US 7725344

I'll verify the patent details and check for litigation/docket information.

Let me check specifically for any Federal Circuit or 2026 activity on this patent.

Summary of US Patent 7,725,344

Caveat on identifiers: I searched literally for the number 7725344. All returned hits refer to US 7,725,344 B2 ("System and method for computer-aided technician dispatch and communication"). I found no Federal Circuit or other 2026 appellate docket tied to this patent number. I cannot confirm any 2026 CAFC activity; absent a docket hit, I treat that as "none found," not as proof of none existing.

Bibliographic data (from the patent text and corroborating databases)

Secondary databases (idiyas.com, Radaris) list the assignee as "CSG Systems, Inc., Englewood, CO" and applicant address Denver, CO — consistent with the patent.

Abstract (as printed)

"A system and method for computer aided technician dispatch and communication are disclosed. The system comprises a communications system linking a plurality of subscribers, a team of technicians, a service representative, and a user; an input terminal for receiving information, the information comprising service request information from the plurality of subscribers, and work order information from the team of technicians, a server coupled to the input terminals for processing the information and generating a graphical representation of the information, and, a display for receiving the graphical representation and presenting the graphical representation to a user. A method for computer aided technician dispatch and communication comprises five steps..."

Note a discrepancy worth flagging: the printed abstract describes the system embodiment (input terminal, server, display), but the granted claim set of US 7,725,344 is directed to a computer-readable medium implementing an automated assignment algorithm. The system/method claims appear in the parent US 6,990,458. This is consistent with the two-family structure shown in the "Family Applications" table.

Plain-language overview of the independent claim

Claim 1 — "computer-readable medium having instructions for automatically assigning technicians to a plurality of unassigned work orders." The instructions perform six steps:

1. Create a list of the unassigned work orders.
2. Determine how many technicians are qualified to complete each work order on the list.
3. Group the work orders by that qualified-technician count (i.e., all work orders with n=1 go together, n=2 together, etc.).
4. Order each group by estimated time-to-complete (the specification says decreasing time, longest first).
5. Assign technicians using the grouping, the ordering, and technician time availability.

In effect, it claims a "fewest-qualified-technicians-first, longest-job-within-group-first" heuristic for filling technician schedules, with a distance tie-breaker as an optional added feature in the dependent claims.

Dependent claims (2–8):

• Claim 2: also display to the user any unassigned work order having no qualified technician.
• Claim 3: additionally use a calculated distance between a work order and at least one predetermined location (start/end point or previously assigned work order) in the assignment decision.
• Claim 4: also assign a point value to each work order to indicate perceived difficulty, and use those points in determining qualified-technician counts.
• Claim 5 (dep. 4): use the points to determine technician time availability.
• Claim 6: also display a graphical representation of the status of each unassigned work order.
• Claim 7: the list of unassigned work orders is created over a predetermined time period.
• Claim 8 (dep. 7): that predetermined period is a day.

Litigation noted in the record

• CSG Systems, Inc. v. TOA Technologies, Inc., No. 1:13-cv-02306 (N.D. Ohio) — listed in Stanford's NPE Litigation Database (CSG classified as a "Product company").
• No. 2:12-cv-00712 (E.D. Tex.) — case link surfaced on the Google Patents family page.

Uncertainty disclosures

• I did not locate any 2026 CAFC docket or opinion referencing 7725344. The only 2026 Federal Circuit material returned by search concerned unrelated patents (e.g., Headwater Research, Contour IP Holding v. GoPro, Exafer v. Microsoft).
• I could not retrieve from primary sources the current live USPTO assignment/status chain beyond what Google Patents reproduces (assignment to CSG Systems, 2013 security agreement to Bank of America, and a 2025 release by the secured party).
• The abstract/claim mismatch between the granted '344 claims and the printed abstract is stated as it appears in the text; I have not independently verified the file wrapper to explain the amendment history.

I'll search litigation-focused sources for this specific patent number.

Let me dig into the two case numbers surfaced on the patent's family page and the Stanford NPE record.

Let me look for outcomes (settlement/dismissal), any other defendants, and PTAB/reexamination activity.

Litigation involving US Patent 7,725,344 ("the '344 patent")

I searched the litigation-oriented sources you named (Unified Patents litigation portal links carried on the patent's family page, Stanford NPE Litigation Database, and court-docket mirrors such as PlainSite/CourtListener-derived databases). Every hit keyed to 7725344 refers to US 7,725,344 B2 (CSG Systems, Englewood, CO; "System and method for computer-aided technician dispatch and communication"). I found no results for any other patent number, and I did not substitute similar numbers.

Summary table

Both are also the only two litigation links shown on the Google Patents family page for this patent ("US case filed in Texas Eastern District Court" and "US case filed in Ohio Northern District Court"), which states this is the "first worldwide family litigation." No non-US proceedings are listed.

Detail

Case 1 — 2:12-cv-00712, E.D. Tex. (Marshall), Judge Gilstrap

• The complaint (a copy of which is archived at iknow.stpi.narl.org.tw) asserts both the '458 patent (issued Jan. 24, 2006) and the '344 patent (issued May 25, 2010), and demands a jury trial. CSG identified itself as the owner by assignment of both.
• Accused products: TOA's cloud-based workforce-management software "ETAdirect" and "ETAworkforce" (specifically ETAdirect Enterprise, ETAdirect Professional, ETAworkforce).
• Factual theory included that TOA hired former CSG personnel who had worked on CSG's WorkForce Express® product and were charged with knowledge of the patents.
• Docket activity I could retrieve: TOA moved to change venue (Dkt. 8) and to stay (Dkt. 19); Judge Gilstrap denied the motion to change venue and found the stay motion moot on 4/18/2013; a docket control order set a Markman hearing for 12/5/2013 and pretrial conference for 5/19/2014; mediator Hon. Robert Faulkner (Ret.) was designated. The docket-record databases I retrieved list the case as closed.

Case 2 — 1:13-cv-02306, N.D. Ohio

• Stanford's NPE Litigation Database entry for patent 7725344 lists this as the case involving the patent, with CSG Systems, Inc. as plaintiff and TOA Technologies, Inc. as alleged infringer, N.D. Ohio venue, and classifies CSG as a "Product company" (practicing entity), not an NPE.
• Court-docket mirrors list it as closed.

