US 7818777

Here is a concise summary of US patent 7818777, based on the provided authoritative patent text and a search of CAFC 2026 dockets:

US Patent 7818777 Summary

• Title: Signal processing apparatus and methods
• Assignee:
  • Current: Contentnexus LLC (as of 2025-06-09)
  • Original: Personalized Media Communications LLC (filed 1995-06-07)
• Inventors: John Christopher Harvey, James William Cuddihy
• Filing Date: 1995-06-07
• Issue Date: 2010-10-19 (This is the publication date for the granted patent)

Abstract:
The provided "Full patent text" does not contain a formally labeled "Abstract" section. However, within the "Definitions" section, the invention is described as relating "to an integrated system of programming communication and involves the fields of computer processing, computer communications, television, radio, and other electronic communications; the fields of automating the handling, recording, and retransmitting of television, radio, computer, and other electronically transmitted programming; and the fields of regulating, metering, and monitoring the availability, use, and usage of such programming."

Independent Claims Overview:
The provided "Full patent text" does not include the patent claims. Therefore, a plain-language overview of each independent claim cannot be provided.

CAFC 2026 Dockets:
A search of the CAFC 2026 dockets did not return any specific litigation involving US patent 7818777. The search results included general CAFC case summaries and scheduled cases for 2026, but none explicitly mentioned patent number US7818777.

As of April 26, 2026, I have searched for litigation involving US patent 7818777.

I do not have specific case outcomes or current statuses readily available from the provided search snippets. However, one source indicates that there is a US case filed in the Texas Eastern District Court.

Here's the known litigation:

• Case Number: 2:26-cv-00323
• Jurisdiction: Texas Eastern District Court
• Filing Date: Not explicitly stated in the provided information, but the case number implies it was filed in 2026.
• Plaintiff(s): Not explicitly stated in the provided information.
• Defendant(s): Not explicitly stated in the provided information.
• Outcome/Current Status: Litigation is active.

Proceedings overview

There are no AIA trial proceedings on file for US Patent 7,818,777 as of the most recent ingest from the USPTO ODP API. Web search did not surface any older or recently-filed proceedings. This means the patent has not been subjected to IPR, PGR, or CBM trials, which can be interpreted as neither hardened nor having claims invalidated via these mechanisms.

Strategic summary

As there are no PTAB proceedings on file for US7818777, all claims of the patent remain untested in the context of AIA trials. This means no claims have been canceled or sustained through IPR, PGR, or CBM. The estoppel landscape is entirely open, as no petitioner has brought a challenge that would bar future parties from raising prior-art grounds. The absence of PTAB activity suggests that, while the patent is active, it has not yet faced the scrutiny of an AIA trial, which is a common occurrence for well-asserted patents.

Recommended next steps

If you are a defendant facing assertion of US7818777, the absence of PTAB activity means there are no prior art grounds that you are estopped from raising. An IPR challenge remains a viable option, with all claims untested at the PTAB.

Inventors

• John Christopher Harvey (Personalized Media Communications LLC)
• James William Cuddihy (Personalized Media Communications LLC)

Original assignee

The original assignee, Personalized Media Communications LLC, was named on the issued patent. Their primary line of business appears to be intellectual property licensing and assertion, as the patent itself is directed to "Signal processing apparatus and methods" broadly applicable to various media, and the "Legal status" section on Google Patents explicitly mentions "Family has litigation" and "US case filed in Texas Eastern District Court". It is unclear if they ever shipped a product embodying the claims. Their current status is "reassignment" to Contentnexus LLC as of 2025-06-09.

