US 7856226

I'll verify the current status of this patent against live sources before summarizing.

Let me check litigation and 2026 Federal Circuit activity.

Let me search specifically for this patent number in litigation and any 2026 CAFC activity.

US 7,856,226 — Verification Summary

Important caveat up front: My searches did not surface any USPTO litigation docket or any Federal Circuit (2026 or otherwise) appeal naming U.S. Patent 7,856,226. I found no CAFC 2026 docket entries for this patent. The "Aylus Networks" Federal Circuit precedent that dominates search results — Aylus Networks, Inc. v. Apple Inc., 856 F.3d 1353 (Fed. Cir. May 11, 2017) — concerns U.S. Reissue Patent RE44,412, a different Aylus patent (digital home networks). It is not this patent, and I am not treating it as authority on 7,856,226. I was also unable to retrieve a first-party USPTO Patent Center / assignment record within the tool budget, so the bibliographic data below is sourced from the patent document itself and Google Patents' rendering of the file.

Bibliographic data

Assignment/security history of record as rendered: assigned to Aylus Networks, Inc. (2007-10-17); collateral assignment to Matrix Partners VII, L.P., North Bridge Venture Partners V-A/V-B, L.P., Weston & Co. VII LLC as nominee (2010-09-23); termination of that collateral assignment (2011-09-01).

Continuation family (same priority): US 12/974,920 → US 8,170,534 B2 ("Systems and methods for user sessions with dynamic service selection"); US 13/459,467 → US 8,433,303 B2; US 13/873,486 → US 2013/0301557 A1.

Uncertainty flags: The 2029-08-17 expiration reflects an adjusted term (patent term adjustment on top of the 2007-04-17 filing date) and is reported as listed by the source; I did not independently confirm current maintenance-fee status or present ownership with the USPTO. Interpret the number literally as 7,856,226 — I did not auto-correct or conflate it with neighboring Aylus patents (e.g., 7,792,528; RE44,412).

Abstract (as issued)

A system generates dynamic call models within an IMS network so that different user entities (UEs) can have different service experiences. The IMS network includes application servers (ASs) and a serving call state control function (S-CSCF) that receives and forwards UE service requests. The system includes storage media storing a service tree defining potential call models that map potential UE service requests onto ASs — with at least two potential call models mapping a specified potential request onto different ASs providing different service experiences. Control logic receives UE service requests forwarded by the S-CSCF, receives the service tree from storage, generates a call model for each UE based on the tree and the requested service, and invokes a specified AS based on that call model.

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Claim 1 — System. A system for generating dynamic call models in an IMS network so different UEs get different IMS service experiences. Three elements:

1. Storage media storing a service tree that defines multiple potential call models mapping potential UE service requests onto ASs — and critically, at least two of those potential call models route the same specified potential service request to different ASs that provide different service experiences. (This is the point of novelty versus static iFCs, which are one-to-one.)
2. Control logic providing session control that receives UE service requests forwarded by the S-CSCF and receives the service tree from storage.
3. Control logic generating a call model per UE based on the tree's potential call models and on the service that UE requested, then invoking a specified AS based on the generated call model.

Claim 13 — Method. The method counterpart to claim 1, reciting the same three-step core: (a) storing a service tree defining potential call models with the divergent-AS property; (b) providing session control by receiving S-CSCF-forwarded UE service requests; (c) receiving the stored service tree; and (d) generating a call model for each UE based on the tree's potential call models and the requested service.

Note: Claim 13 does not, as issued, recite an explicit "invoking a specified AS" step, unlike claim 1 — a claim-drafting asymmetry worth flagging in any analysis.

Dependent claims (brief)

• 2: control logic in direct communication with the ASs.
• 3: storage media stores multiple service trees for different groups of UEs.
• 4–5: S-CSCF forwards requests based on a pre-configured iFC obtained from the HSS.
• 6–9: UE-side agent logic expresses/transmits the UE's dynamic context (e.g., a newly available access network); the S-CSCF forwards that context to the control logic, which generates a new call model from it.
• 10: call model generated on a change in network-operator policy.
• 11–12: MVNO embodiment — multiple MVNOs use the control logic and S-CSCF, first and second MVNO subscriber groups receive at least partly different services, and the service tree maps each group's requests to ASs owned by that MVNO.

Technical thrust

The specification frames the invention against the "linear, static" conventional IMS call model in which every subscriber with the same service subscription in the same home domain receives an identical iFC. Instead, a hierarchical service tree (root/branch/leaf nodes with SPT-driven conditional elements) is stored in a GUP database and "tree-walked" by a Service Capability Interaction Management (SCIM) server that is addressed by the S-CSCF as if it were an ordinary AS — permitting dynamic, per-UE and per-session AS selection based on access-network availability, MVNO subscription, handset capabilities, and operator policy changes. Two alternative architectures are described: an S-CSCF that itself contains the call-model generation logic (FIG. 8), and an "out-of-band" component that supplies dynamically constructed new filter codes (NFCs) to the S-CSCF (per US 11/289,924).

On the litigation/docket question

To be explicit: I cannot confirm, and have no evidence of, any 2026 CAFC docket involving 7,856,226. My searches returned no district-court or PTAB case asserting this specific patent. If you need a definitive negative, this should be re-verified directly against the USPTO Patent Center litigation/assignment tabs and the CAFC docket (via PACER/CM-ECF) rather than relied on from web search alone.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 7856226. Let me run several targeted searches.

Let me dig deeper into the Aylus Networks litigation and that CourtListener document.

Let me search for litigation specifically naming the 7,856,226 patent, and check the Aylus v. Apple docket more closely.

Bottom line

Based on my searches, I could not identify any litigation that specifically asserts U.S. Patent No. 7,856,226. The patent is real and identifiable — "Systems and methods for IMS user sessions with dynamic service selection," filed April 17, 2007, issued December 21, 2010, assigned to Aylus Networks, Inc. (Westford, MA), inventors Ellis L. Wong, Shamim A. Naqvi, and Anju Day (Google Patents). But nothing in the results ties that specific patent number to a case caption, docket number, or complaint.

I state this as a negative finding, not as proof the patent has never been litigated. Public database coverage of secondary/continuation patents in a family is often incomplete, and my searches returned Aylus's other patents far more prominently than the '226 patent. Treat "no litigation found" as a research result, not a conclusion.

Important caution — the Aylus cases I found involve different patents

Aylus Networks is a known litigant, which creates a real risk of a false positive here. The well-documented Aylus campaign is Aylus Networks, Inc. v. Apple Inc., No. 3:13-cv-04700-EMC (N.D. Cal.), and the patent asserted in it was U.S. Patent No. RE44,412 — the reissue of U.S. Patent No. 7,724,753 ("Digital Home Networks Having a Control Point Located on a Wide Area Network"). See the complaint at N.D. Cal., Case No. 3:13-cv-4700 and the PTAB petitions, e.g., Apple Inc. v. Aylus Networks, Inc., IPR2014-01565.