Outcome / current status

• Both dockets are recorded as closed, and the patent itself is Expired – Fee Related (adjusted expiration 2020-12-22), so no live enforcement is possible.
• I could not retrieve the actual terminating disposition (settlement order, stipulated dismissal, consent judgment, etc.) from a primary source such as PACER. I will not guess at the terms. The two TOA cases under the same party names strongly suggest one continuous dispute, but I cannot confirm from the sources retrieved whether 1:13-cv-02306 is a re-filing after the Texas action or the transferred/continued Ohio proceeding — the venue-transfer motion was denied in Texas in April 2013, yet an Ohio case appears later the same year. Treat the relationship between the two case numbers as unverified.

Explicity "not found"

• No other defendants. I found no case accusing any party other than TOA Technologies, Inc. of infringing the '344 patent.
• No PTAB proceedings found. I did not locate any IPR/PGR/CBM or ex parte reexamination challenging 7725344 in the material returned; absence of a hit is not proof of absence.
• No 2026 (or other) CAFC appellate activity tied to 7725344 was found — consistent with the earlier section of this analysis.
• No non-US litigation is listed for this family.

Caveats

• Date note: the task states April 26, 2026, while the environment's current date is 2026-10-01. Nothing in the retrieved records depends on which date is used, but flagging the mismatch per the operating rules.
• Identifiers are reported literally as they appear in the sources; I did not auto-correct any case number, patent number, or party name.
• Docket-record aggregators (PlainSite, the ai-lab CourtListener mirror) occasionally carry inconsistent field values (e.g., one entry showed the N.D. Ohio case as "Closed (04/18/13)" with a filing date of 10/17/13). I have preserved that discrepancy rather than smoothing it over, and I recommend confirming both dispositions directly in PACER if a definitive answer on outcome is required.

I'll verify the structured "no proceedings" signal against live sources before finalizing.

Initial hits are noise — the "'534" references are unrelated patents. Let me specifically test for any IPR/CBM petition naming CSG or TOA Technologies.

One hit is intriguing: a PTAB petition artifact referencing the '458 patent. Let me determine whether it's a proceeding on this family or just the patent used as an exhibit/prior art, and check for CBM activity (this is a G06Q business-method patent, CBM-eligible).

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 7,725,344: 0. Canonical list: the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block returned by the USPTO Open Data Portal is empty (no IPR, no PGR, no CBM, no derivation). There is therefore no active/invalidated/sustained/settled/denied breakdown to report — the patent has never been the subject of an instituted AIA trial, and none of its 8 claims has ever been construed, canceled, or upheld by the Board. The defensive posture this creates is the opposite of "hardened by surviving IPRs": it is untested at the PTAB, but that fact is almost fully neutralized here by expiration — the patent's adjusted expiration date is 2020-12-22, and its legal status is Expired – Fee Related.

⚠️ Flag on the prompt's premise: the task framing anticipates a list of proceedings to narrate. There is no such list. I checked the ODP block (canonical) and ran targeted web searches for IPR/PGR/CBM petitions naming either this patent (7,725,344) or its parent (6,990,458), petitioner-side queries for the known litigants (TOA Technologies, CSG Systems), and CBM-specific queries. Nothing surfaced. I am reporting zero proceedings with an explicit uncertainty statement rather than manufacturing proceeding numbers.

No proceedings to report — but three near-misses worth documenting

(none) — no AIA proceeding exists

• Type: n/a
• Filed: n/a
• Status: n/a — the ODP structured block reports no AIA trial proceedings as of the most recent ingest.
• Judge panel: n/a
• Petition grounds: n/a
• Institution decision: n/a
• Final Written Decision: n/a
• Settlement / termination: n/a
• Appeal: n/a — consequently there is no CAFC appeal of an FWD for this patent. This is consistent with the prior section's finding of no 2026 CAFC docket. Do not read the absence as an affirmative "no appeal was possible"; it follows from the absence of any FWD.
• Defensive value: Because no IPR was ever instituted, no § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches to anyone. There is no petitioner-side estoppel, no patent-owner adverse judgment, and no narrowing amendment in a trial. All invalidity theories (§ 102, § 103, § 112) remain available to a defendant with no PTAB-imposed procedural penalty — but see the expiration point below, which is the real driver of exposure.

Near-miss 1 — the '458 parent appears as an exhibit in someone else's PTAB petition

A PTAB petition-document artifact hosted on the Board's own E2E document service (ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/1540203/...) contains the front page of US 6,990,458 B2 (Harrison et al., App. No. 08/919,450) — the parent of the patent at issue.

• What this is: the '458 patent being attached as an exhibit (i.e., cited as prior art or background) inside a different proceeding, not a challenge to the '344 family.
• What this is not: it is not a proceeding number. 1540203 is an internal PTAB petition-document identifier, and I could not confirm which trial it belongs to from the retrieved snippet. I am not asserting any proceeding number or petitioner from this hit.
• Defensive value: It is a useful signal that the 1997-priority disclosure is being used offensively as prior art against later patents in the field — the opposite vector from what the task anticipates.

Near-miss 2 — litigation, not PTAB

• CSG Systems, Inc. v. TOA Technologies, Inc., No. 1:13-cv-02306 (N.D. Ohio). CSG (a "Product company," not an NPE per Stanford) asserted this family. Source: https://npe.law.stanford.edu/patent/7725344
• TOA Technologies, Inc. v. CSG Systems, Inc., No. 2:2013mc00111 (E.D. Cal., filed 2013-11-01, "Civil Miscellaneous Case," Nature of Suit: Patent). Source: https://dockets.justia.com/docket/california/caedce/2:2013mc00111/[260929](/patent/260929) — a miscellaneous ancillary proceeding (the kind of filing that sometimes accompanies third-party discovery in aid of a validity challenge), but it is not an AIA trial and I have not verified what it sought.
• A second case, No. 2:12-cv-00712 (E.D. Tex.), is linked from the Google Patents family page via the Unified Patents litigation portal. Caution: Unified Patents is appearing there as a data aggregator, not as a petitioner. There is no evidence Unified Patents filed an IPR against this patent.
• Takeaway: this family was actively litigated in 2012–2013 yet produced no PTAB challenge — unusual for that era, and worth noting.

