (applicant-cited, verified against the supplied text)

These are the references the patent itself names, so they are the seed set the examiner would have consulted.

Non-patent literature cited in the '433 specification (verified in the supplied text):

• H. E. Rose, "Adaptation of electronic color correction to the printing process," TAGA Proceedings, pp. 15–27 (1955).
• Bartleson & Breneman, "Brightness perception in complex fields," J. Opt. Soc. Amer. 57: 953–957 (1967).
• Holub et al., "Color systems calibration for graphic arts. II: Output devices," J. Imaging Technol. 14: 53–60 (1988).
• T. N. Cornsweet, Visual Perception, Academic Press (1970), p. 475.

3. Category B — Examiner-cited "References Cited," reconstructed from the family (⚠️ PROXY, NOT the '433 face)

The immediately-related family members US 9,500,527 B2 and US 9,767,763 B2 carry the identical title and share the '433 specification. Their printed "(56) References Cited" lists are the best available proxy for what appears on the '433 face — but they are not the '433 face and I cannot guarantee overlap. I am reporting what the search surfaced:

U.S. Patent Documents (as printed on US 9,767,763 / US 9,500,527):

Foreign patent documents (as printed on the siblings):

• EP 0579224 — 1/1994
• JP 61-292026 — 12/1986
• JP 62-91078 — 4/1987
• JP 4-329066 — 11/1992
• JP 7-17115 — 1/1995
• JP 07-095427 — 4/1995
• JP 7-288704 — 10/1995
• JP 10-173943 — 6/1998
• WO 95/31794 — 11/1995; WO 96/00435 — 1/1996; WO 96/01466 — 1/1996; WO 96/01467 — 1/1996; WO 99/… (truncated)

Other publications (as printed on the siblings): Wolski et al., "Optimization of Sensor Response Functions for Colorimetry of Reflective and Emissive Objects," IEEE Trans. on Image Processing, vol. 5, no. 3, Mar. 1996, pp. 507–517; Fairchild et al., "Image Color-Appearance Specification Through Extension of CIELAB," Color Research and Application, vol. 18, no. 3, pp. 178–190, Jun. 1993; plus the Holub 1988 items.

4. § 102 anticipation analysis — against claims 1 and 16

Constraint: the '433 independent claims are method claims. Claim 1 requires all four steps: (1) a physical white reference, (2) displaying white, (3) a user manually adjusting the display's color channels until on-screen white visually matches the reference, and (4) a sensor measuring the adjusted white. Claim 16 is the same with a computer/UI and a storing step. A § 102 reference must disclose every step.

Bottom line on anticipation: On the record I could retrieve, no single reference appears to disclose all four steps of claim 1. The combination of US 5,638,117 (visual reference matching) + US 6,459,425/6,043,909 (sensor measurement of the adjusted display, network sharing) is the natural § 103 obviousness combination an examiner would have used — which is consistent with the patent having issued with 19 method claims. But I cannot confirm this against the actual prosecution record. I did not retrieve any Office Action, Notice of Allowance, or IDS for the '433 application.

5. Contradictions / items needing verification

1. No contradiction found with the earlier summary's bibliographic data — all fields match.
2. Unresolved: the earlier summary states the claims are 19 method claims with independents 1 and 16, sourced from Justia. I could not independently re-verify the claim count from the USPTO face (consistent with the supplied text omitting the claims). Treat the claim list as Justia-sourced.
3. Do not treat Category B as the '433 face. It is the citation list of US 9,767,763 / 9,500,527. Family members' "References Cited" lists often diverge.
4. OCR/typo flags (not auto-corrected): the sibling list prints "Engelstrom et al." and "Engelbaum et al."; the well-known reference is Engeldrum (US 5,638,117). I am reporting the strings literally and flagging the ambiguity rather than correcting them.
5. Forward citations (e.g., the "Cited By" hits showing US 7,710,433 cited by later patents) are not prior art to the '433 patent and are excluded from the § 102 analysis.