That case (and its companion IPRs IPR2014-01565 / IPR2014-01566, and the resulting Fed. Cir. appeal Aylus Networks, Inc. v. Apple Inc., 856 F.3d 1353 (Fed. Cir. 2017)) concerns the '753/'412 patent — not the '226 patent. I am flagging it because a careless search-and-cite would wrongly attribute it here.

Unresolved lead (could not verify)

One search returned a CourtListener document referencing a defense expert named Richard Dougherty who "concluded that Defendant had not infringed the '622 patent" (storage.courtlistener.com). I could not confirm that "the '622 patent" in that document is U.S. 7,856,226 — "the '622 patent" is ambiguous shorthand common to many patents whose numbers end in 622. I did not have search budget remaining to trace the caption. This is the single most promising thread if you want to press further, but it is unverified.

Lookalike numbers to avoid (all distinct from 7,856,226)

My searches surfaced several similarly-numbered patents in unrelated cases. None of these should be attributed to the '226 patent:

• U.S. 7,244,226 B2 — Adidas AG v. Under Armour Inc., No. 1:14-cv-00130-GMS (D. Del.)
• U.S. 7,231,626 — Siemens Industry Software Inc. v. Bell Semiconductor, LLC (D. Del., declaratory judgment)
• '226 Patent asserted in Innovative Foundry Technologies LLC v. Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., et al., No. 6:19-cv-00719 (W.D. Tex.)
• U.S. 7,861,006 (IOENGINE v. Samsung) — a different number entirely

What I recommend to confirm or refute the negative finding

The tools I was able to reach do not include a patent-level litigation docket for this number. To close this out with confidence, run the patent number directly against:

1. Unified Patents Portal — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist (search the patent number, not the party name)
2. PACER / CourtListener RECAP — docket search filtered on "7,856,226" and "7856226"
3. USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) — for any IPR/PGR/CBM naming the patent as the challenged patent ("Patent Owner: Aylus Networks")
4. USPTO Assignment records — the '226 patent shows a collateral assignment to Matrix Partners VII / North Bridge Venture Partners / Weston & Co. (2010) with a termination of that collateral assignment (2011), plus continuation filings (US12/974,920 → US8,170,534; US13/459,467 → US8,433,303). Those family members are the ones more likely to have been asserted, which is worth checking separately.

Would you like me to draft the exact search strings, or reformulate around the Aylus patent family (8,170,534 / 8,433,303) if the '226 patent itself comes back clean?

I'll verify the structured "no PTAB activity" signal against live sources before writing the analysis.

Let me check the broader Aylus PTAB picture and whether 7,856,226 was ever asserted.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 7,856,226: ZERO. The canonical source for this analysis — the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block sourced from the USPTO Open Data Portal (ODP) API — returns no IPR, no PGR, and no CBM naming this patent, and my live searches returned no petition, institution decision, Final Written Decision, or PTAB appeal that mentions U.S. Patent No. 7,856,226 by number. Breakdown by status is therefore: active 0 / claims invalidated 0 / claims sustained 0 / settled 0 / institution denied 0.

Bottom-line defensive posture for a defendant: This is the opposite of the "hardened, survived two IPRs" scenario. There is no PTAB record to hide behind and no estoppel to fight. All 13 claims — including independent claim 1 (system) and independent claim 13 (method) — are untested at the Board. A defendant retains a completely clean runway to file an IPR on any ground.

Critical disambiguation (do not conflate): The extensive Aylus/PTAB search traffic you will find is about U.S. Reissue Patent RE44,412 ("Digital Home Networks Having A Control Point Located On A Wide Area Network") — a different Aylus patent, challenged by Apple in IPR2014-01565 (filed 2014-09-29) and a concurrently filed second petition. RE44,412 is the patent at issue in Aylus Networks, Inc. v. Apple Inc., 856 F.3d 1353 (Fed. Cir. 2017). That line of authority is not an adjudication of 7,856,226 and I am not treating it as one.

Per-proceeding entries

None exist. Because the template requires a proceeding number for each entry and I am forbidden from inventing one, I am not fabricating entries for proceedings that were never filed. The absence is the finding.

For completeness, here is the adjacent record — explicitly labeled as a different patent, included only because it is the most likely source of confusion:

IPR2014-01565 — Apple Inc. v. Aylus Networks, Inc. (NOT this patent — RE44,412)

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2014-09-29
• Status: Institutional-stage; the Board instituted on all claims except claims 2, 4, 21, and 23 (per the Fed. Cir.'s recitation in Aylus, 856 F.3d at 1357)
• Petition grounds: § 103 obviousness over UPnP Design by Example (2003 book + CD-ROM), alone and in various combinations (e.g., with Costa-Requena, US 2006/0143295; and with Stewart); challenged claims 1–33
• Judge panel: not verified within tool budget — do not rely on any panel listing I cannot source
• Outcome: Aylus voluntarily dismissed its district-court infringement contentions as to all asserted claims except 2 and 21; the district court then granted Apple summary judgment of non-infringement of claims 2 and 21 on a prosecution-disclaimer construction drawn from Aylus's own IPR preliminary responses. Affirmed, 856 F.3d 1353 (2017-05-11) (Stoll, J.; Moore and Linn, JJ.).
• Relevance to 7,856,226: Legal precedent only, not proceeding outcome. Aylus holds that a patent owner's statements in an IPR — even in a pre-institution preliminary response — can be prosecution disclaimer. That cuts in favor of a defendant who later faces assertion of this Aylus patent: any narrowing argument Aylus makes in an IPR you file on 7,856,226 is immediately usable against it in district court.

Strategic summary

Claim status. Every claim of 7,856,226 is UNTESTED. No claim is canceled; no claim has been confirmed; none has been construed by the Board. Independent claim 1 requires (a) storage media holding a service tree defining potential call models, with at least two potential call models mapping the same specified potential service request onto different ASs providing different service experiences, plus (b) control logic receiving S-CSCF-forwarded requests and the service tree, and (c) generating a per-UE call model and invoking a specified AS. Independent claim 13 is the method counterpart — and, as flagged in the earlier section, claim 13 as issued does not recite an express "invoking a specified AS" step, an asymmetry worth pressing in any § 112 or claim-scope analysis. The dependent claims (2–12) add direct AS communication, multiple service trees, HSS-sourced iFCs, UE-side dynamic-context agent logic, operator policy change, and the MVNO mapping embodiment.

Estoppel landscape. Because no petitioner has ever completed an AIA trial on this patent, § 315(e)(2) estoppel is a non-issue — there is no petitioner, no privy, and no "grounds raised or reasonably could have been raised" that anyone is barred from re-litigating. Conversely, no estoppel protects the patent owner either. A defendant today has the full statutory menu available: any § 102/§ 103 ground, any art, any claim.

