US 8041626

I'll search for current information on this patent, including any 2026 CAFC activity.

Let me search more specifically for the CBM outcome and any 2026 Federal Circuit docket.

US Patent 8,041,626 — Summary

Important caveat on scope of my searches: I ran targeted searches for this exact number (US 8,041,626 / "8041626"). I found no 2026 Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit docket activity for this patent, and no CAFC docket at all in 2026. What searches surfaced is the 2016–2017 PTAB/litigation history. I cannot confirm any 2026 CAFC proceeding exists; absent a hit, the honest answer is that I found none. Below I separate what is authoritative (the patent document itself) from what comes from secondary sources.

Bibliographic data (authoritative — from the patent text/front page)

Abstract (verbatim)

"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."

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

There are four independent claims: 1, 2, 3, and 29. Claims 1 and 3 are apparatus claims; claims 2 and 29 are method claims. Claims 2/1 and 29/3 are essentially apparatus/method counterparts of each other.

Claim 1 — Apparatus (processor + memory storing code):
The system shows a first interface with several selectable trading commands for trading an item. When the trader selects one, the system displays a second interface containing: (a) a price field whose displayed price can be adjusted; (b) a size field whose displayed size can be adjusted (price and size relate to trading the item); (c) one or more numeric buttons that let the trader set the size by picking a number; (d) at least one "first button" that confirms the command the trader already selected; and (e) at least one "second button" that submits a different trading command from the set. If the trader hits the second button, that trade command is sent to an electronic trading system for execution. In short: a two-stage interface where one command is selected/confirmed while an alternative command can be fired from the same window.

Claim 2 — Method: The same steps as Claim 1, performed by a processor (display first interface → receive selection → display second interface with price field, size field, numeric buttons, first [confirm] button, second [alternate-command] button → submit trade command to an electronic trade system).

Claim 3 — Apparatus (market-data variant):
The system displays a bid and/or offer for an item at a first interface, with multiple trading commands (first and second) available for selection in conjunction with that interface. On receiving input selecting the first trading command, it displays a second interface with an adjustable price field, an adjustable size field, numeric buttons for setting size, a first button to confirm the first trading command, and a second button to submit the second trading command. Selecting the second button submits that second trade command to an electronic trading system. This is the "click on a market cell to pop up the order ticket" concept, where the pop-up still offers the opposite/alternate command button.

Claim 29 — Method: The method counterpart of Claim 3.

Dependent-claim highlights (context for the independent claims):

• Pointer warping: claims 5–7 position the pointing-device pointer over the confirm button, the alternate-command button, or a cancel button upon the triggering input.
• Input source variants: claims 8 (command-line/keyboard entry), 9 (pointing-device entry), 10 (clicking a component of the bid/offer).
• Mirror-instance feature: claims 11–14 display "another instance of the second interface" when the second command is selected, with its own confirm button, cancel button, and a button to submit the first command instead (i.e., the window flips roles).
• Population of fields: claims 18–19 and 21–22 post the clicked bid price/size or offer price/size into the second interface's price/size fields.
• Display contexts and coloring: claims 23–28 (offer/bid variables, first color on display, second color on pointer hover, shown in a market cell, spreadsheet, data window, entry window, or web page).
• Numeric button sets: claims 55 and 56 recite buttons for the numbers 1, 5, 10, and 100.

Literal-text notes (no auto-correction applied): Claim 37 contains the phrase "another instance of the second third interface" (an apparent typographical artifact in the granted text); claim 56 is captioned "The apparatus of claim 29" even though claim 29 is a method claim; and the specification narrative describes the numeric keypad as including ten, twenty-five, fifty, and one hundred, whereas claims 55/56 recite 1, 5, 10, and 100.

Litigation / PTAB posture (secondary sources)

• CBM2016-00047, CQG, Inc. et al. v. Chart Trading Development, LLC, Patent 8,041,626 — filed 2016-03-18, instituted 2016-09-09, Final Written Decision 2017-09-01 (per Docket Alarm/Unified Patents listings: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/ptab/case/CBM2016-00047; https://www.docketalarm.com/search/PTAB/?...). Petitioners included CQG, Inc., CQG, LLC, Interactive Brokers LLC, NinjaTrader entities, and TradeStation entities.
• Parallel CBMs on related family members: CBM2016-00038 (US 7,113,190), CBM2016-00039 (US 8,380,611), CBM2016-00046 (US 7,890,416).
• District court: E.D. Tex. cases 6:15-cv-01133 (CQG), 6:15-cv-01135 (Interactive Brokers), 6:15-cv-01136 (TradeStation), as listed in the patent's own litigation links and in the CBM2016-00046 institution decision.
• Federal Circuit: I found an IPWatchdog report of a Rule 36 summary affirmance in Chart Trading Development, LLC v. Interactive Brokers LLC affirming PTAB invalidation in Chart Trading's CBM proceedings (panel reported as Newman, Plager, Moore). The article did not give a date I could verify; I could not confirm it concerns the '626 patent specifically rather than its siblings.

Uncertainty I want to flag explicitly:

1. I did not retrieve the actual text of the CBM2016-00047 Final Written Decision, so I cannot state with certainty that the '626 claims were held unpatentable — only that a FWD issued 2017-09-01 and that sibling CBMs (e.g., CBM2016-00039) cancelled claims under §101/§103. Treat my inference that the '626 claims met the same fate as likely but unverified.
2. The Google Patents status "Expired – Fee Related" with anticipated expiration 2020-12-22 is a database status field, not a legal conclusion; if the claims were cancelled in CBM, the expiration status is moot in practice.
3. No CAFC 2026 docket for patent 8,041,626 was located. If you need a definitive negative, that requires a direct PACER/CAFC docket query, which my searches did not conclusively perform.

Sources: the patent full text (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8041626/en); https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/ptab/case/CBM2016-00047; Docket Alarm PTAB records for CBM2016-00047; CBM2016-00046 institution decision (https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/CBM2016-00046/...); IPWatchdog CAFC/CBM coverage of Chart Trading Development v. Interactive Brokers.

I'll research litigation involving US Patent 8,041,626. Let me start with searches across patent litigation databases.

Let me search for more details on the specific district court cases referenced.

Let me dig deeper into the outcomes and any appellate proceedings.

Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. 8,041,626 ("the '626 patent")

Below is what I was able to confirm from patent-litigation databases (Unified Patents litigation/PTAB portals, RPX Insight, Docket Alarm, and case documents). The '626 patent was asserted as part of a multi-patent campaign by Chart Trading Development, LLC ("CTD") — an affiliate of BGC Partners/Cantor Fitzgerald — against financial-trading platform providers. Note: this is not legal advice, and a live PACER/docket pull should be used to verify current status.

1. District Court Litigation — E.D. Tex. (Tyler Division)

All four cases were filed the same day, December 3, 2015, against overlapping groups of defendants and asserted the same five patents (U.S. Pat. Nos. 8,380,611; 7,113,190; 7,890,416; 8,041,626; and 8,060,435 — the '626 patent among them).

Key procedural events:

• On February 4, 2016, cases 1134, 1135, and 1136 were consolidated into the lead action 6:15-cv-01136 (the 1133 action was also handled together).
• On February 22, 2016, defendants collectively moved to stay the litigation pending Covered Business Method ("CBM") review at the PTAB.
• In a March 2016 ruling (Judge John D. Love), the court granted a temporary stay pending the PTAB's institution decisions on the CBM petitions.
• The case(s) were subsequently closed; the Interactive Brokers action (6:15-cv-01135) shows a closure date of September 13, 2017, closely following the PTAB's final written decision in the related CBM (see below).

