US 7969931

I'll verify against live sources, including checking for CAFC 2026 docket activity.

Let me check specifically for litigation/CAFC activity involving this patent number.

US 7,969,931 B2 — Patent Summary

Retrieval note (important): I do not have a direct, credentialed connection to USPTO PatentCenter, the USPTO assignment database, PACER, or the CAFC docket system. This summary is grounded primarily in the full authoritative text of US 7,969,931 B2 (Google Patents, fetched 2026-09-24) plus corroborating web sources. My targeted searches for CAFC 2026 docket activity involving this exact patent number returned nothing — no appeal, IPR/PGR appeal, or Federal Circuit docket naming 7,969,931 surfaced. I cannot rule out a listing I was unable to reach; treat the "no CAFC 2026 activity found" statement as a search result, not a verified negative.

Bibliographic Data

Family members noted: EP 1 646 189 A1; WO 2006/037386 A1; JP 4774057 B2; KR 101140451 B1; CN 101036356 B; BR PI0516311 B1; AT E404006 T1; DE 602005008755 D1. Continuation children filed 2011–2012 issued as US 8,134,975, US 8,233,441, and US 8,848,668, all titled "Network initiated context establishment."

Separate observation (not litigation): A FRAND/SEP declaration database (frandavenue.com) lists US 7,969,931 B2 in a Panasonic declaration dated 20/08/2020 (reference ISLD-202010-016) against 3GPP TS 123 401 and TS 123 402 (3G/4G), flagged as "Yes" for explicit disclosure. Treat this as unverified third-party data.

Abstract (as issued)

The invention relates to a method for configuring a context for a connection delivering a packet data service to a mobile terminal via a target wireless access network. The mobile terminal is initially connected to an originating wireless access network, and the packet data service may be provided to the mobile terminal via the originating wireless network. The invention further provides an authentication server, a packet data gateway, and a packet data service support node participating in the context configuration method. To allow establishing a connection for packet service delivery to a mobile terminal from a wireless access network such as a UMTS as fast as possible, the invention suggests preconfiguring service provision of the packet data service via the target wireless access network by establishing a context prior to the mobile terminal connecting to the target wireless access network.

Plain-Language Overview of the Independent Claims

Claim 1 — Method (the core claim)

A method for setting up a "context" (GPRS terminology for the mobility/session state kept in core-network nodes) so that a packet service can be delivered to a mobile terminal through a target radio access network — while the terminal is still on an originating network (in the described embodiment, WLAN → UMTS).

The steps:

1. Serve the terminal over the originating network. The packet data service is provided to the mobile terminal via the originating wireless network.
2. Network-side attach. An authentication server (the AAA server in the embodiments) attaches the mobile terminal to the core network connected to the target wireless access network, so the terminal can receive the service over the target network.
3. Authentication-server-initiated context establishment, which specifically comprises three sub-steps:
   • a packet data gateway (PDG) of the core network on the originating side receives an address of a serving packet data service support node (e.g., SGSN) or of a gateway packet data service support node (e.g., GGSN) — the PDG is the node that relays the packet-service traffic to/from the originating access network;
   • the PDG itself determines the context information, derived from the context information associated with the existing connection delivering the service over the originating network (e.g., QoS parameters of the WLAN tunnel); and
   • the PDG sends a context activation message containing that determined context information to the serving or gateway support node, so the context is created in the respective node.
4. Timing limitation (the point of novelty). The context is established before the mobile terminal attaches to the target wireless access network.

In short: the network — not the handset — pre-builds the target-side PDP/MM state, using the still-active WLAN session as the source of parameters, so that a subsequent WLAN→UMTS handover does not have to start from a bare GPRS Attach + PDP Context Activation.

Claim 14 — Communication system

A system claim covering the same arrangement in apparatus form. It recites:

• a mobile terminal configured to attach to the originating wireless access network and receive the packet data service there, and further configured to be attached to the target-side core network by the authentication server;
• an authentication server configured to initiate establishment of the context in the target-side core network; and
• a packet data gateway, configured to (i) receive the serving/gateway support-node address, (ii) relay packets to/from the originating access network, (iii) determine context information from the connection used to provide the service over the originating network, and (iv) transmit the context activation message to the serving/gateway support node,
• with the context established prior to the mobile terminal attaching to the target wireless access network.

Claim-1 vs. claim-14 relationship: both independents carry the same three-element architecture (authentication server initiator + PDG as context-information translator + timing of pre-attachment establishment). The system claim is essentially the method claim recast onto the participating nodes.

Dependent-Claim Highlights (for claim-chart context)

• Claim 2/3: AAA server determines the serving SGSN address; attach performed by sending a packet data service attach message; location information received during authentication is mapped to the serving node identifier.
• Claim 4: explicit WLAN → UMTS + GPRS + PDP context narrowing.
• Claim 7/8: QoS requirement + resource reservation information determined by the PDG and carried in the activation message, reserving resources before the terminal attaches (and an indication of whether to reserve).
• Claim 9–13: post-handover behavior — service request received via the target network; PDG asked to reroute data; context update message from serving to gateway support node; rerouting request message; PDG and GGSN co-located in one element.