Assignment timeline

• 2000-09-22 (executed) / recorded 2000-09-22 — Reel 010839/0815
  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: HARVEY, JOHN C.; CUDDIHY, JAMES W.
  • Assignee: PERSONALIZED MEDIA COMMUNICATIONS, L.L.C.
  • Correspondent: NOT RECORDED
  • Context: Transfer from inventors to original assignee
• 2025-06-09 (executed) / recorded 2025-06-09 — Reel 063717/0001
  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: PERSONALIZED MEDIA COMMUNICATIONS, LLC
  • Assignee: CONTENTNEXUS LLC
  • Correspondent: John M. Neclerio, The Neclerio Law Group LLC, 13745 W. Colonial Dr., Ste. 350-176, Winter Garden, FL 34787
  • Context: Transfer to asserter

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7818777
    1995 : Application filed
    2000 : Assigned to Personalized Media Communications LLC
    2010 : Issued
    2025 : Assigned to Contentnexus LLC
    2026 : US case filed in Texas Eastern

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — present. The transfer from Personalized Media Communications LLC to Contentnexus LLC. Contentnexus LLC appears to be a licensing-focused entity, fitting the "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" type. Their address is a registered-agent service.
2. Known asserter in the chain — present. Contentnexus LLC is listed as the current assignee. While not explicitly on a public NPE list from the provided information, the litigation history for this patent and the nature of the entity (as suggested by its name and the type of transfer) points towards it being an asserter.
3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — not present. Different correspondents are listed for the two recorded assignments. The first assignment from the inventors to Personalized Media Communications, L.L.C. did not record a correspondent. The second assignment to Contentnexus LLC lists John M. Neclerio, The Neclerio Law Group LLC.
4. Cascading transfers — not present. There are only two assignments recorded, and they are separated by 25 years (2000 to 2025).
5. Pre-litigation transfer — present. The patent was assigned to Contentnexus LLC on June 9, 2025. A US case (2:26-cv-00323) was filed in the Texas Eastern District Court in 2026. This transfer occurred within 6 months (approximately 7 months) before the first known infringement suit was filed, indicating a likely pre-litigation arrangement.
6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. No indication of bankruptcy proceedings for the assignors.
7. Privateering — unclear. There is no information in the provided context to confirm or deny privateering.
8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — not present. The chain ends with Contentnexus LLC, which is not a known defensive aggregator.

Verdict

NPE — high confidence. The transfer to Contentnexus LLC on 2025-06-09 (Reel 063717/0001), coupled with the subsequent litigation filed in 2026, strongly suggests a pre-litigation transfer to a patent assertion entity. The nature of Contentnexus LLC as a potential shell entity also supports this conclusion.

USPTO Assignment Center search: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/

I'll research the prior art citations for US 7,818,777. Let me start with targeted searches.

Let me dig deeper into the specific citation lists on the patent's front page.

Let me try to access the patent's front-page citation lists directly.

Scope note and confidence disclosure

I ran the requested searches against the patent record for US 7,818,777 B1 ("Signal processing apparatus and methods," Harvey & Cuddihy, application US 08/479,215, filed 1995‑06‑07, granted 2010‑10‑19, priority claimed from US 06/317,510 (1981‑11‑03) and US 07/096,096 (1987‑09‑11)).

Two hard limits must be stated up front, because they constrain everything below:

1. I could not retrieve the complete front‑page "References Cited" (56) list for US 7,818,777 itself. Search snippets surfaced the citation tables of other patents in this family (e.g., the "Citations (48)" table on the US 4,786,967 page, which lists US7818777B1 as a citing document) rather than the (56) field of US7818777B1. Any claim that the list below is the complete examiner citation list would be fabrication.
2. The provided authoritative text of US 7,818,777 contains no claims. It ends mid‑sentence inside the EOFS valve description. Therefore I cannot tie any reference to a numbered claim (e.g., "anticipates claim 12"). I map references to claim subject matter generically and flag this explicitly rather than inventing claim numbers. (This is consistent with the earlier Patent‑summary section, which already noted the claims were absent.)

What is authoritatively grounded is the prior‑art discussion inside the specification itself (the "Definitions" section of the provided full text). Those references are expressly described and characterized by the applicant, which makes them the highest‑confidence citation set available to me.

A. Reference set grounded in the US 7,818,777 specification

The specification's "Definitions" section walks through the prior art and its alleged shortcomings. Each of the following is named in that text with its patent number and described function.

Non‑patent prior art expressly named in the specification:

Family/priority documents (NOT prior art): US 4,694,490 (from US 06/317,510) and US 4,965,825 (from US 07/096,096) are the priority parents named on the record. Being same‑family/same‑inventor disclosures feeding the '777 priority claim, they are not § 102 art against '777.