Near-miss 3 — third-party prior-art crowdsourcing, not a PTAB filing

A Patent StackExchange / AskPatents "Prior Art Request" (post 4637) titled "Software for assigning technicians to jobs — Issued Patent — PRIOR ART REQUEST" targets 6,990,458 and reproduces its claim 7 (a method claim reciting skill-level and time-based assignment plus "displaying an indication if one or more of the plurality of unassigned service requests remain unassigned"). Sources: https://patents.stackexchange.com/posts/4637/revisions

• Relevance: it shows third parties were building invalidity art against the parent as early as the 2013 window. It is not an AIA proceeding, it names the '458 and not the '344, and its posted dates are internally inconsistent (both "before 8/28/96" and "predating Aug 28, 1997" appear in different revisions) — treat the post as a lead, not evidence.
• Cross-reference opportunity: the quoted '458 claim 7 confirms the family split flagged in the summary section — '458 = system/method + display claims; '344 = the algorithmic "computer-readable medium" claim. That split matters because the '344's claim 1 is the modern-load-bearing claim, and it is precisely the one never tested.

False-positive warning for future searches: querying "534 patent" or "'534" returns a large volume of hits for an unrelated WSOU Investments patent asserted against ZTE in W.D. Tex. (multi-carrier/sub-carrier selection, means-plus-function claim construction). Those hits have nothing to do with US 7,725,344. Any claim-chart or decision citing "the '534 patent" in a wireless context should be discarded from this analysis.

Strategic summary

Claim status. Because no AIA trial occurred, all 8 claims of US 7,725,344 are UNTESTED before the PTAB — none CANCELED, none SUSTAINED.

Anyone who tells you "claims 1–5 have been canceled" is citing a proceeding that does not exist. Conversely, nobody can hand you an FWD holding any claim patentable.

Estoppel landscape. There is no estoppel. § 315(e)(2) estoppel applies only to a petitioner that obtains an instituted trial; with zero institutions, no party — and critically, no privy, real party in interest, or successor of any party — is barred from raising any prior-art ground in district court. A defendant today faces no "reasonably could have raised" trap on grounds someone else already litigated. The corollary also holds: there is no IPR record to borrow. No Board claim construction, no institution-stage credibility findings, no expert testimony transcripts, and no FWD to cite in a § 282 notice or a motion for summary judgment.

Why no CBM, and why the window has closed anyway. The patent is pre-AIA (priority 1997-08-28), G06Q-classified, and thus facially CBM-eligible in the 2012–2018 era — yet no CBM was filed, despite live litigation against TOA in 2013. The plausible explanation is subject-matter mismatch: CBM review required a "financial product or service," and field-service/technician dispatch for a cable operator is a technical operations patent, not a financial one — exactly the category the Federal Circuit and Board policed heavily (e.g., the Unwired Planet line). Two timing facts compound this: (a) the PGR window (9 months from the 2010-05-25 grant) closed on 2011-02-25, before CBM/IPR were even in wide use; and (b) as of 2020-12-22 the patent expired.

Pattern signals. No serial petitioner. No patent-owner appellate activity (nothing to appeal). No defensive aggregator in the chain — Unified Patents appears only as a litigation-data vendor on the Google Patents page. The asserted patent portfolio here was a product company's (CSG Systems, per the Stanford NPE database), which correlates with the observed behavior: enforcement through litigation plus a 2013 security agreement (Bank of America, released 2025-03-18), not through a PTAB defense war.

Recommended next steps

1. If you receive an assertion letter citing 7,725,344: state plainly that no AIA trial has ever been filed on this patent and that the Google Patents family record's only "litigation" entries are (i) CSG v. TOA, N.D. Ohio 1:13-cv-02306, and (ii) the E.D. Tex. 2:12-cv-00712 entry hyperlinked to Unified Patents' database, not to a petition. There is no FWD, no institution decision, and no Board record to link to — the absence is the finding.

2. Lead with the expiration, not the invalidity case. The patent expired 2020-12-22. That kills injunctive relief and caps the recoverable window: under 35 U.S.C. § 286, a complaint filed today reaches back only six years, so the residual damages window is a matter of months (roughly 2020-10-01 through 2020-12-22) — and only if marking (§ 287) and other damages defenses fail. Before investing in prior art, price the claim.

3. If a client genuinely needs an invalidity opinion (e.g., for indemnity or a declaratory posture): an IPR remains legally available even against an expired patent (Sony Corp. v. Iancu, 924 F.3d 1235 (Fed. Cir. 2019)), and no estoppel blocks it. But weigh it against the near-zero residual damages — most defendants will instead rely on § 282 defenses in district court, where no estoppel and no PTAB record constrain them.

4. Verify two open items I could not close:

   • The identity of the proceeding to which the PTAB petition-document artifact 1540203 (containing the '458 front page) belongs. Pull it directly from PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/) to confirm the '458 patent is only an exhibit in an unrelated matter. This is the single loose thread in the record.
   • What TOA Technologies, Inc. v. CSG Systems, Inc., No. 2:2013mc00111 (E.D. Cal., filed 2013-11-01) actually sought — misc. case type often signals ancillary discovery, which can corroborate (or refute) third-party validity activity in the 2013 window. Docket: https://dockets.justia.com/docket/california/caedce/2:2013mc00111/260929

5. Re-run the crash-check before relying on "zero." Confirm via the USPTO PTAB API / Patent Trial and Appeal Board Endpoint (https://developer.uspto.gov/api-catalog/ptab-api) and CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com/?q=7725344) at the time of advice. My finding is "none found" as of 2026-10-01, not a certified negative — but on this record, the absence of a proceeding is not ambiguity; it is the answer, because a 23-year-old, once-asserted, now-expired patent with live 2012–2013 litigation and zero IPRs is a pattern, not a data gap.

I'll research the assignment chain and litigation history for this patent before reconstructing the record.

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

Assignment & Ownership Reconstruction — US 7,725,344

Important limitation up front: I was unable to retrieve the reel/frame numbers or recorded correspondent-of-record entries from USPTO Assignment Center (assignmentcenter.uspto.gov) or the legacy assignment.uspto.gov index within this session. The transactional data below is reconstructed from the Google Patents "Legal Events" / "Reassignment" feed for US 7,725,344, which reproduces recording dates, conveyance types, and parties but not reel/frame or correspondent. I am not going to invent reel/frame identifiers or attorney names. Where the record is a dead end, I say so. Reel/frame verification requires a direct query at the Assignment Center link at the bottom.

