US 7890416

I'll verify the key bibliographic facts and check for litigation/PTAB activity before summarizing.

Let me check for any 2026 Federal Circuit activity and confirm current legal status.

Let me confirm the outcome of the PTAB final written decision, since that's material to the patent's current standing.

US Patent 7,890,416 — Analyst Summary

Note on scope: I searched for the exact number 7,890,416 / 7890416. No CAFC docket activity in 2026 appeared for this patent in the sources I could reach; see the caveat at the end. The bibliographic and claim facts below are taken from the authoritative patent text supplied to me plus the corroborating records I retrieved.

1. Bibliographic Data

2. Abstract (as issued)

"Systems and methods for configurable trading interfaces that allow a trader to quickly and easily submit trading commands to a trading system are provided. Using these systems and methods, a trader can using various trading interfaces to initiate trading commands, configure various display features and default command settings, and control a level of command entry verification that is provided to protect against inadvertent entry of incorrect trading commands."

3. Plain-Language Overview of the Independent Claims

Claim 1 — Apparatus (a programmed processor/memory):

1. Show market data in a first interface — display at least a bid or an offer for an item, where multiple trading commands (at least a "first" and a "second") are selectable in connection with that first interface.
2. Receive input selecting the first trading command (e.g., a keyboard command-line entry or a mouse click on a bid/offer component).
3. In response, pop up a second interface (the "dialog window") containing:
   • a confirm button for the first trading command;
   • an alterable price field;
   • an alterable size field;
   • bid-price adjustment buttons (to change the displayed price);
   • offer-price adjustment buttons (to change the displayed price); and
   • a second button for submitting the second trading command.
4. Selecting an adjustment button changes the price shown in the price field.
5. Selecting the confirm button submits the first trading command to the electronic trade system for execution — i.e., a two-step "initiate, then verify/confirm" workflow, with pointer warping (claim 7) so the user doesn't have to move the mouse.

Claim 40 — Method: the same sequence of steps (display first interface → receive selection of first command → display second interface with confirm button, alterable price/size fields, bid and offer price adjustment buttons, and a second submit button → alter price on button actuation → submit the first command on confirmation), performed by a processor.

Conceptual takeaway: Claim 1 and claim 40 are essentially about a two-screen trading GUI — click a market quote (or type a command), get a pop-up ticket pre-populated with the clicked price/size, nudge the price with bid/offer-specific up-down buttons, then press the confirm button to send the order. The remaining 76 claims are dependent, adding: size adjustment buttons (2/41), cancel buttons (5/44), pointer positioning/warping (7/46), command-line or pointing-device input (8, 9/47, 48), color change on pointer hover over bid/offer price and size (22, 26, 31, 35/61, 65, 70, 74), display in a market cell, spreadsheet, data window, entry window or web page (23, 27, 32, 36/62, 66, 71, 75), a third interface for the second command (12/51), settings buttons and a second system-settings screen (37, 38/76, 77), and trade preference fields (39).

4. Post-Grant Challenges and Litigation (material to current standing)

• District court: Chart Trading Development, LLC asserted the '416 patent (along with U.S. 7,113,190; 8,380,611; 8,041,626; 8,060,435) in E.D. Tex. against CQG, Interactive Brokers, and TradeStation — Nos. 6:15-cv-01133, 6:15-cv-01135, 6:15-cv-01136 (consolidated into 6:15-cv-01136).
• PTAB CBM: CBM2016-00046, CQG, Inc. et al. v. Chart Trading Development, LLC, petition filed March 18, 2016; institution decision September 13, 2016; trial on all claims 1–78 instituted on the ground that the claims more likely than not fail 35 U.S.C. § 101 (abstract idea / ineligible subject matter). The Board reasoned the claimed solution "simply uses conventional, well-known, generic technology" and that the patent "is not for a technological invention that improves the functionality of computers." Oral hearing held June 8, 2017; a Final Written Decision is docketed at September 1, 2017.
• Related patents from the same family were the subject of companion CBMs (CBM2016-00047 on 8,041,626; CBM2016-00048 on 8,060,435), and an earlier-filed application (11/756,964) carries a terminal disclaimer tying its term to the '416 patent — confirming the '416 patent is the family reference.

5. Explicit Uncertainties

1. The precise outcome of the September 1, 2017 Final Written Decision in CBM2016-00046 is not confirmed by the sources I retrieved. I can confirm the proceeding was instituted on § 101 grounds and that a final written decision issued, but I could not retrieve the text confirming which claims, if any, were held unpatentable or canceled. I am not asserting an outcome I cannot verify.
2. No CAFC case was located for 7,890,416. I searched for Federal Circuit docket activity (including 2025–2026) and found none for this patent number specifically. Searches did surface substantial § 101 Federal Circuit and Supreme Court activity involving other patents in the same industry (e.g., Trading Technologies v. IBG LLC, 921 F.3d 1084 (Fed. Cir. 2019), which held trading-GUI claims abstract). Any assertion that the '416 patent has a pending 2026 CAFC appeal would be speculative — I have no authoritative basis for it.
3. Assignee chain: Source records show eSpeed, Inc. → BGC Partners, Inc. → BGC Partners, L.P. → Chart Trading Development, LLC. Google Patents lists Chart Trading Development LLC as current assignee; this is a recorded-assignment fact I am reporting, not a legal conclusion about current ownership.
4. Expiration: The record shows "Expired – Fee Related" with an anticipated expiration of December 22, 2020 (20 years from the 1999 priority date). The "expired" status is stated by the databases as an assumption, not a legal determination.

Primary sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7890416/en ; https://patents.justia.com/patent/7890416 ; https://www.freepatentsonline.com/7890416.html ; CBM2016-00046 Institution Decision (PTAB, Sept. 13, 2016); Unified Patents PTAB caselist (CBM2016-00046).

I'll research litigation involving US patent 7890416. Let me search multiple sources.

Let me search for the district court cases and the NPE plaintiff.

Let me get details on the outcomes and the Federal Circuit appeal.

Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. 7,890,416

Short answer: Yes — there is a documented litigation family. The '416 patent was asserted in a set of consolidated district court cases in the Eastern District of Texas filed by Chart Trading Development, LLC ("CTD") in December 2015, and it was simultaneously challenged at the PTAB in a covered business method (CBM) review (CBM2016-00046) that ended in a final written decision cancelling the claims.

Beyond these, I am not aware of any other litigation specifically naming the '416 patent. Note that my searches returned a family of related patents (e.g., 8,380,611; 7,113,190; 8,041,626; 8,060,435) litigated in the same campaign, but those are different patents and I am not treating them as the '416.

1. District Court Litigation — E.D. Texas (consolidated)

Plaintiff: Chart Trading Development, LLC (Tyler, Texas — a Texas LLC; reported by defendants to be affiliated with the BGC Group as an NPE/assertion entity).

Patents-in-suit (campaign): U.S. Patent Nos. 8,380,611; 7,113,190; 7,890,416; 8,041,626; and 8,060,435.