Known Citations of Record (issued patent)

Among the references cited: WO 2004/045224 A1 (Nokia, inter-technology handoff from WLAN to cellular), US 2004/0033805 A1 (Verma), US 2004/0097230 A1 (Kadathur S. Natarajan), US 2003/0103496 A1, US 7,616,598 B2, and US 7,620,017 B2.

Note on prosecution: the granted independent claims expressly build the PDG-receives-address → PDG-determines-context-information → PDG-sends-activation-message sequence into claim 1. This reads like narrowing over the WLAN→cellular handoff art cited above, but I have no authoritative prosecution-history record (no examiner's reasons for allowance, no amendment set) in front of me, so I flag that as an inference rather than a finding.

Uncertainty Flags

1. No CAFC 2026 docket entries for 7,969,931 were found in my searches; I cannot certify this exhaustively — PACER/CM-ECF and the CAFC docket were not directly queried.
2. No district-court litigation involving this patent was surfaced by name-searches on the number. A broad result set for the string "7969931" returned zero relevant litigation hits.
3. The adjusted expiration date (2028-01-13) and the "Active" status come from Google Patents and are expressly labeled there as assumptions, not legal conclusions.
4. I did not auto-correct or normalize any identifier; all numbers above are reproduced literally from the sources.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 7969931. Let me run several targeted searches.

Let me search more specifically including litigation databases.

No litigation hits yet. Let me search additional sources and variants.

Findings: Litigation Involving US Patent 7,969,931

Bottom line: I found no evidence of any litigation involving US Patent 7,969,931. Based on the searches I was able to run (Google Patents, general litigation-coverage searches, and Unified Patents / PTAB / RPX-adjacent materials), no district court case, Federal Circuit appeal, ITC action, or PTAB proceeding asserting or challenging this specific patent was identified.

What I searched and what came back

I ran queries including US patent 7969931 litigation, "7969931" patent infringement case, "7,969,931" patent, and Panasonic-focused infringement queries. Results returned litigation and IPR material for other patent numbers (e.g., Network-1's '930 patent, Kelora's '821 patent, Unified Patents IPRs on unrelated patents), but nothing matching 7,969,931. I deliberately did not credit any of those near-miss numbers, per the instruction to interpret identifiers literally.

Note: I hit the tool-call limit before completing a couple of planned follow-up searches (RPX/Unified litigation portal, Docket Alarm, and continuation-patent variants), so this is a "not found" rather than a definitive "never filed" conclusion. If a precise negative is required for a legal opinion, this should be re-verified against Docket Navigator, PACER, or the Unified Patents litigation case list directly.

Patent context (relevant to why litigation may be absent)

• Patent: US 7,969,931 B2 — "WLAN to UMTS handover with network requested PDP context activation"
• Inventors: Jens Bachmann; Rolf Hakenberg
• Original assignee: Panasonic Corp.; current assignee per the Google Patents record: Panasonic Intellectual Property Corporation of America
• Priority date: 2004-10-06; filed: 2005-06-29; granted: 2011-06-28
• Family continuations (also no litigation found): US 8,134,975 B2; US 8,233,441 B2; US 8,848,668 B2 (all titled "Network initiated context establishment")

Litigation table

Caveats

1. This is a negative finding based on limited search coverage, not a certification that no suit exists. Sources that would need to be checked for a definitive answer include PACER, Docket Navigator, the Unified Patents litigation case list, and RPX Insight.
2. The patent's family/applications and its continuations show no litigation records in the sources retrievable here.
3. If you need a court-admissible "no litigation" statement, I recommend a paid Docket Navigator or Lex Machina search keyed to the patent number and to family members 8,134,975 / 8,233,441 / 8,848,668.

If you can lift the search-step limit or point me to a specific docket portal, I can attempt a more exhaustive verification.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file for US 7,969,931: 0 (zero) — no IPRs, no PGRs, no CBMs, active or terminated; the patent has never been the subject of a PTAB trial. The structured ODP block in this prompt states the API "returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent as of the most recent ingest," and independent web searching (Google Patents family/PTAB data, PTAB PTACTS filings, docket aggregators, petitioner names) turned up no petition, institution decision, FWD, or appeal referencing US 7,969,931, US 2008/0095119 A1, or WO 2006/037386 A1. Defensive posture for a defendant: neutral-to-adverse. This is not a "hardened" patent — it is an untested one. All 14 claims are intact and unadjudicated, the claim terms have never been construed by the Board, and no one is estopped from anything.

Per-proceeding detail

None available. There are no AIA proceedings to describe, so the per-proceeding template (type / filed / status / panel / grounds / institution / FWD / settlement / appeal) has no entries. I will not invent proceeding numbers, panels, or decisions. The sections below cover what the absence means and what a defendant can still do.

Strategic summary

Claim status of US 7,969,931. Every claim stands as issued on 2011-06-28. Nothing has been canceled, disclaimed, or amended in a trial: claim 1 (the sole independent method claim), claims 2–13 (dependents), and claim 14 (the sole independent system claim) are all live and all UNTESTED. There is no narrowing claim language, no Board-construed term, and no prosecution-by-IPR file history to mine. The patent carries an adjusted expiration of 2028-01-13, so it has roughly two years and three months of enforceable life left, and an IPR petition remains statutorily available on any claim — IPR is not limited by the pre-/post-AIA line (this patent, filed 2005-06-29, is pre-AIA, so PGR is unavailable, and CBM has been unavailable since the 2018-09-16 sunset and would not apply to this subject matter anyway).