Inventors

Pattern note: I found no evidence that the inventors departed CSG within 12 months of filing, and the assignment chain contains no fire-sale from the inventors to a third party. The three inventors list the same Denver, CO area as the Englewood, CO assignee — a single-site engineering team, consistent with an operating company's in-house R&D, not a brokered portfolio. Unclear: I could not independently confirm individual employment start/end dates (no LinkedIn/SEC disclosure retrieved), so the "departed within 12 months" test is not applicable on this record, not affirmatively negative.

Original assignee

CSG Systems, Inc. (a Delaware corporation), 9555 Maroon Circle, Englewood, CO 80112. Stated directly in the complaint: "CSG is a Delaware corporation which maintains its corporate headquarters at 9555 Maroon Circle, Englewood, Colorado 80112."

• Primary line of business: Business support systems (BSS) software for communications/telecom service providers — billing, customer care, and field workforce management. CSG describes itself as "one of the world's largest and most established providers of business support solutions."
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Yes. CSG markets Workforce Express®, which the complaint ties directly to the '458 and '344 patents: "CSG has developed patented, proprietary technology – marketed and sold under its Workforce Express® software product line… technician skill level, location/distance of the service call, anticipated length of the service call, and the technician's existing work schedule." That is the claim-1 algorithm ("grouping," "ordering," and "time availability") commercialized.
• Current status: Operating. CSG Systems International (NASDAQ: CSGS) remains an active public company. Patent is Expired – Fee Related with an adjusted expiration date of 2020-12-22.

Assignment timeline

No reel/frame or correspondent values could be retrieved (see limitation above). Entries below are recording-date ordered.

• Execution date not on record / recorded 2011-07-21 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest
  • Assignor: Harrison, Clifford A. (single inventor)
  • Assignee: CSG Systems, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: Confirmatory/nunc pro tunc assignment — inventors' rights in a patent that had already issued (2010) being formally recorded to the original assignee; consistent with a late clean-up recording rather than a transfer of control.

• Execution date not on record / recorded 2011-07-21 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest
  • Assignor: Harrison, Clifford A.; Weber, Emery J.; Bush, Phillip M. (all three)
  • Assignee: CSG Systems, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: Confirmatory assignment — same date, all-inventor version of the entry above; the pairing of a single-inventor and an all-inventor recording on the same day reads as a correction/re-recording, still landing at the original operating assignee. Not a transfer-to-asserter.

• Execution date on record: 2018-03-06 (recorded 2018-03-06) — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Patent Security Agreement (security interest — not an ownership transfer)
  • Assignor: CSG Systems, Inc.
  • Assignee: Bank of America, N.A., as Collateral Agent
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: Securitization / collateralization — CSG pledged its patent portfolio (this patent included) as collateral under a credit facility. CSG remains the owner; BofA holds only a lien.

• Execution date on record: 2025-03-18 (recorded 2025-03-18) — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Release by Secured Party
  • Assignor: Bank of America, N.A., as Collateral Agent
  • Assignee: CSG Systems, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: Lien release — the 2018 security interest was extinguished and full, unencumbered title returned to CSG Systems. Chain terminates at the original operating company.

Note: The Google Patents "Reassignment" feed shows only these four post-issue events. There is no record of the patent ever leaving CSG Systems. (The patent expired 2020-12-22, so the 2025 release post-dates expiration — consistent with a routine portfolio-wide collateral release, not a revival or assertion event.)

Contradiction flag: The prior section of this analysis cites two suits — 2:12-cv-00712 (E.D. Tex.) and 1:13-cv-02306 (N.D. Ohio). The complaint document I retrieved is captioned "Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division" but is docketed as 1:13-cv-02306-DAP in the N.D. Ohio (Judge Dan Aaron Polster, per the Scribd/PriorSmart record). This is a document-vs-docket caption mismatch — likely the same complaint filed twice or a refiling after transfer. I flag it rather than resolve it; it does not affect ownership.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7725344
    1997 : Inventors file parent application
         : Rights assigned to CSG Systems
    2006 : Parent patent 6990458 issues
    2010 : Patent 7725344 issues
    2011 : Assignment recorded to CSG Systems
         : Assignment recorded from all three inventors
    2013 : CSG sues TOA Technologies
    2018 : Security interest to Bank of America
    2020 : Patent expires fee related
    2025 : Bank of America releases lien

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. Every recorded assignee is either CSG Systems, Inc. (Delaware operating company, HQ Englewood CO) or Bank of America, N.A. (collateral agent). No "IP/Holdings/Ventures/Licensing" suffix appears; no registered-agent-service address; no single-purpose LLC. The chain ran from CSG → lienholder → back to CSG.

2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. CSG Systems does not appear on any NPE directory I checked. Critically, the Stanford NPE Litigation Database classifies the '344 asserter as a "Product company" (Product company code 8), not as an NPE, for CSG Systems, Inc. v. TOA Technologies, Inc., 1:13-cv-02306.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Unclear / not retrievable. I could not obtain the correspondent-of-record for any of the four recordings. For completeness: Greenberg Traurig LLP is listed as the prosecution attorney of record for the '344 patent (per Justia), but that is prosecution counsel, not confirmed to be the assignment-recording correspondent, and a single law firm performing ordinary patent prosecution is not an NPE signal. No recurrence finding can be made.

4. Cascading transfers — Not present. The chain is four events over 14 years (2011 → 2018 → 2025), all to/from the same operating owner or its lender. Zero back-to-back LLC hops, zero shared-principal clustering.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present. The nearest assignment to the 2013 suit is the 2011-07-21 confirmatory recording, ~19 months prior and to the existing owner. There is no assignment within 6 months before the first infringement filing.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. No Chapter 7/11 record surfaced for CSG; CSG Systems International remained a going concern (NASDAQ: CSGS). No patents sold in proceedings.

7. Privateering — Not present. CSG asserted its own patents against TOA, a direct competitor in field-workforce-management software (ETAdirect / ETAworkforce). The 2018 security agreement is ordinary secured lending, not a transfer to an assertion vehicle.

8. Defensive aggregator — Not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN; it terminates back at the operating assignee, CSG Systems.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

Justification: The '344 patent never left the operating assignee — the recorded chain is a pair of 2011-07-21 confirmatory inventor assignments to CSG Systems, Inc., a 2018-03-06 security agreement to Bank of America as collateral agent, and a 2025-03-18 release returning clean title to CSG Systems. CSG both ships a product embodying the claims (Workforce Express®) and sued a direct competitor (TOA Technologies' ETAdirect/ETAworkforce) in CSG Systems, Inc. v. TOA Technologies, Inc., 1:13-cv-02306 (N.D. Ohio, 2013) — and Stanford's NPE Litigation Database classifies CSG as a "Product company," not an NPE. Every NPE-pattern signal is either not present or (correspondent recurrence) unverifiable on the records I could reach.

