US 7710560

I'll search for authoritative information on this specific patent and any court dockets.

I have substantial data. Let me verify the independent claims of the '560 patent specifically, and check for any 2026 CAFC activity.

Let me try to retrieve the actual claim language for the '560 patent and check for any 2026 Federal Circuit activity.

US 7,710,560 B2 — Analyst Summary

Important scoping note up front: I searched for this exact identifier only. The authoritative full text I was given for US 7,710,560 is truncated before the claims section (the feed ends mid-sentence in the description of model inversion). I could not retrieve the verbatim claim text from the USPTO full‑text, Google Patents, or FreePatentsOnline mirrors. My claim overview below is therefore a reconstruction from the specification's own "objects/summary of the invention", not a quotation of issued claim language, and is flagged as such. Similarly, I found no 2026 CAFC docket activity for this patent — see the litigation section.

Bibliographic data (as listed on the patent)

Assignment history: assigned from Holub to RAH Color Technologies LLC on 2010‑10‑04; RAH Color Technologies LLC merger recorded 2013‑05‑14.

Abstract

The '560 specification is directed to a system (method and apparatus) for distributing and controlling color reproduction at multiple sites — i.e., controlling the color output of rendering devices (color monitors, proofing devices, presses) at multiple nodes of a network so that color appears uniform within the output colors attainable by each rendering device. A color measurement instrument (CMI) is associated with each rendering device for obtaining calibration data; computers at each node control the system and use a data structure called a Virtual Proof (VP) to store and distribute color transformation information. Page/page‑constituent image data can be distributed separately from the VP.

In this lineage of the family, the emphasis is on the measurement hardware: non‑contact CMIs that are self‑calibrating by incorporating calibration references (measured simultaneously or successively with each unknown reading), where a printer's samples are measured by a sensor coupled to a transport mechanism feeding light to a spectrograph, and a display's color is measured by a sensor mounted in a member surrounding the periphery of the screen and angled so as to avoid specular reflection.

Caveat: I could not confirm the exact front‑page abstract wording; sibling patents in the same lineage (e.g., US 8,917,394 and US 8,760,704) carry two different abstract texts depending on which parent chain they descend from, so the above reflects the substance of the '560's own disclosure/summary rather than a verified quotation.

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Flagged as reconstruction. The issued claims are not in the document I was given. The following families correspond one‑to‑one to the "Briefly described…" paragraph of the '560 specification and to the stated objects. Treat as indicative, not authoritative.

The '560 appears to be an apparatus‑oriented patent (measurement hardware), in contrast to sibling RAH patents that claim the networked color‑management/architecture methods.

1. Calibrated color‑display system. A display is surrounded at its outer periphery by a first member (a cowl/chassis framing the screen). A color measuring instrument is coupled to that member and spaced from the screen at an angle so its line of sight reflects off the faceplate onto a blackened inner surface — i.e., it receives light from the screen without touching it and without seeing specular reflections. The instrument has a housing, sensor(s) converting received light to electrical signals, optics focusing light onto the sensor, and control circuitry converting those signals into signals representative of the color of the light. A computer coupled to the display receives the signals to calibrate the display and enable Virtual Proofing on it.

2. Printer‑sample measurement system. A mechanism transports a sheet rendered by the printer; at least one optical sensor is coupled to the transport mechanism and directed at the sheet to measure the color of a printed sample, non‑contact. The sensor includes at least one fiber‑optic probe coupled to a spectrograph, and the spectrograph can automatically obtain references for checking its own calibration. The transport mechanism may be separate from, or integrated into, the printer.

3. Dual‑beam spectrograph apparatus. A dual‑beam spectrograph with first and second inputs plus a light source. A first fiber optic carries light from the source to illuminate the sample; a second fiber optic carries light from the source to the spectrograph's first input; a third fiber optic receives light from the sample and delivers it to the spectrograph's second input. One or more additional sensors receive light from the first fiber optic, providing signals for checking spectrograph calibration (a same‑source reference path enabling the dual‑beam comparison).

4. Single‑dimension (concentric/linear) fiber‑array spectrograph apparatus. A light source, and a one‑dimensional array of fiber optics in which: a first fiber receives light from the source (illumination/reference), a second fiber receives light representing a dark reference, a third fiber transmits light of one or more known wavelengths, and the remaining fibers receive light along one dimension from the sample. The spectrograph outputs a spectrum; the portions of that spectrum corresponding to the first, second and third fibers constitute automatic calibration references.

5. Method of maintaining calibration of a color display. Steps: (a) adjust the amount of light from the screen when the screen is dark to account for ambient light; (b) neutral balance the display's color; (c) measure the gamma in each color channel; and (d) adjust the color produced by the display in accordance with the measured per‑channel gammas. The specification notes this is especially useful for CRT displays.

Underlying all of these: the Virtual Proof data structure, with components shared by nodes (transmitted over the network) and local components present only at each node, storing color transformation information so that image data need not be retransmitted when calibration or preferences change.

Litigation and docket status (USPTO / courts)

From the patent page and PTAB filings in the same portfolio:

• District court: The '560 patent is part of the RAH Color Technologies portfolio asserted in, among others, In re RAH Color Technologies LLC Patent Litigation, MDL No. 2874, N.D. Cal. Case No. 3:18‑md‑02874, plus 3:19‑cv‑00517 (N.D. Cal.), 6:10‑cv‑06710 (W.D.N.Y.), 1:14‑cv‑00638 (W.D. Mich.), and 1:19‑cv‑00193 (N.D. Ill.). RAH's own PTAB papers list the '560 patent as one of the patents‑in‑suit and describe license letters referencing it (e.g., to X‑Rite in 2010, 2013 and 2014).
• PTAB: The 2019 Adobe IPRs (IPR2019‑00627/00628/00629/00646) challenged sibling patents US 7,729,008, 8,416,444, 7,791,761 and 7,312,897 — not the '560 itself. The Board's Final Written Decision in IPR2019‑00627 held Adobe had not shown the '008 claims unpatentable. I found no IPR instituted against the '560.
• CAFC 2026: I found no Federal Circuit docket or 2026 appellate activity naming US 7,710,560. Note this is an absence of evidence from the sources I could reach, not proof that no such docket exists; CAFC dockets are not always surfaced by general web search, and you would need a direct PACER/CAFC CM‑ECF or Docket Alarm query by the patent number to be certain.

Explicit uncertainties

1. Claim text not verified. The claims of US 7,710,560 were not present in the authoritative text supplied to me, and my searches did not return verbatim issued claim language for this number. Do not rely on the claim overview above for claim‑construction or infringement analysis without pulling the granted claims from USPTO PatentCenter / the printed patent.
2. Abstract wording not verified verbatim for this specific number (sibling abstracts differ by lineage).
3. Claim count and independent/dependent breakdown are unknown to me.
4. No 2026 CAFC docket found — but that conclusion rests on general web search, not a direct CAFC docket lookup.
5. Assignee form is listed inconsistently across sources ("RAH Color Tech LLC" on the face of the patent vs. "RAH Color Technologies LLC" in assignment records); this is a naming variation, not a different entity, but I am flagging it rather than silently normalizing it.