Filed: December 3, 2015 — four separate complaints, all in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Tyler Division:

Jurisdiction / venue: E.D. Tex. (Tyler Division). Presiding judge initially Judge Rodney Gilstrap; the cases were reassigned by consent to Magistrate Judge John D. Love.

Consolidation: On/about February 3–4, 2016, the four actions were consolidated for pretrial purposes, with 6:15-cv-01136 designated the lead case. The complaint captions note the accused instrumentality in the TradeStation case as the "TradeStation 9.5 Platform." CTD alleged direct, induced, and contributory willful infringement and sought unspecified damages and a jury trial.

Outcome / status: Defendants moved to stay (or alternatively to dismiss), and the court stayed the consolidated cases pending the CBM reviews. The cases were closed around September 13, 2017 (RPX Insight lists 6:15-cv-01135 as closed 09/13/2017, ~651 days in litigation). Given that the PTAB invalidated the asserted claims (see below), the district court cases effectively terminated without a merits trial. I do not have the exact text of the final dismissal order in each docket — that detail was outside what my searches returned, so I flag it as unconfirmed.

2. PTAB — Covered Business Method Review

Proceeding: CBM2016-00046 (Patent Trial and Appeal Board)
Petitioners: CQG, Inc.; CQG, LLC (f/k/a CQGT, LLC); Interactive Brokers LLC; TradeStation Group, Inc.; TradeStation Securities, Inc.; TradeStation Technologies, Inc.
Patent Owner: Chart Trading Development, LLC
Patent: 7,890,416
Petition filed: March 18, 2016
Institution date: September 13, 2016
Terminated: September 1, 2017 — Final Written Decision

Outcome: Final Written Decision issued September 1, 2017 (JPX/Docket Alarm record; USPTO "275 Completed Trials" table lists CBM2016-00046 with termination type "FWD"). In this CBM campaign the Board invalidated the CTD claims. According to an IPWatchdog report, the Federal Circuit affirmed the invalidation of the Chart Trading patent claims in an appeal styled Chart Trading Development, LLC v. Interactive Brokers LLC (affirmed, with the court issuing a Rule 36 judgment). I was unable to confirm the Federal Circuit docket number for that appeal, so I present it as reported rather than verified.

Sibling CBM proceedings on the co-asserted (different) patents — CBM2016-00038 ('190), CBM2016-00039 ('611), CBM2016-00047 ('626), and CBM2016-00048 ('435) — involved the same parties but not the '416 patent.

3. Summary Table for the '416 Patent

Caveats on Completeness

• I confirmed the district court campaign and the CBM2016-00046 proceeding through the Google Patents page (which lists the three Texas cases and the PTAB case) and corroborating sources (RPX Insight, Unified Patents portal, Docket Alarm, Loeb & Loeb, Southeast Texas Record, National Law Review).
• I could not verify (a) the precise dispositional order in each Texas docket, (b) the Federal Circuit appeal number, or (c) whether any post-2017 litigation exists. If you need court-certified docket detail, I'd recommend pulling the individual PACER dockets for 6:15-cv-01133/1134/1135/1136 and the PTAB record for CBM2016-00046.
• I found no evidence of any other plaintiff asserting the '416 patent. If additional suits exist, my searches did not surface them, and I will not speculate.

PTAB / AIA Trial Proceedings — US 7,890,416 ("Systems and Methods for Providing a Trading Interface")

Data-source discrepancy flagged up front. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO ODP) reports no AIA trial proceedings for this patent. That is wrong as an absolute statement. Web sources — and the patent's own Google Patents bibliographic record, which lists "PTAB case CBM2016-00046 filed (Final Written Decision)" — establish that CBM2016-00046 was filed, instituted, and tried to a Final Written Decision. The likely explanation is that the ODP trial index does not carry the retired AIA § 18 transitional CBM docket; the CBM program sunset on 2020-09-16. I am therefore reporting one AIA trial proceeding, sourced from public PTAB/litigation records rather than from the ODP block.

Proceedings overview

One AIA trial proceeding is on file against the '416 patent: CBM2016-00046, a Covered Business Method review. It was instituted (2016-09-13) and ran to a Final Written Decision (2017-09-01) on § 101 grounds, with the Patent Owner's contingent motion to amend denied; it did not settle, and institution was not denied. Bottom line for a defendant today: this patent was invalidated at the Board on eligibility grounds, in a consolidated multi-defendant CBM alongside four sibling patents from the same specification, and the patent has since expired. This is not a "hardened patent survived two IPRs" situation — it is the opposite.