Vehicle constraints you must build around. 7,856,226 has a filing/priority date of 2007-04-17 — a pre-AIA patent. That means:

• PGR is unavailable (post-grant review reaches only patents with effective filing on or after 2013-03-16).
• CBM is unavailable twice over — the CBM program sunset for petitions on 2020-09-16, and this IMS/S-CSCF/service-tree subject matter is a technological invention, not a "covered business method." Do not budget for either.
• IPR is your only AIA trial vehicle, and it is fully available.

Pattern signals. There is no serial-petitioner pattern, no defensive-aggregator footprint, and no PTAB-appeal history for this patent. I found no Unified Patents (or similar) involvement, and no evidence that 7,856,226 was ever asserted — the Aylus v. Apple litigation I could source (N.D. Cal. 3:13-cv-04700) is documented as involving RE44,412, and I could not confirm within my tool budget that 7,856,226 was among the asserted patents. Treat that assertion question as unverified and re-check it directly. Notably, the whole continuation family sharing this priority (US 8,170,534; US 8,433,303; US 2013/0301557) also returned no PTAB hits in my searches — so this looks like a portfolio that was never stress-tested at the Board.

Recommended next steps

1. No PTAB proceeding to link to — because none exists. I cannot link you to a Final Written Decision, because there is no FWD for U.S. Patent No. 7,856,226. Verify the null result directly rather than on my word: search the patent number on USPTO PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/) and on the USPTO Patent Center "Post-Grant Proceedings" / litigation tabs for application 11/787,635, and cross-check CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com/) for any appeal. If E2E also returns nothing, the null is confirmed.

2. Because the patent is untested, an IPR is a live, unconstrained option — watch the clock, not the estoppel bar. Note the interplay of two dates:

• § 315(b) bar: you must file within one year of service of a complaint alleging infringement of this patent. If you have been served, that clock is running and nothing else in this analysis matters until you diary the date.
• Patent expiry: Google Patents lists an adjusted expiration of 2029-08-17. An IPR filed in 2026 would reach FWD roughly 18 months later (statutory 1-year trial deadline from institution, plus ~6 months to institution), i.e., comfortably before expiry — but margin is thinning. Do not let this sit.

3. Mine the Aylus precedent offensively. If you file an IPR on 7,856,226, every narrowing statement Aylus makes in its Patent Owner Response or even its preliminary response becomes a prosecution disclaimer usable in the parallel district court case. Aylus Networks, Inc. v. Apple Inc., 856 F.3d 1353, 1362 (Fed. Cir. 2017) (https://caselaw.findlaw.com/summary/opinion/us-federal-circuit/2017/05/11/[279316](/patent/279316).html). That is an unusually favorable asymmetry for a defendant against a patent owner whose own appellate precedent hands you the tool.

4. Consider ex parte reexamination as a hedge. Given the 2025-2026 surge in PTAB discretionary denials (record-high 607 in 2025) and the Director's ongoing workload-management processes, a parallel or fallback ex parte reexamination on the service-tree/iFC art is worth pricing — it carries no § 315(b) deadline and no estoppel, though it lacks the Board's amendment procedures.

5. Independent verification I could not complete. I could not retrieve first-party USPTO Patent Center assignment/ownership records or a definitive "never asserted" negative within my tool budget. Before you act on the "no PTAB activity" conclusion, confirm (a) no petition was filed and dismissed/terminated pre-institution without an ODP entry, and (b) whether any district-court complaint has ever asserted claim 1 or claim 13 of 7,856,226. Both are checkable in minutes against Patent Center and PACER; neither should be assumed from web search alone.

I'll research the assignment record for this patent before producing the analysis.

Let me dig into the litigation history and current status of Aylus Networks as an asserter.

Let me search for Aylus's litigation campaign and current corporate status.

Ownership Chain Analysis — US 7,856,226

Data-sourcing note (important): I was not able to retrieve the first-party USPTO Assignment Center record set (reel/frame headers, correspondent-of-record names, execution dates) within my tool budget — my live searches did not return those fields. The assignment data below is taken from the legal-events record rendered in the authoritative patent text supplied for this analysis (Google Patents "Reassignment"/legal-status entries). That rendering gives me recording dates, conveyance descriptions, assignor/assignee legal names, and one reel/frame citation (Reel 025066/0395, quoted inside the 2011 termination entry). Everything else — execution dates, correspondent attorneys — is unknown and is marked as such rather than inferred. Verify against USPTO Assignment Center (patent-number search) before relying on it.

Cross-check against the prior summary: that section likewise flagged the Assignment Center/PEDS data as unretrieved and correctly separated Aylus Networks, Inc. v. Apple Inc., 856 F.3d 1353 (Fed. Cir. 2017) (RE44,412 — a different Aylus patent) from this one. No contradiction between that section and this one.

Inventors

Pattern check: All three inventors assigned to the same company within ~6 months of the 2007-04-17 filing, and all three are named on the same assignment instrument — the normal "founders/employees assign to the startup" pattern. There is no evidence of the fire-sale precursor you asked me to watch for (all inventors departing the original assignee within 12 months). I have no data on inventor departure dates, and I will not infer them. Because I could not pull the assignment instrument itself, I cannot confirm whether the inventors were listed as employees, consultants, or founders on the face of the document.

Original assignee

Aylus Networks, Inc. (Westford, Massachusetts). Originally assigned and, per the record, still the current assignee.

• Legal status/type: Privately held corporation (per its own infringement pleading: "Aylus is a privately held corporation based in Westford, Massachusetts").
• Primary line of business: Developer of "media switch and processing technology, and infrastructure that enables mobile video communication across networks and devices" (complaint language). Founded 2005 by Shamim A. Naqvi.
• Did it ship a product embodying the claims? Unclear. The complaint describes Aylus as an R&D house ("Aylus' homegrown technology… are the result of Aylus' own research and development"); I found no evidence of a commercial product in the record I retrieved, and I also found no evidence affirmatively negating one. I will not classify it as a product company or a pure shell on this record.
• Current status: Not confirmed. I could not complete a corporate-status search (SEC filings, Massachusetts registry). What is documented is behavior: Aylus asserted a sibling family patent (RE44,412, from '753, "Digital Home Networks…") against Apple in N.D. Cal., Case No. 3:13-cv-04700-EMC, 2013–2016, losing on summary judgment of non-infringement. That is an assertion posture on family IP, though not on this patent.

Assignment timeline

Recorded events, chronological. Dates shown are recording dates as rendered; execution dates were not retrievable.

• 2007-04-17 (filing) / recorded 2007-10-17 — Reel/frame not retrievable

  • Conveyance: Assignment (rendered as "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)")
  • Assignor: Anju Day; Shamim A. Naqvi; Ellis L. Wong (the inventors)
  • Assignee: Aylus Networks, Inc.
  • Correspondent: unknown — not retrievable from the sources available to me. (This is the field you flagged as the highest-value tell; I could not obtain it, and I will not guess a firm.)
  • Context: Initial ownership — inventors assign their rights to their company. Not a fire-sale, not a reorg.