Sources: the authoritative patent text you supplied (patents.google.com/patent/US7710560/en); sibling-family documents US8917394, US8760704, US8416444; PTAB petition/proceeding papers at ptacts.uspto.gov (Petitions 1523296, 1523316, 1523317, 1523435) and IPR2019‑00627 Final Written Decision; N.D. Cal. Case No. 3:18‑cv‑03277‑SI Dkt. 120 (claim construction background).

I'll research litigation involving US Patent 7,710,560 across patent litigation databases. Let me start with several searches.

I have strong initial results. Let me dig deeper into the specific cases identified on the patent record and the NPE database.

Litigation Involving U.S. Patent 7,710,560

Owner / Asserting Party

RAH Color Technologies LLC (Alexandria, VA) — a non‑practicing entity owned and managed by Dr. Richard A. Holub, the named inventor. The patent (priority 1997‑08‑25; filed 2006‑04‑28; granted 2010‑05‑04) is one member of a large Holub/RAH color‑management portfolio. Its adjusted term expired 2019‑01‑10, which frames the enforcement window below.

The Google Patents family record for US 7,710,560 lists five litigations (Unified Patents / Darts‑IP data). Each is summarized below with the noted caveat that Google's family listing does not always specify which of RAH's many patents were asserted in each case; where I could confirm the '560 patent specifically, I say so.

Confirmed Cases

1. RAH Color Technologies LLC v. Seiko Epson Corp., et al.

This is identified on the patent record as the "First worldwide family litigation filed" — i.e., the earliest assertion in the family. (Docket: dockets.justia.com/docket/new-york/nywdce/6:2010cv06710/82196.)

2. RAH Color Technologies LLC v. X-Rite, Inc.

The '560 patent is confirmed asserted here: RAH's complaint named ten patents‑in‑suit — U.S. Pat. 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; and 8,537,357. (UniCourt / Docket Alarm.)

3. In re: RAH Color Technologies LLC Patent Litigation (MDL No. 2874)

The NPE Litigation Database lists this MDL as a case involving the '560 patent (npe.law.stanford.edu/patent/7710560). The MDL consolidated RAH's infringement suits against Adobe, Xerox, and others with EFI's declaratory‑judgment action; the JPML found all actions shared "factual questions about the alleged infringement, validity, and enforceability of nine related patents owned by RAH." Adobe's transfer motion and the EFI jurisdictional fight produced published opinions (CourtListener; cases.justia.com, N.D. Cal.).

4. RAH Color Technologies LLC v. Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG

This appeared on the patent family record (both the N.D. Ill. 1:19‑cv‑00193 and the N.D. Cal. 3:19‑cv‑00517 references correspond to this same action).

Related / Contextual Enforcement (Not Confirmed for '560)

RAH ran a broad 2010–2019 campaign against many color‑management stakeholders. The following are documented but I could not confirm from the sources that the '560 patent specifically was asserted in them, so I flag them rather than list them as '560 cases:

• RAH Color Technologies LLC v. Dalim Software GmbH — 1:19‑cv‑00275 (N.D. Ill.) → 3:19‑cv‑00518 (N.D. Cal.), tag‑along to MDL 2874.
• RAH Color Technologies LLC v. Ricoh Americas Corp. — 15‑cv‑05203 (E.D. Pa., Sept. 17, 2015); asserted the '870, '897, and '008 patents (not the '560).
• RAH Color Technologies LLC v. Xerox Corp. — N.D. Ill. 1:17‑cv‑06813 / W.D.N.Y. 6:18‑cv‑06746; asserted '870, '008, '444, '704, '251, '897.
• RAH Color Technologies LLC v. Eastman Kodak Co. — 6:19‑cv‑06112 (W.D.N.Y.), identified by RAH as a related '761‑family case.
• RAH Color Technologies LLC v. Quad/Graphics, Inc. — E.D. Wis. 2:18‑cv‑00087.
• Other 2017 filings (e.g., Agfa 1:17‑cv‑02145; Fujifilm 1:17‑cv‑02924, N.D. Ill.) — patents asserted not verified for '560.
• A Microsoft complaint (Windows Color System / WCS accused products) is documented in RAH's licensing/enforcement file, asserting the '870 patent claims 34/37/38/40 — again not the '560.

Administrative (PTAB) Proceedings

I found no inter partes review specifically challenging U.S. 7,710,560. Adobe Inc. did file IPRs against four related RAH patents — IPR2019‑00627 ('008), IPR2019‑00628 ('444), IPR2019‑00629 ('897), and IPR2019‑00646 ('761) — with final written decisions holding some '761 claims unpatentable (Oct. 8, 2020). These are related‑patent proceedings, not '560 proceedings.

Appellate (CAFC)

I did not identify any Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit appeal specifically involving the '560 patent. If an appeal exists, it would most plausibly arise out of the MDL, but I could not confirm one.

Summary Table

Caveats

• I relied on the Google Patents family/litigation record (Unified Patents, Darts‑IP), the Stanford NPE Litigation Database (npe.law.stanford.edu/patent/7710560), Justia Dockets, UniCourt, CourtListener, and PTAB/Docket Alarm filings. I did not obtain full PACER dockets for every case.
• Google's family listing associates these cases with the '560 family; only the X‑Rite case was explicitly confirmed in the pleadings I retrieved as asserting the '560 patent by number. Where the '560‑specific assertion could not be verified (e.g., the MDL and Seiko Epson matters), I have noted the source basis.
• All case numbers and patent numbers are transcribed literally; no auto‑correction has been applied.

I'll start by checking the web for any PTAB proceedings involving this patent, since the structured block says ODP has none.

Let me search more specifically for any IPR naming this patent, and check the Stanford NPE database and litigation dockets.

Key data point emerging: Adobe filed four IPRs (on the '008, '444, '761, '897 patents) — but apparently not on the '560. Let me verify whether any AIA petition ever targeted the '560 specifically.

AIA Trial Proceedings — US Patent 7,710,560

Prepared: 2026-09-27 | Patent: US 7,710,560 B2 ("System for distributing and controlling color reproduction at multiple sites"), RAH Color Technologies LLC / inventor Richard A. Holub; app. 11/413,949 filed 2006-04-28; granted 2010-05-04; priority 1997-08-25.

Verification note up front: I ran targeted searches across PTAB filings, PTAB/docket aggregators (Docket Alarm, PTAB E2E document links), the Stanford NPE Litigation Database entry for 7710560, and the RAH-family MDL record. I found no IPR, PGR, or CBM petition ever filed against the '560 patent, which is consistent with the structured ODP block. I hit my tool-step ceiling before exhausting every secondary source, so treat the "zero" as high-confidence but not exhaustively negative — the individual proceeding numbers below that I did verify are all for sibling RAH patents, not the '560.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 7,710,560: 0 — 0 active, 0 with claims invalidated, 0 with claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution denials. The bottom-line defensive posture this gives a defendant is unusual and, counter-intuitively, strongly favorable: the patent was never hardened by a PTAB win because it was never attacked at the PTAB at all — and the most plausible reason is that it had already run its term. Per Google Patents' legal-status data the '560 carries an adjusted expiration of 2019-01-10 and is flagged "Expired - Fee Related." (Confirm in USPTO Patent Center — maintenance-fee status and term adjustment — before relying on this.) An expired patent supports neither injunctive relief nor, in a suit filed now, any recoverable damages, because 35 U.S.C. § 286's six-year look-back window no longer reaches any date on which the patent was in force. So the correct defensive read is not "the patent survived IPRs" but rather "this patent is a dead letter — check the exact expiration date before you spend a dollar responding to a demand letter citing it."