Estoppel landscape. Because no IPR was ever filed, there is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel against anyone — no petitioner, no privy, no real party in interest. A defendant today faces a completely open prior-art field: every pre-AIA § 102(a)/(b)/(e) and § 103 combination is available, whether or not it appears on the face of the patent. The only prior-art "spent" by anyone is the examiner's own consideration; those references are not estoppel-barred but they are § 325(d)-risk material. The nine references in the "Citations" table are worth reading first as a diligence shortlist, in particular WO 2004/045224 A1 (Nokia, "Method and apparatus for performing inter-technology handoff from WLAN to cellular network") — directly on point for the WLAN→cellular direction — plus US 2004/0033805 A1 (Verma), US 2004/0097230 A1, WO 2004/023249 A2 (InterDigital), US 7,616,598 B2 (Samsung) and US 7,620,017 B2 (Motorola). These were cited against the broad parent concept and did not stop issuance, so a § 325(d)-clean petition will likely need different primary art (e.g., 3GPP TS 23.234 / TS 23.060 releases and AAA/PDG-to-GGSN interworking proposals predating 2004-10-06) rather than a re-run of the examiner's list.

Pattern signals. None of the classic signals are present: no repeat petitioner (no serial IPR filer targeting this family), no defensive aggregator (no Unified Patents or similar filing in the chain), and no Patent Owner appeal activity to the Federal Circuit from a PTAB decision. The patent's ownership chain is Panasonic Corp → Matsushita → Panasonic Corporation → Panasonic Intellectual Property Corporation of America (assignment recorded 2014-05-27), i.e., a large operating-company NPE-style holding entity, not a litigation troll — but note the family is a four-patent cluster sharing the 2004-10-06 priority date: US 7,969,931, US 8,134,975, US 8,233,441, and US 8,848,668 (the latter three all titled "Network initiated context establishment," the '975 being a straight continuation of the '931). There is also a substantial foreign family (JP 4774057 B2, KR 101140451 B1, CN 101036356 B, BR PI0516311 B1, and a DE filing, DE 602005008755 D1, alongside EP 1 646 189 A1). Practical consequence: any demand letter or complaint must be mapped to a specific patent number in the cluster; each patent has a separate claim set, a separate IPR clock under § 315(b), and separate claim-construction exposure. Do not assume an analysis of '931 transfers to the continuations.

Recommended next steps

1. Confirm the negative directly, then date-stamp it. Query the patent number on PTAB Center/PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/) and USPTO Patent Center (https://patentcenter.uspto.gov/) for US 11/576,776, and cross-check CourtListener for the number and title (https://www.courtlistener.com/?q=%227969931%22). Capture the search output in your file — if the patent owner later asserts it, the absence of any prior § 315(b)-triggering IPR is relevant to damages and to any "objectively baseless" analysis.
2. Calendar the IPR bar immediately if litigation is live. § 315(b) runs one year from service of a complaint alleging infringement of this patent. Because there is no prior petition, a first IPR is fully available; the deadline is the whole ballgame.
3. Build the petition around non-examiner art. Given § 325(d) and the nine references already of record, lead with 3GPP system-description material (TS 23.234 system description, TS 29.234 stage 3, TS 23.060 GPRS Stage 2 chapter 9.2 on PDP context activation) and any pre-2004 network-initiated activation / AAA-initiated attach proposals, and use WO 2004/045224 A1 only as a secondary teaching, not the primary reference.
4. Attack the priority chain if the art is close. The '931 patent claims priority to EP 04023829.7 (2004-10-06) via PCT/EP2005/007005 (filed 2005-06-29). A successful priority challenge moves the critical date later and can convert "too early" art into § 102(a)/(e) prior art; check whether the PCT application as filed supports every limitation of claim 1, particularly the packet-data-gateway-relays-packets limitation and the "receiving... an address of a serving packet data service support node or an address of a gateway packet data service support node" alternative.
5. Do not overlook the continuations. If a demand letter identifies the family, run the same proceeding search against US 8,134,975, US 8,233,441, and US 8,848,668 before responding. Their continuations were filed 2011-05-20, 2012-01-26, and 2012-06-28 respectively — still pre-AIA — and each carries its own, potentially different, claim scope and its own § 315(b) clock.
6. Flag the EPO parallel track. EP 1 646 189 and the German member (DE 602005008755 D1) exist; I did not verify whether an EPO opposition was filed or is pending, and I am not asserting one. If the client is a European manufacturer, that is a separate verification task.

Bottom line: there is no PTAB activity on file for US 7,969,931 — no FWD to quote, no canceled claims to point at, and no estoppel to leverage. The absence itself is a signal that the patent has not been seriously asserted or licensed in the US in a way that drew a validity challenge, which cuts both ways: its 14 claims are un-narrowed and fully live until 2028-01-13, but its validity record is a blank slate and a well-constructed first IPR has no adverse estoppel, no prior-institution precedent, and no Board-narrowed claim construction standing in the way.

I'll research the assignment record for US 7,969,931, starting with the USPTO assignment data and cross-referencing the inventors and assignees.

Let me search for the specific assignment records and reel/frame numbers.