The accused products included Interactive Brokers' Trader WorkStation ("Chart Trader" feature), CQG's platform, NinjaTrader 6/7, and the TradeStation 9.5 platform.

2. PTAB — Covered Business Method Review (the key invalidity proceeding)

• Real parties in interest (per Patent Owner's mandatory notices): Chart Trading Development, LLC; BGC Partners, L.P.; BGC Partners, Inc.; Cantor Fitzgerald, L.P.
• Grounds asserted in the petition (Corrected Petition for CBM Review of U.S. Pat. No. 8,041,626):
  • Ground 1: Claims 1–56 unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. § 101 (abstract/patent-ineligible).
  • Ground 2: Claims 1–4, 9, 11–14, 16, 23, 25–26, 28–30, 35, 37–40, 42, 49, 51, 52, 54 anticipated by Patterson under § 102.
  • Ground 3: Claims 10, 17–18, 20–21, 36, 43–44, 46–47 obvious over Patterson in view of Belden under § 103.
• Petitioners' counsel: Loeb & Loeb LLP (Adam G. Kelly) and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati (Michael T. Rosato, Matthew A. Argenti).
• Patent Owner's counsel: Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, LLP (James R. Barney).
• The proceeding reached a Final Written Decision on September 1, 2017. (Unified Patents' PTAB database lists the outcome simply as "Final Written Decision"; the FWD is dated 09/01/2017.)

Related CBM proceedings on sibling patents (same family, same petitioners): CBM2016-00038 ('190 patent, filed 02/19/2016), CBM2016-00039 ('611 patent, filed 02/19/2016), CBM2016-00046 ('416 patent, filed 03/18/2016), and CBM2016-00048 ('435 patent, filed 03/18/2016). CTD alleged five patents against 32 defendants across four cases.

3. Federal Circuit Appeal

There is evidence of a Federal Circuit appeal arising from the CTD CBM decisions. An IPWatchdog report (Dec. 18, 2018) titled "Alleged Due Process, APA Violations by PTAB Rule 36ed by Federal Circuit" discusses Chart Trading Development's appeal (argued by Finnegan's James Barney), which challenged PTAB final written decisions on § 101 and § 103 grounds. The Federal Circuit issued a Rule 36 summary affirmance (affirmed without opinion).

⚠️ Caveat: The IPWatchdog account focuses primarily on the '611 and '190 patents; I could not confirm from the available search results whether the '626 patent specifically was part of that Federal Circuit appeal, nor could I confirm the exact CAFC docket number. I also could not independently confirm the precise findings of the CBM2016-00047 Final Written Decision (e.g., whether all claims 1–56 of the '626 patent were held unpatentable). These should be verified directly from the PTAB Final Written Decision (Paper No. 43) on the USPTO PTAB site and the Federal Circuit docket.

Summary

• District court: Four consolidated patent-infringement suits by Chart Trading Development, LLC, all filed Dec. 3, 2015 in the E.D. Tex. (Tyler Div.) — 6:15-cv-01133, 6:15-cv-01134, 6:15-cv-01135, 6:15-cv-01136 (lead); all active cases were stayed and later closed (6:15-cv-01135 closed 09/13/2017).
• PTAB: CBM2016-00047 (CQG, Inc., CQG, LLC & Interactive Brokers LLC v. Chart Trading Development, LLC), filed 03/18/2016, instituted 09/09/2016, Final Written Decision 09/01/2017.
• Federal Circuit: A Chart Trading Development appeal resulted in a Rule 36 summary affirmance; whether it covered the '626 patent specifically is unconfirmed.
• Google Patents itself flags only CBM2016-00047 and the two E.D. Tex. cases 6:15-cv-01135 and 6:15-cv-01133 with respect to this patent.

If you need a verified, current docket-level picture, the authoritative sources would be PACER (E.D. Tex. cases 6:15-cv-01133 through -01136), the PTAB P-TACTS/PTAB portal for CBM2016-00047 (Paper 43, Final Written Decision), and the Federal Circuit docket/opinion for the Rule 36 affirmance.

I'll start by researching the PTAB proceedings on this patent, including the CBM that Google Patents' own litigation block flags.

Strong lead — CBM2016-00047 confirmed. Now let me get the Final Written Decision outcome at claim level, the panel, and the CAFC appeal.

Now I need the FWD disposition for CBM2016-00047 specifically, and whether the '626 CBM was appealed.

Important flag before anything else

The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block and the public record contradict each other. The block states, verbatim:

"The USPTO ODP API returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent as of the most recent ingest."

That is wrong on the public record. US 8,041,626 was the subject of CBM2016-00047, which was instituted and terminated with a Final Written Decision on 2017-09-01. Sources: the patent's own Google Patents litigation block ("PTAB case CBM2016-00047 filed (Final Written Decision)"), the Unified Patents PTAB caselist (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/ptab/caselist?petitioners=CQG+Inc), and Docket Alarm's docket for the case (https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/CBM2016-00047/Covered_Business_Method_Patent_Review_of_U.S._Pat._8041626/).

Two things follow. First, do not treat the ODP ingest as authoritative here — CBM2016-00047 is a legacy AIA trial that predates the PTAB E2E/ODP API's reliable coverage of CBM cases, and it appears to have fallen out of the dataset. Second, because the structured block has no entry, I cannot quote a "Status" field verbatim from it; I've used the Unified Patents status field instead and labeled it as such below.

Proceedings overview

One CBM proceeding on file for US 8,041,626 — CBM2016-00047 — which ran to a Final Written Decision on 2017-09-01 (claim-level disposition not retrievable from the sources I could reach), was not, on the public record I found, appealed to the Federal Circuit, and left the patent expired since 2020-12-22; the bottom line for a defendant is that this patent carries a completed adverse PTAB adjudication and roughly nine years of dead statutory term, so before responding to any assertion you must confirm from the FWD itself whether any claims survived — because if none did, the assertion is frivolous on its face.

CBM2016-00047 — CQG, Inc.; CQG, LLC; Interactive Brokers LLC v. Chart Trading Development, LLC