Proceedings on US 7,710,560

None. No AIA trial proceeding of any type — Inter Partes Review, Post-Grant Review, or Covered Business Method review — appears on file for this patent in the ODP structured data or in any public source I could reach.

Two structural points explain why:

1. PGR was never available. The '560 issued 2010-05-04 from an application filed 2006-04-28 — a pre-AIA effective filing date. Post-Grant Review is limited to patents with an effective filing date on or after 2013-03-16, so PGR was categorically unavailable.
2. CBM was never a fit. The '560 claims color-measurement/color-reproduction subject matter, not a "covered business method" (financial-product or financial-service) claim. The transitional CBM program sunset 2020-09-16 in any event.
3. IPR was the only live vehicle — and it was never used. Adobe's February 2019 IPR wave against RAH targeted four sibling patents and repeatedly skipped the '560 (see below). Notably, Adobe filed those petitions on 2019-02-01, roughly three weeks after the '560's annotated expiration date of 2019-01-10. I read this as a deliberate decision not to spend IPR resources on a patent that had already expired; that is an inference, not a documented statement by Adobe.

Related AIA proceedings on sibling RAH patents (context only — NOT proceedings on the '560)

These are listed for strategic context because they show how the PTAB treated the shared 1997-priority RAH specification. Do not cite any of these as authority about US 7,710,560's claims. All four were filed by Adobe Inc. on 2019-02-01 and were consolidated for a single oral hearing held 2020-05-28.

IPR2019-00629 — Adobe Inc. v. RAH Color Technologies LLC (U.S. Pat. No. 7,312,897 — sibling)

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2019-02-01
• Status: Terminated — all challenged claims held unpatentable
• Judge panel: Not confirmed in the sources I reached
• Outcome: Per the N.D. Cal. MDL claim-construction order (Case No. 18-md-02874-SI, Doc. 120, filed 2021-01-22), "In IPR2019-00629 (U.S. Pat. 7,312,897), the PTAB determined all challenged claims were not patentable."
• Appeal: RAH did not appeal; RAH told the MDL court it intended to remove the '897 patent from the litigation.
• Defensive value: The '897 claims are canceled — any infringement theory built on the '897 is dead. Useful precedent showing the PTAB would cancel RAH's gamut-descriptor claims on ICC-publication-based art (ICC v.3.0/3.01, Beretta, Stone, Tajika, Giorgianni), which is the closest art family to the '560's subject matter.

IPR2019-00646 — Adobe Inc. v. RAH Color Technologies LLC (U.S. Pat. No. 7,791,761 — sibling)

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2019-01-31 per the FWD (Paper 119); institution decision entered 2019-09-04 (Paper 34)
• Status: Partially invalidated — claims 7, 8, 10, 11, and 13 unpatentable; claim 15 sustained
• Judge panel (institution): Eleni Mantis Mercader, Frances L. Ippolito, John A. Hudalla
• Judge panel (FWD): Frances L. Ippolito, John A. Hudalla, Nathan A. Engels (opinion by Engels)
• Claims challenged: 7–11, 13, 15
• Institution: Instituted as to all challenged claims and all grounds — reasonable likelihood under § 314(a)
• Final Written Decision: Paper 119, dated 2020-10-08 (public version): "we determine that Petitioner has demonstrated by a preponderance of the evidence that claims 7, 8, 10, 11, and 13 of the '761 patent are unpatentable." Claim 15 survived.
• Appeal: Adobe did not appeal the claim 15 finding (per MDL Doc. 120).
• Source: FWD public version via Docket Alarm, IPR2019-00646 Paper 119 — https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2019-00646/
• Defensive value: A clean example of the PTAB splitting a RAH claim set — most claims canceled, one sustained — which is exactly the kind of mixed outcome that gives a defendant both an invalidity roadmap and caution about over-reading an IPR win.

IPR2019-00627 — Adobe Inc. v. RAH Color Technologies LLC (U.S. Pat. No. 7,729,008 — sibling)

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2019-02-01 (claims 28–33 and 36–38 challenged; grounds built on ICC v.3.0/3.01, the ICC User Guide, and Beretta)
• Status: Patent owner prevailed in part — the PTAB "found that Adobe had not demonstrated that all challenged claims were unpatentable" (MDL Doc. 120)
• Judge panel (motion practice): Ippolito, joined by Engels and Hudalla (Paper 124, 2020-08-31 — excluding a declaration under the hearsay rule because the declarant refused to be deposed)
• Appeal: Adobe filed a Notice of Appeal to the Federal Circuit (per MDL Doc. 120)
• Defensive value: Shows RAH successfully defended at least some dependent claims against ICC-focused art — so an ICC-only § 103 theory against the '560's sibling claims is not a gimme.

IPR2019-00628 — Adobe Inc. v. RAH Color Technologies LLC (U.S. Pat. No. 8,416,444 — sibling)

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2019-02-01
• Status: Patent owner prevailed in part — "the PTAB found that Adobe had not demonstrated that all challenged claims were unpatentable" (MDL Doc. 120)
• Appeal: Adobe filed a Notice of Appeal to the Federal Circuit (per MDL Doc. 120)
• Note: I did not verify the CAFC docket numbers or dispositions for the '008 and '444 appeals; confirm on the Federal Circuit docket / CourtListener before citing.

Real-party-in-interest fight (worth knowing): RAH pressed an RPI discovery campaign in the Adobe IPRs, arguing Quad/Graphics, Dalim, Xerox, Heidelberger, and EFI were unnamed RPIs. The Board rejected that in the institution decision and reaffirmed it in the FWD ("Petitioner has sufficiently shown that Quad, Dalim, Xerox, Heidelberger, and EFI are not RPIs"). This matters if you ever try to invoke § 315(e)(2) estoppel against a non-Adobe defendant — Adobe's privies were not extended to the MDL co-defendants.

Strategic summary

Claim status on the '560. Because no AIA trial ever reached the '560, no claim of US 7,710,560 has been canceled, confirmed, or construed by the PTAB. Every claim is untested at the Board. That is not the same as "intact" — it means you cannot borrow any PTAB holding to argue preclusion, and equally you get no free roadmap from a FWD. The '560's validity posture is therefore purely a district-court question. The practical narrowing is temporal, not claim-based: the patent's annotated adjusted expiration of 2019-01-10 means the entire enforceable term predates the Adobe IPR wave.

Estoppel landscape. Because there was no IPR, no FWD, and no settlement on the '560, § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches to no one with respect to this patent. A defendant today may raise any § 102/§ 103 ground it wants — including grounds Adobe raised or could have raised against the sibling patents, and including the ICC-publication art family that killed the '897 claims. There is no Sotera-type stipulation, no instituted ground, and no petitioner-privity chain to worry about. The only constraints are the ordinary ones: the § 315(b) one-year bar if you are served, and § 325(d)/Fintiv-style discretion if the patent were still challengeable (which, given expiration, may moot institution in practice).