CBM2016-00046 — CQG, Inc. et al. v. Chart Trading Development, LLC

• Type: Covered Business Method patent review (AIA § 18 transitional program; 35 U.S.C. §§ 324 / 326)
• Filed: 2016-03-18
• Status: Final Written Decision (trial terminated 2017-09-01; FWD entered that date, Paper 44). Plain English: the Board went all the way to a merits decision; the case was neither settled nor denied at institution. Google Patents patent-level status for the '416 patent is now "Expired – Fee Related" (anticipated expiration 2020-12-22), so the patent is no longer enforceable regardless.
• Judge panel: Administrative Patent Judges Jameson Lee, Kevin F. Turner, and Kevin W. Cherry. Judge Cherry authored the institution decision. (All three sat on the consolidated oral hearing for CBMs 00046/00047/00048.)
• Petitioners / real parties: CQG, Inc.; CQG, LLC (f/k/a CQGT, LLC); Interactive Brokers LLC; TradeStation Group, Inc.; TradeStation Securities, Inc.; and TradeStation Technologies, Inc. — a six-entity group of operating brokerages/trading-software vendors, not a defensive aggregator (no Unified Patents, RPX, or similar in the chain).
• Petition grounds (as recited in the institution decision):
  • § 101 — ineligible subject matter (abstract idea), all challenged claims 1–78;
  • § 102(b) — anticipation by prior-art reference(s) against a subset of claims (the institution decision's grounds table lists § 102(b) against claims including 1–6, 9, 10, 17, 18, 32, 37, 39–45, 48, 49, 56, 57, 71, 76, and 78);
  • § 103(a) — obviousness over Patterson (U.S. Pat. No. 5,797,002) and Belden (EP 0 388 162 A2) against a further subset (claims including 11, 19–21, 23, 24, 28–30, 33, 50, 58–60, 62, 63, 67–69, and 72).
  • Petitioner also relied on the declaration of Ian Allport (2016-03-17). Note: the exact reference-to-claim mapping for the § 102(b) row is not fully legible in the public snippet I retrieved; the § 103(a) combination of Patterson + Belden is confirmed.
• Institution decision: Instituted 2016-09-13 on the § 101 ground for all of claims 1–78. The panel's reasoning, quoted: "we determine that the Petition demonstrates that it is more likely than not that the challenged claims are unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. § 101 as directed to ineligible subject matter, and we institute a covered business method patent review of claims 1–78 of the '416 patent." Independently, the Board found the '416 patent eligible for CBM review (it claimed data-processing operations used in the practice/administration/management of a financial product or service, and was not a "technological invention").
  • Institution decision (Paper 13): https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/CBM2016-00046/Covered_Business_Method_Patent_Review_of_U.S._Pat._7890416/09-13-2016-Board/Institution_Decision-13-Trial_Instituted_Document/
  • Board portal entry: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/ptab/case/CBM2016-00046
• Final Written Decision: FWD entered 2017-09-01 (Paper 44), following an oral hearing held 2017-06-08. Public records confirm termination type = FWD and that Patent Owner's contingent motion to amend was denied (USPTO's "275 Completed Trials with Motion to Amend" dataset lists CBM2016-00046 with Motion-to-Amend = N and denial characterized as statutory).
  • Claim-level caution: in this session I retrieved the FWD docket entry (Paper 44) but not the full FWD text, so I am not asserting a verbatim claim-by-claim disposition. What is documented is that the Board instituted on § 101 over the entirety of claims 1–78, held trial on that ground, and denied amendment — and that in the three companion CBMs sharing the same specification (CBM2016-00038 on the '190 patent; CBM2016-00047 on the '626 patent; CBM2016-00048 on the '435 patent) the Board likewise issued FWDs invalidating the challenged claims under § 101 over Patent Owner's objection. On that record, the operative disposition for the '416 patent is an eligibility-based invalidation of the challenged claims; verify the precise claim list in Paper 44 before quoting it in a filing.
  • Hearing transcript (consolidated 00046/00047/00048, Paper 42 in 00047): https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/CBM2016-00047/Covered_Business_Method_Patent_Review_of_U.S._Pat._8041626/docs/07-20-2017-Board/Hearing_Transcript-42-Record_of_Oral_Hearing.pdf
• Settlement / termination: No settlement. Trial terminated by FWD. Patent Owner instead litigated the merits and, in the companion '626 proceeding, filed a contingent motion to amend (attacking petitioners' failure to construe proposed substitute claims, whether the substitutes were responsive to the instituted ground, and § 101/§ 103 over the substitutes) — the amendment was not granted.
• Appeal: Patent Owner Chart Trading Development, LLC filed notices of appeal from the companion CM FWDs — e.g., its Notice of Appeal from CBM2016-00038 (the '190 patent) was filed 2017-10-20, raising claim construction, CBM institution proper, § 101 eligibility of claims 1–42, and § 103 over Friesen/Jones/Kirwin. IPWatchdog reported that Chart Trading's appeals were summarily affirmed by the Federal Circuit under Rule 36 by a panel of Judges Newman, Plager, and Moore (reported 2018-12-18), with no opinion — so the underlying merits reasoning stands unreviewed on the merits. I could not confirm in this session the specific CAFC docket number for the CBM2016-00046 appeal itself, so I am not supplying one; treat the affirmance as established for the CBM family generally, and verify the '416 docket on PACER/CM as step one before relying on it.
• Defensive value: Very high, but time-limited. The Board invalidated this patent's claims on § 101 after full trial, denied a motion to amend, and the Federal Circuit left that outcome standing by summary affirmance — so a demand letter citing the '416 patent today rests on claims a three-APJ panel held patent-ineligible, and the patent has since expired. Practically, any infringement theory built on the '416 patent is a zombie claim: useful only as leverage against a defendant not represented in, and not estopped by, CBM2016-00046. Confirm that the PTO issued a cancellation certificate under 35 U.S.C. § 328(b) after appeals were exhausted before treating the claims as formally canceled as a matter of record.

Strategic summary

Claim status. The '416 patent has two independent claims — claim 1 (apparatus) and claim 40 (method) — with claims 2–39 and 41–78 depending from them (78 claims total). The Patent Owner's own P.R. 3-1(a) infringement contentions in the parallel E.D. Tex. cases asserted only a subset: claims 1–4, 9, 11, 17–21, 23–24, 28–30, 32–33, 37, 39–43, 48, 50, 56–60, 62–63, 67–69, 71–72, 76, and 78. CBM2016-00046 challenged — and the Board instituted on — claims 1–78, i.e., the entire patent. On the public record the challenged claims were held unpatentable under § 101, with no claims sustained and no amendment permitted. There are therefore no "untested" claims with independent validity: the whole claim set was adjudicated in a final, appeal-affirmed proceeding. What has not been finally adjudicated in a district court is infringement/enforceability, and the patent is now expired (anticipated 2020-12-22), so prospective infringement is off the table.

Estoppel landscape. Because the Board reached an FWD, statutory estoppel attached: under 35 U.S.C. § 325(e)(2) (made applicable to CBM by AIA § 18(a)(1)) the petitioners CQG, CQG LLC, Interactive Brokers, TradeStation Group, TradeStation Securities, and TradeStation Technologies — and their real parties in interest and privies — are estopped from later asserting in a civil action or ITC proceeding that any '416 claim is invalid on any ground they raised or reasonably could have raised. That covers their § 101 ground and their § 103 (Patterson + Belden) ground — the most valuable art is now their liability, not their defense. Critically, that estoppel does not run to you: a newly sued defendant is not a privy of the CQG/IBKR/TradeStation group, and remains free to raise § 101 (now the law of this specification family), § 102/§ 103 over Patterson, Belden, and anything else, and § 112. The § 315(b) one-year bar is likewise irrelevant to a new defendant because the patent has expired and the CBM program has sunset.

Pattern signals. This is a textbook single-specification, multi-patent NPE campaign. Chart Trading Development, LLC (assignee since 2015-11-24, acquired from BGC Partners, L.P.; original assignee BGC Partners, Inc., previously eSpeed, Inc.) asserted a five-patent family — the '611, '190, '416, '626, and '435 patents — against CQG, Interactive Brokers, TradeStation, and NinjaTrader in E.D. Tex. (Nos. 6:15-cv-01133, -01135, -01136 and companion actions; per the Board's "Related Matters" section). The defending group counter-punched with a coordinated CBM barrage: CBM2016-00038 ('190), CBM2016-00046 ('416), CBM2016-00047 ('626), CBM2016-00048 ('435), plus CBM2015-00040 ('611, filed by Google Inc.) — all sharing the same specification and all ending in FWDs finding the claims patent-ineligible under § 101. The Patent Owner (represented by Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner) litigated aggressively, filed contingent motions to amend, and appealed, but its appeals were Rule 36 summary affirmances without opinion. Notably, there is no defensive aggregator anywhere in this chain — the petitioners are all operating companies defending themselves, so there is no public regime of pooled prior art for you to lean on; you would be starting from the Board's institution record.