• Type: Covered Business Method review (AIA § 18; 35 U.S.C. §§ 321, 328)
• Filed: 2016-03-18. The Board's Notice of Filing Date Accorded to Petition (Paper 4, mailed 2016-03-29) accorded the 2016-03-18 date but flagged the petition as defective — mislabeled exhibits (Exs. 1002 Parts 1–2, 1003 Parts 2–3) and improper claim charts containing petitioner argument under 37 C.F.R. § 42.6(a)(2)(iii). A Corrected Petition was filed 2016-04-05.
• Status: Final Written Decision (verbatim from Unified Patents' caselist, which records Term. Date 2017-09-01). Plain-English gloss: trial completed on the merits; no settlement, no abandonment, no denial. Note: this proceeding does not appear in the structured ODP dataset supplied in this prompt.
• Judge panel: Administrative Patent Judges Jameson Lee, Kevin Turner, and Kevin Cherry (per the consolidated oral hearing transcript of 2017-06-08 covering CBM2016-00046, -00047, and -00048).
• Petition grounds (from the Corrected Petition, Paper 5):
  • Ground 1 — § 101: claims 1–56 unpatentable as directed to an abstract idea (Alice/Mayo step one: "confirming or modifying an order is part of the order placement process," a fundamental economic practice; step two: conventional, generic technology).
  • Ground 2 — § 102 (anticipation): claims 1–4, 9, 11–14, 16, 23, 25–26, 28–30, 35, 37–40, 42, 49, 51, 52, and 54 anticipated by Patterson.
  • Ground 3 — § 103 (obviousness): claims 10, 17–18, 20–21, 36, 43–44, and 46–47 obvious over Patterson in view of Belden.
• Institution decision: Instituted 2016-09-09 (10 days inside the § 18 six-month statutory deadline from the 2016-03-18 filing date). The Board also resolved Patent Owner's real-party-in-interest challenge in the Preliminary Response, declining to add the customer-defendants (NinjaTrader, TradeStation entities) as RPIs — reasoning that co-defendant status and a joint-defense-group relationship are not alone enough, and that the customer-defendants' voluntary stipulation in E.D. Tex. to be bound by AIA estoppel did not convert them into RPIs before the Office. I could not retrieve the institution decision text itself, so I cannot quote its precise § 101/§ 102/§ 103 reasoning beyond this.
• Final Written Decision: issued 2017-09-01 (Paper 43). ⚠️ I was unable to retrieve the FWD's text or its claim-level disposition. I therefore will not assert which claims were canceled. What I can state:
  • The trial covered all 56 claims (per Petitioners' Request for Oral Argument: "the unpatentability of claims 1-56 ... on the instituted grounds").
  • Pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 328(b), any claim held unpatentable in the FWD would have been canceled by certificate, but I have not verified that this occurred for any specific claim.
  • Do not treat the sibling-family outcomes as a substitute for the '626 disposition. See the "Pattern signals" note below.
• Motion to Amend: Patent Owner moved to amend, proposing substitute claims 57–66 (drawing on elements of original dependent claims). Patent Owner's Reply to Petitioners' Opposition to the Motion to Amend was filed 2017-04-18, arguing the substitute claims were patent-eligible under Trading Techs. Int'l, Inc. v. CQG, Inc., No. 16-1616 (Fed. Cir. Jan. 18, 2017) (nonprecedential). I could not verify whether the motion to amend was granted or denied.
• Oral hearing: 2017-06-08, consolidated with CBM2016-00046 and CBM2016-00048.
• Counsel: Patent Owner — Finnegan (James R. Barney, Timothy P. McAnulty; Justin Loffredo). Petitioners — Benjamin B. Lieb (Talus Law Group) as lead; Michael T. Rosato / Matthew A. Argenti (Wilson Sonsini) for Interactive Brokers; Adam G. Kelly et al. (Loeb & Loeb) on the petitions.
• Settlement / termination: No settlement or termination on the record I retrieved. The proceeding went to a merits FWD. Note that the underlying E.D. Tex. actions were stayed pending the CBM reviews — defendants represented to the court that "all Defendants agree to be bound by the AIA estoppel provision as to all patents presently asserted against them," which the Board treated as a litigation stipulation, not an RPI admission.
• Appeal: No Federal Circuit appeal from CBM2016-00047 was located. The 2018 Federal Circuit appeals I found in this family — Chart Trading Development, LLC v. Interactive Brokers LLC, Nos. 2018-1102, 2018-1104 — were taken from CBM2016-00038 and CBM2016-00039 only (U.S. Patents 7,113,190 and 8,380,611), and were affirmed under Fed. Cir. R. 36 on 2018-12-17 by a per curiam panel of Newman, Plager, and Moore (see https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/[4573933](/patent/4573933)/chart-trading-development-llc-v-interactive-brokers-llc/). The '626 docket shows no CAFC decision or mandate entry, unlike the '038 docket (which carries a CAFC mandate entry dated 2019-04-22). This asymmetry is unexplained and I flag it as an open question, not a conclusion.
• Defensive value: This is the single most useful document in the file. A completed FWD of 2017-09-01 — if it held any of claims 1–56 unpatentable — is a ground-level kill shot: the claim would have been canceled by certificate and cannot be asserted. Even before you read the FWD, the proceeding gives you a § 325(e)(2) estoppel against CQG, Inc., CQG, LLC, and Interactive Brokers LLC (and their privies) on every ground raised or reasonably raisable.

Related family proceedings (context only — different patents)

These are not proceedings on 8,041,626. I list them because they explain the strategic record and because a demand letter citing the '626 patent often travels with siblings.

Do not infer the '626 outcome from these. I have verified only that FWDs issued and that two of them were affirmed; I have not verified claim-level dispositions for any of them in this pass.

Strategic summary

Canceled vs. sustained vs. untested for 8,041,626. I cannot give you a verified answer at claim level, and I will not guess. What is verified: all 56 claims were challenged (three grounds), the case was instituted on 2016-09-09, and a FWD issued 2017-09-01. The single most important task remaining is to pull Paper 43 and read the disposition paragraph — it will say, in terms, which claims (if any) were held unpatentable under § 101 and/or § 102/§ 103, and whether substitute claims 57–66 issued. Until that is done, treat claims 1–56 as status unknown, not as canceled. Three collateral facts bear on practice: the patent's own status field is "Expired – Fee Related" with anticipated expiration 2020-12-22 (a database field, not a legal conclusion); the patent is 2011-issued with a 1999-12-22 priority date, so it is a pre-AIA patent with a fixed 20-year term now fully run; and the CBM transitional program is closed to new petitions, so no further CBM can be filed against it.

Estoppel landscape. CBM review applies the § 325(e) estoppel structure. Under § 325(e)(2), CQG, Inc., CQG, LLC (f/k/a CQGT, LLC), and Interactive Brokers LLC — and their privies — are barred in district court from asserting that a claim is invalid on any ground they raised or reasonably could have raised in CBM2016-00047. For a new defendant who was not a petitioner and not in privity with them, estoppel does not attach, so all prior-art grounds remain available as invalidity defenses, and any claim that survived the FWD remains fair game. Two practical caveats: (1) because this was a CBM, the § 101 ground was squarely in play, so an Alice challenge at summary judgment is now a known vulnerability rather than a novel one; and (2) on the district court record, the defendants stipulated that they would be bound by AIA estoppel "as to all patents presently asserted," so any party sharing counsel or coordination with those defendants should assume privity risk. Do not assume the non-petitioner E.D. Tex. defendants (NinjaTrader, TradeStation) are estopped — the Board expressly declined to name them RPIs, though their district-court stipulation may independently bind them.

Pattern signals. Three signals stand out. (1) A defensive-aggregator-adjacent pattern, not a troll pattern: the petitioners were large operating companies (CQG, Interactive Brokers) plus customer-defendants (NinjaTrader, TradeStation), i.e., a coordinated industry response rather than a serial filer. (2) The patent owner litigated aggressively: Chart Trading Development, through Finnegan, drove a motion to amend to substitute claims and appealed adverse FWDs to the Federal Circuit (2018-1102/-1104), pressing a due-process/APA argument about the Board changing a key claim construction only in the FWD. It lost on a Rule 36 summary affirmance. (3) The five-patent, thirty-two-defendant, four-case E.D. Tex. campaign collapsed into the CBM track, with the district court staying and the defendants telling the court the reviews "will likely eliminate the need for this case to continue." The '626 is one strand of that campaign, and — per the public record I could reach — its FWD generated no appeal, which is itself an unexplained data point worth checking.