6. Recommended next step to close the gap

To produce a defensible, face-accurate prior-art list for US 7,710,433 B2, retrieve the official document image or the "References Cited" table from:

• USPTO Patent Public Search (ppubs.uspto.gov) — full-text with the (56) References Cited table, and
• USPTO PatentCenter (patentcenter.uspto.gov) — application 11/442,882, to pull the IDS (PTO/SB/08a) and any Form 892/Office Actions, which distinguish applicant-cited from examiner-cited art — a distinction the search-proxy list above cannot make.

If you can paste the "References Cited" text from the '433 face (or the USPTO PDF), I will re-run the § 102/§ 103 mapping against claims 1–19 precisely.

I'll ground the § 103 analysis by verifying the disclosure content of the key third-party references before building combinations.

Obviousness Analysis Under 35 U.S.C. § 103 — US 7,710,433 B2

Patent: US 7,710,433 B2, "Methods and apparatus for calibrating a color display" (Holub; RAH Color Technologies LLC)
Application: 11/442,882, filed 2006‑05‑30 (divisional of 09/832,553 → US 7,102,648); priority 2000‑04‑11 (provisional 60/195,837)
Claims analyzed: 19 method claims, independents 1 and 16 (claim text per Justia; the Google Patents copy supplied truncates before the claims — flagged in the earlier summary and still unverified against the face of the patent)

0. Two corrections to the prior-art section before building the combination

Before running § 103, I must flag two things in the previously generated Prior Art section, because both materially change the obviousness calculus.

(a) Inventor attribution of US 5,512,961 is wrong in the prior-art table. The earlier section lists "US 5,512,961 (Stokes) — pub. 1996." Live search contradicts this: US 5,512,961, "Method and system of achieving accurate white point setting of a CRT display," granted 1996‑04‑30, is credited to Richard D. Cappels, Sr. and assigned to Apple Computer, Inc. (uspto.report record: https://uspto.report/patent/grant/[5512961](/patent/5512961); corroborated by the front-page citation list at FreePatentsOnline for US 8,279,236, which prints "5512961 | Method and system of achieving accurate white point setting of a CRT display | 1996‑04‑30 | Cappels, Sr."). The Stokes reference in the family is US 5,561,459 ("Automatic profile generation for a self-calibrating color display," Stokes et al., 1996‑10‑01). Per the operating rules, I take the search result as ground truth and flag the discrepancy rather than silently harmonizing it.

(b) The prior-art section's treatment of US 6,043,909 and US 6,459,425 as § 102/§ 103 art is legally overstated. Those two documents name Richard A. Holub as the sole inventor, the same inventive entity as the '433. Under pre-AIA § 102(a) and § 102(e), a reference must be "by another." A document by the identical inventive entity is not "by another" and therefore is not § 102(a)/(e) prior art at all; and even if it were, pre-AIA § 103(c)(1) disqualifies subject matter that qualifies as prior art only under § 102(e)/(f)/(g) where the subject matter and the claimed invention were commonly owned (here, Holub owned both). The practical consequence is significant and cuts against a challenger: the '433's own family patents cannot be used as the anticipating or obviousness references. The obviousness attack must be built from third-party art, which is what the grounds below do. (If, contrary to the record I retrieved, the '433 claims were ever prosecuted with a different inventive entity, this conclusion would need re-checking against the assignment and inventorship record.)

1. Governing legal standard (pre-AIA § 103)

Because the '433's application was filed 2006‑05‑30 with a 2000‑04‑11 priority date — before March 16, 2013 — pre-AIA § 103 applies. The analysis is governed by Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966) (scope and content of the prior art; differences; level of ordinary skill; secondary considerations) and KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007), which holds that the teaching‑suggestion‑motivation test is not the exclusive framework and that a combination is obvious where (i) the elements were known and combined by known methods to yield predictable results, (ii) a known technique is used to improve a similar device in the same way, (iii) a known technique is applied to a known device ready for improvement, or (iv) the combination was "obvious to try" over a finite number of identified, predictable solutions. Critically, a motivation to combine may flow from the references themselves, from the knowledge of a skilled artisan, or from the nature of the problem to be solved — not just from explicit cross-references.

Procedural posture note: the patent is recorded as Expired – Fee Related (adjusted expiration 2022‑01‑30). The § 103 merits are unchanged, but invalidity would now be adjudicated in a defensive/ex parte reexamination or a § 282 defense rather than in an injunction fight.