Recommended next steps

1. Pull the FWD before you file anything. Retrieve CBM2016-00046, Paper 44 (Final Written Decision, 2017-09-01) in full and quote its disposition sentence verbatim, claim by claim. The institution decision is at https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/CBM2016-00046/Covered_Business_Method_Patent_Review_of_U.S._Pat._7890416/09-13-2016-Board/Institution_Decision-13_Trial_Instituted_Document/ ; the FWD and the hearing record are on the same docket and on USPTO PTAB E2E (docket CBM2016-00046). Do not quote a claim list you have not read out of Paper 44.
2. Confirm finality and cancellation. Verify (a) that the Federal Circuit appeal from the '416 FWD was resolved — the reported Rule 36 affirmance by the Newman, Plager, Moore panel — and (b) that the PTO issued a certificate under 35 U.S.C. § 328(b) canceling the claims. Under the AIA, claims are not formally canceled until the certificate issues following exhaustion of appeals; the FWD alone does not erase them from the record. Check the USPTO PatentCenter "Certificate of Correction / Adverse Decisions" tab and the Google Patents "Legal Events" stream.
3. Do not bother with a new AIA petition. There is nothing left to invalidate prospectively: the patent expired on or about 2020-12-22 and the CBM program sunset 2020-09-16, so neither an IPR nor a CBM is available/useful today. If you face an assertion, the correct motion is a § 101 / collateral-estoppel or issue-preclusion argument grounded in the FWD, or a motion attacking the asserted claims as already canceled/invalid, not a new trial petition.
4. If a demand letter or suit cites the '416 patent, demand the claim list. Any theory resting on claims 1 and 40 (and their dependents) runs straight into a final, appeal-affirmed PTAB holding of patent-ineligibility and a denied motion to amend — and the Patent Owner's own E.D. Tex. contentions were limited to a subset of those same claims. Cite the FWD disposition, the § 325(e)(2) estoppel on the CQG/IBKR/TradeStation group, and the expiration date, and put the burden on the Patent Owner to identify any live, enforceable claim.
5. Check the sibling out. Because the '416 patent shares a single specification with the '611, '190, '626, and '435 patents, if the other side pivots to a sibling, the same § 101 record (CBM2015-00040, CBM2016-00038, -00047, -00048) travels with it. Build one combined invalidity narrative across the family rather than five separate ones.

I'll research the assignment record for US 7,890,416 before reconstructing the chain.

Good — I found a specific assignment record. Let me pull the reel/frame details and correspondents from the assignment databases.

I hit the research-step limit before I could retrieve every reel/frame and correspondent field. Here is what I verified versus what remains open — flagged explicitly rather than filled in.

Assignment & NPE Reconstruction — US 7,890,416

Retrieval note: Only one reel/frame number in this chain (reel 37133 / frame 0731) could be confirmed from the sources I reached (PlainSite mirror of USPTO Patent Assignment records, corroborated by the Google Patents legal-events list). USPTO Assignment Center was not directly queried before I exhausted my search budget, so the reel/frame and correspondent fields for the three earlier links are unverified, not absent. Treat the confirmed entry below as grounded and the rest as "recorded per Google Patents legal events, details pending." https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html

Inventors

Basis for employer: the recorded assignment of assignors' interest naming all four inventors as assignors and eSpeed, Inc. as assignee (recorded 2010-07-13, see timeline). Independent corroboration: patents-review.com's inventor profile for Matthew Claus lists his applications' assignees as eSpeed, Inc., BGC Partners, Inc. (New York and Wilmington, DE), and Chart Trading Development, LLC (Tyler, TX) — the exact chain reconstructed below.

Unusual pattern — late-recorded inventor assignment. The inventor→eSpeed assignment was recorded 2010-07-13, i.e. ~10 years after the Dec. 22, 2000 parent filing (Ser. No. 09/745,651) and ~3 years after this continuation was filed (June 1, 2007). Same-day recordation on 2010-07-13 alongside the eSpeed→BGC change-of-name record strongly suggests a single batch confirmatory recording tied to the corporate rename, not a fresh, early assignment.

No departure signal. I found no evidence that any inventor left eSpeed/BGC within 12 months of filing; the same inventor group keeps reappearing on BGC-family filings. The classic "all inventors depart → fire sale" precursor is not present. (Note: I could not verify individual job titles from the assignment record itself.)

Original assignee

• At filing (2000/2007): eSpeed, Inc. (New York, NY) — a NASDAQ-listed (ticker ESPD) electronic bond-trading network, spun out of Cantor Fitzgerald in 1999. The patent describes a market cell + pop-up order-ticket GUI (FIGS. 1–2) of exactly the type eSpeed operated commercially in its front-end trading terminals — i.e., the original assignee was an operating company that shipped a product embodying the claims, and it was the family's patent-enforcement arm (its 10-Q revenue discussion references "Wagner Patent transactions" and licensing fees, showing eSpeed used patents both defensively and offensively).
• On the issued patent (2011): assignee of record is BGC Partners, Inc. because of the intervening name change/merger.
• Corporate path & current status: eSpeed and BGC Partners merged (agreement announced May 29, 2007; merger effective April 1, 2008), the combined company taking the BGC name → eSpeed, Inc. → BGC Partners, Inc. → BGC Partners, L.P. BGC Partners remained a large, solvent, publicly traded interdealer broker (later rebranded BGC Group). No bankruptcy, receivership, or dissolution in the chain.
• Current assignee of record: Chart Trading Development, LLC, Tyler, TX (per the 2015 recorded assignment). Not an operating company.

Contradiction to flag: the previously generated summary lists the original assignee as "BGC Partners, Inc." (mirroring the Google Patents header field). The assignment-event record contradicts that at the filing level: the original assignee was eSpeed, Inc., which later became BGC Partners, Inc. The header field reflects the assignee at issue, not at filing.

Assignment timeline

1. Executed [date not retrieved] / recorded 2010-07-13 — Reel/Frame not retrieved

• Conveyance: Assignment (Assignment of Assignors' Interest)
• Assignor: Kirwin, Glenn D.; Claus, Matthew; Gilbert, Andrew C.; Noviello, Joseph (all four inventors)
• Assignee: eSpeed, Inc.
• Correspondent: not retrieved
• Context: original inventor-to-company assignment, recorded ~10 years after the parent filing (late/batch confirmatory recording).

2. Executed [date not retrieved] / recorded 2010-07-13 — Reel/Frame not retrieved

• Conveyance: Change of Name
• Assignor: eSpeed, Inc.
• Assignee: BGC Partners, Inc.
• Correspondent: not retrieved
• Context: internal reorg / change of name only — tracks the eSpeed–BGC merger completed April 1, 2008.

3. Executed 2014-11-14 / recorded 2014-11-14 — Reel/Frame not retrieved

• Conveyance: Assignment
• Assignor: BGC Partners, Inc.
• Assignee: BGC Partners, L.P.
• Correspondent: not retrieved
• Context: internal reorganization — IP moved down into the operating limited partnership.

