US 8081227

I'll search for litigation and docket information on this specific patent before summarizing.

US Patent 8,081,227 B1 — Quick-Reference Summary

Docket / litigation check (as requested)

I searched for CAFC 2026 dockets and district-court actions naming this specific patent number.

• No CAFC 2026 appeal or IPR involving US 8,081,227 was found in my searches.
• The Adobe-related 2025–2026 litigation that did surface — AlmondNet, Inc. and Datonics LLC v. Adobe Inc. (W.D. Tex. 7:25-cv-00180; transferred/refiled in N.D. Cal., e.g., 5:26-cv-08062 and 4:26-cv-08067) — asserts different Adobe patents (U.S. 10,839,423; 10,984,445; 8,200,822; 8,589,210). It does not involve 8,081,227. See https://npe.law.stanford.edu/case/299600 and https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69912962/
• Treat the absence of litigation as "none found," not as affirmative proof that none exists.

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Bibliographic data

Status is listed as Active on Google Patents. I do not have independent live confirmation from USPTO PatentCenter of the current maintenance-fee status, so treat the "Active / expires 2028-03-01" figure as the Google Patents listing rather than my own verification.

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Abstract (verbatim)

"An image for which a quality indicator is to be displayed is obtained. The image is processed to obtain a quality value associated with the quality of the image. The quality indicator based at least in part on the quality value is displayed, wherein the quality indicator is displayed with a displayed version of the image."

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Independent claim overview (plain language)

The patent has three independent claims — claim 1 (method), claim 9 (system), and claim 16 (computer program product on a non-transitory medium). Claims 9 and 16 track claim 1 almost step-for-step.

Claim 1 — Method

1. Obtain an image captured on a mobile telephone that includes a camera, where the image is one for which a first and second quality indicator are to be displayed.
2. Obtain information associated with a first portion and a second portion of that image.
3. Send that portion information over a mobile telephone network to a remote image quality analyzer.
4. At the remote analyzer, use a processor to generate a corrected version of the image before any indication/request to correct the image is received — i.e., pre-emptively, unprompted.
5. Receive the corrected version back over the mobile telephone network if a request associated with correcting the image is received.
6. Display the corrected version on the mobile telephone.

Claim 9 — System

Same substance recast as apparatus: an interface that obtains the image and the first/second-portion information and sends it to the remote analyzer over the mobile network; a processor on the remote image quality analyzer that generates a corrected version before any correction request arrives and transmits it back to the mobile telephone when a request is received; and a display on the mobile telephone for showing the corrected version.

Claim 16 — Computer program product

Mirrors claim 1 as computer instructions on a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium: obtain the mobile-phone-captured image, obtain the two portion-information sets, send them over the mobile network to the remote analyzer, generate the corrected image at the remote analyzer pre-emptively, receive it back upon request, and display it on the mobile telephone.

Dependent claims, grouped

• Indicator presentation: 2 (plurality of indicators over a plurality of images), 3 (indicators on top of the image), 4 (display via capture device / mobile telephone / computer), 12 & 17 (displaying a number), 13 & 18 (filling in zero or more shapes).
• Quality type: 5 (relative quality), 6 (absolute quality).
• Portions: 7 & 14 & 19 (first and second portions do not overlap), 8 & 15 & 20 (a portion includes a face).
• Architecture: 10 (processor located remotely from the display), 11 (system includes a camera).

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Analytical caveat worth flagging

The specification and abstract are about displaying a visual quality indicator (e.g., FIG. 1's mobile phone with a 0–5 circle meter; FIG. 2's color LED; FIG. 3's file-browser thumbnails; FIG. 9's per-portion "okay / not okay" indicators). The granted independent claims, however, are drafted around the remote/offloaded workflow: sending portion data to a server-side analyzer, having the server pre-generate a corrected image before it is asked to, and returning/displaying that corrected image on the phone.

Notably, the independent claims do not recite a step of generating a quality value or of actually displaying a quality indicator. The "first quality indicator and second quality indicator" language in claims 1, 9, and 16 appears only as a characterization of the image being obtained ("an image … for which a first quality indicator and a second quality indicator are to be displayed"), while the only affirmative display step is displaying the corrected image. This appears to reflect claim amendments made during prosecution, and it materially narrows the claims relative to the disclosed invention. Anyone analyzing scope or infringement should read the actual claims against the prosecution history rather than against the abstract.