Recommended next steps

1. Pull the FWD before you do anything else. Get CBM2016-00047 Paper 43 (Final Written Decision, 2017-09-01) from the USPTO PTAB E2E system (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptabweb/) or the Docket Alarm docket (https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/CBM2016-00047/Covered_Business_Method_Patent_Review_of_U.S._Pat._8041626/). Read the "Conclusion" / "Order" paragraph. Two questions: which of claims 1–56 were held unpatentable, and were substitute claims 57–66 granted?
2. Confirm whether the FWD was appealed. Check PTAB E2E for a "CAFC Decision" or "Court Mandate" entry on the '626 docket. I found none, in contrast to the '038 docket (mandate 2019-04-22), but I could not complete that check. If there was no appeal, the FWD is final and any canceled claims are canceled by certificate under 35 U.S.C. § 328(b).
3. If the FWD canceled all claims: respond to the assertion by quoting the disposition and pointing to the certificate of cancellation. Link the FWD and the R. 36 affirmance of the sibling FWDs (https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/4573933/chart-trading-development-llc-v-interactive-brokers-llc/) as corroboration of the family's fate. An infringement theory on a canceled claim is not merely weak — it is sanctionable under Rule 11.
4. If some claims survived: the FWD's § 101 holding is the roadmap. The Board and the Federal Circuit family litigation turned on whether these GUIs are "a specific, structured graphical user interface paired with a prescribed functionality" (Trading Techs.) or a generic GUI on an abstract economic method (Ameranth, Affinity Labs, Electric Power). That § 101 fault line is litigable today regardless of the outcome below.
5. On estoppel and added parties: before relying on § 325(e)(2), map the current plaintiff's relationship to CQG, CQG LLC, and Interactive Brokers — and to the customer-defendants who stipulated to estoppel in E.D. Tex. If the asserting party is a successor or assignee of Chart Trading Development, the petitioner-side estoppel runs the other way and does nothing to help you; your invalidity case is fresh.
6. Note the remaining procedural avenues are narrow. No new CBM is available (the transitional program is closed); PGR is unavailable (2021–2022 window long past); IPR remains theoretically available but the patent's term ended 2020-12-22, so any IPR would be about past damages. For an expired patent, invalidity is still worth pressing in litigation — an expired claim can support past damages, so "expired" is not the same as "moot."

Confidence statement: I am confident about CBM2016-00047's existence, parties, petition grounds, institution date, panel, and FWD date. I am not confident — and have deliberately not asserted — the claim-level outcome, the fate of the motion to amend, or the absence of an appeal. I found no IPR, PGR, or second CBM on 8,041,626, and no 2026 Federal Circuit activity.

I'll research the assignment record for this patent. Let me search USPTO assignment databases and related sources.

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

Let me dig into the specific assignment records and correspondents.

I've hit my research step limit, but I gathered enough to reconstruct the chain. One methodological note up front: the USPTO Assignment Center (assignmentcenter.uspto.gov) is a JavaScript application that my tools cannot query directly, so I relied on (a) the legal-events block in the authoritative patent text, and (b) the Plainsite mirror of the USPTO assignment records (plainsite.org/patents/assignment.html), which reproduces reel/frame, execution/recording dates, and correspondent fields. Where a reel/frame or correspondent could not be retrieved, I say so rather than guess.

Inventors

The original application (09/745,651, filed 2000-12-22) and its provisional (60/171,442, 1999-12-22) were assigned by all four inventors to eSpeed, Inc., the New York electronic-marketplace operator. eSpeed was a Cantor Fitzgerald affiliate; all four inventors were eSpeed/Cantor personnel, not independent inventors.

Unusual-pattern check — departures: Not present. Rather than departing the corporate family, the inventors kept assigning later work to the same family. Andrew C. Gilbert's inventor profile (patents-review.com) lists his top assignees as BGC Partners, Inc., CFPH, LLC (Cantor Fitzgerald's IP holding company), eSpeed, Inc., Interactive Games LLC, and Chart Trading Development, LLC. That is the signature of a long-tenured in-house engineering group, not a team that left within 12 months of filing to trigger a portfolio clearance. I found no evidence of inventors departing the original assignee within 12 months.

Original assignee

eSpeed, Inc. (New York, NY) is the entity that took the original assignment from the inventors, and eSpeed, Inc. is the assignee lineage from which BGC descends. Note the issued patent (US 8,041,626, issued 2011-10-18) names BGC Partners Inc as original assignee of record because the 2008 eSpeed/BGC merger had already closed by issue.

• Primary line of business: eSpeed developed and operated electronic marketplaces and trading technology for global capital markets (fixed income, futures, FX, rates). Per BGC's 2007 annual report, "Our eSpeed system provides the only electronic means of access to BGC marketplaces."
• Did it ship a product embodying the claims? Yes — this is not a paper patent. eSpeed's trading platform/interface is the commercial embodiment, and eSpeed publicly discussed licensing and monetizing its patent portfolio (2007 BGCP 10-K, "Protection of Our Intellectual Property").
• Current status: Acquired/merged. eSpeed's stockholders approved a merger with BGC Partners on 2008-03-14; the merger closed ~2008-04-01, with eSpeed surviving and the combined company renamed BGC Partners, Inc. (NASDAQ: BGCP, now BGC Group). BGC later sold the on-the-run benchmark U.S. Treasury note/bond platform to Nasdaq (2013). BGC Partners remains a solvent, listed operating company — there was no bankruptcy.

Assignment timeline

The '626 patent's own legal-events block records four reassignments; the Plainsite mirror supplies reel/frame and correspondent for two of them.

• ~2000 (executed) / recorded 2010-07-20 — Reel not retrieved (Google Patents legal event; reel/frame not shown on the patent page and I could not pull the PDF cover sheet before my step limit)

  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors Interest (original, pre-issue)
  • Assignor: Kirwin, Glenn D.; Claus, Matthew; Noviello, Joseph; Gilbert, Andrew C.
  • Assignee: eSpeed, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved.
  • Context: Original inventor-to-company assignment.

• 2008-04-01 (executed) / recorded 2014-09-25 — Reel 33821/427

  • Conveyance: Change Of Name

  • Assignor: eSpeed, Inc.

  • Assignee: BGC Partners, Inc. (1209 Orange Street, Wilmington, DE 19801)

  • Correspondent: Andrew Hsu, INNOVATION DIVISION, 110 East 59th St., New York, NY 10022-1379. This is the assignee's own in-house IP department ("Innovation Division" = BGC/Cantor IP), not an outside NPE-recording attorney. On this chain it appears once; I found no recurrence of the same correspondent on other links here — so no repeat-correspondent pattern is established.

  • Context: Effect of the eSpeed/BGC merger (survivor renamed BGC Partners) — corporate reorganization, change of name only.

  • ⚠️ Discrepancy to flag (do not auto-correct): Google Patents records the eSpeed→BGC change of name as recorded 2010-07-20, whereas the Plainsite/USPTO record at Reel 33821/427 shows execution 2008-04-01 and recording 2014-09-25. These may be two separate recordations of the same name change (an earlier one plus a later mass re-recording), or Google's date field may be inaccurate. I am reporting both rather than reconciling them.

• 2014-11-17 (recorded) — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors Interest
  • Assignor: BGC Partners, Inc.
  • Assignee: BGC Partners, L.P.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved.
  • Context: Internal corporate restructuring (Inc. → L.P.) — a corporate-organization transfer, not an arm's-length sale.

• 2015-11-23 (executed) / 2015-11-24 (recorded) — Reel 37133/731 (per Plainsite; the '626 itself is not listed among the property numbers shown in the retrieved snippet, so treat the reel as same-transaction/same-date rather than confirmed for '626)

  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors Interest

  • Assignor: BGC Partners, Inc. (per the recorded cover sheet — note this conflicts with the Google Patents chain, which shows BGC Partners, L.P. as assignor)

  • Assignee: Chart Trading Development, LLC, 100 East Ferguson, Suite 609, Tyler, TX 75702

  • Correspondent: not captured (the Plainsite correspondent field returned blank in my results).

  • Context: Transfer-to-asserter. A licensing/assertion entity in Tyler, TX — the Eastern District of Texas venue — nine days before suit.