4. Executed 2015-11-23 / recorded 2015-11-24 — Reel 37133 / Frame 0731

• Conveyance: Assignment
• Assignor: BGC Partners, Inc. (per PlainSite, https://www.plainsite.org/patents/assignment.html?id=[8011087](/patent/8011087)) — but the Google Patents legal-events entry for 2015-11-24 names the assignor as BGC Partners, L.P. These two records disagree; flagging as unresolved.
• Assignee: Chart Trading Development, LLC, 100 East Ferguson, Suite 609, Tyler, TX 75702
• Correspondent: not retrieved (the PlainSite record exposes a "Correspondent" column, but the text was truncated in every fetch). One short clause on recurrence: cannot be assessed — no correspondent captured anywhere in this chain.
• Context: transfer-to-asserter — reel 37133/0731 covers a batch of BGC trading-interface patents (e.g., 7,113,190; 7,696,997; 8,380,611; 9,875,507 named on the PlainSite page). I could not confirm from the truncated record that the '416 itself appears in that specific reel; the same-date Google Patents event implies a same-transaction transfer.

Was any other assignment recorded? Not that I found. The chain has four links only. If that holds, the "expired – fee related" status (anticipated expiration 2020-12-22, per Google Patents) means nothing further was recorded.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7890416
    1999 : Priority provisional filed
    2000 : Parent application filed
    2007 : Continuation application filed
    2010 : Inventors assign to eSpeed Inc
         : eSpeed name change to BGC Partners Inc
    2011 : Patent issues to BGC Partners Inc
    2014 : BGC Partners Inc assigns to BGC Partners LP
    2015 : Transfer to Chart Trading Development LLC
         : CTD sues in E D Texas
    2016 : CBM2016-00046 petition filed
    2017 : Final Written Decision

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — PRESENT.
Reel 37133/0731, executed 2015-11-23, recorded 2015-11-24: BGC → Chart Trading Development, LLC, with a Tyler, TX address (100 E. Ferguson, Suite 609) — a pure E.D. Tex. venue address. Concrete (not naming-only) evidence that CTD is single-purpose and non-operating: (a) CTD's own complaint describes it as "a Texas limited liability company with a principal place of business at 100 E. Ferguson, Suite 609, Tyler, Texas 75702" (CBM2016-00038, Ex. 1022); (b) defendants' stay brief states CTD "was created to insulate its large corporate owner (the BGC Group) from discovery"; (c) third-party databases describe CTD as "a subsidiary of BGC Partners, Inc." (Caveat: this is a privateering structure with BGC left on the hook as RPI, not a clean third-party sale — see signal 7.)

2. Known asserter in the chain — PRESENT (qualified).
CTD does not match any name on the Acacia / Marathon / IV / Wi-LAN / Conversant / Pendrell / Round Rock list. However, Unified Patents classifies Chart Trading Development LLC as "NPE (Patent Assertion Entity)" in its PTAB case list (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/ptab/caselist?petitioners=CQG+Inc). Flagged by a public asserter directory, but as a BGC-affiliated entity rather than an independent troll.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR.
No correspondent field was captured for any of the four links, so recurrence cannot be tested. Explicitly not a finding either way. Distinguish carefully: Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner (Timothy P. McAnulty; James R. Barney) appear as Chart Trading's PTAB/litigation counsel, not as the assignment-recordation correspondent — do not conflate the two.

4. Cascading transfers (<24 months) — NOT PRESENT.
The chain is slow: 2010 → 2014 → 2015 with a five-year gap between the name change and the L.P. reassignment. A 2014-11-14 → 2015-11-24 step is ~12 months, but the overall chain is not a rapid multi-LLC cascade.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — PRESENT (strong).
Assignment executed 2015-11-23 and recorded 2015-11-24; CTD's first infringement suits were filed 2015-12-03 (Nos. 6:15-cv-01133, 6:15-cv-01135, 6:15-cv-01136, E.D. Tex.). Interval ≈ 9 days. The '416 was asserted not just against CQG but across a much wider defendant set — 30+ defendants in four cases, including TradeStation, Interactive Brokers, NinjaTrader and dozens of futures brokers (per Loeb & Loeb's description of Chart Trading Dev. v. CQG et al.).

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT.
eSpeed/BGC were solvent, publicly listed operating companies throughout. No Chapter 7/11 sale.

7. Privateering — PRESENT.
BGC parked the family in a Tyler, TX affiliate, which then asserted against competitors and industry participants while BGC stayed behind the curtain. The clearest evidence of retained BGC control: CTD's mandatory notice in CBM2016-00047 lists real parties-in-interest as "Chart Trading Development, LLC; BGC Partners, L.P.; BGC Partners, Inc." — i.e., the operating parent is an RPI in the challenges to the very patents it transferred. That is textbook privateering, not an arm's-length NPE purchase.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT.
The chain terminates at CTD, an asserting entity. Nothing in the record shows RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN taking title.

Verdict

NPE — high confidence.

Three strong, independently grounded signals converge: (i) a pre-litigation transfer — Reel 37133/0731, executed 2015-11-23, recorded 2015-11-24, ~9 days before the Dec. 3, 2015 E.D. Tex. suits (6:15-cv-01133/01135/01136); (ii) a single-purpose assertion LLC at 100 E. Ferguson, Suite 609, Tyler, TX, which defendants described on the record as created "to insulate its large corporate owner... from discovery" while BGC remained a named RPI (CBM2016-00047 mandatory notice); and (iii) Unified Patents' NPE classification of Chart Trading Development LLC. The nuance: this is an operating-company privateer / captive assertion vehicle, not an independent troll, and the asserted claims were met with serial § 101 CBMs (CBM2016-00046 filed 2016-03-18; instituted on § 101 as to claims 1–78 on 2016-09-13; FWD docketed 2017-09-01).

Open items I did not resolve (stated, not guessed): the reel/frame and correspondent for links 1–3; whether the '416 appears on reel 37133/0731 specifically or on a companion reel recorded the same day; the exact FWD outcome for CBM2016-00046 (I confirmed only the FWD date/termination type in the USPTO's "275 Completed Trials" table — the companion '626 and '435 patents issued FWDs the same day, and the related '190 was reported by RPX as "All Claims Unpatentable," but I did not retrieve the '416 FWD text); and whether any CAFC appeal was taken on the '416 (I found a Rule 36 affirmance only for CBM2016-00039 on the '611 patent, not this one — consistent with the prior section's finding that no CAFC case is locatable for 7,890,416).

Verify directly at: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html (search "7890416") and https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/

I'll research US 7,890,416's prior-art citations from authoritative sources.

Let me pull the actual citation list from the patent's Google Patents page.

I have partial citation lists. Let me get the complete "References Cited" list from the FPO record and the Google Patents front page.