• 2010-09-23 (recorded) — Reel 025066 / Frame 0395

  • Conveyance: Collateral Assignment of Patents, Trademarks and Copyrights (i.e., a security interest / securitization, not an ownership sale)
  • Assignor: Aylus Networks, Inc.
  • Assignee: Matrix Partners VII, L.P.; North Bridge Venture Partners V-A, L.P.; North Bridge Venture Partners V-B, L.P.; Weston & Co. VII LLC, as nominee
  • Correspondent: unknown — not retrievable. No recurrence can be assessed.
  • Context: Securitization — Aylus's venture-capital investors (Matrix, North Bridge, Weston) took a collateral security interest in the company's IP, consistent with a venture-debt/financing transaction. These are Aylus's own investors, not an assertion entity.

• 2011-09-01 (recorded) — Reel/frame reported as "Reel 025066 and Frame 0395" (the release expressly references the 2010-09-23 instrument)

  • Conveyance: Termination of Collateral Assignment of Patents, Trademarks and Copyrights (release/reconveyance)
  • Assignor: Matrix Partners VII, L.P.; North Bridge Venture Partners V-A, L.P.; North Bridge Venture Partners V-B, L.P.; Weston & Co. VII LLC, as nominee
  • Assignee: Aylus Networks, Inc.
  • Correspondent: unknown — not retrievable.
  • Context: Release — the security interest was discharged and full ownership reconfirmed in Aylus.

Not assignments (for the avoidance of doubt): the record's "Priority to US 12/974,920" (2010-12-21), "Priority to US 13/459,467" (2012-04-30), and "Priority to US 13/873,486" (2013-04-30) entries are continuation-family filings (US 8,170,534; US 8,433,303; US 2013/0301557), not transfers of title. New continuations were filed out of Aylus during 2010–2013 — a further indicator that Aylus kept prosecuting and holding the family rather than divesting it.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7856226
    2007 : Application filed
         : Inventors assign to Aylus Networks
    2010 : Collateral security assignment recorded
         : Patent issued Dec 21
    2011 : Collateral security interest terminated
    2012 : Continuation filings by Aylus

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. The only post-issuance assignees are Aylus's own institutional investors (Matrix, North Bridge, Weston) taking a collateral security interest at Reel 025066/0395 — not an "IP/Licensing/Holdings/Ventures LLC" acquiring title. There is no transfer of ownership to a licensing-only shell anywhere in the chain. (Note: "North Bridge Venture Partners" and "Matrix Partners" are VC fund names, but their role here is secured lender, not acquirer — the interest was released at 2011-09-01.)

2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. Neither Aylus Networks, Inc. nor the three VC funds appear on any of the public NPE/PAE lists you enumerated (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg entities). Aylus is a VC-backed technology company, not a member of those lists.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Unclear / cannot assess. I could not retrieve any correspondent-of-record name for either recorded instrument (2007-10-17 or 025066/0395). Because the signal you defined is recurrence of a correspondent, and I have zero correspondent data points, I cannot score it. This is the single most important gap in this analysis.

4. Cascading transfers — Not present. Only three recorded events across 19 years: one inventor→company assignment, one security interest, one release. No chain of back-to-back LLC transfers.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present. No infringement suit naming US 7,856,226 surfaced in any search, so there is no pre-suit assignment window to examine. (Aylus's litigation — Aylus v. Apple, 3:13-cv-04700-EMC — asserted RE44,412, not this patent.)

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. No Chapter 7/11, no court-supervised sale. The 2011-09-01 entry is a negotiated release of a VC security interest, not a distressed sale.

7. Privateering — Not present. Privateering requires an operating company transferring to an NPE that asserts on its behalf. Here there is no transfer at all, and the only third parties in the chain are Aylus's own investors holding collateral.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified, or OIN.

Verdict

Insufficient data.

The recorded chain for US 7,856,226 contains no ownership transfer since the original 2007-10-17 inventor→Aylus assignment — the only two later entries are a collateral security interest recorded at Reel 025066/0395 (2010-09-23) and its release (2011-09-01). That is itself the finding: no shell-entity transfer, no known asserter, no cascading LLC chain, no bankruptcy sale, no defensive aggregation — i.e., none of the NPE signals are present in this patent's chain, which is why I cannot responsibly render an NPE verdict either way. The two facts that prevent a clean "operating-company" conclusion are (a) I could not verify via the Assignment Center whether Aylus still holds title today or obtain the correspondent-of-record data that would expose any recurring filing agent, and (b) Aylus's documented behavior on a sibling family patent (the 2013–2016 assertion against Apple on RE44,412) shows an assertion posture on the portfolio even though this patent was never asserted. Recommend re-running against USPTO Assignment Center (search patent 7,856,226) to capture execution dates and the correspondent names, and checking Massachusetts corporate status, before upgrading this to an NPE call.

I'll research the prior-art references cited for US 7,856,226, starting with patent-level lookups and the specific "cited by / cites" data.

I have the front-page reference data. Let me pull the complete "Patent Citations (99)" table plus the foreign/other references so I can rank them accurately.

Let me verify the titles/dates of the highest-relevance cited references before ranking them.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 7,856,226 B2

Requested ID: 7,856,226 — interpreted literally. I did not conflate it with neighbors (7,856,225 / 7,856,227 / RE44,412 / 7,792,528). Confirmed hit: US 7,856,226 B2, "Systems and methods for IMS user sessions with dynamic service selection," App. No. 11/787,635, filed 2007‑04‑17, issued 2010‑12‑21, Aylus Networks, Inc.; pre‑grant pub. US 2008/0261593 A1 (Google Patents; Justia; PDF).

Two housekeeping notes before the substance:

1. This is a pre‑AIA patent. Filed 2007‑04‑17, so §§ 102(a), (b) and (e) (pre‑AIA) govern. Every "anticipation" call below is framed accordingly; § 102(e) references must have a U.S. filing date before 2007‑04‑17.
2. Scope/provenance. The '226 face lists roughly 99 references (Google Patents renders the table as "Patent Citations (99)"). I reconstructed the inventory from three renderings of the same document — the issued PDF face, the Justia page, and the Google Patents page for US 2008/0261593 A1 (link). I did not have first‑party USPTO Patent Center/IDS access inside the tool budget, so examiner‑vs‑applicant attribution and any post‑issuance IDS citations are not independently verified. Where the continuation's face differs typographically from the '226 face (e.g., OCR "7.292,049"/"6.694,145 … Riihonen"), I use the '226 face as authoritative.