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Sources

• Full patent text: https://patents.google.com/patent/US8081227/en
• Corroborating bibliographic data: https://golden.com/wiki/US_Patent_8081227_Image_quality_visual_indicator-ZXPWK68 (assignee, filing date, abstract)
• Inventor/assignee listing: https://www.patentleaderboard.com/adobe/wilson-chan/[1085677](/patent/1085677)

Uncertainty note: I could not verify current USPTO maintenance-fee status or locate any CAFC/PTAB proceeding specific to 8,081,227 from the searches run. The docket result above is a negative finding, not a certified clearance.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 8081227. Let me search multiple sources.

Let me search more targeted litigation databases.

Litigation Search Results for U.S. Patent No. 8,081,227

Bottom line

I found no known litigation — district court, ITC, or PTAB — involving U.S. Patent No. 8,081,227 ("Image quality visual indicator"). Based on the sources I was able to search, this patent does not appear to have been asserted in any infringement action, nor has it been the subject of any AIA post-grant challenge (IPR/PGR/CBM).

What I verified

The patent itself (confirming I'm looking at the correct number):

• U.S. Patent No. 8,081,227 B1
• Application No. 11/607,302; filed November 30, 2006; granted December 20, 2011
• Inventors: Grace Kim, Wilson Chan, Sheryl Ehrlich
• Original assignee: Adobe Systems Incorporated; current assignee: Adobe Inc.
• Status per Google Patents: Active, adjusted expiration 2028-03-01
• 20 claims (method, system, and computer program product claims directed to displaying quality indicators and offloading image-quality analysis to a remote analyzer over a mobile telephone network)

Litigation databases searched:

• Unified Patents litigation portal
• CourtListener / RECAP dockets (district courts and CAFC)
• Justia Patents and general web searches keyed to the exact numbers "8081227" and "8,081,227"

None of these returned a case in which 8,081,227 was the asserted patent.

Cases that were NOT this patent (to avoid confusion)

My search did surface several matters that involve similar-sounding numbers or unrelated patents. I am explicitly excluding them:

• An EDTX complaint referencing "Defendant Adobe" — this concerns different asserted patents, not 8,081,227. (storage.courtlistener.com, txed.120134.7.0.pdf)
• Snapaid Ltd. v. [various] (USPTO/CourtListener) — a long-running family of suits asserting U.S. Patent Nos. 9,338,348 / 10,009,537 / 9,661,226, etc., directed to "real time assessment of picture quality." Related subject matter, different patent and different owner than 8,081,227.
• Kofax mobile-image-capture patents (e.g., 10,146,795; 9,754,164) — related field, unrelated patent.
• Huawei's 8,571,253 / Kofax and similar numbers — not 8,081,227.

Important caveats

1. Absence of evidence ≠ proof of absence. I could not access PACER directly or run a full Docket Navigator / Lex Machina query in this session, and Reed Tech/Unified portals sometimes lag newly filed complaints. A negative result from these searches is strong but not conclusive.
2. Adobe's posture matters. Adobe has historically been a defensive portfolio holder rather than a prolific patent plaintiff, and this patent is a device/smartphone-camera UX patent. The absence of assertions is consistent with typical Adobe practice, but I cannot state it as a certainty.
3. No PTAB proceedings found on the Google Patents "family"/legal-proceedings views for this patent — but I could not independently confirm via the PTAB E2E portal in this session.

Recommendation

To convert this into a definitive "no litigation" opinion, run a paid Docket Navigator or Lex Machina query on Patent Number 8,081,227 (searching both plaintiff and counterclaim/declaratory-judgment fields), and separately confirm via the USPTO PTAB E2E search that no IPR/PGR names this patent. If you'd like, I can help draft that query or interpret the results once you have them.

I'll verify the structured data with targeted web searches before writing up.

The search surfaced a "'1227 IPR" reference that I need to rule in or out — it may be a different patent. Let me verify.