Pattern signals. (a) Same petitioner, multiple patents: Adobe filed four IPRs against four RAH siblings on 2019-02-01 and conspicuously omitted the '560 — consistent with the patent already being expired, not with the patent being overlooked. (b) Patent owner behavior at the PTAB: RAH (a one-man NPE run by Dr. Holub) litigated hard, won partial outcomes on the '008 and '444, lost the '897 outright, and did not appeal the '761 or '897 FWDs — a mixed but non-aggressive appellate posture. There is no evidence of a defensive aggregator (e.g., Unified Patents, RPX) petitioning on the '560; the Unified Patents hits in the Google Patents litigation block are litigation-tracking links, not petitions. (c) Assertion pattern: the '560 was asserted in the 2010 Epson suit (W.D.N.Y. 6:10-cv-06710), a 2014 W.D. Mich. case (1:14-cv-00638), the 2018 X-Rite suit, and appears in Adobe's exhibit charting asserted claims against Xerox (Adobe Exhibit 1037 in IPR2019-00646 lists the '560 with claims 46, 51, 54, 55 in the Xerox column — verify this reading before relying on it). The '560 did not appear among the four patents RAH ultimately pressed against Adobe in MDL 2874 ('897, '008, '761, '444), i.e., RAH quietly dropped it.

Recommended next steps

• First move — verify expiration, not validity. Pull US 7,710,560 in USPTO Patent Center and confirm (i) the term-adjustment calculation, (ii) any terminal disclaimer, and (iii) maintenance-fee payment history. Google Patents shows "Expired - Fee Related" with adjusted expiration 2019-01-10 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7710560/en). If that confirms, note that a complaint filed in 2026 cannot recover damages: all infringement necessarily predates 2019-01-10, which is outside the § 286 six-year lookback, and an expired patent cannot be enjoined.
• Because there is no PTAB record on the '560, there is nothing to link to at PTAB E2E and no FWD to quote. Do not represent to a court or counterparty that any PTAB finding applies to this patent. If you need a PTAB anchor for the art, the closest verified authority is the '897 FWD (all challenged claims unpatentable) via IPR2019-00629 and the '761 FWD via IPR2019-00646, Paper 119, 2020-10-08 (https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2019-00646/), plus the N.D. Cal. MDL claim-construction order summarizing all four outcomes (https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.[327437](/patent/327437)/gov.uscourts.cand.327437.120.0.pdf).
• If — and only if — the patent is confirmed still in force (i.e., the 2019-01-10 date is wrong): there is still no § 315(b) bar for any party not served, and the ICC/Beretta/Stone/Tajika art family has already produced both a total invalidation ('897) and a partial one ('761). That combination is the strongest available § 103 starting point. Meet-and-confer with counsel before filing, since a petition against an expired patent invites a discretionary-denial/mootness fight.
• Confidence flag: the "zero proceedings" conclusion rests on the ODP structured block plus my searches; I was unable to complete a final sweep of every secondary aggregator before my tool limit. If you need a belt-and-suspenders negative, run one more query directly against PTAB E2E and the PTAB API for "7710560" / "'560 patent" before representing the absence as absolute in a filing.

I'll research the assignment record and litigation history for US 7710560.

Let me dig into the specific assignment records and reel/frame data.

Let me investigate the RAH Equity Holdings / Premier Imaging entities and try to surface specific assignment reel/frame data.

Ownership and Assignment Analysis — US 7,710,560 B2

Analyst caveat on sources (read first): I could not load assignmentcenter.uspto.gov / assignment.uspto.gov results in this session, so no reel/frame numbers and no recording correspondents are reported below. I am not going to invent them. The timeline below is built from the USPTO-derived legal-events record presented on the authoritative patent page (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7710560/en), which mirrors USPTO assignment data but omits reel/frame and correspondent. Where a fact is unverified, it is labelled as such. Verify reel/frame at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ by searching patent number 7710560.

Inventors

• Holub's employment history is set out in RAH's own complaints and his PTAB deposition (Ex. 1053, Adobe v. RAH Color Technologies, IPR2019-00628): Eikonix (1983, later acquired by Eastman Kodak), Compugraphics/Agfa-Gevaert (~1990–93), SuperMac Technologies (~1993–94). He left SuperMac in 1994 and from 1994 worked independently, renting lab space from RIT Research Corp. and hiring contractors.
• Unusual pattern (inverse of the usual one): there is no corporate employee-assignment trail at all. Holub had already departed his last employer (SuperMac, ~1994) before the earliest family priority (1996-02-26 parent) and before this patent's 1997-08-25 priority. The applications were filed in Holub's personal name (pre-grant publications in this family name Holub, Richard A. as applicant), not by a company. So the usual red flag — "all inventors leave the assignee within 12 months of filing, presaging a fire-sale" — does not apply; there was no operating-company assignee to leave.
• Holub formed Imagicolor Corporation in 1998 to commercialize the prototype; per RAH's complaints, investment never materialized and Imagicolor was dissolved. He is the sole member of RAH Color Technologies LLC (confirmed in his 2018 venue declaration, N.D. Ill. 1:18-cv-00087, R. 58-8 ¶1).

Original assignee

RAH Color Technologies LLC (per the patent record and Google Patents' assignee field; earlier family applications name Holub personally).

• Entity: Virginia LLC; office at 7012 Colgate Drive, Alexandria, VA 22307; formed 2005. On the 2012-issued family member US 8,279,236 the same-named assignee is listed as Rochester, NY — the entity's situs changed, which is what the 2013 merger entry records (below).
• Line of business: patent licensing. RAH's own pleadings state the company "was formed as a vehicle for an on-going licensing program for companies whose products depend on Dr. Holub's innovations."
• Did it ship a product embodying the claims? No. RAH's complaints concede the prototype "combined instrumentation for fully automatic display calibration with software support for highly accurate soft-proofing," that "commercialization of the prototype did not come to fruition," and that Imagicolor was dissolved. There is no evidence of any RAHCT product in commerce.
• Current status: operating as a licensing/assertion entity (not dissolved, not in bankruptcy on the available record). Its enforcement campaign ran at least 2010–2020, including MDL No. 2874. This patent's USPTO legal status is "Expired – Fee Related," adjusted expiration 2019-01-10.
• Name-collision warning (do not conflate): RAH Equity Holdings, LLC and Premier Imaging Holdings, LLC (defendants in Bee v. RAH Equity Holdings, Conn. Super. Ct. HHD-CV24-6184373-S, involving radiology-practice LLC agreements) are unrelated Delaware entities. Nothing links them to the Holub patents; they are not in this chain.

Assignment timeline

Reel/frame: NOT CAPTURED. Both USPTO events below are flagged "reassignment" in the Google Patents legal-events record for US 7,710,560 with the conveyance type and assignor named, but Google does not publish reel/frame or correspondent. I could not retrieve those fields from Assignment Center in this session, and will not fabricate them.

• Executed date not published / recorded 2010-10-04 — Reel not captured/not captured

  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest ("ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS' INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)")
  • Assignor: HOLUB, RICHARD A., PHD, DR. (individual)
  • Assignee: RAH COLOR TECHNOLOGIES LLC
  • Correspondent: not captured — cannot assess recurrence for this chain; see signal 3.
  • Context: transfer from inventor to his own single-member licensing LLC (formed 2005), recorded ~5 weeks before the first infringement suit — i.e., standing-cleansing for assertion, not a third-party acquisition.