Verification links:

• USPTO Assignment Center (search literature "7,725,344" or app "11/014,133"): https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/
• Legacy assignment search: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html
• Google Patents legal events: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7725344/en
• Stanford NPE Litigation Database entry: https://npe.law.stanford.edu/patent/7725344

Remaining uncertainty: Reel/frame numbers and the assignment correspondent of record must be pulled directly from Assignment Center; I could not obtain them here, so signal #3 (repeat correspondent) is explicitly left unresolved, not scored as absent.

I'll verify the patent on USPTO/patent databases and then analyze the cited prior art references one by one.

Let me verify the key prior-art references cited on the face of the patent.

I've hit the tool step limit, so I'll consolidate what I verified rather than continue pulling full texts for all 137 references.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 7,725,344 B2

1. Verification of the patent (USPTO / patent databases)

Confirmed against independent secondary sources (idiyas.com patent badge; USPTO PTAB exhibit copy of the related '458 patent at ptacts.uspto.gov). No auto-correction applied: the number 7725344 returns only this patent; similar numbers (e.g., US 7,725,344 family vs. US 8,948,355 and US 6,990,458) are distinct documents and are treated as such.

2. Scope and methodological caveat (important)

• The record lists 137 cited references (Google Patents) and a "Patent Citations (142)" count; the family table shows 4 "Family Cites Families." I could not retrieve full text for every one within the tool budget. What follows is a tiered, evidence-grounded assessment.
• Critical framing point: almost the entire citation list was raised against the parent (the '458 patent), whose claims were the system / graphical-display claims. US 7,725,344's granted claims are instead directed to the assignment algorithm (create list → count qualified technicians → group by that count → order each group by estimated time-to-complete → assign using availability). Very few of the 137 references address that specific heuristic. Consequently the cited art is weak-to-moderate § 102 art for claim 1 and stronger § 103 art.
• Applicable law: pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102 (priority 1997-08-28). § 102(b) cutoff = 1996-08-28; references granted between 1996-08-28 and 1997-08-28 qualify under § 102(a); references filed before but granted after 1997-08-28 qualify under § 102(e) as of their filing dates (all such filings here pre-date 1997-08-28).
• I flag a minor internal inconsistency: the asterisk convention (examiner- vs. third-party-cited) differs between the Google Patents list and the printed '458 front page (e.g., US 4,937,743 carries an asterisk in the '458 PDF but none in the Google list). I do not rely on asterisks below.

3. Tier 1 — Most relevant references

3.1 US 4,937,743 A — Rassman, Berman, Blau, Chiang; IntelliMED Corp.

• Full citation: "Method and system for scheduling, monitoring and dynamically managing resources," US 4,937,743 A; Appl. 07/096,027; filed 1987-09-10; granted 1990-06-26. (EP counterpart EP 0 306 965 A2, pub. 1989-03-15.)
• Description: Database of interrelated resources; graphical display of utilization/availability as a function of time; "scheduling indicia," "status indicia," and "conflict indicia"; continuous update so the display reflects the most recent data; real-time clock; automatic rescheduling when conflicts arise; automatic notification to field personnel via "beepers"/telephone. Note: filed 1987, published as EP in 1989 — predates the '344 priority date by a decade.
• § 102 analysis: § 102(b). Potentially anticipates claim 2 (notification regarding an unassignable item), claim 6 (graphical status representation), and supports limitation (e) of claim 1 (scheduling against resource availability). It does not appear to disclose grouping work orders by the number of qualified resources or ordering each group by estimated time-to-complete, so it is unlikely to anticipate claim 1 alone.

3.2 US 5,099,431 A — Natarajan et al.; IBM — "Automated re-work shop order scheduling system"

• Dates (per record): filed 1989-10-23; granted 1992-03-24.
• Description (from title/classification; full text not retrieved): automated scheduling of shop/work orders in a manufacturing rework environment, classed at 705/8.
• § 102 analysis: § 102(b). This is the closest topical match to claim 1's core concept (automated work-order scheduling), and the front page of the '458 marks it with an asterisk. Because I could not verify whether it discloses the "group by number of qualified technicians" and "order each group by estimated completion time" steps, I cannot confirm anticipation of claim 1; flagged as the highest-priority reference to pull in full.

3.3 US 5,615,121 A — Babayev, Berger, Dean, Hansen, Parrish; U S West Technologies, Inc.

• Full citation: "System and method for scheduling service providers to perform customer service requests," US 5,615,121 A; Appl. 08/381,657; filed 1995-01-31; granted 1997-03-25.
• Description (verified): Scheduling tasks for service requests; estimating resource/time per task; customer-preferred time intervals; solving a combinatorial optimization model that allocates a predetermined amount of resources per time slot; explicitly directed to "scheduling technician time for service calls … in the telecommunication and utility industries"; constraints relating the number of service providers available in a slot to allocated/unallocated providers; dynamic reallocation.
• § 102 analysis: § 102(a) (granted 1997-03-25, before the 1997-08-28 filing) and § 102(e) as of 1995-01-31. Potentially anticipates claim 7 (list over a predetermined time period) and claim 8 (period = a day), and maps to claim 1(e) (availability-driven assignment). It does not disclose the "group-by-qualified-technician-count" ordering, so § 103 rather than § 102 for claim 1.

3.4 US 5,467,268 A — Sisley et al.; Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing (3M)

• Dates: filed 1994-02-25; granted 1995-11-14.
• Description: "Method for resource assignment and scheduling" — rule-based assignment of resources to tasks using availability and preference data.
• § 102 analysis: § 102(b). Relevant to claims 1, 4, 5, 7 (resource assignment/scheduling; skill and availability factors). Anticipation of claim 1 is doubtful given the absence (as far as I can verify) of the qualified-count grouping step.

3.5 US 5,623,404 A — Collins et al.; 3M — "System and method for producing schedules of resource requests having uncertain durations"

• Dates: filed 1994-03-18; granted 1997-04-22. § 102(a)/(e).
• Note: same author cluster as the key non-patent reference below; relevant to claims 1 and 7.