Let me try to find the actual reel/frame records and correspondent details.

I hit the search-step limit before retrieving the primary-source reel/frame and correspondent fields from Assignment Center, so I'll present what the available record supports and flag the gaps rather than inventing entries.

Inventors

• Jens Bachmann — named inventor. At filing he is attributable to Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. (the pre-2008 name of Panasonic Corporation); the EP/INPI record lists inventor country DE, i.e. a Germany-based Panasonic R&D inventor. He reappears as a named inventor on later Panasonic filings (e.g. US 10,785,689 B2, priority 2006-03-27, also Bachmann/Hakenberg), which is consistent with continued Panasonic employment rather than a post-filing departure.
• Rolf Hakenberg — named inventor, likewise attributable to Matsushita/Panasonic and Germany-based; also appears on the later Bachmann/Hakenberg Panasonic filings.

Pattern note: both inventors assigned to their employer (normal employer-assignment), and both stayed attached long enough to co-invent subsequent Panasonic applications. There is no sign of the two inventors jointly departing the original assignee within 12 months of filing — the "pre-fire-sale" tell is absent. Caveat: employer attribution is inferred from the assignment chain plus co-inventorship on later Panasonic applications; the assignment PDF for this patent number was not retrieved.

Original assignee

• Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. (Osaka, Japan) is the assignee entity on the underlying application. That entity changed its name to Panasonic Corporation (recorded 2008-11-24 as a Change of Name). The issued face of the patent names Panasonic Corp.
• Line of business / products: Panasonic is a major consumer-electronics and telecom operating company; it built mobile handsets and radio/network infrastructure. The claims (GPRS/UMTS ⇄ WLAN handover with pre-provisioned PDP context) read on real Panasonic dual-mode handset/WLAN-interworking products, so this is a genuine operating-company patent, not a paper asset.
• Current status: operating (Panasonic Corporation; group restructured under Panasonic Holdings Corporation in 2022). No bankruptcy. The patent is now held by Panasonic's captive US IP subsidiary, Panasonic Intellectual Property Corporation of America, 20000 Mariner Avenue, Suite 200, Torrance, CA 90503.

Assignment timeline

Source caveat: the three events below are the reassignment records shown on the Google Patents legal-events feed (which mirrors USPTO Assignment Center). I was unable to retrieve the reel/frame numbers or the correspondent-of-record for this specific patent within the available searches. Those fields are therefore marked not retrieved — they are not guessed. (For orientation, Panasonic's recordings are typically filed by in-house correspondent Panasonic IP Management Co., Ltd., 7F OBP Panasonic Tower, 1-61 Shiromi 2-chome, Chuo-ku, Osaka 540-6207, JP — seen on a different Panasonic recording, Reel 034444/0158, App. 14/389,453 — but that is a generic Panasonic correspondent, not confirmed for this chain.)

1. ~2007-10-03 (recorded) — Reel NNNNNN/NNNN not retrieved

   • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest (inventor → employer)
   • Assignor: Jens Bachmann; Rolf Hakenberg (joint inventors)
   • Assignee: Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.
   • Correspondent: not retrieved
   • Context: routine employer/inventor assignment at completion of national-stage entry — acquisition of title by the operating employer.

2. 2008-11-24 (recorded) — Reel NNNNNN/NNNN not retrieved

   • Conveyance: Change of Name (not a transfer of ownership)
   • Assignor: Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.
   • Assignee: Panasonic Corporation
   • Correspondent: not retrieved
   • Context: internal reorg / corporate rename only — the same legal entity under a new name.

3. 2014-05-27 (recorded) — Reel NNNNNN/NNNN not retrieved

   • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignor's Interest
   • Assignor: Panasonic Corporation
   • Assignee: Panasonic Intellectual Property Corporation of America (20000 Mariner Ave, Suite 200, Torrance, CA 90503)
   • Correspondent: not retrieved
   • Context: in-family transfer of the portfolio into Panasonic's captive US IP-holding/licensing subsidiary — corporate reorganization, not a third-party sale.

Net effect: only two true ownership transfers (2007, 2014) separated by ~7 years, plus one name change. The chain never leaves the Panasonic corporate family.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7969931
    2004 : Priority EP application filed
    2005 : PCT application filed by Matsushita
    2007 : US national stage entered
         : Inventors assign to Matsushita
    2008 : Matsushita renamed Panasonic Corporation
    2011 : US patent issued
    2014 : Assigned to Panasonic IP Corp of America

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. The only third-stage transfer (2014-05-27) moves the patent to Panasonic Intellectual Property Corporation of America, a captive subsidiary of the operating parent, at Panasonic's own Torrance, CA address. No "IP/Licensing/Holdings/Ventures" single-purpose LLC, no registered-agent-service address in the record retrieved.
2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. No Acacia, Marathon, IV, Wi-LAN/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, Round Rock, Spangenberg entity, or any Unified Patents/RPX-flagged high-frequency plaintiff appears as assignor or assignee.
3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Unclear / not scorable. Correspondent-of-record was not retrieved for any of the three events. Note the inverse signal: Panasonic recordings are characteristically filed by a single in-house correspondent (Panasonic IP Management Co., Ltd., Osaka — e.g. Reel 034444/0158 on an unrelated application), which is normal corporate practice and not an NPE tell.
4. Cascading transfers — Not present. Two ownership transfers over ~7 years, no chained LLCs, no shared-correspondent clustering in a <24-month window.
5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present. No infringement suit naming this patent was found (see prior litigation section), so there is no 6-month pre-suit transfer to anchor this signal; the 2014 transfer predates no identified assertion.
6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. Panasonic/Matsushita did not enter Chapter 7/11; no court-ordered patent sale.
7. Privateering — Not present. No downstream NPE asserting on Panasonic's behalf; title stays inside the Panasonic group.
8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present. Chain terminates at Panasonic IP Corp of America, not RPX, AST, LOT, Unified, or OIN.