• Executed date not published / recorded 2013-05-14 — Reel not captured/not captured

  • Conveyance: Merger
  • Assignor: RAH COLOR TECHNOLOGIES LLC
  • Assignee: RAH COLOR TECHNOLOGIES LLC
  • Correspondent: not captured
  • Context: internal reorganization / change of domicile only (same-named assignor and assignee; consistent with the Rochester, NY → Alexandria, VA shift between the 2012-issued family member and later pleadings). No change in beneficial owner (Holub).

No other recorded post-issuance transfers appear on this patent. Specifically, on the available record there is no security agreement, no collateral assignment, no release, no license recorded against title, no bankruptcy-sale assignment, and no transfer to a third-party aggregator or defensive entity.

Adjacent dated events that are not ownership changes (listed so they are not mistaken for assignments): 2006-04-28 application filed; 2006-09-07 publication of US 2006/0197757 A1; 2010-03-08 priority to US 12/660,937; 2010-05-04 grant; 2019-01-10 adjusted expiration.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7710560
    1996 : Parent filing in the Holub family
    1997 : Priority date 25 Aug
    2006 : Application filed in name of RAH Color Tech LLC
         : Pre grant publication
    2010 : Patent granted 4 May
         : Holub assigns to RAH Color Technologies LLC
         : First suit filed against Seiko Epson
    2013 : Merger recorded under same RAH Color name
    2018 : MDL formed in N D California
    2019 : Expired fee related per USPTO

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — PRESENT (in substance), with a caveat. The patent moved from the individual inventor to RAH Color Technologies LLC, a licensing-only entity with no products in commerce — a fact conceded in RAH's own complaints ("formed as a vehicle for an on-going licensing program"; prototype commercialization "did not come to fruition"). Recording date 2010-10-04. Caveat: this is the inventor's own single-member LLC, not an anonymous third-party shell — the address (7012 Colgate Drive, Alexandria, VA) is the company's stated office, not a registered-agent service, and Holub is publicly identified as sole member. So the economic substance is non-practicing-entity ownership; the "hidden shell" inference is not supported.

2. Known asserter in the chain — PRESENT in substance / UNCLEAR as to the named lists. RAH Color Technologies LLC does not match any entity on the enumerated list (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg entities). I found no evidence in this session placing RAHCT on an RPX or Unified Patents high-frequency-plaintiff list. Independently, however, the assertion record is a matter of public court record: RAHCT suits against Seiko Epson (6:10-cv-06710, W.D.N.Y., Dec. 2010), Xerox, Samsung, R.R. Donnelley, Agfa, Fujifilm, Quad/Graphics, Adobe, Heidelberg, Dalim, Kodak, and X-Rite, consolidated into MDL No. 2874 (N.D. Cal. 3:18-md-02874); Adobe's brief in IPR2019-00628 records ~$11.5M in total royalties across 17 licenses with the eight express "avoid litigation costs" licenses averaging ~$698,750. That is a licensing-driven assertion program, whatever the label.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR (cannot be called). I could not capture recording correspondents for either entry, so I cannot show recurrence on the assignment side. Related but distinct repeat players visible elsewhere in the record: Global IP Law Group, LLC (55 W. Monroe St., Suite 3400, Chicago) — Irwin Park (Reg. No. 68,865), Ragnar Olson, David P. Berten, Alison A. Richards — is counsel of record across RAH's licensing letters, district-court suits and IPRs from at least 2016 into 2020, and Holub declared in 2018 that he had worked with that firm on RAH's portfolio "for nine years." Original prosecution was by Martin LuKacher (named in the IPR record). Treat these as enforcement/prosecution counsel, not as assignment correspondents — this is not a finding under the stated test.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT. Only two recorded ownership events (2010-10-04; 2013-05-14), seven years apart, and the second is a same-name merger. There is no chained-LLC sequence and no succession of unrelated assignees within 24 months.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — PRESENT. Assignment to RAH Color Technologies LLC recorded 2010-10-04; the first infringement suit in the campaign, RAH Color Technologies LLC v. Seiko Epson Corp., 6:10-cv-06710 (W.D.N.Y.), was filed 2010-12-21 — ~11 weeks later, well inside the 6-month window. The timing is consistent with arranging title immediately before assertion. (Note: RAHCT had been sending license demands since at least 2002 through Niro, Scavone, Haller & Niro, so the assertion strategy long predates the 2010 assignment; the assignment is what perfected the plaintiff's title.)

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. No Chapter 7/11 sale of this patent is recorded or referenced. Imagicolor Corporation was dissolved (per RAH's complaints) but no bankruptcy proceeding or trustee sale is documented in the record I retrieved.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT. No operating company transferred this patent to an NPE to assert against its competitors. The asserted patents originate with Holub personally; the current holder is his own vehicle. Holub's former employers (Kodak, Agfa, SuperMac) are defendants/targets, not beneficiaries of the chain.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — NOT PRESENT. The chain terminates at RAH Color Technologies LLC; it does not pass to RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents or OIN. The patent was not neutralized by aggregation. Instead it lapsed: legal status "Expired – Fee Related, adjusted expiration 2019-01-10", typical of a monetization-only owner that stops paying once the assertion program winds down — although the 1996/1997 priority dates mean natural term expiry would also fall in this window, so I read the expiration as corroborative rather than dispositive.

Verdict

NPE — high confidence.

Two strong signals converge and are grounded in the record: (i) the patent is held by a non-practicing, licensing-only LLC with no product in commerce — RAH Color Technologies LLC, which its own complaints describe as "a vehicle for an on-going licensing program" after prototype commercialization "did not come to fruition," with Holub as sole member; and (ii) a pre-litigation title transfer, the 2010-10-04 assignment from Holub to RAHCT recorded roughly 11 weeks before the 2010-12-21 Seiko Epson suit, followed by a decade-long assertion campaign including MDL No. 2874. The 2013-05-14 merger is an internal, same-name reorganization and adds nothing. The countervailing facts — the holder is the inventor's own transparent single-member company rather than an anonymous shell, and no third-party NPE, aggregator, or bankruptcy transfer appears anywhere in the chain — are why this is an inventor-owned NPE rather than a classic third-party troll chain. Recorded transfers on both entries: reel/frame not captured — verify at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search 7710560); the Assignment Center is also indexed at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html.

I'll research US patent 7710560 and its prior art citations.

Let me get the specific citation list for this patent.

Let me search for the specific citation tables for this patent family.

Prior Art Analysis — US 7,710,560 B2

1. Patent identification (verified)

The patent is a divisional in the Holub family (parent chain: US 6,459,425 → US 7,075,643 → US 7,710,560), and is one of several siblings including US 8,760,704, US 8,917,394, US 9,054,802 and US 9,894,338. It was asserted in the multi-district litigation referenced on the Google Patents family page (e.g., N.D. Cal. 3:18-md-02874; N.D. Cal. 3:19-cv-00517; N.D. Ill. 1:19-cv-00193; W.D.N.Y. 6:10-cv-06710; W.D. Mich. 1:14-cv-00638).

⚠️ Identifier caution (do not auto-correct)

A search for the literal string "US7710560" on Google Patents surfaces an unrelated hit: US 3,107,689 (Narcosis apparatus, Schreiber/Egidi). That page displays "US7710560" only because 3,107,689 was filed under Ser. No. 77,105 (a serial-number match, not a patent-number match). This is not the patent in question. I have interpreted "7710560" as US 7,710,560 B2, the color-reproduction patent, consistent with your prompt.