3.6 US 5,590,269 A — Miller et al.; 3M — "Resource assignment system providing mixed-initiative user interface updates"

• Dates: filed 1994-04-22; granted 1996-12-31. § 102(a)/(e). Relevant to claim 6 (user-facing display of assignment status) and claim 1's assignment step.

3.7 US 5,122,959 A — Nathanson et al.; Automated Dispatch Services, Inc.

• Full citation: "Transportation dispatch and delivery tracking system," US 5,122,959 A; filed 1988-10-28; granted 1992-06-16.
• Description (claims 21–40 verified): Integrated vehicle-dispatch system with a graphic map display using icons for pickup/delivery locations; a "candidate selection program" that identifies the best candidates using weighted criteria — time to pickup, time to delivery, distance, and capabilities of each vehicle; vehicle assignment; progress monitoring; graphic map reporting; real-time clock; pre-scheduling queues up to a year.
• § 102 analysis: § 102(b). Potentially anticipates claim 3 (using distance in the assignment decision) and claim 6 (graphical status on a map). Topically closest prior art for the dispatch limitations, but it concerns vehicles, not qualified technicians, and lacks the grouped ordering — so § 103 for claim 1.

3.8 US 5,787,000 A — Lilly Software Associates — "Method and apparatus for scheduling work orders in a manufacturing process"

• Dates: filed 1994-05-27; granted 1998-07-28. § 102(e) as of 1994-05-27.
• Relevance: claims 1, 7, 8 (work-order scheduling). Topical rather than anticipatory.

3.9 US 5,890,906 A (EDS, filed 1996-08-13; granted 1999-04-13) and US 5,920,846 A (Southwestern Bell Telephone, filed 1996-02-27; granted 1999-07-06)

• Both are § 102(e) art. US 5,920,846 is directly on point ("processing a service request relating to installation, maintenance or repair of telecommunications services … at a customer premises") — highly relevant to claims 1, 7, 8. US 5,890,906 ("Managing work in a computing application") relates to claim 6.

4. Tier 2 — Other cited scheduling/dispatch references (secondary relevance)

These establish the general state of the art (graphical dispatch, resource scheduling, location tracking) but do not teach the claim-1 grouping/ordering heuristic.

5. Tier 3 — Remainder of the 137 citations

The bulk of the cited corpus (e.g., US 4,390,968; US 4,484,304; US 4,558,413; US 4,651,279; US 4,698,752; US 4,714,996; US 4,800,170; US 4,811,207; US 4,853,843; US 4,864,497; US 5,032,979; US 5,073,932; US 5,122,959; US 5,462,226-range refs; and the long IBM/DEC/Wang-era database-security and software-configuration references) is general background on transaction processing, database access control, and software versioning. On the record available, none of these discloses or suggests the automated technician-assignment steps of claims 1–8, and none anticipates any claim. I have not individually verified full text for these; they are listed here as "not material to the '344 claims."

6. Non-patent literature (material)

• Collins, J.E., et al., "Automated Assignment and Scheduling of Service Personnel," IEEE Expert, vol. 9, no. 2, April 1994, pp. 33–39 (cited on the front page of US 6,990,458).
• § 102(b) — published well over one year before the 1997-08-28 priority date.
• Relevance: this is arguably the single most on-point reference for claim 1's subject matter (automated assignment and scheduling of service personnel) and should be read alongside US 5,623,404 (same author group) and US 5,467,268. I recommend obtaining the full text to test whether it discloses a qualified-personnel-count grouping; if it does, it would be the leading § 102(b) candidate for claim 1.

7. Claim-by-claim § 102 matrix (best cited reference)

8. Overall conclusion

1. No single cited reference appears to anticipate independent claim 1 on the record available. The distinctive limitation — grouping unassigned work orders by the number of qualified technicians, then ordering each group by estimated time-to-complete, then assigning — is not shown in the references I could verify. Anticipation under § 102 is unlikely; the citations are better deployed as § 103 art, often in combination (as reflected in how third parties have used this patent's disclosure elsewhere — e.g., PTAB petitions citing "Harrison" alongside other references to read on "determining a plurality of qualified candidates," "choosing one candidate," and "determining … the most available").
2. The strongest § 102(b) reference to pull next is the Collins et al., IEEE Expert (April 1994) article, followed by US 5,099,431. The strongest § 102(e) references are US 5,920,846, US 5,890,906, and US 5,787,000.
3. Why the citation list is weak for these claims: it was assembled against the parent '458 (system/graphical-display claims), not against the '344's algorithmic claims. That mismatch is the central finding of this analysis.

9. Explicit uncertainties

• I could not retrieve full text for all 137 references; verification was limited to Google Patents, USPTO PTAB exhibits, Espacenet/INPADOC, and EveryPatent snippets. Claim-mapping for US 5,099,431, US 5,467,268, US 5,590,269 and US 5,787,000 is based on title/abstract/classification only and must be confirmed against full text before being relied on.
• I did not verify the examiner's actual § 102/§ 103 rejections from the 11/014,133 file wrapper; the mapping above is my independent read, not the USPTO's.
• Asterisk (examiner-cited) conventions differ between sources; I did not use them as a weighting factor.
• No 2026 appellate/docket activity on 7725344 was found; that is "none found," not proof of none existing.

I'll ground the analysis by pulling the actual disclosure of the key cited references. Let me search several in parallel.

Now let me pull the other key cited references and check the parent patent's claim scope.

Obviousness Analysis — US 7,725,344 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Prepared: April 26, 2026
Patent analyzed: US 7,725,344 B2, System and method for computer-aided technician dispatch and communication (CSG Systems, Inc.; app. 11/014,133, filed Dec. 16, 2004; continuation of 08/919,450, filed Aug. 28, 1997; issued May 25, 2010; expired fee-related Dec. 22, 2020)
Prior art basis: the "Citations (137)" and "Patent Citations (142)" listings on the patent's Google Patents family page (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7725344/en), plus the "Cited By" and family-citation lists. I independently retrieved and read the disclosures of the principal references discussed below; those I did not read are flagged as such.

A note on the record built earlier: the prior section concluded the granted '344 claim set is a Beauregard-style computer-readable-medium claim directed to an assignment algorithm, while the printed abstract describes the broader system embodiment that is actually claimed in parent US 6,990,458. Nothing I found contradicts that. It matters here because it sharply narrows the § 103 battlefield — I am not analyzing the map/icon/GPS system of the specification; I am analyzing a five-step scheduling heuristic.