Verdict

Defensive / non-asserting — with an explicit taxonomy caveat. The recorded chain is a routine, wholly in-family ownership sequence (inventors → Matsushita, ~2007-10-03; name change to Panasonic, 2008-11-24; Panasonic → Panasonic IP Corp of America, 2014-05-27) and shows zero NPE signals; the terminal entity is Panasonic's captive IP subsidiary, and no assertion of this patent has been observed.

Two honesty flags: (a) the option's parenthetical defines the category as terminating at a defensive aggregator, which Panasonic IP Corp of America is not — I am selecting the "non-asserting" limb of the label because it matches the observed reality, not the aggregator limb; if the taxonomy must be read strictly, the only other defensible pick is Insufficient data, driven by the unretrieved reel/frame and correspondent fields rather than by the substance of the chain. (b) the reel/frame and correspondent data could not be verified here.

Verification link: USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search by patent number 7969931; legacy index at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html). Because I could not pull the reel/frame table, confirm the three events and capture correspondents there before relying on this record.

I'll research the patent and its cited references. Let me start with targeted searches.

Let me research the key cited references in more detail.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 7,969,931 B2

Retrieval note (methodology + limits). I do not have a credentialed connection to USPTO PatentCenter or the USPTO full-text search API. I retrieved and verified against the authoritative patent text (Google Patents, fetched 2026-09-24) plus corroborating sources. My searches confirmed the patent number literally as US 7,969,931 B2 (no near-number substitution). I did not finish every planned follow-up search (the tool step limit was reached before I could pull full text on the two JP references and WO 2004/023249 A2), so descriptions for those three are taken from their titles/abstract metadata and are flagged as such.

§ 102 cutoff for this patent. Priority date 2004-10-06 (EP 04023829.7); pre-AIA § 102 applies (application filed 2005-06-29, before the AIA's 2013-03-16 change). A reference therefore needs a date before 2004-10-06 to be § 102(a)/(b) art; a U.S. patent/application with an earlier U.S. filing date can be § 102(e) art even if it granted later.

References of record (the 9 citations on the face of US 7,969,931 B2)

The * marks in the Google Patents citation table denote references cited by the examiner/third party. All nine were considered during prosecution.

Bottom line on the § 102 question

None of the nine references of record discloses every element of independent claim 1 or independent claim 14, so none anticipates under § 102. The reason is structural: claim 1 (as issued) is built around a specific three-part sequence that the cited handoff art does not teach —

1. an authentication server (AAA) attaching the mobile terminal to the target-side core network on the terminal's behalf, and
2. a packet data gateway that (a) receives the serving/gateway support-node address, (b) itself determines the context information from the still-active originating-network connection, and (c) transmits a context activation message to create the context, with
3. the whole context established before the terminal attaches to the target network.

The cited references are predominantly (i) terminal-initiated, signal-strength-triggered Mobile-IP handoffs (US 2004/0097230 A1; US 2004/0033805 A1; US 7,620,017 B2), or (ii) WLAN/cellular coupling and authentication architecture (US 7,616,598 B2; JP 2004-266331 A; JP 2003-018195 A), or (iii) node-side context/IP handling (US 2003/0103496 A1; WO 2004/023249 A2). Their value is as § 103 obviousness references, not § 102 anticipation references.

Relative ranking of relevance:

1. WO 2004/045224 A1 (Nokia) — same field and handoff direction; strongest § 103 reference.
2. US 2004/0033805 A1 (Verma / Thomson) — richest on the interworking/GGSN-PDP-context mechanics; § 103.
3. US 2004/0097230 A1 (Natarajan / Motorola) — inter-technology handoff triggering; § 103.
4. US 7,616,598 B2 (Samsung) — WLAN/cellular coupling with core-network anchoring; § 103, and § 102(e) as to art date.
5. Remaining five — peripheral; useful only as background.

This is consistent with the inference already flagged in the earlier summary: the granted independent claims encode the PDG-receives-address → PDG-determines-context-information → PDG-sends-activation-message sequence, which reads as narrowing over precisely this handoff-art set. I still have no authoritative prosecution-history record (no examiner's reasons for allowance, no amendment set) in front of me, so that remains an inference, not a verified finding.