2. Methodology note and a material limitation (stated plainly)

• What I could ground: The authoritative full text you supplied contains the patent's own extended prior-art discussion (the "PRIOR ART"/Background narrative and Definitions), which cites the references below by name and, for several, by patent number. I also cross-checked one citation date against a same-family sibling (US 8,760,704), whose front-page reference list confirms US 2,790,844 A (4/1957, Neugebauer) and the Sodergard et al., TAGA Proceedings, vol. 1, pp. 620–634, 1995 non-patent reference.
• What I could NOT retrieve within my search limits: the complete front-page "(56) References Cited" list for US 7,710,560 itself (i.e., the exhaustive examiner/applicant citation table). My targeted queries for that table were cut off, and several search hits returned unrelated chemical/medical patent citation lists. I therefore cannot certify that the list below is the exhaustive 56 list for 7,710,560. It is the set of references the patent itself discusses, which is the subset I can verify from the authoritative text.
• Claim mapping is provisional. The full text you supplied ends before the claims (it truncates at "the search routine may use either the interpolative approximation to the polynomial…"). Consequently, I do not have the verbatim claim set of 7,710,560, so § 102 mappings are made by claim subject-matter category, not by literal claim wording. Each is flagged accordingly.

3. Patent references discussed in US 7,710,560

3.1 US 2,790,844 — Neugebauer

• Citation: U.S. Pat. No. 2,790,844, Neugebauer.
• Date: granted 4/1957 (confirmed via the same-family reference list of US 8,760,704).
• Description: Extends the Hardy–Wurzburg color-correction machine to capture and represent color imagery in a colorimetric (device-independent) coordinate system, and provides a soft proof by projecting video images onto the paper stock to be used in final reproduction, controlling surround illumination/viewing conditions.
• § 102 relevance: Potentially anticipatory of claims directed to soft proofing / representing a printer on a display viewed under controlled conditions, and to colorimetric (device-independent) representation of imagery. Because it is a single reference that discloses colorimetric capture + soft proof, it is the strongest single-reference candidate for the display-proofing aspects. It cannot alone anticipate the distributed network / Virtual Proof data structure claims, since it discloses no multi-site network.

3.2 US 4,500,919 — Schreiber

• Citation: U.S. Pat. No. 4,500,919, Schreiber.
• Date: ~1985 (year stated with moderate confidence; number as cited in the patent text).
• Description: Discloses a system to match the hard copy to the monitor image — i.e., the inverse proofing direction from Neugebauer.
• § 102 relevance: Relevant to claims on hard-copy/monitor color matching and calibration of a display to a print target. Alone, it does not disclose spectral self-calibrating instrumentation or networked distribution.

3.3 US 5,107,332 — Chan

• Citation: U.S. Pat. No. 5,107,332, Chan.
• Date: early 1990s (as cited; precise grant date not verified in this session).
• Description: Closed-loop control of a digital printer aimed at relatively low-quality desktop devices (e.g., ink jet). Uses a flat-bed scanner as part of a closed calibration loop: a standardized calibration form printed by the system is scanned, and deviations from expected color values generate correction coefficients.
• § 102 relevance: Potentially anticipatory of claims to a method of calibrating a printer via a printed calibration form and feedback of measured deviations to produce correction coefficients. It does not disclose a human-observer-traceable spectral measurement (Standard Observer) or a multi-node network, so it cannot alone anticipate the network/colorimetric claims.

3.4 US 5,185,673 — Sobol

• Citation: U.S. Pat. No. 5,185,673, Sobol.
• Date: early 1990s (as cited; precise grant date not verified).
• Description: Shares the Chan architecture — closed-loop printer control in which a scanner + printing assembly form a closed calibration system using a standardized calibration form.
• § 102 relevance: Same claim categories as Chan (closed-loop printer calibration / correction coefficients). Chan and Sobol are essentially cumulative; neither addresses distributed multi-site calibration.

3.5 US 5,272,518 — Vincent

• Citation: U.S. Pat. No. 5,272,518, Vincent.
• Date: 1993 (grant date stated with moderate confidence).
• Description: A portable spectral colorimeter for performing system-wide calibrations; low-cost design based on a linearly variable spectral filter interposed between the object and a linear sensor array. The specification notes Vincent mentions applicability to consistent color across a network but does not disclose how distributed calibration would be implemented, and provides no self-check or verification of calibration.
• § 102 relevance: The most on-point single reference for claims to a portable spectral colorimeter and, arguably, to network-wide color calibration / consistent color across a network in its broadest form. Under § 102, however, Vincent would likely fail against the specific network/distribution claims because it lacks: (a) a disclosed implementation of distributed calibration, and (b) self-calibration/verification — both of which the patent distinguishes.

3.6 Kipphan et al. (number not confirmed — do not infer)

• Citation: "Kipphan et al." as cited in US 7,710,560. I did not confirm the underlying patent number and will not supply one.
• Description: System that takes printed sheets and scans specialized color bars at the sheet margin with a spectral colorimeter; CIELAB readings are compared to aim values and converted into ink-density corrections fed to the press inking-key control panel. Operator override necessary; no calibration self-check; closed loop but off-line and does not read image area.
• § 102 relevance: Potentially anticipatory of claims to press inking control from colorimetric color-bar measurement. The patent expressly distinguishes it on image-area measurement and self-checking, so it cannot anticipate claims reciting those features.

3.7 Bonino et al. (number not confirmed — do not infer)

• Citation: "Bonino et al." as cited in US 7,710,560. Number not confirmed.
• Description: Method for harmonizing the output of color devices, primarily video display monitors. Measures the voltage-in/luminance-out (V/L) relationship for each of the three channels separately and adjusts all devices to a commonly achievable maximum, assuming this places all devices in the same gamut (true only if primary chromaticities are substantially equal).
• § 102 relevance: Relevant to claims on multi-device display harmonization/gamut matching. Because the patent identifies a specific deficiency (the equal-chromaticity assumption), Bonino alone would not anticipate claims reciting colorimetric gamut configuration.

3.8 Eouzan et al. (number not confirmed — do not infer)

• Citation: "Eouzan et al." as cited in US 7,710,560. Number not confirmed.
• Description: System for controlling a projection video display based on CRT technology, using a camera to capture the image area of the display. Suited to the manufacturing environment, not the field; no disclosure of colorimetric calibration or control of display output to a colorimetric criterion.
• § 102 relevance: Relevant to claims of display calibration using a camera viewing the screen. Again, the patent distinguishes it for lack of colorimetric control, so it cannot anticipate colorimetric-criterion claims.

3.9 Van Aken et al. (number not confirmed — do not infer)

• Citation: "Van Aken et al." (dual-beam spectrophotometer), cited earlier in the description.
• Description: A dual-beam spectrophotometer in which light reflected from the unknown sample is compared, simultaneously or successively, with light from the same source reflected from a known reflector — enabling separation of colorant, substrate and illumination contributions.
• § 102 relevance: Relevant to the patent's dual-beam spectrograph claims (compare sample vs. reference for self-calibration). Van Aken appears to be an instrument reference rather than a networked-reproduction reference.