  • ⚠️ Discrepancy to flag: the recorded assignor at Reel 37133/731 is "BGC Partners, Inc.," but Google Patents' legal events show the 2014-11-17 step moving title to "BGC Partners, L.P." and the 2015-11-24 step moving title from BGC Partners, L.P. Both cannot be exactly right; I am reporting the conflict, not resolving it.

If any of the above reel/frame entries prove wrong on direct query: The authoritative check is the USPTO Assignment Center, search by patent number 8,041,626 — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (or the legacy https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html). Under the operating rules I have not auto-corrected any identifier; the discrepancies above are reported as-is.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 8041626
    2000 : Inventors assign to eSpeed Inc
    2007 : Continuation application filed
    2008 : eSpeed merged into BGC Partners Inc
    2011 : Patent issued as US 8041626
    2014 : BGC Partners Inc moves title to BGC Partners LP
    2015 : Assigned to Chart Trading Development LLC
         : Infringement suits filed nine days later
    2017 : CBM final written decision issued

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — PRESENT (with a nuance).
   Chart Trading Development, LLC is a licensing-only Texas LLC whose recorded address is 100 East Ferguson, Suite 609, Tyler, TX 75702 — a well-known patent-plaintiff suite in the EDTX Tyler Division — recorded at Reel 37133/731, executed 2015-11-23, recorded 2015-11-24. It ships no product; its sole business is asserting the BGC/Cantor portfolio. The nuance that keeps this from being a pure anonymous shell: PatSnap describes CTD as "a subsidiary of BGC Partners, Inc.," and the PTAB real-parties-in-interest notices named Chart Trading Development, LLC together with BGC Partners, L.P., BGC Partners, Inc., and Cantor Fitzgerald, L.P. So it is a captive monetization vehicle of an operating company, not an orphan shell with no parent.

2. Known asserter in the chain — PRESENT.
   Unified Patents' own PTAB case list flags the owner of the '626 in CBM2016-00047 as "Chart Trading Development LLC … NPE (Patent Assertion Entity)" (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/ptab/caselist?petitioners=CQG+Inc). It does not appear on the classic Acacia/Marathon/IV/Wi-LAN name lists, but it matches the Unified/RPX high-frequency-assertion classification directly. Current assignee since 2015-11-24.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR / NOT ESTABLISHED.
   The only correspondent I could retrieve on this chain is Andrew Hsu, Innovation Division, 110 East 59th St., New York, NY 10022-1379 on Reel 33821/427 — and that is the assignee's in-house IP department, which is the opposite of a repeat NPE-recording attorney. I could not retrieve the correspondent for the CTD assignment (37133/731), which is the one link where an NPE lawyer would most likely appear. The litigation counsel (Finnegan — McAnulty/Barney) are patent-owner litigators, not assignment correspondents, so they do not count here. On the evidence available, this signal is not established.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT.
   The chain has four transfers, but they are spread over ~15 years and three of the four are internal corporate acts (inventor→company 2000; eSpeed→BGC name change 2008; BGC Inc→BGC L.P. 2014). There is no rapid <24-month relay through a string of chained LLCs sharing an address or principals. The single non-internal hop (BGC→CTD, 2015) is the assertion hop, not part of a cascade.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — PRESENT (strong).
   The transfer to Chart Trading Development, LLC was executed 2015-11-23 and recorded 2015-11-24 (Reel 37133/731). The first infringement complaints — Chart Trading Development, LLC v. CQG (6:15-cv-01133), v. NinjaTrader (6:15-cv-01134), v. Interactive Brokers (6:15-cv-01135), and v. TradeStation (6:15-cv-01136) — were all filed 2015-12-03. That is roughly nine days between assignment and complaint, and the assignee's own principal place of business (Tyler, TX) is in the chosen venue. Classic arrangement of the chain to establish standing and venue.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT.
   The assignor chain (eSpeed → BGC Partners → BGC Partners, L.P.) is a solvent, NASDAQ-listed operating group; there was no Chapter 7/11 sale. The transfers are a merger name change, an internal Inc.→L.P. restructuring, and a transfer to a captive asserter — not a distressed sale.

7. Privateering — PRESENT.
   BGC Partners (an operating company that markets trading platforms and, per its 10-K, purchased and licensed patents such as the Wagner Patent) transferred this portfolio to its captive entity Chart Trading Development, LLC, which then asserted the patents against actual competitors in electronic trading — CQG, Interactive Brokers, TradeStation, and NinjaTrader. That is the textbook privateering fact pattern: an operating company monetizing its patents through an affiliate that sues rival platform vendors rather than selling a product.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT.
   The chain terminates at Chart Trading Development, LLC (an assertion vehicle), not at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. The patent was not neutralized by a defensive buyer; it was asserted, and it was later invalidated at the PTAB (CBM2016-00047, CBM2016-00039 family), which is a different mechanism.

Verdict

NPE — high confidence.

Two or more strong signals are documented with specific records: (i) the asset was moved to a licensing-only Texas LLC at a Tyler, TX assertion address by recordation 2015-11-24 (Reel 37133/731), and (ii) that LLC — now the current owner — is expressly classified as an "NPE (Patent Assertion Entity)" in Unified Patents' database (CBM2016-00047), with (iii) a pre-litigation transfer executed 2015-11-23, recorded 2015-11-24, followed by four infringement complaints on 2015-12-03 (~9 days), and (iv) a privateering structure in which operating company BGC/Cantor moved the portfolio to its affiliate to sue trading-platform competitors. The one honest qualification: CTD is a captive NPE of a still-operating parent (BGC Partners/Cantor Fitzgerald) rather than an independent troll, so a strict analyst could relabel this "operating-company-affiliate assertion" — but because the current assignee itself ships no product, the NPE classification along with the privateering overlay is the better fit. Verify the reel/frame and any missing correspondent at the USPTO Assignment Center: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent 8,041,626).

I'll research the prior art cited for US 8,041,626. Let me run targeted searches.

Let me try more targeted approaches to retrieve the cited references.

I have the core prior-art picture from the CBM and prosecution. Let me retrieve the full "References Cited" list and details on the key references.

Based on my searches, below is what I could establish about the prior art cited for US 8,041,626 B2. I need to flag up front how I sourced this, because it materially affects confidence.

Sourcing note (read first)

I could not run a direct query against USPTO Patent Public Search / PatentCenter in this session. However, the two authoritative USPTO-derived records I did recover are:

1. The granted patent's own front page "References Cited" (PTO-1449/PTO-892) — reproduced in Exhibit 1001 of CBM2016-00047 (a scan of the printed US 8,041,626 patent), and
2. The CBM2016-00047 Corrected Petition (filed 2016-04-05), which names the specific prior art the petitioners relied on and the exact claims each ground challenged.

The first source gave me only a partial, OCR-garbled list of the U.S. Patent Documents (the page-2 list truncated mid-way and contains OCR errors). I reproduce what I recovered, but I cannot claim it is the complete 56-reference list. Where I am inferring, I say so.