Caveats / uncertainty flags

1. No CAFC or district-court activity was found in the earlier sections, and nothing in this prior-art task changes that.
2. Full text not retrieved for JP 2003-018195 A, WO 2004/023249 A2, and JP 2004-266331 A — their descriptions above come from titles/metadata only. If the task requires claim-level mapping for those, they should be re-verified against the JP/WO full texts.
3. WO 2004/045224 A1 / US 7,280,505 B2 — I obtained only partial text (the abstract/excerpts); the "not anticipatory" conclusion for it is based on those excerpts and the absence of the AAA-initiated PDP-activation feature, and should be re-confirmed against the full Nokia specification if a § 102 opinion is required.
4. § 102(e) dates for US 7,616,598 B2 and US 7,620,017 B2 are their U.S. filing dates (2003-09-30 and 2004-09-21 respectively), both before the 2004-10-06 priority date; these qualify as prior-art dates, but the grant dates are later (2009).
5. Per operating rules, I have not auto-corrected any patent number or identifier; all are reproduced literally (e.g., "US 2003/0103496 A1," "US 7,280,505 B2," "WO 2004/045224 A1").

I'll build on the prior-art section rather than repeat it. Let me run targeted searches to strengthen the § 103 combinations and ground the motivation-to-combine arguments.

Good grounding on the Nokia reference and 3GPP TS 23.234. Let me pull the Nokia anticipated-handoff content and the Verma interworking reference, which are the key § 103 primaries.

Strong material. Let me do one final check on two things that bear directly on the crux limitation (network-side attach on the terminal's behalf) — the Samsung pre-registration patent's date and any pre-2004 network-initiated attach teaching.

Obviousness Analysis — US 7,969,931 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Scope note. This builds on the Prior-Art section already produced (the nine references of record and their limiting disclosures). Below I (1) fix the legal framework, (2) decompose claim 1 into limitation elements, (3) present three ranked § 103 combinations with explicit motivation-to-combine reasoning, (4) map the dependents, and (5) flag the weak link and the honesty caveats. I do not re-describe the nine references' bibliographic data — see the prior section.

Pre-AIA § 103 governs (application filed 2005-06-29; priority 2004-10-06). The analysis uses Graham v. John Deere factors and the KSR Int'l v. Teleflex framework: the motivation to combine may come from the references themselves, from the knowledge of a person having ordinary skill in the art ("POSITA"), from the nature of the problem, or from market/design incentives — not only from explicit "teaching, suggestion, or motivation." Where the art is in a predictable, well-trodden field (here, GPRS/UMTS context management and 3GPP-WLAN interworking), a combination of known elements with a predictable result is obvious.

1. The claim-1 limitation set (the target of the analysis)

Claim 1 recites, in order:

L2 + L3b + L4 form the real inventive core. Everything else (PDG, GGSN, SGSN, AAA, PDP context, WLAN, UMTS) is the standardized I-WLAN/GPRS machinery of 3GPP Release 6. As the prior-art section concluded, no single reference anticipates — but the combination route is strong because the field is highly predictable and the standardized architecture already supplies most elements.

2. The § 103 reference palette

Group A — of record (on the face of the patent):

• WO 2004/045224 A1 (Nokia; US equivalent US 7,280,505 B2) — Method and apparatus for performing inter-technology handoff from WLAN to cellular network. Discloses the WLAN→cellular direction with an "anticipated handoff" mode (Fast Mobile-IPv6-adapted) in which network elements are engaged to prepare for the handoff before the mobile node completes movement. Same field, same direction, same problem.
• US 2004/0033805 A1 (Verma / Thomson) — Seamless handoff from a wireless telephony network to a WLAN. Interworking Element (IWE) acting as a logical RNC; the SGSN/GGSN maintain and update the PDP context; the GGSN reserves resources and reassigns addressing as the data path relocates between the RNC and the WLAN access point. Teaches conserving/reusing an existing core-network PDP context across a WLAN↔UMTS boundary and network-driven relocation of the data path.
• US 2004/0097230 A1 (Natarajan / Motorola) — inter-technology handoff triggering with FA/HA mobility agents.
• US 7,616,598 B2 (Samsung) and US 7,620,017 B2 (Motorola) — WLAN/cellular coupling and hard-handoff architectures; both qualify as art by U.S. filing date (2003-09-30 and 2004-09-21) with later grants.
• JP 2003-018195 A, US 2003/0103496 A1, WO 2004/023249 A2, JP 2004-266331 A — peripheral; background only.

Group B — additional art / standards (not on the face; available as § 102(a)/(b) printed publications or POSITA knowledge):

• 3GPP TS 23.234 (available as of v6.0.0, 2004-03; and v6.3.0/v6.4.0 later) — the I-WLAN System Description. Discloses, verbatim from the retrieved text: the PDG, the 3GPP AAA Server, W-APN resolution and tunnel establishment, the WAG, and critically the PDG→GGSN signaling where "the W-APN provided over the end-to-end tunnel shall be forwarded in the Create PDP Context Request message to GGSN" and "the IMSI of the WLAN UE shall be forwarded to GGSN in the Create PDP Context Request message." Also discloses the Wx reference point (AAA↔HSS), the D/Gr' point, and that "if a 3GPP AAA Server supports the D' reference point, it will appear to the HLR/HSS as a VLR."
• 3GPP TR 22.934 (feasibility study) and TS 22.234 (requirements) — define Scenario 4 (Service Continuity) and Scenario 5 (Seamless Service Continuity). Retrieved text: transitions "may be from 3GPP system to a WLAN, or from a WLAN to a 3GPP system"; the goal is that "services supported in Scenario 3 … survive a change of access between WLAN and 3GPP systems" with "no need for the user/UE to re-establish the service." This is the express design requirement that motivates pre-establishing target-side state.
• WO 2004/006482 A3 (published 2004-01-15; priority 2002-07-02) — Method and apparatus for handoff between a WLAN and a UMTS — UE-initiated handoff and higher-layer system-information exchange. Is § 102(a)/(b) prior art (published before 2004-10-06).
• EP 1 523 821 B1 / US 2005/0254469 A1 (InterDigital line) — registering a WLAN coverage area as a UMTS Routing Area (RA) and maintaining the PDP context while the service is delivered over the WLAN "such that interworking between the WLAN and the mobile network is provided." (Priority/date needs verification; flagged.)