1. Complete patent-document citation inventory (U.S.), as listed on the '226 face

1a. Granted U.S. patents

1b. Published U.S. applications (in listing order)

2002/0059416 (Tuunanen, 5/2002); 2002/0140726 (Schwartz, 10/2002); 2002/0181462 (Surdila, 12/2002); 2003/0026245, 2003/0027569, 2003/0027595 (Ejzak, 1–2/2003); 2003/0055974 (Brophy, 3/2003); 2003/0134636 (Sundar, 7/2003); 2003/0193426 (Vidal, 10/2003); 2004/0008669 (Bos, 1/2004); 2004/0019539 (Raman, 1/2004); 2004/0043766 (Sashihara, 3/2004); 2004/0043776 (Tuomela, 3/2004); 2004/0068574 (Costa Requena, 4/2004); 2004/0076145 (Kauhanen, 4/2004); 2004/0083195 (McCord, 4/2004); 2004/0107143 (Niemi, 6/2004); 2004/0162892 (Hsu, 8/2004); 2004/0190498 (Kallio, 9/2004); 2004/0193700 (Westman, 9/2004); 2004/0193725 (Costa‑Requena, 9/2004); 2004/0205212 (Huotari, 10/2004); 2004/0219912 (Johansson, 11/2004); 2004/0240430 (Lin, 12/2004); 2004/0249887 (Garcia‑Martin, 12/2004); 2004/0249962 (Lecomte, 12/2004); 2004/0252673 (Ejzak et al., 12/2004); 2004/0261116 (Mckeown, 12/2004); 2005/0025047 (Bodin, 2/2005); 2005/0025163 (Christie, 2/2005); 2005/0043020 (Lipsanen, 2/2005); 2005/0047399 (Lee, 3/2005); 2005/0050194 (Honeisen, 3/2005); 2005/0058125 (Mutikainen, 3/2005); 2005/0083909 (Kuusinen, 4/2005); 2005/0089020 (Ahlback, 4/2005); 2005/0136926 (Tammi, 6/2005); 2005/0141484 (Rasanen, 6/2005); 2005/0170861 (Niemi, 8/2005); 2005/0190772 (Tsai, 9/2005); 2005/0213606 (Huang, 9/2005); 2005/0227681 (Li, 10/2005); 2005/0237933 (Marjelund, 10/2005); 2005/0243870 (Balogh, 11/2005); 2005/0245261 (Ejzak, 11/2005); 2005/0271011 (Alemany, 12/2005); 2005/0286531 (Tuohino, 12/2005); 2006/0015812 (Cunningham, 1/2006); 2006/0025151 (Karaoguz, 2/2006); 2006/0031888 (Sparrell, 2/2006); 2006/0062206 (Krishnaswamy, 3/2006); 2006/0083199 (Yang, 4/2006); 2006/0089143 (Jagadeesan, 4/2006); 2006/0104262 (Kant, 5/2006); 2006/0114987 (Roman, 6/2006); 2006/0120287 (Foti, 6/2006); 2006/0121902 (Jagadeesan, 6/2006); 2006/0136557 (Schaedler, 6/2006); 2006/0140150 (Olvera‑Hernandez, 6/2006); 2006/0155814 (Bennett, 7/2006); 2006/0161512 (Schaedler, 7/2006); 2006/0164550 (Yoshimoto, 7/2006); 2006/0183478 (Jagadeesan, 8/2006); 2006/0209768 (Yan, 9/2006); 2006/0221903 (Kauranen, 10/2006); 2006/0246903 (Kong, 11/2006); 2006/0256751 (Jagadeesan, 11/2006); 2006/0258394 (Dhillon, 11/2006); 2006/0262806 (Bouazizi, 11/2006); 2006/0291412 (Naqvi, 12/2006); 2006/0291419 (McConnell, 12/2006); 2006/0291437 (Naqvi, 12/2006); 2006/0291484, /291487, /291488, /291489, /292444 (Naqvi, 12/2006); 2007/0008913, /0008951 (Naqvi, 1/2007); 2007/0014281 (Kant, 1/2007); 2007/0033286 (Min, 2/2007); 2007/0053343 (Suotula, 3/2007); 2007/0066347 (Silverbrook, 3/2007); 2007/0067807 (O'Neil, 3/2007); 2007/0091855 (Karaoguz, 4/2007); 2007/0110043 (Girard, 5/2007); 2007/0111752 (Pazhyannur, 5/2007); 2007/0165572 (Lenzarini, 7/2007); 2007/0197227 (Naqvi, 8/2007); 2007/0207802 (Palmer, 9/2007); 2007/0207804 (Sharma, 9/2007); 2007/0217349 (Fodor, 9/2007); 2007/0221366 (Sagi, 9/2007); 2007/0226344 (Sparrell, 9/2007); 2008/0043717 (Bellora, 2/2008); 2008/0130637 (Kant, 6/2008); 2008/0316998 (Procopio, 12/2008).

1c. Foreign patent document

• EP 1 435 748 — July 2004. (Sole foreign document on the face. I did not verify its subject matter within budget — flagged below.)

1d. Other publications ("OTHER PUBLICATIONS")

• International Search Report, PCT/US 06/24619 (mailed 2007‑02‑14)
• International Search Report, PCT/US 08/60644 (mailed 2008‑06‑27)
• OSGi Service Platform, Mar. 2003, The Open Services Gateway Initiative, Release 3, pp. 345–346, 505, 513–526
• Definition of "proxy," dictionary.com (printed 2009‑03‑14)
• International Search Report, PCT/US 06/24624 (mailed 2007‑04‑03)
• International Search Report, PCT/US 07/04854 (2008‑01‑31)
• International Search Report, PCT/US 08/57367 (2008‑08‑08)
• International Search Report & Written Opinion, PCT/US 08/60656 (2008‑07‑02)
• 3GPP TS 23.228 V6.8.0 (2004‑12); 23.218 V6.3.0 (2005‑03); 24.228 V5.12.0 (2005‑03); 24.229 V6.6.0 (2005‑03) — cited in the specification as describing the conventional iFC/SPT/call‑model environment (see "Description," Background).

Anomaly worth flagging (contradiction to verify): Four references on the face — 2007/0197227, 2008/0043717, 2008/0130637, 2008/0316998 — carry publication dates after the '226 filing date of 2007‑04‑17. As listed, they can only be prior art under § 102(e) via their earlier U.S. filing dates, which I could not confirm. 2008/0043717 (Bellora et al.) appears to correspond to Aylus's own combinational‑services application Ser. No. 11/504,896 (filed 2006‑08‑16), which the '226 expressly incorporates by reference — plausible but unverified.

2. Most relevant prior art — ranked, with § 102 claim mapping

No single cited reference appears to disclose all elements of independent claim 1. The closest cluster is the applicant's own Aylus family (the applications the '226 calls "the incorporated patent references"). That is analytically important and worth stating plainly: the best § 102 ammunition against the '226 is largely the same company's earlier filings.