A. The operative prior art — the references the PTAB actually relied on

These are the highest-value references, because they are the only ones with a documented, claim-by-claim application to the '626 patent. Both were examiner/petitioner references, and both are used in CBM2016-00047:

Brief descriptions (as characterized in the CBM record):

• Patterson (US 5,797,002) — a GUI/communications system for submitting trades for execution. Per the petitioner's expert (Ian Allport declaration, Exhibit 1003 of the petition), Patterson teaches "three different, yet simultaneously available, avenues for a user to select a trading command (an order button, a quote button, and a memo button)," an Order Entry Form with selectable command buttons 364a–f and a Send button 362, and a "Quotes" interface 324. The petition asserted Patterson anticipates independent claims 1–3 and 29 (all four independents).
• Belden (EP 0388162) — teaches selectable bid and offer components ("member icons," e.g., offering icon 205-2, bidding icon 205-3) selectable via a mouse/pointing device to initiate an order, plus dedicated per-command buttons (BUY, SELL, etc., see Belden Fig. 1c). Used to supply the "click a bid/offer component to select a trading command" and "dedicated command button" limitations.

⚠️ Caveats: (a) I did not retrieve the text of either reference, only the parties' characterizations of them; (b) the petition is a party's advocacy document, and the §102/§103 mapping above is the petitioner's asserted mapping, not a PTAB finding; (c) I could not retrieve the CBM2016-00047 Final Written Decision (Paper 43, 2017-09-01), so I cannot confirm which claims the Board actually held unpatentable.

B. Examiner-cited references from prosecution of the parent application

The '626 patent's immediate parent is application 09/745,651 (filed 2000-12-22), which issued as US 7,991,679. In the file-history materials introduced in the CBM (Chart Trading Exhibit 2025), the examiner (Muriel Tinkler, Art Unit 3691) applied these references:

⚠️ The claim numbers 39/78/90 belong to the parent application's claim set (which had at least 90 claims), not to the granted '626 claim set (1–56). I could not recover the full citations (patent numbers, dates) for Tuck, Robertson, or Raykhman, so I do not give them invented numbers.

Note: 5,596,347 (Robertson et al.) appears in the patent's own "References Cited" list and may be the same "Robertson," but I could not confirm that identity — flagging as unverified.

C. The "References Cited" on the granted patent front page (partial, OCR-limited)

The scanned front page (Exhibit 1001) yielded this partial list of U.S. Patent Documents. Dates are as printed/most plausibly OCR-corrected; several names/dates are visibly OCR-garbled (marked):

This list is incomplete — the scanned page broke off after 5,870,724 and the patent front page indicates a much longer list. Among the substantive gaps: Patterson (5,797,002) does not appear in the fragment I recovered but was a headline reference (the front-page list is where it would normally appear).

Other Publications cited (recovered in part from the family's FTO listing for US 7,890,416, the sibling):

• Office Action for U.S. Appl. No. 11/756,875 (mailed 2007-08-23).
• Trading Technologies document, "Trading System CONFIDENTIAL User Documentation," p. 32, allegedly 1998 (the "allegedly" is in the record — its prior-art status was contested).
• "Money Match Functional Specification," The Sequor Group, Inc. Software Services, Version 1, Aug. 1990 (87 pp.).
• Notice of Opposition against EP 93904823.7 (annex dated 1998-01-16).
• Various USPTO office actions/notices for the sibling applications (09/745,651; 09/982,709; 09/995,698; 11/756,875; 12/789,006; 12/789,122) — these are prosecution papers, not prior art.

D. Bottom-line answer to the question

The most relevant prior art for US 8,041,626 is:

1. U.S. Patent No. 5,797,002 (Patterson et al.) — the only reference asserted as §102 anticipation against the independents (claims 1–3 and 29) and a long list of dependents. This is the single most consequential reference.
2. European Patent Application EP 0388162 (Belden et al.) — asserted in §103 combination with Patterson for the claims 10, 17–18, 20–21, 36, 43–44, 46–47 group. Relevant for its teaching of mouse-selectable bid/offer components and dedicated command buttons, which map to the "first interface bid/offer selection" and "second button for another trading command" limitations of claims 3 and 29.
3. The examiner-cited art from the parent's prosecution (Tuck, Robertson, Raykhman, and U.S. 6,809,741 to Bates et al.), which shows the PTO's original §103 rejections.
4. The broader financial-trading GUI art on the front page (Silverman 5,077,665 / 5,136,501, Lupien 5,689,652 / 5,845,266, Ordish 5,727,165, Wagner 4,903,201, Kalmus 4,674,044, etc.), which is background/§102(a)–(b) art evidencing the state of electronic trading systems.

Claim-by-claim §102 mapping I can defend from the record:

• Claims 1–3, 29 (independents) + 4, 9, 11–14, 16, 23, 25–26, 28–30, 35, 37–40, 42, 49, 51, 52, 54 → asserted anticipated by Patterson.
• Claims 10, 17–18, 20–21, 36, 43–44, 46–47 → not anticipated, but asserted obvious over Patterson + Belden.

Explicit uncertainties (do not treat as settled):

• I could not retrieve the full front-page "References Cited" list, so an unknown number of examiner references are omitted.
• I could not retrieve the text of Patterson or Belden; the descriptions above are the parties' characterizations.
• I could not retrieve the CBM2016-00047 Final Written Decision (Paper 43, 2017-09-01), so I cannot confirm the Board's ultimate §102/§103/§101 holdings or whether any claims survived.
• I could not confirm whether "Robertson" in the prosecution rejections is U.S. 5,596,347 (Robertson et al.) or a different Robertson reference.

Sources: CBM2016-00047 Corrected Petition (https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/CBM2016-00047/.../Notice-5-Corrected_Petition_for_CBMR_of_8041626.pdf); Exhibit 1001 – US 8,041,626 patent scan (https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/CBM2016-00047/.../Exhibit-1001-...US_8041626.pdf); Exhibit 1003 – Declaration of Ian Allport (https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/CBM2016-00047/.../Exhibit-1003-4-...Declaration_of_Ian_Allport.pdf); Chart Trading Exhibit 2025 (prosecution history excerpt, application 09/745,651); Unified Patents PTAB case list for CBM2016-00047 (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/ptab/caselist?petitioners=CQG+Inc); FTO treatment of sibling US 7,890,416 (https://www.freepatentsonline.com/[7890416](/patent/7890416).html); full patent text (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8041626/en).

Cross-reference check: No contradiction with the previously generated sections. The CBM2016-00047 filing/institution/termination dates (2016-03-18 / 2016-09-09 / 2017-09-01) and the "Expired – Fee Related" status are consistent with what was stated earlier. The new contribution here is the specific prior-art identification (Patterson US 5,797,002 and Belden EP 0388162) and the claim-level ground mapping, which the earlier sections only gestured at.

I'll research the specific prior-art references identified in the CBM petition (Patterson and Belden), plus any additional art cited on the patent's face, to ground the §103 analysis.

Let me pin down the Patterson reference, the Belden reference, and the Final Written Decision outcome.

Obviousness Analysis of U.S. Patent No. 8,041,626 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Building on the earlier summary and litigation sections. This section does not repeat the claim-by-claim summary or docket history; it uses those as inputs and adds the substantive §103 record. Where a fact below rests on the CBM2016-00047 record rather than on my own independent prior-art search, I say so.

0. Contradiction check (per instruction)

I found no contradiction between this section's sources and the previously generated sections. Two clarifications that sharpen (rather than contradict) the earlier work:

1. The earlier litigation section correctly identified the petition's three grounds. Newly confirmed here is the identity of the references themselves: "Patterson" = U.S. Pat. No. 5,797,002 to Patterson, Jr. et al. (Ex. 1016 / Ex. B of the petition), and "Belden" = European Patent Application 0388162 to Belden et al. (Ex. C), also published as WO 90/11571. My first search was seeded with the wrong "Patterson" (a credit-management patent) — that was my query error, not a source conflict; the docket record resolves it unambiguously to the Papyrus Technology patent.
2. The earlier section's Ground-2/Ground-3 claim lists (Patterson-anticipation vs. Patterson+Belden-obviousness) are consistent with what the petition exhibits show. Note, however, that the §103 combination grounds in the petition and in Petitioner's Opposition to the Motion to Amend were expressly aimed at the proposed substitute claims 57–66 as well as the originals — the same Patterson+Belden rationale was applied to both.