Not available as prior art — do not chart: US 7,391,754 B2 (Samsung, System and method for seamless handoff of WLAN-UMTS interworking). Although topically the closest thing I found to "pre-authentication + pre-registration + PDP address request from SGSN to GGSN before handoff," it was filed 2005-11-25 — after the 2004-10-06 priority date, and it has no earlier U.S. filing date to give it pre-AIA § 102(e) effect (foreign priority does not count for pre-AIA § 102(e)). It therefore cannot be used as § 102/§ 103 art against this patent. I flag this explicitly because it is a tempting but impermissible cite.

3. The combinations

Combination I (primary): WO 2004/045224 A1 + 3GPP TS 23.234 (+ TR 22.934 / TS 22.234)

Structure of the combination. Take Nokia's WLAN→cellular handoff architecture (L1 serve-over-WLAN; WLAN→cellular direction; network-engaged anticipated preparatory handoff) and implement the target-side preparation using the already-standardized I-WLAN nodes of TS 23.234 (PDG as a GGSN-like gateway that already opens a Create PDP Context Request toward the GGSN carrying the W-APN and IMSI).

Motivation to combine (KSR-compliant).

1. The references address the same problem from complementary angles. Nokia's WLAN→cellular handoff addresses how to move; TS 23.234 supplies the standardized nodes and messages (PDG, AAA, W-APN, Create PDP Context Request) that any implementer of a WLAN→cellular handoff within an I-WLAN deployment must use. Combining a handoff technique with the standard interface it is deployed on is the paradigm of a predictable combination of known elements.
2. An express design requirement in the standards. TR 22.934/TS 22.234 Scenario 4/5 mandate that WLAN↔3GPP transitions occur without the user/UE re-establishing the service. The patent itself concedes the problem: without pre-provisioning, the terminal "must be initiated from scratch by performing a GPRS Attach procedure and a PDP Context Activation which are time consuming and imply a significant delay." A POSITA reading the standard would be directly motivated to pre-establish the target context to satisfy the continuity requirement.
3. Predictable result / reasonable expectation of success. Every step is a known message flow (DNS/W-APN resolution, AAA HLR registration, PDG→GGSN Create PDP Context Request). Pre-running the same flow before the terminal moves has a predictable outcome — the context exists at handoff — with no technological leap.

Rebutting a "different field" argument. Nokia, TS 23.234, and the patent all sit in the same 3GPP-WLAN interworking field; two of them are the very documents the patent's own Background section cites (TS 23.234, TR 22.934, TS 22.234), which undercuts any argument that the combination is unbounded.

Combination II: WO 2004/045224 A1 + US 2004/0033805 A1 (Verma) + 3GPP TS 23.234

Why add Verma. Verma supplies the two limitations that are the strongest candidates for "inventive" status:

• Context continuity across the WLAN/UMTS boundary as a designed objective. Verma's IWE acts as a logical RNC and the SGSN/GGSN update the PDP context so the user "can readily transition between a direct connection with the wireless telephony network and a connection via the WLAN … without the need to obtain a new IP address." That is an express teaching to keep/reuse core-network PDP state across the air-interface change — the conceptual heart of L3b/L4.
• Network-driven relocation of the data path and resource reservation at the GGSN ("the GGSN 26 will reserve the necessary resources needed for providing a data path"). This supports L3c (context/resource establishment at the GSNs) and the dependent claims 7–8 (QoS + resource reservation).

Motivation. Verma and Nokia are both WLAN/UMTS vertical-handoff disclosures; Verma maintains the PDP context and resources in the GSNs, and Nokia triggers the handoff in the WLAN→cellular direction. A POSITA seeking to realize TR 22.934 service continuity would combine Verma's "keep the PDP context alive across the boundary / reserve resources at the GGSN" teaching with Nokia's directional handoff and the TS 23.234 node/message set. The result — pre-creating the target context from the still-active WLAN session — is the natural and predictable union of these teachings.

Direction caveat (the honest weakness). Verma's illustrated embodiment is 3G→WLAN (the reverse of the claim). That is not fatal: (i) the principle Verma teaches — preserving/reserving core PDP state across the WLAN/UMTS boundary and relocating the data path — is direction-agnostic; (ii) Nokia already supplies the WLAN→cellular direction; and (iii) two-way handoff was an express 3GPP objective (TR 22.934: transitions "may be … from WLAN to a 3GPP system"). But it is the point on which a patent owner would most credibly argue away the combination, so the petition/opinion should lead with Nokia on direction and use Verma only for the context-continuity teaching.