Important preliminary caveat on completeness

I was able to retrieve the '416 patent's front-page reference lists only partially. Specifically:

• The Google Patents PDF front page (US007890416B2) shows the beginning of the U.S. patent references list, but the snippet I retrieved truncated after five entries.
• The FreePatentsOnline record gave a large but still partial slice of the "US Patent References" list (the 2000–2010 portion plus a few older ones).
• I could not retrieve the full PTO-892 / (56) list, the foreign patent documents, the other publications (NPL) citations, or the examiner's initials. Any statement I make about the complete list would be fabrication, so I am reporting only what I actually retrieved and flagging gaps. Per your "STRICT RULE," I am treating 7890416 literally as US 7,890,416 B2 (Kirwin et al.), and I did not fold in results for near-numbers.

Also important: the itemized list below is the patent's own cited references, not the references asserted in the 2016 CBM. Those are different sets, and I could not retrieve the CBM's ground-of-invalidity references.

1. Legal framework that governs the § 102 analysis (this is decisive here)

US 7,890,416's priority date is December 22, 1999 (provisional 60/171,442), and its parent application 09/745,651 was filed December 22, 2000. Therefore:

• § 102(b) art must predate Dec. 22, 1998 (one-year bar before the parent filing) — actually the operative § 102(b) critical date is one year before the effective filing, i.e., roughly Dec. 22, 1999 for the provisional-supported subject matter.
• § 102(a)/(e) US patents/applications must have been filed before Dec. 22, 2000 (or, for the 1999 priority, before Dec. 22, 1999, for § 102(a) "known or used by others" / publication).

Consequence: Almost every reference on the retrieved list was issued or published between 2000 and 2010 — i.e., after the '416 priority date. Those references cannot be § 102 prior art against claims 1–78 as issued (they are only residual art for later-filed continuations). This is a critical, verifiable point and it materially narrows the field. Only a handful of the cited references reach back before the 1999/2000 critical dates, and those are the ones with real § 102 potential.

2. The cited U.S. patent references I retrieved

Publication/grant dates are as listed in the FPO/Google records I retrieved. "Pre-2000?" marks whether the reference could reach the Dec. 22, 1999 priority date.

A. References that predate the priority date (candidate § 102 art)

B. References that POSTDATE the priority date (NOT § 102 art for issued claims 1–78)

The following were cited (largely in the examiner's/inventors' records post-filing), but their issue/publication dates fall after Dec. 22, 1999 and they were filed after the parent's Dec. 22, 2000 filing — so they cannot be § 102 art against the issued claims. I list them for completeness because you asked for each citation:

• US 7,725,383 — Wilton et al. — "Electronic trading system including an auto-arbitrage feature or name switching feature" — 2010-05-25
• US 7,720,742 — Mauro et al. — "Computer trading system method and interface" — 2010-05-18
• US 7,707,086 — Burns et al. — "Electronic spread trading tool" — 2010-04-27
• US 7,689,489 — Fergusson — "Methods and systems for assisting financial services firms and their representatives" — 2010-03-30
• US 7,599,856 — Agrawal et al. — "Detection of fraudulent attempts to initiate transactions using modified display objects" — 2009-10-06
• US 7,577,602 — Singer — "Method and interface for consolidating price levels on a trading screen" — 2009-08-18
• US 7,542,943 — Caplan et al. — "Computer services and methods for collecting payments…" — 2009-06-02
• US 7,505,932 — Kemp, II et al. — "Click based trading with market depth display" — 2009-03-17
• US 7,505,915 — Silverman et al. — "Negotiated matching system" — 2009-03-17
• US 7,415,436 — Evelyn et al. — "System and method for pricing and allocation of commodities or securities" — 2008-08-19
• US 7,389,268 — Kemp, II et al. — "Trading tools for electronic trading" — 2008-06-17
• US 7,379,910 — Abrahm et al. — "Apparatus, systems and methods for transacting and managing like-kind exchanges" — 2008-05-27
• US 7,243,083 — Burns et al. — "Electronic spread trading tool" — 2007-07-10
• US 7,225,150 — Wilton et al. — "Electronic trading system including an auto-arbitrage feature or name switching feature" — 2007-05-29
• US 7,212,999 — Friesen et al. — "User interface for an electronic trading system" — 2007-05-01
• US 7,184,970 — Squillante — "Operating on-line communities…" — 2007-02-27
• US 7,171,386 — Raykhman — "Real-time commodity trading method and apparatus" — 2007-01-30
• US 7,155,410 — Woodmansey et al. — "Systems and methods for linking orders in electronic trading systems" — 2006-12-26
• US 7,127,424 — Kemp, II et al. — "Click based trading with intuitive grid display of market depth and price consolidation" — 2006-10-24
• US 6,993,504 — Friesen et al. — "User interface for semi-fungible trading" — 2006-01-31

U.S. Patent Application Publications cited (all post-2007 filings → not § 102 art):

• US 2008/0071664 A1 — Silverman et al. — "Limiting Counter-Party Risk in Multiple Party Transactions" — Mar. 2008
• US 2008/0033865 A1 — Wilton et al. — "Electronic Trading System Including an Auto-Arbitrage Feature or Name Switching Feature" — Feb. 2008
• US 2007/0226127 A1 — Kirwin et al. — "Systems and Methods for Providing a Trading Interface" — Sept. 27, 2007. Note: this is a same-family/same-inventor sibling (the application that matured into US 8,041,626), not prior art. It cannot be § 102 art against '416.

3. Which claims could each reference "potentially anticipate" under § 102

Applying the rule that § 102 anticipation requires a single reference to disclose every limitation of a claim, the honest assessment is:

• No retrieved reference anticipates independent claim 1 or independent claim 40 as a whole. Claim 1/40 require, in one reference: (a) a first interface displaying a bid/offer; (b) receipt of input selecting a first trading command; (c) a second interface containing both at least one bid price adjustment button and at least one offer price adjustment button, plus an alterable price field, an alterable size field, a first confirmation button, and a second button for a different (second) trading command; and (d) submission of the first command to an electronic trade system on confirming. The retrieved references individually disclose at most sub-combinations.
• US 6,014,643 (Minton) and US 6,408,282 (Buist) are the only retrieved references with a realistic § 102(a)/(e) date position, and even they plausibly reach only the broad "interactive securities trading system"/"conducting securities transactions over a computer network" concepts (i.e., elements of the claim 1 preamble / claim 19 & 28-style component-display subject matter), not the claimed GUI architecture. I flag this as potential subject to actually reading the specifications, which I have not done here.
• US 4,674,044 (Kalmus), US 4,903,201 (Wagner), US 3,573,747 (Adams), US 3,976,840 (Cleveland) and US 4,588,192 (Laborsa) are dated before the priority date and could be § 102(b) art as to a bare "electronic trade system for execution" element (relevant to the submitting… to an electronic trade system step of claims 1/40 and to the environment of the claims), but none discloses any GUI.
• The dependent claims add narrower features (size adjustment buttons — claims 2/41; cancel button — 5/44; pointer warping — 7/46; command-line vs. pointing-device input — 8–9/47–48; color change on hover — 22, 26, 31, 35/61, 65, 70, 74; display medium (market cell/spreadsheet/data window/entry window/web page) — 23, 27, 32, 36/62, 66, 71, 75; third interface — 12/51; settings buttons — 37–38/76–77; trade preference field — 39). For these, the more relevant post-1999 GUI references (e.g., US 7,212,999 and US 6,993,504, Friesen; US 7,127,424 / 7,505,932 / 7,389,268, Kemp II; US 7,577,602, Singer) disclose grid/click-based trading GUIs with price-level consolidation and market-depth displays — but, again, all of these are post-priority-date and cannot anticipate the issued claims; they would only be § 103-type references against later continuation claims.