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

A bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, physics, imaging science, or color science, plus 2–4 years' experience in display color management, or a master's plus 1–2 years. The POSITA is familiar with: CIE colorimetry (XYZ, x,y chromaticities, tristimulus matrices); CRT gamma and tone‑reproduction curves; white‑point/neutral‑balance control via analog gain/offset or per‑channel LUTs; the use of a spectroradiometer/colorimeter to measure a display; ICC profile generation and update; network distribution of profiles; and the rudiments of visual psychophysics (thresholds, metameric matching) as taught by Cornsweet.

Actually, that caveat could be clearer: the POSITA is a display‑calibration engineer, and the visual‑matching aspect is a well‑traveled branch of that field, as Engeldrum's own title ("Interactive method and system for color characterization and calibration of display device") reflects.

3. Operative claim limitations (as summarized from the earlier sections)

4. Legally available prior art (third‑party only)

All of the above are third‑party art. Holub's own '909, '425, and later family members are excluded as § 102/§ 103 references for the same‑inventor/common‑ownership reasons in §0(b), even though they appear on the family's face.

5. Claim 1 — element‑by‑element mapping and the primary obviousness combinations

Ground 1 (strongest): Engeldrum '117 in view of Cappels '961

Motivation to combine. Both references address the identical problem — establishing a known, reproducible white point on a computer display so that soft‑proofed color is trustworthy — and both sit in the same art and the same product space (desktop display characterization/calibration). The motivation is supplied by the references themselves and by the problem: '117 resolves the subjective/visual component (what the user perceives as white) but produces only a user‑mediated result, whereas '961 supplies an objective measurement of whatever the display is actually emitting and a stored tristimulus white‑point value. A POSITA seeking a durable white‑point record (so that the setting can be restored or verified later) would naturally use '961's spectroradiometer to measure the state '117's user just established — this is the classic "known technique (instrumented display measurement) used to improve a similar device (visually calibrated display) in the same way" rationale of KSR, and the combination yields no more than the predictable sum of its parts. Nothing in '117 discourages measurement; nothing in '961 requires that the white point be set by machine rather than by hand. Reasonable expectation of success is high: '961 already measures tristimulus values of displayed white, and '117 already produces a visually matched white; measuring the latter with the former is a two‑step, fully predictable operation.

Ground 2: Engeldrum '117 + Stokes '459 (and Kodak '537 / HP '349)

'459 adds the profile‑storage and profile‑update dimension directly (a formatted device characterization profile containing white point, black point, gamma, gamut, and ambient conditions) and expressly recites the prior‑art practice of obtaining it by "placing a spectraradiometer to the screen." Motivation: '117 identifies the parameters that need to be characterized; '459 supplies the standardized profile in which to persist them and confirms instrument‑based measurement as the norm. This combination is the most natural for dependent claims 2–3 and 7–8 (store white point/TRCs and update color transformations), because '459 already stores white point, black point, and gamma in a device characterization profile.

Ground 3: McLaughlin '809 + Cappels '961 (with '117)

'809 is, on the retrieved text, the single most concentrated third‑party teaching for the '433's overall scheme: it stores calibration‑measured display parameters separately from user‑specified desired parameters and from adjustment data, it enables sharing of stored adjustment data over a LAN/WAN, it provides on‑screen virtual controls including slider adjustments for display parameters, and it expressly sets the display white point to a "proofing" level (5000 K) by directly controlling display circuitry and then prompts the user to execute a color‑matching operation at that white point. Combined with '961's instrumented tristimulus measurement, this covers claim 1 and much of claims 16 and 2–4 without needing '117 at all. Motivation: '809's own stated advantages — "sharing among multiple users (of a disk, a local area network, or a wide area telecommunications transmission system) of stored multiple sets of adjustment data" and "remote viewing and sharing of display configuration and/or adjustment data" — are precisely the network‑distribution objectives the '433's dependent claims recite.