Tier 1 — Closest art (Aylus family; § 102(a)/(e))

① US 2006/0291437 A1 (Naqvi et al.) — "System and method to provide dynamic call models for users in an IMS network"

• Filed 2005‑06‑24; published 2006‑12‑28; granted as US 7,561,535 B2 (Google Patents).
• Description: Provisioning dynamic call models in an IMS network with an S‑CSCF; a UE with agent logic expresses dynamic context and sends it to the network; the S‑CSCF/database instantiates a dynamic call model having filter codes that associate IMS service codes with ASs; at least two call models have different ASs with different service logic for a specified IMS service code, yielding distinct service experiences.
• Potentially anticipates: claims 6–9 squarely (agent logic / dynamic context / new call model on context change), and claim 1 and claim 13 only if "service tree" is construed to cover a selectable/instantiable call‑model database — a real claim‑construction fight. Its structure is filter‑code/call‑model, not a stored hierarchical "service tree" that is tree‑walked, and it does not recite control logic addressed by the S‑CSCF as an AS. I would expect this to be run as § 103, not § 102, against claims 1/13.
• Subsection: § 102(a) and § 102(e) (pub. <1 yr before filing, so not § 102(b)). Common ownership raises a pre‑AIA § 103(c) disqualification question for obviousness only.

② US 2007/0008913 A1 (Naqvi et al.) — "Method and system for provisioning IMS networks with virtual service organizations having distinct service logic"

• Filed 2005‑06‑24; published 2007‑01‑11; granted as US 7,792,528 B2 (FPO; '528 PDF).
• Description: Call models provisioned so different users/groups get distinct IMS service experiences; a call‑model database associates IMS service codes with ASs based on user/group identity; at least two call models have different ASs with different service logic for a specified service code.
• Potentially anticipates: claims 11 and 12 (multiple MVNOs/VSOs with distinct service logic; different ASs per subscriber group), claim 3 (call‑model info keyed to user/group identity ↔ "plurality of service trees for different groups of UEs"), and the "at least two potential call models mapping a specified request onto different ASs" element of claims 1/13 (that element is essentially verbatim from the '528 abstract).
• Subsection: § 102(a) and § 102(e).

③ US 2006/0291412 A1 (Naqvi et al.) — "Associated device discovery in IMS networks"

• Filed 2005‑06‑24; published 2006‑12‑28; continuation published as US 2012/0036248 A1.
• Description: IMS serving‑node logic, UE/associated‑device discovery, policy‑driven association of devices to an IMS session.
• Potentially anticipates: claims 6–9 (UE‑side logic reporting context to the network), less so the core call‑model claims.
• Subsection: § 102(a)/(e).

④ US 2006/0291484, 2006/0291487, 2006/0291488, 2006/0291489, 2006/0292444, 2006/0291419 (12/2006) and US 2007/0008951 (1/2007) — Naqvi et al. / McConnell et al.

• These are the sibling Aylus publications corresponding to Ser. Nos. 11/166,406 (mediation/hybrid network), 11/166,456 (stateful‑connection cost), 11/282,924 (AVS sessions with multiple access networks), 11/283,038, 11/283,042, 11/370,594, etc. — the same list the '226 reproduces under "Incorporated Patent References."
• Potentially anticipates: collectively relevant to claims 2, 3, 6–9 (session control topology; UE/context signalling; multi‑access‑network sessions).
• Subsection: § 102(a)/(e). Caveat: these are cited as applicant's own references and incorporated by reference into the '226, which cuts both ways (see § 4 below).

⑤ US 2007/0197227 A1 (Naqvi et al.) — pub. 2007‑08‑23

• Listed on the face although its publication postdates the '226 filing date; qualifies (if at all) only under § 102(e) via a pre‑4/17/2007 filing date, which I did not verify. Treat as applicant‑family art of uncertain citable date.

Tier 2 — Third‑party art on IMS session/service invocation

⑥ Jagadeesan family — US 7,299,049 B2 (issued 2007‑11‑06) and US 2006/0089143 A1 (4/2006); 2006/0121902 A1 (6/2006); 2006/0183478 A1 (8/2006); 2006/0256751 A1 (11/2006)

• Bell‑Labs/Lucent‑lineage work on orchestrating invocation of application servers in an IP multimedia network (service invocation/session control).
• Potentially anticipates: claims 1, 2 (control logic that invokes a specified AS; direct communication with ASs) — to the extent it discloses selection among plural application servers per service request.
• Subsection: the 2006 publications → § 102(b) (published >1 yr before 2007‑04‑17). US 7,299,049 issued after the '226 filing date → § 102(e) only (assumes a pre‑2007‑04‑17 filing date; unverified).
• Caveat: I could not verify the exact title/claims of US 7,299,049 within budget. Do not cite it by title from this memo alone.

⑦ Ejzak family — US 7,301,938 B2 (2007‑11‑27); US 7,353,021 B2 (2008‑04‑01); US 2003/0026245 A1 (2003‑01‑30); US 2003/0027569 A1 (2003‑02‑06); US 2003/0027595 A1 (2003‑02‑06); US 2004/0252673 A1 (2004‑12‑16); US 2005/0245261 A1 (2005‑11‑03)

• Lucent work on IMS call/session control, trigger‑driven service invocation, and interworking.
• Potentially anticipates: claims 1, 4, 5 (S‑CSCF session control; pre‑configured iFC; HSS‑sourced iFC) — these are largely the admitted conventional IMS background, which the '226's own Background section describes.
• Subsection: the 2003 publications → § 102(b). The granted patents issued after 2007‑04‑17 → § 102(e) only.

⑧ US 6,694,145 B2 (Riikonen et al.), 2004‑02‑17 — examiner‑listed; classification 455/502 per the '226 face. At most peripheral to the call‑model claims; may bear on claim 7 if it touches access‑network availability/handoff. Subject matter not independently verified.

⑨ Jacuzzi/MVNO‑adjacent art — US 2006/0262806 A1 (Bouazizi, 11/2006), US 2003/0055974 A1 (Brophy, 3/2003), US 2004/0193725 / 2004/0068574 (Costa‑Requena), US 6,782,412 B2 (Brophy, 8/2004) — IMS service provisioning, mobility, and network‑selection art; best positioned against claims 4–7, 10.

Tier 3 — Background/printed publications (§ 102(b))

3GPP TS 23.218 V6.3.0 and TS 23.228 V6.8.0 (both 2004–2005) are the most consequential non‑patent references. They define the iFC / SPT / S‑CSCF call‑model machinery that the '226 concedes is prior art in its Background. They are excellent § 102(b) art for the claim preambles and claims 4–5, but they do not disclose a stored "service tree" or per‑UE divergent AS selection. OSGi Release 3 (Mar. 2003) and the ISR documents are cited for completeness and carry little independent § 102 weight.