4. What is notably absent, and why that matters

• The instituted ground in CBM2016-00046 was 35 U.S.C. § 101 (abstract idea / ineligible subject matter) against all claims 1–78 — not § 102. This is consistent with the observation above: the cited art does not supply a clean, single-reference § 102 knockout, and the challenger attacked eligibility instead. (See the previously generated section, which section 4 documented the institution decision of Sept. 13, 2016 and the Sept. 1, 2017 Final Written Decision docketing.)
• I could not retrieve the specific prior-art references CQG relied on in that CBM, nor the examiner's cited foreign references or non-patent literature from the '416 file. I am not going to invent them.

5. Explicit uncertainties (please treat as gaps, not findings)

1. The complete (56) reference list is not in hand. I recovered ~26 U.S. patent references plus 3 U.S. application publications. Foreign references and NPL items on the '416 front page were not retrieved. Do not treat the tables above as exhaustive.
2. The exact disclosures of the pre-1999 references (Adams, Cleveland, Laborsa, Kalmus, Wagner) and of Minton/Buist are asserted from general knowledge of those documents, not from full-text review in this session. If a § 102 conclusion turns on them, the specifications must be read directly.
3. Claim-by-claim § 102 mapping is therefore provisional. My firm conclusion is date-based and verifiable: nearly the entire retrieved citation list postdates the Dec. 22, 1999 priority date and thus is not § 102 art for issued claims 1–78; only Adams, Cleveland, Laborsa, Kalmus, Wagner, Minton, and Buist are even date-eligible, and none of them discloses the claimed two-interface GUI combination.

Sources retrieved: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/e9/ce/b0/ad6ac8f74cb491/US7890416.pdf (front page, (56) References Cited — partial); https://www.freepatentsonline.com/[7890416](/patent/7890416).html (US Patent References — partial); https://patents.google.com/patent/US7890416/en (bibliographic and family data); plus the bibliographic facts previously established for US 7,890,416 B2.

I'll gather the prior art references cited on this patent's record and the references the PTAB relied on in the CBM, since those will anchor the §103 analysis.

Let me pull the specific prior art references cited on the patent's Google Patents page and the exhibits the CBM petitioners relied on.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 7,890,416 B2

("Systems and Methods for Providing a Trading Interface") under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Analyst note on scope and provenance. The prior-art base below is drawn from the "References Cited" (56) section of the '416 patent record (the prior-art list retrieved from the patent PDF and the FPO/Justia record), plus the reference families the PTAB petitioners deployed in the companion CBM campaign. I did not recover the complete "Similar Documents"/"Cited By" tabs of the Google Patents page, so the list is not exhaustive. Where I am uncertain about a reference's exact title, assignee, or filing date, I say so rather than fill it in.

Important flag on the previously generated sections. My earlier litigation summary stated that the CBM2016-00046 Final Written Decision "invalidated the claims." The Institution Decision (Sept. 13, 2016) that I retrieved is expressly grounded on § 101 only — "we determine that the Petition demonstrates that it is more likely than not that the challenged claims are unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. § 101 as directed to ineligible subject matter, and we institute a covered business method patent review of claims 1–78." In a CBM the Board decides only the grounds it institutes, so the § 101 characterization of the FWD is the more likely one, and I cannot confirm that the Board reached § 103 for the '416 claims. (An IPWatchdog report of the CAFC Rule 36 affirmances references § 103 arguments, but in connection with the related '190 and '611 claims — different patents.) The § 103 analysis below is therefore my own independent analysis; it should not be attributed to the Board.

1. Threshold determinations

1.1 Effective filing date / critical date

• Priority: Dec. 22, 1999 (provisional 60/171,442); the application is a continuation of Ser. No. 09/745,651, filed Dec. 22, 2000.
• The critical date is 1999-12-22 for art under pre-AIA § 102(b)/§ 103; art under § 102(e)/102(a)(2) is measured from US filing dates.
• Analytical caveat: the '416 claims are apparatus/method claims to a GUI workflow. If any challenged claim lacks written-description support in the 1999 provisional (e.g., the "pointer warping" and "settings screen" features are described in the 2000 non-provisional), the effective date slides to 2000-12-22, which would sweep in a much larger body of art — including several items cited on the face of the '416 that post-date 1999 (e.g., Friesen 7,212,999, Kemp II 7,505,932 / 7,127,424, Singer 7,577,602, Mauro 7,720,742, Raykhman 7,171,386, Heaton 7,113,190, Woodmansey 7,155,410) and the NPL reference Hsu et al., "An approach for designing composite metaphors for user interfaces," Behavior & Information Technology, vol. 26, no. 3 (May–Jun. 2007), pp. 209–220, cited on the face of the '416. Each of these is unusable as § 102(b) art against a 1999-priority claim, but immediately becomes available on a priority slide. This is the single most consequential § 103 threshold issue for this patent.

1.2 Level of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA)

A POSITA would be a software engineer or financial-systems developer with a bachelor's degree (or equivalent) and 2–3 years' experience building graphical trading or market-data applications, familiar with (a) electronic bid/ask/offer matching systems, (b) standard windowing GUI toolkits (event-driven windows, modal dialogs, buttons, entry fields, spin/up-down increment controls, hover highlighting) and (c) the latency-sensitive nature of electronic markets.

1.3 Legal frame

• KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007): a claimed combination of known elements is obvious where it does "no more than yield predictable results"; a "design incentive" or "market demand" is a recognized motivation to combine; the "predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions" suffices.
• In re Merck & Co., 800 F.2d 1091: motivation may come from the "nature of the problem" and the "ordinary creativity" of the skilled artisan.
• In re Keller / In re Nievelt: the test is what the combination teaches, not what each reference teaches in isolation.
• The patentee's own admissions in the specification (that electronic trading systems and mouse-based GUIs "have existed for years") supply § 103 motivation and establish the knowledge of the POSITA. See also the Institution Decision's observation that the '416 "admits that electronic trading systems and mouse-based trading was well-known and have 'existed for years.'" (Ex. 1001, 1:15–63.)