Combination III (fallback, no Nokia): US 2004/0033805 A1 (Verma) + 3GPP TS 23.234 + US 7,616,598 B2 (Samsung) + WO 2004/006482 A3

Structure. Use the standardized I-WLAN architecture (TS 23.234) as the base, add Samsung's tightly-coupled WLAN↔cellular interworking with core-network anchoring (US 7,616,598: PDSN/PCF/interworking server, handoff between cellular and WLAN), and use Verma for PDP-context continuity plus WO 2004/006482 for WLAN/UMTS handoff signaling.

Motivation. All four are WLAN/UMTS interworking references addressing handoff; TS 23.234/TS 22.234 define the requirement that service survive the transition; the combination merely asks a POSITA to pre-execute the architecture's own context-establishment flow before the transition. This combination is weaker than I/II primarily because it lacks Nokia's explicit pre-handoff/anticipated-handoff timing (L4), so it depends more heavily on the standards' service-continuity requirement to supply the "prior to attach" motivation.

4. Dependent-claim obviousness (claims 2–14)

5. The weak link, and where the patent may survive

Weakest limitation for the challenger: L2 ("attaching the mobile terminal to a core network … by an authentication server"). Classic GPRS attach is terminal-initiated (TS 23.060 ch. 6.5). The prior art of record is largely terminal-initiated or terminal-triggered. The strongest available bridge is TS 23.234's disclosure that the 3GPP AAA Server registers the WLAN user in the HSS and "appears to the HLR/HSS as a VLR" — i.e., the AAA is already the network entity that performs HLR/HSS mobility registration on the user's behalf within I-WLAN. That supports the motivation for a POSITA to let the AAA server initiate the network-side attach once the service-continuity requirement is imposed — because the AAA is the only node with both (a) the subscriber/authentication role and (b) the existing HLR/HSS registration interface. But a patent owner can argue this stops short of an express teaching of the AAA performing a full GPRS Attach in the target SGSN. The second-weakest is L3b (PDG itself deriving the context information); TS 23.234 gets the PDG to the point of emitting a Create PDP Context Request, but the "derive from originating-connection context info" step leans on Nokia/Verma's parameter-mapping teachings.

Conversely, the strongest § 103 arguments for the challenger are: (1) the field is predictable and standardized (KSR); (2) the express standard requirement of Scenario 4/5 seamless continuity supplies the motivation; and (3) the patent's own Background concedes the delay problem, making the pre-establishment solution an obvious response to a recognized need.

Secondary considerations. I found no objective indicia (no evidence of commercial success tied to the claim, no copying, no industry praise) in the retrieved record; the patent's family has produced no litigation and no PTAB activity (per the earlier sections), so there is no "failure of others"/"industry skepticism" record either. Absent such evidence, secondary considerations do not appear to rescue claims 1 or 14.

6. Bottom line

• § 102: no anticipation by any reference of record or by the standards (consistent with the prior-art section).
• § 103: claims 1 and 14 are vulnerable. The strongest combination is WO 2004/045224 A1 (Nokia) as the primary directional/anticipated-handoff reference, in view of 3GPP TS 23.234 (PDG/AAA/W-APN/Create-PDP-Context architecture) and the TR 22.934 / TS 22.234 Scenario 4/5 service-continuity requirement, with US 2004/0033805 A1 (Verma) added for the PDP-context-continuity and GGSN resource-reservation teachings. Fallback: Verma + TS 23.234 + US 7,616,598 + WO 2004/006482 A3.
• Dependents 2–13 are each individually obvious over the standardized GPRS/I-WLAN flows plus the handoff references; claim 14 tracks claim 1.
• Residual risk for the challenger: limitation L2 (AAA-performed attach) and L3b (PDG deriving context info) are the least expressly disclosed; expect the dispute to center there, and expect the patent owner to argue the cited handoff art is terminal-initiated and teaches the reverse direction (Verma).

7. Honesty / verification flags

1. Full texts not obtained for WO 2004/045224 A1 (only abstract/excerpts), JP 2003-018195 A, JP 2004-266331 A, and WO 2004/023249 A2; the mappings above for those rest on titles/abstracts and should be re-verified against full specifications before filing a petition or validity opinion.
2. US 7,391,754 B2 (Samsung) is NOT prior art to this patent (filed 2005-11-25, after the 2004-10-06 priority date; no earlier U.S. filing for pre-AIA § 102(e)). I excluded it deliberately despite its topical closeness.
3. US 7,280,505 B2 is the U.S. equivalent of WO 2004/045224 A1 (Nokia); I treat them as one teaching. The earlier prior-art section flagged that only partial text was available — same caveat applies.
4. WO 2004/006482 A3 (priority 2002-07-02, published 2004-01-15) and EP 1 523 821 B1 / US 2005/0254469 A1 (InterDigital WLAN-as-UMTS-routing-area line) appear to be qualifying prior art by date, but I did not fully verify their § 102 dates or disclosure scope; confirm before relying on them.
5. Identifiers are reproduced literally and were not auto-corrected. Where the retrieved sources contradicted each other on a date (e.g., the Samsung grant/filing fields), I relied on the filing-date field and flagged the discrepancy rather than normalizing it.
6. This is a technical obviousness analysis, not a legal opinion; it assumes pre-AIA § 103 and does not account for any later-discovered art, claim-construction rulings, or objective indicia not present in the retrieved record.