3. Claim-by-claim vulnerability map (§ 102)

Bottom line: On the cited-of-record art, claims 11–12 and 6–9 are the most exposed to outright anticipation; claim 1/13 is more likely a § 103 target in view of 2007/0008913 + 2006/0291437 + admitted IMS background, with "service tree / tree-walking" as the surviving point of novelty.

4. Caveats, uncertainties, and cross-references

• Common ownership. The strongest references are Aylus's own earlier applications (filed 2005‑06‑24), several of which the '226 incorporates by reference. They remain citable under § 102(a)/(e) as of their filing/publication, but for obviousness purposes pre‑AIA § 103(c) (common ownership) may disqualify them. That is a legal judgment, not a factual finding — flag it for counsel.
• Unverified items: exact subject matter of EP 1 435 748, US 7,299,049 B2, and US 6,694,145 B2; filing dates of the four post‑filing publications listed on the face; examiner‑vs‑applicant designation of individual references.
• Consistency with earlier sections. Nothing here contradicts the previously generated summary (13 claims / 2 independent; 2029‑08‑17 adjusted expiry; terminal disclaimer). New detail added: the '226 carries 853 days of PTA and is subject to a terminal disclaimer; and its continuation US 8,170,534 B2 (6 claims) recites a UE‑centric independent claim (agent logic → dynamic context message → new call model) — i.e., the '226's dependent claims 6–9 were rewritten as independent claims downstream (US 8,170,534 PDF). That matters because the same Aylus prior art now maps onto the continuation's independent claim.
• On the litigation lead. The earlier "Litigation summary" flagged an unverified CourtListener reference to "the '622 patent." Nothing in the searches for prior art resolves that ambiguity; I still cannot confirm it is U.S. 7,856,226. The ongoing caution about Aylus v. Apple / RE44,412 (a different Aylus patent) also stands — do not attribute it here.
• I did not run the classic third‑party prior art that is not on the '226 face (e.g., Lucent/IBM "service broker" art, IMS SCIM literature) — that would properly require a full prior‑art search, not a citation review.

If useful, I can next produce (a) a machine‑readable citation table with verified filing dates for the Tier‑1/Tier‑2 references, or (b) a § 103 combination chart pairing 2007/0008913 + 2006/0291437 + 3GPP TS 23.218 against claim 1 element‑by‑element.

I'll research the prior art of record for this patent before building the §103 analysis.

Let me locate the actual prior-art references of record and the family's published applications.

Good — I'm finding the actual record. Let me verify a few key references' dates, assignees, and content.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. 7,856,226 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)

Building on the two prior sections: bibliographic findings, the claim breakdown, and the negative litigation finding are assumed. This section does not repeat them. Where the earlier sections' data conflicts with what I found here, I flag it inline.

1. What the "Prior Art" material on this page actually supplies — and its limits

Be clear about provenance, because this matters for how much weight each ground can bear:

So the analysis below is built on (a) the reference set the applicant itself put on the record, (b) the standards cited by the applicant, and (c) references I independently located and dated.

Identifier note (literal): the specification's cross-reference list names 11/282,924 while the detailed description names 11/289,924 for what appears to be the same out-of-band "new filter code" disclosure. I do not auto-correct either. Likewise the "Combinational Services (CS) server" and the "SCIM" are both given the numeral 335 in the description; both are quoted as written.

Contradiction flag: the Unified Patents portal entry surfaced in search lists the '226 priority date as 2007-04-16; the patent face and Google Patents say 2007-04-17. I treat 2007-04-17 as authoritative (it is the filing date on the document). This one-day discrepancy does not change any conclusion here.

2. Governing framework

• Pre-AIA § 103(a) applies (filed 2007-04-17). Prosecution was conducted in the pre-KSR TSM era — KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) issued April 30, 2007, thirteen days after this filing. A modern validity challenge therefore gets KSR's flexible rationales (design incentives, predictable variation, "obvious to try," market/design demand, teaching of the reference itself), which is a meaningfully easier standard than what the examiner applied.
• § 103(c) caveat (critical). Two of the strongest references are commonly owned Aylus filings with overlapping inventive entities (the '535 and '528 patents). To the extent they qualify as prior art only under §102(e), §103(c) disqualifies them as §103 references. They are usable only if they also qualify under §102(a) as printed publications before the applicant's invention date — which (i) puts the burden on the applicant to antedate under Rule 131, and (ii) is a genuine vulnerability in every ground that leans on them. I weight the non-commonly-owned Verizon reference ('275) and the 3GPP specs (statutory bars) accordingly.
• Graham factors applied below: scope/content of art, differences, POSITA level, secondary considerations (none of record — no evidence of unexpected results, licensing, or industry praise was located).

POSITA: B.S. in EE/CS (or equivalent) plus 2–4 years designing packet-switched/wireless service architecture; familiar with 3GPP TS 23.228/23.218 (IMS stage-2 call model, service profile, iFC, SPT), SIP/ISC application-server invocation, and IMS-based MVNO partitioning.

Claim-construction caveats that drive the outcome:

1. "service tree" is defined only functionally in claim 1 ("the service tree defining a plurality of potential call models… mapping a specified potential service request… onto different ASs"). The specification's narrower description is root/branch/leaf nodes "tree-walked" in prefix order with iFCs at each node. The broad reading governs the obviousness case; the narrow reading is the one plausible survival path (see §6).
2. "control logic" is not limited to a separate server — the spec's FIG. 8 embodiment puts call-model generation inside the S-CSCF. This matters because the best art puts the SCIM inside or alongside the S-CSCF.

3. The reference set

4. Grounds of rejection

Ground 1 — Claims 1, 2, 4, 5, 13: 3GPP TS 23.228/23.218 + US 7,792,275 ('582)

Why combine: Two references in the same field (IMS service invocation), addressing the same admitted problem. TS 23.228 supplies the S-CSCF + service-profile + iFC/SPT + ISC invocation framework, and — decisively — the SCIM as an AS-addressed entity whose purpose is coordinating multiple application-service invocations. '275 supplies the missing dynamic layer: the profile-stored SCIM rules that let the same parsed request resolve to different application services depending on the subscriber profile, i.e., a plurality of potential mappings. Motivation is intrinsic to the references: TS 23.228's own service-interaction architecture calls for a SCIM precisely because static iFC chaining is insufficient; '275 states the same objective ("placing a SCIM within an S-CSCF"). KSR rationale: combination of known elements (iFC-based invocation + a known coordinating entity) yielding the predictable result of per-subscriber service selection. Both references predate 2006-04-17 in relevant substance, so at least the standards half is not antedatable.

Element chart (claim 1):

Claim 2 (direct AS communication) → '275 (SCIM invokes the micro-application AS directly). Claims 4–5 (iFC/HSS) → TS 23.228/23.218 expressly. Claim 13 (method) → same mapping; note the asymmetry flagged in the prior section — claim 13 omits any "invoking" step, making it broader and therefore easier to invalidate on this ground, not harder.