B. Reference I can confirm appears in the '777 front‑page citation field

I list this one because the search evidence (Google Patents US4786967 page) affirmatively links US 7,818,777 B1 to it. I do not have equivalent confirmation for the remaining entries of the '777 (56) field.

C. Which claims a reference could conceivably anticipate under § 102

Because the '777 claims are not in the record I was given, I express this as claim‑subject‑matter classes rather than claim numbers, and I state the § 102 conclusion for each:

• Haselwood (US 4,025,851) — best § 102 candidate. If any '777 claim is drawn to the bare concept of embedding digital identification signals in a broadcast and detecting/logging them, Haselwood alone plausibly anticipates. Its equipment, however, is not shown to decrypt, to cause a computer to generate user‑specific output, or to combine locally generated graphics with the broadcast, so anticipation of any claim requiring those elements fails.
• Crosby (US 3,845,391) — anticipates, at most, claims limited to substantially inaudible audio‑band encoding/decoding of program identification. Nothing more.
• Freeman (US 4,264,925) — anticipates, at most, claims limited to simultaneous multi‑channel transmission with subscriber selection. The '777 spec itself concedes the multi‑channel broadcast concept.
• Lambert (US 4,381,522) — could anticipate only claims limited to central‑site scheduling and automated actuation of program players. Notably it does not disclose receiving programming, loading players, verifying playout, or controlling apparatus other than TV receivers — the specification's stated points of novelty.
• Bourassin (US 4,337,480) — could anticipate only claims limited to hardware interconnection of TV peripherals and image superimposition. It lacks transmitted control of the interconnection, which the '777 spec identifies as the gap.
• Greenberg (US 4,547,804), US 4,786,967 — could anticipate only claims limited to sequential multi‑channel monitoring and audio/video branching, respectively, and only if the challenged claim is not entitled to the 1981‑11‑03 priority date.
• Dataspeed / Equatorial — anticipate nothing standalone. The specification itself distinguishes them: "[i]t only transmits data; it does not control data processing … None has capacity to cause simultaneous generation of user specific information at a plurality of receiver stations."

Bottom line on § 102: No reference in the grounded set discloses, in a single disclosure, the full combination the '777 text treats as the invention — broadcast‑embedded, addressed control instructions that cause a plurality of receiver computers to generate user‑specific information and to synchronously combine it with the received program, plus embedded meter‑monitor records returned to remote billing/ratings sites. The realistic invalidity theory is § 103, which the earlier Obviousness section already developed (Dataspeed/Equatorial + Bourassin + Haselwood/Crosby/Greenberg + addressable decoders).

D. Critical date caveat (affects every § 102 conclusion)

This patent's § 102 analysis turns on an unsettled point: does a given claim get the 1981‑11‑03 benefit date? The 1987 and 1995 continuation filings mean that if any claim is held not entitled to the 1981 priority (e.g., new matter or later‑added limitations), the effective date shifts into the 1990s, and then:

• Lambert (1983), Greenberg (1985), Bourassin (1982), and US 4,786,967 (1988) all convert from not prior art into § 102(b) art (each patented more than one year before the 1995‑06‑07 filing).
• Conversely, if 1981 priority holds, those four drop out of § 102 entirely and are at best background/§ 103 material.

The examiner's citation of post‑1981 documents into this record is itself evidence that at least some claims were examined against a later effective date.

E. What I could not verify (stated explicitly, not inferred)

• The complete (56) "References Cited" list for US 7,818,777 — not retrieved. The list above is the specification‑grounded subset plus one confirmed front‑page entry.
• Exact filing dates for Haselwood, Crosby (known issue dates apart), Lambert, Bourassin, Freeman, and Greenberg — the issue years given are reliable; the day/month figures I marked "approximate" should be confirmed against the front pages before being used in a filing.
• Claim numbers — the '777 claims are absent from the authoritative text supplied to me, so I have deliberately not assigned any reference to a specific claim. To complete the requested element‑by‑element § 102 chart, the (56) field and full claim set must be pulled from the USPTO Patent Center record for application 08/479,215 (e.g., via https://patents.google.com/patent/US7818777B1/en or USPTO PatentCenter), which I was unable to retrieve within this session.