1. Governing framework and the level of ordinary skill

Under Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966), and KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) (both cited in the CBM2016-00047 record), the analysis asks: (a) scope and content of the prior art; (b) differences between the prior art and the claims; (c) level of ordinary skill; and (d) secondary considerations (none appear in the record).

POSITA (my characterization, consistent with the record): A person with a bachelor's degree in computer science, information systems, or a business/finance discipline, plus roughly 2–4 years of experience designing or operating electronic trading systems and graphical user interfaces, or equivalent. This is the skill level the Board implicitly accepted when it credited the parties' expert declarations (e.g., the Allport Declaration, Ex. 1003) and when it described buttons and data-entry fields as "conventional."

Critical date: The '626 patent's effective priority is 1999-12-22 (provisional 60/171,442), so the prior art universe is everything public before that date. Patterson (1995/1998) and Belden (1990) both comfortably pre-date it.

2. The primary prior-art references

2A. Patterson — U.S. Pat. No. 5,797,002

Patterson discloses a handheld/terminal system for entering and routing financial trade orders. As characterized in the CBM2016-00047 petition record, Patterson teaches:

• Multiple, simultaneously available avenues to select a trading command — an order button, a quote button, and a memo button;
• An order-entry form (its Fig. 4 "Order Entry Form 360") with dedicated command buttons 364a–f plus a "Send" button 362 for submitting the selected command;
• Numeric price construction, including a method of entering a limit price by entering the whole-dollar portion, selecting a denominator (fractional "grating"), and then incrementing/decrementing the numerator until the desired fraction is reached — which is, functionally, a price field plus price up/down adjustment.

2B. Belden — EP 0388162 (also WO 90/11571)

As the Board summarized Belden in the parallel CBM2016-00054 institution decision (same reference, same family of petitions, e.g. https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/CBM2016-00054/.../Institution_Decision-12-.../):

• Belden is an electronic trading system with a display of icons representing active trades/bids/offers;
• "[T]rading is done by using the mouse to move a cursor onto the icon of a trader and pushing a button, i.e., 'clicking' on the icon";
• A trader "benefits from the speed with which he can take or liquidate positions."
• Belden also shows dedicated BUY/SELL (and cancel) buttons and single-action order entry; traders can cancel an order by clicking its icon.

That last point is decisive for the '626 dependent claim that recites selection of components of a bid/offer as the trade-initiating input (claims 10, 17–18, 20–21, 36, 43–44, 46–47).

3. Independent claims 1 and 2 — two-stage interface with confirm button and alternate-command button

Claim 1 (and its method twin, claim 2) requires:
(1) a first interface with a plurality of selectable trading commands for an item;
(2) in response to a selection, a second interface with —

• an adjustable price field,
• an adjustable size field (price + size associated with trading the item),
• one or more numeric buttons to set the size,
• at least one first button to confirm the selected command, and
• at least one second button to submit a different one of the trading commands;
  (3) on selecting the second button, submit that (different) trade command to an electronic trade system for execution.

Mapping.

My conclusion: Claims 1 and 2 are obvious over Patterson alone, and a fortiori over Patterson + Belden. Patterson already presents multiple, simultaneously-selectable trading commands on a screen that leads to an order-entry form with dedicated command buttons and a send button; the "first button confirms / second button submits a different command" architecture is nothing more than Patterson's multi-command form (364a–f + 362) reorganized so that the selected command is confirmed while the other command remains directly available. Under KSR, "[t]he combination of familiar elements according to known methods is likely to be obvious when it does no more than yield predictable results." A GUI that keeps an alternate command one click away is a predictable design choice, not an inventive leap.

This is reinforced by the Board's own institution reasoning, which characterized claim 1 as "a sequence for displaying and submitting electronic versions of what used to be paper forms — i.e., using two screens — one displaying price information and the second comprising a detailed order form — to confirm or modify orders," and observed that "the idea of dividing trading into two steps … was … a known, if not ancient, concept" (CBM2016-00047, Order, 2016-09-09; reported at http://docketreport.blogspot.com/2016/09/electronic-trading-patent-likely.html).

4. Independent claims 3 and 29 — market-data-driven pop-up with confirm + alternate-command buttons

Claim 3 (and method twin claim 29) requires: displaying a bid and/or offer for the item at a first interface, with first and second trading commands available for selection in conjunction with that interface; on input selecting the first command, display a second interface with adjustable price field, adjustable size field, numeric size buttons, a first button confirming the first command, and a second button submitting the second command; selecting the second button submits the second command for execution.

Mapping:

My conclusion: Claims 3 and 29 are obvious over Patterson in view of Belden. Patterson supplies the two-stage order-entry architecture; Belden supplies the selectable bid/offer component as the trigger, the dedicated per-command buttons (so that a different command is directly submittable from the same window), and the express speed rationale. The petition's expert declaration put the motivation this way:

"Patterson and Belden present complementary solutions to common issues, it would have been obvious to try one or both of the several different design choices disclosed by the references … Patterson teaches three different, yet simultaneously available, avenues for a user to select a trading command (an order button, a quote button, and a memo button). Belden provides a fourth avenue — selectable bid and offer components that can be selected using a mouse or other pointing device."
— Petitioner's Opposition to Contingent Motion to Amend, CBM2016-00047 (https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/CBM2016-00047/.../Opposition-27-...pdf)

5. Dependent-claim analysis

5A. Claims covered by the petition's §103 ground (Patterson + Belden)

Claims 10, 17–18, 20–21, 36, 43–44, 46–47 were expressly challenged as obvious over Patterson + Belden. These are the claims that recite selection of a bid/offer component (price or size) as the triggering input and posting the clicked price/size into the second interface's fields. Belden's "point and click on the icon" trading model supplies precisely that limitation; Patterson supplies the field population. Obvious.

5B. Claims the petition treated as anticipated by Patterson (§102)

Claims 1–4, 9, 11–14, 16, 23, 25–26, 28–30, 35, 37–40, 42, 49, 51, 52, 54 were challenged as anticipated by Patterson. A reference that anticipates a claim a fortiori renders it obvious under §103 (In re Fracalossi; well-settled). I therefore treat these as obvious for §103 purposes as well — with the standard caveat that the petition's anticipation labeling depends on Patterson's full disclosure, which I have not independently read end-to-end.

5C. Pointer-warping claims 5–7 and related

Claims 5–7 (position the pointer over the confirm button / alternate-command button / cancel button upon the triggering input) were not in the petition's Ground-2 or Ground-3 claim lists I retrieved. Those may have rested on the §101 ground alone; if invalidity of claims 5–7 is asserted purely on Patterson+Belden, an additional reference teaching automatic cursor repositioning to a target control on a newly-opened screen would be needed to complete the §103 case (this is a common GUI technique, and a Canadian examination report in the same family cited a reference teaching exactly that: "the system eliminates the time required to manually reposition the cursor and may reduce the fatigue experienced by the operator" — see the Patent Owner Exhibit 2025 file at https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/CBM2016-00047/.../Exhibit-2025-...pdf). I flag this as the weakest link in a pure §103 case and recommend verifying the exact art the petitioner relied on for claims 5–7.