6. Claim 16 and the dependent claims

7. Why a POSITA would have combined these references (KSR rationales, stated expressly)

1. Known elements combined by known methods → predictable result. Visual white‑point matching ('117) plus instrumented tristimulus measurement of the display ('961) plus profile storage ('459) yields only the expected combination; no new cooperation between elements is asserted.
2. Same field, same problem, overlapping disclosure. All three are display‑calibration references; all address white point and gamma; the '433 specification itself concedes that '117's card/reflector visual calibration exists and distinguishes it only on the network‑sharing point ("such calibration is not provided for as part of a virtual proof…"). That concession is an admission that the visual‑reference method standing alone was known.
3. Known technique to improve a similar device the same way. Using a spectroradiometer to measure a display's white was, per '459 and '961, the accepted way to obtain profile data.
4. Design incentive / market forces. The '433 and '809 share the same commercial drivers (soft‑proofing, "proofing white point" of 5000 K/paper stock, distributed production), which supplies a concrete reason to combine white‑point matching with profile storage and network distribution.
5. "Obvious to try" over a finite set. Once a POSITA decides to record a user‑selected white point, the finite options are (a) record the user's RGB values or (b) measure the resulting screen output; both were known and both predictable.

8. Is there a single‑reference (anticipation) case?

Probably not for claim 1 as a whole. On the retrieved disclosures, no single reference teaches all four steps: '117 teaches (a)–(c) but not an instrument measuring the adjusted white; '961 and '459 teach (d) but not user visual matching to a physical white reference. The closest single‑reference candidate is '809, which pairs a proofing‑white‑point setting with a prompt to "execute a color matching operation," but the retrieved text describes software/white‑point control rather than a physical white reference plus a sensor measuring the user‑adjusted result. Accordingly, § 103 is the correct attack vector for claim 1, and § 102 is unlikely to succeed without a reference I have not located.

9. Defenses the patent owner will raise, and how they fare

10. Bottom line / strength ranking

Realistic assessment: The '433 is a narrow, method‑claim patent whose independent claims read on a workflow (provide white paper/hood → show white → user tweaks RGB → colorimeter measures the result) that the art had largely assembled piecewise by 1997–2000. The strongest invalidity theory is a three‑reference § 103 combination (Engeldrum '117 + Cappels '961 + Stokes '459) with McLaughlin '809 supplying network and proofing‑white‑point motivation. I would not expect a clean single‑reference anticipation, and I would expect the § 102(e)‑limited availability of Holub's own patents to be the challenger's main procedural risk.

11. Verification gaps (explicit)

1. Claim text. The full text of claims 1–19 is taken from the earlier section's Justia‑sourced summary; I did not re‑retrieve the granted claims from the patent face. All claim mapping above should be re‑run once the claims are pulled from USPTO Patent Public Search.
2. "References Cited" on the '433 face. Still not retrieved (consistent with the earlier sections' flags). The prior‑art set here is assembled from the specification's named references plus third‑party art surfaced by search — not from the '433's own (56) table.
3. Engeldrum '117 disclosure depth. I confirmed the card/matching regions/white‑point‑CCT/black‑point/gamma content and claim 1 of '117 via Google Patents, but I did not read the full '117 column‑by‑column. If '117 in fact discloses or suggests an instrument in place of the user's eye for the comparison step, claim 1 collapses toward § 102 rather than § 103 — worth checking.
4. '809 identity/scope. The retrieved US5739809 text (CALIBRATION TOOL, virtual controls, LAN/WAN sharing, 5000 K proofing white point) is consistent with the '433 specification's characterization of "Color Sentry" locking, but I did not confirm the patent's full title/inventors from its face. Verify before relying on it in a petition.
5. Same‑inventor/"by another" analysis for '909 and '425 assumes a single, unchanged inventive entity (Holub) across those patents and the '433. If any claim of the '433 was ever prosecuted under a different inventive entity, re‑test § 102(a)/(e) and § 103(c).
6. No 2026 CAFC activity for the '433 was found (consistent with the earlier litigation section), so this analysis is prospective/defensive rather than responsive to a live validity holding.

Recommended next step to close the analysis: pull (i) the '433 grant claims and (ii) the application file wrapper (IDS, Form 892s, Office Actions) from USPTO PatentCenter, then re‑run the charts in §§5–6 with the exact claim language and with the applicant‑cited vs. examiner‑cited distinction resolved. If you can paste the '433's "References Cited" table and the claim set, I will produce a limitation‑by‑limitation § 103 claim chart against the specific combinations above.