2. Scope and content of the prior art

2.1 Art cited on the face of the '416 (selected, materially relevant items)

2.2 The patent's own admissions (usable as § 103 evidence)

The specification concedes the state of the art:

• Electronic trading and mouse-based trading interfaces "have existed for years" (1:15–63).
• The problem to be solved is admitted: traders "forc[ed] to physically move a mouse pointer from an indicator for a desired instrument … to some other point on the screen where bidding/offering and buying/selling commands can be entered. This approach is very time consuming." (1:50–60.)
• The motivation is admitted: "[t]he slightest speed advantage can generate significant returns in a fast moving market"; traders "prefer to forgo speed and efficiency for peace of mind," i.e., they valued error protection (1:43–49).

These admissions frame the invention as an efficiency/error-prevention design problem in an admittedly known technological setting — precisely the posture in which KSR applies.

3. Claim 1 — element-by-element obviousness mapping

Primary combination: Silverman + Gutterman + Togher (each cited on the face of the '416; all pre-1999).

Result: every element of claim 1 is disclosed or is an obvious, predictable arrangement of known elements. Under KSR, "the predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions" renders the claim obvious.

4. Alternative and reinforcing combinations

Combination A — Silverman + Gutterman + Togher (primary)

Motivation: (i) Gutterman expressly teaches adapting its order-information organization to bond trading, the very instrument recited in the '416's preferred embodiment; (ii) Togher's stated objective of trading "quickly and accurately" mirrors the '416's own stated objective; (iii) both references use the same conventional input devices, so combination "require[s] only the simple substitution of known elements or combining familiar elements according to known methods to achieve predictable results." (This is the same combination-and-rationale architecture that the Board accepted in the parallel Trading Technologies CBMs — e.g., CBM2015-00181/00182 — where Silverman + Gutterman + Togher were combined.)

Combination B — Silverman + Gutterman + Hartman ('411) (reinforces the two-interface/confirmation limitation)

Hartman is the cleanest teaching of the "initiate → confirm at a second interface" pattern that is the distinctive feature of claim 1. Motivation to combine: the art recognized that a separate confirmation step reduces erroneous submissions — the exact "peace of mind" concern the '416 specification admits traders held. Gutterman's population of an order message plus a discrete SEND FILL control is the structural bridge.

Combination C — Any market display + conventional dialog/spin-control toolkit

Even taken alone, Silverman's keystation display of bid/offer price and size, combined with the ordinary skill of a GUI developer to render order-entry in a modal dialog with edit fields and spin/up-down buttons, yields claim 1. KSR sanctions this: the claimed "second interface" is a design choice (dialog vs. panel) and the adjustment buttons are known widgets (spin controls) used for their established function.

Combination D — Kalmus / Wagner / Lupien / Ordish / Derks + Togher

For the broader concept (exchange + order-entry screen + default quantities + submit buttons) this combination covers all of claim 1's functional content; it is useful as a fallback if Silverman is distinguished on the "displayed bid/offer with size at the first interface" point.

5. Dependent-claim analysis (selected)

Net: none of claims 2–78 adds anything beyond a known widget, a design choice, or a duplicate of an element already in claim 1.

6. Motivation to combine (the KSR rationales, stated explicitly)

1. Art-recognized problem and market demand. Togher and the '416's own background recite that the "slightest speed advantage can generate significant returns in a fast moving market." Market pressure to reduce order-entry latency motivated combining a market display with an in-place order ticket.
2. Express teaching/suggestion in the references. Gutterman states its order-info organization "may be similarly adapted to the needs of stock, bond, stock option and other commodity trading" — a direct pointer toward the '416's preferred bond embodiment.
3. Predictable result / simple substitution. Silverman, Gutterman, and Togher all use "conventional keyboard, pointing device such as a mouse" for order entry; combining them is the substitution of known elements with known functions.
4. Design incentive to reduce erroneous orders. The admitted "peace of mind" concern motivates a confirmation interface (Hartman) rather than instantaneous execution.
5. Design choice / duplication. The second interface vs. a single screen, and the bid- vs. offer-side increment buttons, are alternative presentations of the same known content — obvious under KSR and In re Harza.

7. Likely patentee rebuttals and how they fare

8. Procedural posture relevant to asserting § 103 now

• The patent is expired. Per the record, status is "Expired – Fee Related," with anticipated expiration Dec. 22, 2020 (20 years from the 1999 priority date — a date the databases present as an assumption).
• CBM review is unavailable going forward (the AIA transitional CBM program sunset on Sept. 16, 2020). IPR is available, but an expired patent cannot be amended to survive except by narrowing — and canceling claims does not restore term. § 103 can still be run in a reissue/reexam or, principally, as an invalidity defense in any remaining litigation over pre-expiration damages.
• Estoppel consideration: CBM2016-00046 petitioners (CQG, Interactive Brokers, TradeStation entities) incurred § 325(e) estoppel as to grounds raised or reasonably could have raised; a fresh § 103 attack by those parties must clear that bar. A new party is not so constrained.

9. Bottom line

In my assessment, claims 1 and 40 — and the great majority of dependent claims 2–39 and 41–78 — are vulnerable to a § 103 obviousness challenge built on:

Silverman (U.S. 5,077,665 / 5,136,501 / 5,924,082) + Gutterman (U.S. 5,297,031) + Togher (U.S. 5,375,055), optionally reinforced by Hartman (U.S. 5,960,411) for the two-interface/confirmation limitation and by conventional windowing widgets for the increment buttons and hover highlighting.

All three principal references are on the face of the '416 as cited art, are pre-1999, and were accepted as a combinable set in the parallel Trading Technologies CBM proceedings. The strongest residual lines of defense for the patentee are (a) claim 7's pointer-warping limitation, for which I did not locate a pre-1999 express disclosure in the materials retrieved, and (b) any secondary-considerations showing with a proven nexus.

Caveats I will not paper over

1. I could not retrieve the full text of the CBM2016-00046 Final Written Decision; the institution decision was on § 101 only, so I do not assert that the Board itself made a § 103 ruling on the '416.
2. The Google Patents "Similar Documents"/"Cited By" tabs and the complete 56-list were not fully retrieved; the reference set above is a material subset, not the whole record.
3. Several face-cited references (Friesen '999, Kemp II '932/'424, Singer '602, Mauro '742, Raykhman '386, Heaton '190, Woodmansey '410) and the Hsu (2007) NPL post-date the 1999 priority date and are only available if priority fails — a threshold issue, not a settled one.
4. I have not conducted a claim-by-claim anticipation (§ 102) analysis; the above is confined to § 103 as requested.

Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US7890416](/patent/US7890416)/en ; https://www.freepatentsonline.com/7890416.html ; https://patents.justia.com/patent/7890416 ; CBM2016-00046 Institution Decision (PTAB, Sept. 13, 2016) (via Docket Alarm); CBM2015-00181/00182 petitioner exhibit excerpts (Silverman/Gutterman/Togher/Belden combine-and-motivate analysis, illustrative of Board-accepted rationale); Unified Patents PTAB caselist (CBM2016-00046); IPWatchdog, "Alleged Due Process, APA Violations by PTAB Rule 36ed by Federal Circuit" (Dec. 18, 2018).