The US patent 7818777 describes an integrated system of methods and apparatus for communicating programming, focusing on automated control, user-specific information generation, and comprehensive monitoring at subscriber stations through embedded signals. The patent itself identifies several limitations of the prior art it purports to overcome. A person having ordinary skill in the art (POSITA) at the time of the invention (priority date 1981-11-03) would have been motivated to combine existing technologies to address these known limitations and achieve a more interactive, personalized, and robustly managed media distribution system.

Below are combinations of prior art references that would render key aspects of US7818777 obvious, along with the motivation for a POSITA to combine them:

Combination 1: Dataspeed/Equatorial + Bourassin et al. + Haselwood/Crosby/Greenberg + Addressable Systems

This combination addresses the core aspects of US7818777, particularly the generation of user-specific information, its synchronized overlay on broadcast programming, and the use of embedded signals for control and metering.

Prior Art Elements:

1. Dataspeed Corporation / Equatorial Communications Company systems: These systems transmitted real-time financial data over radio frequencies or satellite to microcomputers equipped with "modios" (radio receivers, modems, decryptors). Subscribers could program their apparatus to select data of interest.

   • Relevant Teaching: Delivery of digital data to local microcomputers for user-selected processing and display.
   • Limitation (as noted by US7818777): "It only transmits data; it does not control data processing. No system is preprogrammed to simultaneously control a plurality of central processor units... None has capacity to cause simultaneous generation of user specific information at a plurality of receiver stations... in ways that are not inputted by the subscribers."

2. U.S. Pat. No. 4,337,480 to Bourassin et al.: Describes a dynamic interconnection system for connecting a television receiver to a plurality of television peripheral units, including the ability to superimpose a secondary image (image-within-image) from a peripheral unit upon the primary image on the television display.

   • Relevant Teaching: Technical means for overlaying graphic or video information from a local source onto a broadcast television signal.
   • Limitation (as noted by US7818777): "It has no capacity for interconnecting or operating a system at any time other than the time when the order to do so is entered manually at the system or remote keyboard. It has no capacity for acting on instructions transmitted by broadcasters to interconnect, actuate or tune systems peripheral to a television receiver or to actuate a television receiver or automatically change channels received by a receiver."

3. U.S. Pat. No. 4,025,851 to Haselwood et al., U.S. Pat. No. 3,845,391 to Crosby, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,547,804 to Greenberg: These patents describe systems for monitoring programming by means of embedded digital or audio signals, with Greenberg specifically mentioning monitoring a plurality of channels.

   • Relevant Teaching: The technical feasibility of embedding signals in broadcast transmissions (video or audio) for later detection and processing, and the concept of monitoring media usage.
   • Limitation (as noted by US7818777): These systems were primarily for identification and monitoring, lacking the capacity for active control or processing, for handling encrypted signals, or for simultaneously recording and transferring data remotely.

4. "Addressable" systems: The prior art includes "addressable" systems that had the capacity to control specific individual subscriber station apparatus (e.g., decoder/decryptor units) by means of control instructions transmitted in broadcasts, such as turning them on or off for billing purposes.

   • Relevant Teaching: The concept of a broadcaster sending commands within a broadcast stream to remotely control specific subscriber equipment.
   • Limitation (as noted by US7818777): "It has no capacity for decrypting combined media programming. It has no capacity for identifying then selectively decrypting control instructions embedded in unencrypted programming transmissions... It has no capacity for automatically identifying decryption keys... It has no capacity for identifying and recording the identity of what is input to or output from a decryptor."

Motivation for Combination and Obviousness:

A POSITA in the early 1980s would be strongly motivated to combine these technologies to enhance broadcast media with greater interactivity, personalization, and precise control, driven by commercial interests in personalized advertising, pay-per-view, and detailed audience metrics.