1. Threshold legal framework and the critical date

Pre-AIA governs. The application is a continuation of a 1997 application and issued in 2010; it never contained a claim with an effective filing date on or after March 16, 2013. Accordingly, pre-AIA § 102/§ 103 applies, and prior art is measured against the August 28, 1997 priority date (the 08/919,450 filing date), not the December 16, 2004 continuation filing date.

Statutory date of each reference — this is the first place a validity challenge is usually won or lost, so I set it out explicitly:

That the printed copies of '000, '906 and '846 post-date the invention is not an obstacle to § 103: pre-AIA § 102(e) art is available for obviousness as of its filing date, and each of these was filed before August 28, 1997. The dates above are drawn from the citation tables on the family page; where a reference's own front page was retrieved (e.g., US 5,615,121 at http://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/e5/a9/42/7a0732aae64b30/US5615121.pdf; US 5,920,846 at https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/2a/a9/85/e5ebded076b70d/US5920846.pdf), the dates are from the document itself.

§ 112 caveat worth preserving for litigation. The claim-1 language "grouping … as a function of the number of technicians determined to be qualified" does not appear verbatim in the 1997 specification, which instead describes the process narratively by reference to FIGS. 7–8 (steps 706, 708, 710, 716, 722, 724, 726, 802, 804). If a challenger or the patentee takes the position that the grouping/ordering limitations lack written-description support in the 08/919,450 parent, the effective date for those limitations shifts to December 16, 2004, and a materially larger universe of art opens up (e.g., the "Cited By" references such as US 2003/0220827 A1 to Murphy, System and Method for Scheduling Service Technicians, filed 2002-05-21). I flag this because it is a live strategic fork; I am not opining that the support is lacking.

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

A POSITA as of August 1997 would have a bachelor's degree in computer science, industrial engineering, operations research, or an equivalent technical field, plus approximately two to three years of experience designing or operating workforce-management, vehicle-routing, or field-service dispatch systems — or a lesser degree with proportionally more experience in the same domain. Critically, that person would be familiar with:

• bin-packing / constraint-satisfaction heuristics, including the "most-constrained-variable-first" (minimum-remaining-values) rule, which is the operations-research generalization of "process the work orders with the fewest qualified technicians first"; and
• list-scheduling heuristics, notably the "longest processing time first" (LPT) rule from multiprocessor scheduling theory, which is the generalization of "order each group by decreasing estimated time to complete."

Both of these are textbook content of the field well before 1997. I state that from general knowledge of the discipline; I did not in this pass pull a specific 1960s–1990s textbook page to the record, and a formal invalidity contention should do so (the LPT rule is conventionally attributed to Graham's 1969 multiprocessor scheduling work, and the MRV rule is standard in the constraint-satisfaction literature).

That framing matters: the dependent claims and the independent claim alike are, at bottom, recitations of two named heuristic orderings applied at a known step of a known process. Under KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007), this is the paradigm case for obviousness — "a court must ask whether the improvement is more than the predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions."

3. Element-by-element mapping of claim 1

Claim 1 requires instructions that perform five things. Mapping each to the cited art:

No anticipation. No single reference of record discloses the grouping step, so § 102 anticipation of claim 1 is not sustainable on the art I reviewed. The case is a § 103 case.

4. The primary combination and the motivation to combine

Combination A (the strongest): US 5,467,268 (Sisley/Collins, 3M) in view of US 5,615,121 (Babayev et al., US West)

'268 supplies the field-service framework and the qualification test. It expressly frames the problem as assigning resource requests to resource providers "specializing in customer service calls," describes the human dispatcher's magnetic board, and enumerates the factors — resource types required, resource types available, prior assignments, scheduled times and durations. It further acknowledges the known prior approaches ("primary technician," "one-call-at-a-time" objective-function assignment, and pure mathematical optimization), which is an admission of the state of the art in the field and, under KSR, evidence that the design space was already a crowded one of interchangeable heuristics. The reference also cites Collins & Sisley, "AI in Field Service: The Dispatch Advisor" (1993), confirming that automated field-service dispatch was an established art years before the critical date.

'121 supplies the time-quantified allocator. It obtains, per service request, (a) a preferred time interval and (b) "an estimate related to an amount of said predetermined plurality of resources for performing the task," and then allocates technicians across discrete time slots subject to a per-slot capacity constraint. It expressly states the invention "is particularly useful in scheduling technician time for service calls received by customer representatives in the telecommunication and utility industries" — the identical commercial setting to the '344 patent (cable television and subscriber programming service calls).

Motivation to combine. Four independent rationales, each of which a court may accept under KSR and MPEP § 2143:

1. Same field, same problem, same actors. Both references address scheduling a limited pool of field technicians against a queue of pending customer service requests for a telecom/utility provider. The '344 patent's own Background concedes that this problem "is solved manually" with "a conventional map and colored pins."
2. Complementary, not overlapping, disclosures. '268 is strong on who is eligible (skills/resource types) but its disclosed solution is a general "best-first" search; '121 is strong on when a technician is free (duration estimates, time slots, capacity constraints) but does not rank candidates by qualification set size. A POSITA seeking to automate a dispatcher's manual board would predictably look to both.
3. Predictable result / mere automation. Both references replace the same human judgment that the '344 Background describes ("It is therefore an object of this invention to automate both the assignment of technicians to subscribers and monitoring the technician's progress throughout the day"). Automating a known manual heuristic on a general-purpose computer, with no change in the underlying physical or business result, is the classic KSR "predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions."
4. The claim adds no new mechanism. Steps (a), (b) and (e) are disclosed; step (d) is the LPT ordering rule; step (c) is the MRV ordering rule. The invention is the sequencing of two known heuristics — precisely the kind of "improvement [that] is more than the predictable use of prior art elements" only if it produces an unexpected result. Nothing in the specification asserts, or provides data showing, that the grouping step yields an unexpected improvement in technician utilization or travel time over simple LPT scheduling. That evidentiary gap is fatal to a nonobviousness argument built solely on the ordering of steps.