4. Non-patent literature cited in the specification

5. Bottom line for § 102 purposes

1. Strongest single-reference candidates (subject-matter level):

• Vincent (US 5,272,518) — for portable spectral colorimeter / network color-consistency claims; but it fails under § 102 for claims requiring disclosed distributed calibration implementation or self-calibration/verification.
• Kipphan et al. — for press ink-density control from color-bar colorimetry; fails for image-area/self-check limitations.
• Sodergard et al. (1993/1995) — for on-press image-area color control; the patent itself attacks its precision.
• Neugebauer (US 2,790,844) — for colorimetric capture + soft proof onto the production substrate.
• Chan (US 5,107,332) / Sobol (US 5,185,673) — for closed-loop printer calibration via a printed form.

1. No single reference appears to anticipate the core networked claims (computer at each node + color measurement instrument per rendering device + distributed color-transformation data structure separable from image data — the "Virtual Proof"). The patent's own distinguishing points (self-calibration, image-area measurement, extensible profile/class hierarchy, portable data structure transmitted between nodes) are each recited as missing from the listed references. Those claims would more plausibly be attacked under § 103 (combinations) than under § 102.

2. Claim numbers: I deliberately have not assigned specific claim numbers (e.g., "claim 72") because the claim text of US 7,710,560 was not available to me in this session. The references above map to claim categories; a definitive § 102 mapping requires the issued claim set, which should be pulled directly from USPTO PatentCenter (application 11/413,949) or the granted patent.

Would you like me to (a) retrieve the exact (56) reference list directly from USPTO PatentCenter for application 11/413,949, and (b) pull the issued claim set so the § 102 mapping can be done claim-by-claim with literal language?

I'll ground this analysis in the prior-art references identified in the patent's own background/definitions section, and verify what I can about them.

Let me verify a few more of the specific prior-art references the specification relies on, so my citations are exact.

Obviousness Analysis — US 7,710,560 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Analyst work-product. Not a legal opinion. Read together with the two previously generated sections (Patent summary; Litigation summary), whose contents I treat as authoritative and do not repeat.

0. Threshold caveats (carried forward, not re-litigated)

1. ⚠ The granted claims of US 7,710,560 were not in the authoritative text supplied. The feed ends mid-sentence in the description of forward-model inversion. Everything below maps prior art to the reconstructed claim families in the Patent summary §"Plain-language overview of the independent claims." Those reconstructions are indicative, not quotations. No ground below should be used for a real validity opinion without pulling the granted claims from USPTO PatentCenter.
2. Effective date assumption. The record gives priority 1997-08-25 (prov. 60/056,947) via 09/139,498 (1998-08-25) → 10/209,431 → 11/413,949. I assume the '560 claims are supported by that chain. This assumption is not outcome-determinative here: every reference relied on below predates 1995, and most predate 1993, so the analysis holds even if the effective date slipped to the 1998-08-25 filing.
3. Source of the prior art. Per the task I used the Prior Art / Background section of the '560 itself — the references the applicant named and characterized. Those characterizations are the applicant's own, and under the admission doctrine a patentee's description of the prior art in the specification is usable against it. I have independently verified several references by search (URLs below); where I could not, I say so.

1. Level of ordinary skill (POSITA)

My judgment (assumption, stated as such): as of 1997, a POSITA would hold a B.S. in physics, electrical engineering, or imaging/color science plus ~2–4 years in graphic-arts color measurement and control, or equivalent experience. Such a person would be familiar with: CIE 15.2 colorimetry and CIELAB; spectrophotometers/colorimeters and their calibration (dark/white references, dual-beam normalization); polynomial/LUT/neural device modeling and inversion; closed-loop press and printer color control; and the ICC Profile Format (v3.01, 1995) and EFI's Metric Color Tag spec (Rev 1.1d, 1993). The specification itself supplies most of this as admitted background.

2. Prior-art reference table (as characterized by the '560, with verification status)

Also surfaced by search and squarely on point for the display claims: GB 2,115,175, "Fibre optics head featuring core spacing to block specular reflection" (1983) — ⚠ I verified only the title as it appears in a reference list; I have not read the specification.

3. Claim family 1 — calibrated color-display system (peripheral member; angled non-contact CMI; housing/sensor/optics/control circuitry; computer enabling Virtual Proofing)

Mapping

Motivation. The '560's own four-category recitation of prior calibration-device deficiencies — (i) manual measurement prone to operator error, (ii) contact causing scuffing/fingerprints and suction-cup residue on monitors, (iii) operator-performed calibration with black traps and white plaques, (iv) instrument-to-instrument variation defeating remote proofing — supplies the motivation as an admission: each claimed feature (non-contact, angular anti-specular geometry, self-referencing, computer-controlled calibration) is a known engineering response to a known, expressly articulated problem.

4. Claim family 2 — printer-sample measurement (transport mechanism; non-contact optical sensor; fiber-optic probe → spectrograph; spectrograph auto-obtains calibration references)

This is the strongest ground, because the pieces align almost element-for-element across two references.

Motivation — and it is the applicant's own words. The '560 states of Kipphan: "Operator override is possible and is necessary when the colorimeter goes out of calibration, since it is not capable of calibration self-check." That single sentence is simultaneously (a) an admission that self-calibration failure was a known problem and (b) a statement of the reason a POSITA would add the reference channels Van Aken already used for exactly that purpose. Under KSR, identifying a known problem and applying a known solution from the same field is the paradigm of obviousness.

5. Claim family 3 — dual-beam spectrograph apparatus (source; 1st fiber illuminates sample; 2nd fiber carries source light to spectrograph input #1; 3rd fiber carries sample light to input #2; sensors on the 1st fiber for calibration check)

Van Aken alone discloses this architecture in substance: an illumination path with a beamsplitter or fiber-optic pickups drawing a reference beam from the illumination; a sample-imaging path; a polychromator with two sequential inputs (reference flash, sample flash); and discrete wavelength detectors (fibers + bandpass + reference detector) monitoring the illumination source — i.e., sensors receiving light from the illumination path whose signals are used to normalize/check the measurement.

Combine with Kipphan '721 (fiber-to-spectrometer packaging in a printing environment) and Vincent '518 (low-cost linearly-variable-filter spectral engine), both in the graphic-arts color field.

Motivation, again admitted: the '560 itself explains the purpose — "the spectrum of light reflected from the unknown sample is compared either simultaneously or successively with the light of the same source reflected from a known reflector. In this way it is possible to separate the spectral contributions of colorants, substrates and illumination sources and to estimate their true functional forms over multiple impressions," citing Van Aken. The specification thus identifies the result the combination achieves and names the reference achieving it; the only remaining question is packaging, which is a routine design choice.

6. Claim family 4 — one-dimensional fiber array with illumination fiber, dark-reference fiber, known-wavelength fiber, and sample fibers; spectrograph output whose reference-fiber portions constitute automatic calibration references

Combination: Rock et al., US 4,678,332 ("fiberoptics reformatter having a plurality of fibers ... for dispersion of the incident beam into its component wavelengths" — recited in Vincent's own background, so the '560 is on notice of it) + Van Aken (reference/dark/illumination normalization channels on the same instrument) + Vincent US 5,144,498 (dark-current register + calibration tables).

Motivation / rationale. The technical reason to put the reference fibers into the same linear array feeding the same spectrograph is that all channels then share one dispersion and one detector-array calibration — i.e., the references calibrate the very dispersion you are relying on, and the dark reference subtracts offset. Placing known-wavelength sources at known array positions provides wavelength-axis registration. That is a predictable arrangement of known elements with a predictable result, and the '560 recites precisely that result ("the part of the line of light ... automatically provide calibration references").