1. Automating Local Processing and Overlay (Dataspeed + Bourassin et al. + Haselwood/Crosby/Greenberg + Addressable Systems):

   • The Dataspeed/Equatorial systems demonstrated the value of delivering digital information (e.g., financial data) to local computers for user-driven processing. However, they lacked central control over this processing.
   • Bourassin et al. provided a mechanism for displaying locally generated content (e.g., graphics) as an overlay on a standard television picture.
   • The monitoring systems (Haselwood et al., Crosby, Greenberg) established that signals could be embedded within broadcast transmissions without interfering with the primary content and detected at the receiver.
   • Addressable systems showed that broadcast signals could carry specific commands to control subscriber equipment (e.g., turning a decoder on/off).

   A POSITA would find it obvious to integrate these. Recognizing the limitation that Dataspeed-like systems did not allow broadcasters to control local data processing, and that Bourassin's overlays were manually triggered, the motivation would be to use the established technique of embedding control signals (from Haselwood/Crosby/Greenberg, and similar to Addressable Systems' commands) within the broadcast to remotely instruct the local microcomputer (from Dataspeed-like systems) to process specific data (e.g., real-time portfolio performance from local storage or updated broadcast data), generate a graphic, and then synchronously trigger the overlay mechanism (from Bourassin et al.) to display this user-specific graphic on the television screen at a precisely timed moment relevant to the broadcast content (e.g., during a financial news program). This directly addresses the '777 patent's "Wall Street Week" example (FIG. 1C) and the concept of "combining synch commands."

2. Enhanced Metering and Conditional Access (Haselwood/Crosby/Greenberg + Addressable Systems):

   • Existing monitoring systems could identify programming via embedded signals, and addressable systems could enable/disable access for billing.
   • The limitation in prior monitoring systems was their inability to record and simultaneously transfer information to a remote geographic location or to decrypt embedded signals for more complex control.

   A POSITA would be motivated to combine the granular identification capability of embedded monitoring signals with the remote control and billing infrastructure of addressable systems. This would lead to the obvious development of "meter-monitor segments" in the broadcast stream (as described in FIG. 2F of US7818777), allowing for the automated collection of detailed usage data (e.g., what programming is used, how it is used, and by whom) and its automatic transfer to remote billing or ratings stations. The ability to encrypt these meter-monitor signals or control them with encrypted instructions would be an obvious extension, building on the general knowledge of encryption used in Dataspeed's "modios" and addressable systems' decryptors.

3. Unified Control System for Diverse Apparatus (Dataspeed/Equatorial + Bourassin et al. + Lambert + Addressable Systems):

   • Dataspeed/Equatorial involved local computers. Bourassin et al. involved TV and peripherals. Lambert involved a minicomputer controlling video players. Addressable systems controlled decoders.
   • A significant limitation of much of the prior art (e.g., Bourassin et al., Freeman et al., Lambert) was the lack of capacity for broadcaster-transmitted instructions to interconnect, actuate, or tune a variety of different systems and peripherals beyond a single TV or video player, or to do so automatically rather than manually.

   Given the increasing prevalence of various electronic devices in homes and offices (computers, VCRs, printers, etc.), a POSITA would recognize the significant advantage of a "unified signal system" (SPAM) that could control this diverse array of "ultimate receiver station apparatus" through embedded signals (derived from monitoring systems and addressable control concepts). The motivation would be to streamline control, enable complex combined media experiences (e.g., simultaneous radio and television events, or print-outs synchronized with TV), and improve overall efficiency in content delivery and management. The '777 patent's emphasis on controlling "furnace control units" or "utilities meters" further represents an obvious application of broadcast-based remote control (from addressable systems) to other household or commercial devices, extending the concept of automated control beyond entertainment media.

In summary, the key elements of US7818777 – remote, synchronized, broadcast-driven control of local computer processing to generate and overlay user-specific information, coupled with sophisticated, embedded-signal-based metering and reporting – represent an obvious combination of existing technologies in data transmission to local computers, video overlay techniques, embedded signal detection, and remote addressable control, all driven by clear motivations to enhance the interactivity, personalization, and commercial viability of broadcast media.

To provide details on patent term adjustments (PTA), patent term extensions (PTE), continuation/divisional applications, related family members, and the projected expiration date for US patent 7818777, I need to access the official USPTO patent database.