Confidence: high for claims 13, 4, 5; high-moderate for claim 1 (depends on whether "service tree" is read functionally).

Ground 2 — Claims 1, 3, 10, 11, 12: '275/'582 + US 7,792,528 ('913)

This is the cleanest textual hit in the entire set. The '528 specification independently articulates the exact limitation that distinguishes claim 1 from admitted prior art: "Call models have different ASs with different service logic associated with a specified IMS service code, such that two call models will provide distinct service experience for a specified IMS service code." Compare claim 1's: "at least two of the potential call models mapping a specified potential service request by a UE onto different ASs capable of providing different service experiences to the UE." Claim 12's MVNO-owned-AS mapping is disclosed by the '528 VSO/MVNO provisioning embodiment. Claim 3 (plurality of service trees for different groups) follows from the '528 user/group-identity database plus '275's plurality of subscriber profiles. Claim 10 (operator policy change) follows from '528's operator/VSO policy provisioning.

Motivation — and note how strong it is here: the motivation is supplied by the '226's own Background section, which concedes the problem and the demand: "service differentiation is not possible amongst various MVNOs using a common network operator…"; "MVNOs conventionally distinguish their services mainly through marketing, handsets, and billing." Under KSR, an applicant's own acknowledgment of the problem in the specification is powerful evidence of a known design incentive. There is no teaching away: the references point in the same direction for the same reasons.

§103(c) exposure: both prongs of this ground except '275 are commonly owned Aylus art. A defendant must establish §102(a) status (publication 2007-01-11 before the '226 invention date, with the applicant unable to antedate). A Rule 131 antedating declaration is the practical defense. Confidence: moderate standing alone; high when '275 is the primary reference.

Ground 3 — Claims 6, 7, 8, 9: US 7,561,535 ('437) + US 7,792,275 ('582) + app. 11/282,924

Claim 6's language ("agent logic to express a dynamic context of the UE in a message and to transmit the dynamic context message to the S-CSCF") maps nearly word-for-word onto the '535's claim 21 recitation ("At least one user endpoint device (UE) with agent logic, expresses dynamic context of the UE in a message and sends said dynamic context message to a[n] S-CSCF"). Claim 7 (newly available access network as the dynamic context) is met by 11/282,924's disclosure that the UE "can access a different access network … of different type," and by the '535's inclusion of "network connections that terminate or emanate from said devices" in the dynamic context. Claim 8's iFC forwarding is TS 23.228/'275. Claim 9 (new call model from the forwarded context) is the '535's core disclosure ("new call models… new filter codes are built and pushed on top of the prior call model"). Motivation: the '535 and the '226 share a common problem statement (the UE's environment changes mid-session and static iFCs cannot react).

Note the dependency/citation quirk: the '226 specification expressly incorporates 11/166,470 (= the '535) by reference. An applicant incorporation-by-reference of a document that supplies a claim limitation is itself a strong obviousness/anticipation posture, subject to the same §103(c)/§102(a) caveats. Confidence: high on the technical mapping; moderate on admissibility because of common ownership.

Ground 4 — Claim 10 (operator-policy-driven call model): '528 + TS 23.228 + '275

Operator provisioning of service profiles in the HSS and the S-CSCF's use of them is §102(b)-level art. Re-provisioning on a policy change is the ordinary use of that mechanism; the specification itself describes the trigger ("if the network operator wants to enforce a change in policy… this can trigger SCIM 335 to derive a new call model"). Confidence: high-moderate.

5. Optional formalities / secondary considerations

No evidence of record was located for nexus-bearing secondary considerations — no unexpected results, no industry praise, no licensing attributable to the '226 (the 2010–2011 assignments on the face are a collateral security interest with a later termination, not a licensing program). Absence of such evidence weakens any rebuttal of the KSR rationales.

6. Where the claims have their best chance of surviving

Honest counterweight, because a one-sided analysis is not useful:

1. The "service tree" as a hierarchical structure with parent-to-child context passing. On the narrow construction (root/branch/leaf Service Profiles, prefix/trie tree-walking, and — per the specification — the ability of one level of service logic to select and pass context to the next level, which the '226 distinguishes from IMS's sequential iFC chaining that "is not passed on to the next application server"), the strongest references ('535, '528) describe dynamically generated per-user call models / filter codes, not a persistent multi-dimensional tree with recursive context inheritance. I did not locate any pre-2007 IMS reference expressly disclosing a "service tree" as such. If the claims are limited to that structure, the obviousness case rests on (a) the predictability of organizing service profiles hierarchically (X.500/LDAP/prefix-trie structures were ubiquitous) plus (b) the 2008-onward 3GPP SCIM study finding that dynamic service chaining layered on iFC was needed — but that literature post-dates the filing and cannot be used as prior art. This is the single most defensible distinction.
2. §103(c) / Rule 131 attacks on the Aylus-family references (§4, Grounds 2–3). If both the '535 and '528 are knocked out, the remaining non-commonly-owned art ('275) plus the standards still reaches claims 1, 2, 4, 5, 10, 13 comfortably, but the MVNO-owned-AS mapping of claim 12 loses its cleanest textual support.
3. Claim 13's missing "invoking" step is a drafting asymmetry that helps an invalidity challenger, not the patentee — flagged in the prior section and confirmed here.

7. Verification gaps — do not treat as settled

• I could not retrieve the '226's own examiner-cited "References Cited" table. Everything above about which references were of record during prosecution of the '226 is inference. To close this, pull the front page of the granted patent PDF (the file is linked from the Google Patents page) and take the §56 list literally.
• The exact §102(e) support for US 7,792,275's SCIM-in-S-CSCF disclosure relative to its 2005-07-29 priority — I verified the priority date and the published content separately, but not paragraph-level priority support. Worth checking before relying on '275 as a 2005-date reference.
• Common-ownership / Rule 131 posture as between Aylus's 2005 filings and the '226 — decisive for Grounds 2–3 and not determinable from the documents alone.
• CN 101330449 / US 2010/0185772 / US 2007/0100981 were surfaced but their pre-2007-04-17 public-availability dates are unconfirmed; I deliberately excluded them from every ground.

Bottom line: on the record available, claims 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 13 are more likely than not obvious under §103(a) over (i) 3GPP TS 23.228/23.218's iFC/SPT/service-profile framework with the SCIM, in view of (ii) US 7,792,275's profile-driven SCIM invocation (non-commonly-owned, §102(e) art), and (iii) US 7,792,528 / US 7,561,535 for the per-UE and per-MVNO divergent-AS mapping and the UE dynamic-context agent — subject to the §103(c)/§102(a) admissibility fight on the Aylus-family references. Claims 7, 9, and 12 are obvious on the same combination with 11/282,924 and the '528 VSO embodiment respectively. The residual non-obviousness strength sits almost entirely in the narrow "hierarchical service tree with inter-level context passing" reading of claim 1 — and that reading is not what claim 1's language, standing alone, requires.