⚠ Weakness. I have not read Rock '332; this ground should be re-verified. If Rock's bundle is only a dispersion reformatter without reference fibers, the ground leans more heavily on Van Aken plus ordinary design choice.

7. Claim family 5 — method of maintaining calibration of a color display (ambient/dark adjustment; neutral balance; per-channel gamma measurement; per-channel adjustment)

Motivation. Harmonizing display appearance is Bonino's express purpose; the '560 admits the baseline skill level: "Calibration of video displays for soft proofing is well known, and discussed by Holub, et al." The '560's criticism of Bonino — that it is photometric, not colorimetric, and that a single-channel photometer cannot verify the equal-primaries assumption — is exactly the kind of gap a POSITA would close by substituting the colorimeter the same field already used (Vincent '518; Eouzan's camera).

8. Where the prior art is weakest — and why that matters

The background art is materially weaker against anything reciting the Virtual Proof data structure (shared components transmitted over the network / local components at each node; color-transform information stored separately from image data; verification-and-revision loop):

• Vincent '518 "mentions applicability to insuring consistent color across a network, but does not discuss how distributed calibration would be implemented."
• MCT '93 and ICC v3.01 are file formats, not distributed-production architectures; the '560 notes ICC embeds profiles with image data, "which generates large data transfers over a network whenever profiles are updated," and is not readily extensible beyond three device types.
• Sodergard teleproofing (1991 TAGA) transmits actual image data and "lacks any provision for calibration or verification of the devices at either end of a link and also lacks the data structures needed to support remote proofing and negotiation of color approval."

A §103 attack on the architecture claims would therefore need a secondary reference beyond the '560's own background (e.g., a networked color-server disclosure) plus an articulated reason to split transform data into shared/local components. Notably, the '560's Summary/Brief Description emphasizes the measurement hardware, which suggests — but does not prove — that the asserted independent claims are apparatus claims aimed at the CMI, not at the network architecture. ⚠ This is a reconstruction-dependent inference and should not be relied on.

Likewise outside the '560's cited background: the forward-model pipeline (untruncated polynomial basis functions fit by SVD; recursive-factorization evaluation; sparse-table interpolation with pre/post-conditioning LUTs; gamut descriptors in hue-angle/chroma/lightness; Newton-Raphson or Simplex inversion; GCR/black-utilization selection) is rich in specific limitations that none of the background references disclose in that combination. If the granted claims recite these, they are individually harder to reach.

9. Motivation to combine — assembled KSR rationales

1. Common field and common problem. Every reference sits in graphic-arts color measurement/control. The '560 states the objective as uniform appearance of color within each device's attainable gamut — the same objective as Holub et al. 1988/1989 and Neugebauer.
2. The applicant's own deficiency list is the motivation. Vincent (no self-check; no implemented distributed calibration); Chan/Sobol (desktop/ink-jet orientation; scanner-based; no colorimetric calibration to a device-independent criterion; "No requirements are placed upon the spectral sensitivities of the scanner's RGB channel sensitivities"); Kipphan (no self-check; color bars only, image-area information lost); Sodergard (insufficient precision); Eouzan (factory not field; no colorimetric calibration concept); Bonino (photometric, not colorimetric). Each deficiency maps to a known remedy drawn from another reference in the same list.
3. Predictable substitution of known elements. Spectrograph for filter colorimeter; fiber-optic pickup for contact head; one-dimensional fiber array for single fiber; motorized transport for manual placement; per-channel gamma adjustment for global V/L matching.
4. "Obvious to try" design incentives. Automate (reduce operator skill — a stated motivation: "reduction of the level of skill required of the human operator(s)"), non-contact (avoid scuffing), self-calibrate (make "instrument-to-instrument variation" tolerable).
5. Design choice / adjacent prior art. Monitor hoods and anti-specular fiber geometry (GB 2,115,175; Karras '046) were old; dual-beam reference normalization was textbook analytical instrumentation.

10. Reasons a challenger could nonetheless fail (§ 103 counterweights)

• No institution on the '560. Consistent with the Litigation summary, the 2019 Adobe IPRs targeted US 7,729,008, 8,416,444, 7,791,761 and 7,312,897 — not the '560 — and I found no IPR against the '560. The '560 was explicitly asserted by number only in the X-Rite case (W.D. Mich. 1:14-cv-00638), which was dismissed by stipulation 2015-03-05. It therefore has essentially no adversarial invalidity record, which cuts against confidence in these grounds as much as for them.
• Teaching away is unlikely but the references do not urge the combination. The '560's criticisms are "lacks feature X," not "X is undesirable," so KSR is not defeated by them — a point the challenger should press.
• Secondary considerations. RAH's licensing campaign (X-Rite 2010/2013/2014 license letters; Epson; the MDL defendants) and the portfolio's assertion history could support a commercial-success/non-obviousness narrative — but as a non-practicing entity with no manufacturing, and with licenses taken in settlement rather than as praise, that evidence is routinely discounted. A long-felt-need story is available (Holub himself documented in 1989 that "static calibration proved inadequate" because production equipment changed with time, and the '560 was fielded in 1997), but it is double-edged: the same inventor authored the 1988–1995 publications that state the problem and supply much of the machinery, which weakens "failure of others."
• Claim-scope risk. If the granted claims are apparatus claims with specific structural interrelationships (the blackened-inner-surface geometry; the exact spatial relation of the reference fibers to the spectrograph input; the shared/local VP split), the reconstructed mappings above may not reach every limitation, and a §103 ground must reach all limitations.

11. Illustrative grounds (⚠ reconstructed claims only — do not file or opine on these)

12. Bottom line

• On the hardware-side claims (Claim families 1–5 as reconstructed), the '560 looks vulnerable to §103, principally because the specification itself (a) names each reference, (b) states the deficiency of each, and (c) states the benefit of the very feature that cures it — the classic KSR posture. The single best ground is Kipphan '721 + Van Aken + Vincent '518, with Chan '332/Sobol '673 supplying the transport and closed-loop motivation.
• On any claim reciting the Virtual Proof shared/local data structure or the specific forward-model/inversion pipeline, the '560 is much stronger on this record, because the background art the patent itself cites does not reach those features and the specification's distinctions (ICC embedding profiles with image data; MCT's incompleteness; Sodergard's lack of calibration/data structures) are technically substantive.
• Confidence is capped by two facts: the granted claims were unavailable to me, and the '560 has never been subjected to an instituted IPR. Both the mapping and the ground selection should be re-run against the actual claim set before any reliance.

Key sources: authoritative '560 text supplied (patents.google.com/patent/US7710560/en); US 5,107,332; US 5,185,673; US 5,182,721; US 5,272,518 and US 5,144,498; Van Aken et al. remote-reading spectrophotometer (EP 0 242 725 A2); sibling-family texts US 6,157,735 / US 6,043,909 / US 2005/0233763 / US 7,075,643 (which reproduce the identical background section, including the ICC, MCT, Eouzan, Bonino, Kipphan, Sodergard and Van Aken characterizations); PTAB petition paper listing US 5,185,673 (ptacts.uspto.gov, Petition 1523316).