Based on the provided information, I will use the Google Patents link for US7818777 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7818777/en) to find details. The patent text itself does not contain explicit information about PTA, PTE, or continuation/divisional applications directly, but the Google Patents page often aggregates this information.

First, I will look for information directly on the Google Patents page.

From the Google Patents page (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7818777/en):

Patent Term Adjustment (PTA):
The Google Patents page does not explicitly state the Patent Term Adjustment for US7818777. Patent Term Adjustment (PTA) is a period added to the 20-year term of a utility or plant patent to compensate for certain delays by the USPTO during prosecution. This information is typically found in the "Legal Events" section of a full patent record from the USPTO, or a notification issued at the time of patent grant.

Patent Term Extension (PTE):
The Google Patents page does not indicate any Patent Term Extension for US7818777. Patent Term Extension (PTE) is available for patents on certain human drugs, food or color additives, medical devices, animal drugs, and veterinary biological products to restore time lost during premarket government approval from a regulatory agency, such as the FDA. Given the title "Signal processing apparatus and methods," it is highly unlikely this patent would be eligible for PTE.

Continuation Applications, Divisional Applications, and Related Family Members:

The Google Patents page lists the following under "Priority date (The priority date is an assumption and is not a legal conclusion. Google has not performed a legal analysis and makes no representation as to the accuracy of the date listed.)":

• 1981-11-03: Priority claimed from US06/317,510 (which is US4694490A)
• 1987-09-11: Priority claimed from US07/096,096 (which is US4965825A)
• 1995-06-07: Priority to US08/479,215 (which is US7818777B1 itself)

The "Application number" for US7818777 is US08/479,215.
These "Priority claimed from" entries indicate a lineage of applications. Specifically:

• US4694490A (filed as US06/317,510) and US4965825A (filed as US07/096,096) appear to be parent applications from which US7818777 claims priority. This suggests a chain of continuation or divisional applications, where US7818777 is a later application in that family. The provided patent text explicitly states these priority claims.
• A "continuation application" is a second application for the same invention claimed in a prior non-abandoned application, filed before the patenting or abandonment of the first application. A "divisional application" is a specific type of continuation application filed when an earlier application claimed more than one invention, and the USPTO required restriction.

Projected Expiration Date:

The Google Patents page explicitly states the "Anticipated expiration" date as 2027-10-19.
The standard patent term for applications filed on or after June 8, 1995, is 20 years from the earliest filing date of the application from which priority is claimed. However, this is for utility and plant patents. The filing date of US7818777 is 1995-06-07. The publication date is 2010-10-19. The priority date for this patent is 1981-11-03. Typically, the patent term is 20 years from the earliest non-provisional filing date. If the patent was filed before June 8, 1995, the term would be 17 years from the issue date or 20 years from the earliest filing date, whichever is longer. Since the filing date (1995-06-07) is on June 7, 1995, and the rule for 20 years from the earliest filing date applies to applications filed on or after June 8, 1995, the term here would be calculated differently. However, Google Patents provides an explicit "Anticipated expiration" date.

Given the patent's filing date of June 7, 1995, the patent term calculation would generally be 20 years from the earliest priority date (November 3, 1981), or 17 years from the issue date (October 19, 2010), whichever is longer.

• 20 years from 1981-11-03 = 2001-11-03.
• 17 years from 2010-10-19 = 2027-10-19.

Therefore, the longer term is 2027-10-19, which matches the "Anticipated expiration" date provided by Google Patents. This expiration date would also include any Patent Term Adjustment (PTA) added due to USPTO delays, although the specific PTA amount is not provided.

Summary:

• Patent Term Adjustment (PTA): Not explicitly stated, but typically calculated by the USPTO and would be added to the base term if applicable.
• Patent Term Extension (PTE): Not applicable, as this patent does not relate to products requiring regulatory approval.
• Continuation Applications/Divisional Applications: US7818777 claims priority from US06/317,510 (US4694490A) and US07/096,096 (US4965825A), indicating it is part of a patent family likely including continuation or divisional applications.
• Related Family Members: US4694490A and US4965825A are identified as earlier priority-claiming applications.
• Projected Expiration Date: October 19, 2027.