Combination B (the display/status thread): US 4,937,743 (IntelliMed) in view of US 5,467,268 and US 5,590,269

For the claims that require display (claims 2 and 6), the strongest trio is:

• '743 — "graphically displaying utilization and availability of the resources as a function of time," with "indicia … to provide visual identification of symbols as well as information about scheduling, status and conflicts," plus "continuous updating of the information stored therein so that when resource utilization is displayed it reflects the most recent data in the data base," and "automatic adjustment of schedules as conflicts arise as well as the automatic communication of those adjustments" (https://patents.google.com/patent/US4937743A). This anticipates the entire dynamic-status-display concept of the '344 specification, including the "flashing icon" and "color change" conventions.
• '269 — displays "a graphical representation of the assignment set," including a scheduler window with a technician field, a schedule field showing calls assigned to each technician and their scheduled times, and — importantly for claim 3 — "time blocks 54, 56, 58 representing travel times between successive calls" (US5590269 PDF).
• '268 — the underlying assignment engine.

Motivation: '743 and '269 are both directed to the dispatch-display problem; '743 is expressly a scheduling/monitoring system in a high-consequence resource environment, and '269 expressly describes the graphical rendering of the assignment set that '743's data base feeds. Both are assigned to the same technical problem the '344 patent identifies as unsolved — "it may be some time before the map is updated to reflect changes."

Combination C (durations and their uncertainty): adding US 5,623,404

If the patentee argues that "estimated time to complete" is a non-trivial input, '404 forecloses the argument: it discloses computing "expected durations" and "pessimistic durations" for each resource request and scheduling against both. A POSITA would combine it with '121 and '268 for the obvious reason that service-call durations are estimated, not known.

The work-order lineage: US 5,787,000

The patent's own citation list includes US 5,787,000 (Lilly Software Associates), Method and apparatus for scheduling work orders in a manufacturing process (filed 1994-05-27; issued 1998-07-28). I did not retrieve or read this reference in this pass — I am reporting only its bibliographic data as it appears on the family page. If its disclosure is as its title indicates (scheduling a set of work orders against constrained resources), it would supply the "work order" vocabulary and the list-generation step, and would be a useful tertiary reference. This should be verified before it is relied upon in a contention.

5. Dependent claims

6. Secondary considerations and the patentee's best rebuttals

I found no evidence in the record reviewed of:

• unexpected results attributable to the ordering/grouping heuristic (the specification asserts only that automatic routing is a "technical advantage," not that it is superior to LPT-style scheduling);
• copying by competitors;
• industry praise or licensing of the claimed algorithm separately from the broader system;
• a nexus between any commercial success of CSG Systems' products and the specific grouping-by-qualified-technician-count limitation.

The patent's litigation history — CSG Systems, Inc. v. TOA Technologies, Inc., No. 1:13-cv-02306 (N.D. Ohio), and the E.D. Tex. case No. 2:12-cv-00712 listed on the family page — establishes that the patent was asserted, which is sometimes offered as a proxy for non-obviousness. That inference is weak: assertion is equally consistent with the patent covering a commercially important system (the parent, US 6,990,458) rather than with the '344's algorithm claims being non-obvious. A patentee would need to tie the asserted value to the claimed steps.

The patentee's strongest counter-arguments, in descending order of force:

1. No express teaching of the group-by-qualified-count step. This is real. Absent a reference or textbook squarely disclosing the MRV heuristic applied to technician qualification sets, the patentee can argue that the specific ordering was not suggested. The counter is twofold: (i) claim 1 recites what is grouped, not any technical mechanism, and a POSITA implementing "assign the hardest-to-place jobs first" would arrive at it directly; and (ii) under KSR, "when there is a design need or market pressure to solve a problem and there are a finite number of identified, predictable solutions, a person of ordinary skill has good reason to pursue the known options within his or her technical grasp."
2. Claims 4–5's point system. As noted, no reference of record uses literal points.
3. A possible § 112 / priority-date squeeze. If the grouping language was added in the 2004 continuation without support in the 1997 parent, the patentee cannot simultaneously claim the 1997 date and rely on the 1997-era gap in the art. But this cuts against the patentee, not for it.

7. Bottom line

• Claim 1 is, in my assessment, obvious over US 5,467,268 in view of US 5,615,121, with US 5,590,269 supplying the software/display context and the MRV/LPT heuristics supplying the grouping and ordering steps. The principal vulnerability is the absence of an express "group by number of qualified technicians" teaching; the principal strength of the challenge is that claim 1 recites two standard ordering heuristics and no more.
• Claims 2, 3, 6, 7 and 8 are the most clearly obvious; claims 3, 6 and 7 in particular are disclosed almost verbatim by US 4,937,743 and US 5,615,121 respectively.
• Claims 4 and 5 are the most defensible; the point-scoring limitation is not squarely disclosed by any reference I read, though it is a predictable implementation choice.
• The overall structure of the claim set is a single independent claim with seven dependents; invalidating claim 1 collapses the set, since every other claim depends directly on claim 1 or through claims 4 or 7. That is the practical significance of the analysis.

8. Uncertainty disclosures

• References I did not read in this pass. I retrieved and read the disclosures/claims of US 4,937,743 (via Google Patents and the EP 0 306 965 A3 counterpart), US 5,467,268 (PDF; EP 0 669 586 A3 counterpart with search report), US 5,590,269, US 5,623,404, US 5,615,121, and US 5,920,846. I did not retrieve US 5,787,000, US 5,893,906, US 5,123,959, US 5,428,546, US 5,109,399, US 5,249,701, US 5,245,985, US 5,251,181, or US 5,273,? — for those I am relying on the titles and bibliographic data in the patent's own citation tables on the family page. They should be verified before any of them is relied upon in a written contention.
• The LPT and MRV heuristics. I have asserted these as pre-1997 textbook knowledge from general familiarity with the field. I did not pull primary sources to the record in this pass; a formal invalidity analysis should cite specific treatises or the original Graham (1969) paper for LPT and a standard constraint-satisfaction text for MRV.
• Date of the grouping limitation in the file history. I have not examined the 11/014,133 file wrapper to determine whether and when the "grouping … as a function of the number of technicians" language was added, or whether it has written-description support in the 08/919,450 specification. I stated the two possible critical dates as a fork, not as a finding.
• No 2026 appellate activity located. Consistent with the earlier section, I found no Federal Circuit or other 2026 docket referencing 7,725,344. Treat this as "none found," not as proof of none existing. The patent expired fee-related on December 22, 2020, which also bears on the practical significance of this analysis — it matters principally for the historical damages period in the 2012–2013 district court cases, not for prospective relief.
• No search results contradicted the patent text on any point material to this analysis.