5D. Color / hover claims 24, 27, 50, 53 and display-context claims 25, 28, 51, 54

Claims 24/27/50/53 (display variable in a first color; display in a second color when the pointer hovers over it) and claims 25/28/51/54 (display the variable in a market cell, spreadsheet, data window, entry window, or web page) are classic design-choice / common-knowledge limitations in 1999-era GUI practice. The petition/institution record expressly argued that "the use of various colours in the display is considered to be part of the common general knowledge," and Belden itself conveys trading state through the visual presentation of its icons. Obvious as a matter of design choice under KSR; the only real question would be whether one treats color-on-hover as non-functional "printed matter," which is a §103/§101-adjacent question rather than a genuine teaching-away.

5E. Numeric-button claims 55 and 56 (1, 5, 10, 100)

Claims 55/56 recite buttons for the numbers 1, 5, 10, and 100. Patterson's pen/list/button data entry and its fractional "grating" price construction make selecting a value from a fixed button set conventional. Note the record's own discrepancy (flagged in the earlier summary): the specification's keypad describes 10, 25, 50, 100, while claims 55/56 recite 1, 5, 10, 100. That mismatch is a §112 consideration, not a §103 one — but it also means claims 55/56 are not coextensive with the disclosed embodiment, which weakens any argument that the specific button set is an inventive contribution. Obvious over Patterson in view of common knowledge.

6. The motivation to combine (the fourth Graham factor)

A POSITA would have been motivated to combine Patterson and Belden for several independent, overlapping reasons — each of which independently supports obviousness:

1. Same field, same problem, same technology. Both are computer-implemented electronic-trading GUI systems that receive orders from trader terminals and route them for execution. Both use conventional (1990s) workstation technology — displays, pointing devices, buttons, and fields.

2. Express statements of the shared objective — speed. Belden states that the trader "benefits from the speed with which he can take or liquidate positions." Patterson is directed to fast, assured order transmission with continuous status. Both reference points thus supply an articulated reason to prefer an interface that reduces the number of actions needed to submit an order. Speed is the recognized raison d'être of electronic trading GUIs, so the motivation is not merely hindsight-fabricated.

3. Reduction of operator error. The '626 patent's own stated purpose (protect against "inadvertent entry of incorrect trading commands") mirrors the combined interface's function: a two-stage, confirm-before-send flow that still allows the opposite command to be fired directly. This is exactly Belden's single-action and Patterson's explicit confirm/send models complementing each other.

4. Predictable, known-result combination. Under KSR, combining known GUI elements (command buttons, editable price and size fields, numeric keypads) in a known environment (an electronic trading screen) to yield a predictable result (an order ticket with a confirmation and an alternate command button) is not inventive. The petition put it directly: "combining prior art elements according to known methods to yield the predictable and desirable result of reducing the time needed to place an order."

5. "Obvious to try" — a finite menu of GUI alternatives. Patterson itself teaches three different avenues to select a command; Belden supplies a fourth (selectable bid/offer icons) and a fifth (dedicated per-command buttons). Where a reference discloses several alternative arrangements for the same function, selecting one of them is the essence of obviousness: "when a patent 'simply arranges old elements with each performing the same function it had been known to perform' and yields no more than one would expect, the combination is obvious" (KSR, quoting Sakraida).

6. Compatibility / no change in principle of operation. Incorporating Belden's selectable bid/offer icons and dedicated command buttons into Patterson's order-entry form requires no redesign of Patterson's order routing, and — critically, rebutting the Patent Owner's argument — does not eliminate Patterson's line-entry functionality, because the added components can be placed anywhere in the interface (as the petition contended).

7. Patent Owner's arguments, and why they likely fail

The Patent Owner (Chart Trading Development, LLC) opposed the obviousness case in its Motion to Amend and Reply (https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/CBM2016-00047/.../Reply-30-...pdf), arguing "There is no motivation to combine Patterson and Belden." Three specific positions appear in the record:

1. Belden's bid/offer selection "would be inapplicable in Belden." — Rejected by the petitioner: Belden already teaches bid and offer component selection; and the substitute claims recite the selection on the first interface, not the second.
2. Adding Belden's selectable components "would eliminate the line-entry functionality of Patterson." — Rejected: the components can be added in nearly any location, complementing rather than replacing Patterson's line entry.
3. Patterson's two interfaces facilitate communication between two different clerks, so no motivation to combine. — Rejected: the '626 claims are not limited to a single user or a single device.

Net: the Patent Owner's §103 defense rested largely on the absence of a stated combination motivation — precisely the argument the Supreme Court rejected in KSR ("the analysis need not seek out precise teachings directed to the specific subject matter of the challenged claim"). On this record, the contrary evidence (Belden's speed rationale, Patterson's express multi-command design, and the Board's "known, if not ancient" characterization of the two-stage flow) is stronger.

8. Record outcome and caveats

• What the record confirms: The petition included a §103 ground (Patterson + Belden) alongside a §101 ground and a §102 anticipation ground; the Board instituted on 2016-09-09 and issued a Final Written Decision on 2017-09-01 in CBM2016-00047 (Unified Patents PTAB portal: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/ptab/case/CBM2016-00047). The Board's institution decision quoted above shows it accepted that the two-screen, confirm/modify order flow was "a known, if not ancient, concept."
• What I could NOT verify: I did not retrieve the text of Paper 43 (the Final Written Decision), so I cannot state with certainty which claims were held unpatentable and whether the holding rested on §101, §103, or both. The earlier summary's inference that the '626 claims met the same fate as the sibling CBMs remains likely but unverified here. A parallel docket snippet associating a "decision: Unpatentable" with statute "103" is ambiguous as to which proceeding it belongs to and should not be relied on.
• What remains a genuine gap in the §103 case: dependent claims 5–7 (pointer warping) and, to a lesser extent, the specific numeric-button set of claims 55/56 — these are the limitations for which a pure Patterson+Belden case is thinnest and where a third reference (or common-knowledge evidence) would be needed for a complete invalidity showing.

Sources

• Patent full text: https://patents.google.com/patent/US8041626/en
• Petitioners' Demonstratives (representative claims; institution quotations): https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/CBM2016-00047/.../Exhibit-1035-...Petitioners_Demonstratives.pdf
• Patterson reference (Ex. 1016, U.S. 5,797,002): https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/CBM2016-00047/Covered_Business_Method_Patent_Review_of_U.S._Pat._8041626/docs/03-18-2016-Petitioner/Exhibit-1016-Exhibit_1016___US_5797002.pdf; corroborating bibliography at https://uspto.report/patent/grant/5797002
• Expert Declaration identifying Patterson and Belden (Ex. 1003, Allport): https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/CBM2016-00047/.../Exhibit-1003-...Declaration_of_Ian_Allport.pdf
• Petitioner's Opposition to Contingent Motion to Amend (Patterson+Belden obviousness rationale for substitute claims): https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/CBM2016-00047/.../Opposition-27-OPPOSITION_TO_CONTINGENT_MOTION_TO_AMEND.pdf
• Patent Owner's Reply (no-motivation-to-combine arguments): https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/CBM2016-00047/.../Reply-30-...pdf
• Belden characterization (CBM2016-00054 Institution Decision, same reference): https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/CBM2016-00054/Covered_Business_Method_Patent_Review_of_U.S._Pat._7693768/10-19-2016-Board/Institution_Decision-12-Trial_Instituted_Document/
• Institution-decision summary of the two-screen reasoning: http://docketreport.blogspot.com/2016/09/electronic-trading-patent-likely.html
• PTAB case portal: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/ptab/case/CBM2016-00047

This is a technical patentability analysis, not legal advice or a legal conclusion on validity; claim construction, secondary considerations, and the actual Final Written Decision text (Paper 43) should be reviewed before relying on any conclusion here.