The "'1227 IPR" is a false positive (IPR2018-01227 on a different patent). Let me run final confirmatory checks on assertion history and any post-grant activity.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 8,081,227: zero. The USPTO Open Data Portal structured block returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceedings, and my independent web searches (PTAB petition text, DocketAlarm PTAB dockets, and general assertion-keyword searches) surfaced nothing to contradict it — no institution decision, no FWD, no termination, no appeal. This places the patent in a different posture from the one the output template anticipates: there is no claim-level outcome to report, because no claims have ever been tested at the Board. The bottom line for a defendant: there is no IPR record to piggyback on and no invalidation estoppel to exploit — the patent's claims 1–20 are all UNTESTED and intact on their face, but equally, there is no institution decision or FWD endorsing their patentability. A defendant would be building a first-generation invalidity challenge from scratch.

One important negative finding to record so it is not mistaken for a true match: a web hit for IPR2018-01227 ("the '1227 IPR") is a false positive. That proceeding is Hulu, LLC, [Amazon.com, Inc.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Amazon.com%2C%20Inc.), and Netflix, Inc. v. Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC, challenging U.S. Patent 9,578,298 (stereoscopic video decoding) — the "1227" is the IPR number, not the patent number. See https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2018-01227/Inter_Partes_Review_of_U.S._Pat._9578298/. It has no relationship to US 8,081,227.

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Proceedings on file

None. There are no proceedings to list.

Because the template calls for a per-proceeding entry, I am explicitly recording the empty set rather than padding it:

(no proceeding exists)

• Type: N/A — no IPR, PGR, or CBM petition has ever been instituted against US 8,081,227.
• Filed: N/A
• Status: N/A. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block from the USPTO ODP is empty as of the most recent ingest, and no live search result contradicts it.
• Judge panel: N/A
• Petition grounds: N/A — no petition to characterize.
• Institution decision: N/A
• Final Written Decision: N/A — no FWD has issued on any claim of this patent, so it is inaccurate to describe any claim of US 8,081,227 as canceled, confirmed, or construed by the Board.
• Settlement / termination: N/A
• Appeal: N/A — no PTAB decision to appeal to the Federal Circuit.
• Defensive value: A defendant cannot borrow a PTAB outcome. Conversely, the patent owner cannot point to any Board decision upholding the claims, which means the claims carry no PTAB-hardened presumption — their validity is entirely unlitigated.

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What this means strategically

Claim status across US 8,081,227. All twenty claims — independent claims 1, 9, and 16, and dependents 2–8, 10–15, and 17–20 — are UNTESTED. Nothing is CANCELED and nothing is SUSTAINED by the Board. This matters because the common defense playbook ("find the IPR that killed independent claim 1 and refuse to engage") is unavailable here. Note the prior analytical section's caveat still governs: the granted independents are drafted around a remote-analyzer workflow — sending portion data over a mobile telephone network to a remote image quality analyzer, having that remote processor pre-generate a corrected version before any correction request is received, and returning it — with the "first/second quality indicator" language appearing as a characterization of the image rather than an affirmative display step. That is a narrow, server-centric claim set relative to the abstract, and it is the feature a defendant should target, both for non-infringement (does the accused device's cloud pipeline really pre-generate corrections unprompted?) and for § 103.

Estoppel landscape. Because no IPR was ever filed, 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) estoppel is a non-issue — no petitioner, no privy, and no real party-in-interest is estopped from anything. A defendant today has the full universe of prior art available in district court under §§ 102/103/112, including art that would have been reasonably raisable in an IPR. Practically, that means the 17 references cited on the face of the patent (e.g., US 5,806,005; US 6,018,397; US 6,778,684; US 7,286,177; US 7,405,816; US 2005/0219400 (Hasselblad, "Image quality indicator"); US 2003/0151674 (Lin, photo-quality assessment in a DSC); US 2003/0117511 (Kodak, blurring verification image to show out of focus); US 2005/0219393 (Fuji, face image display)), and the three examiner-cited non-patent references (Halmshaw, Industrial Radiography; Imatest "Sharpness"; Jacobsen Real-Time X Ray glossary), can be redeployed freely and combined — subject to the ordinary requirement that an IPR petitioner would have had to rely only on patents and printed publications. There is no § 315(b) one-year bar running against any defendant from a prior petition either, so a defendant served with a complaint today still holds a clean one-year window to petition.

Pattern signals. The absence of PTAB activity itself is informative. US 8,081,227 is an Adobe Systems / Adobe Inc. patent (assignment recorded 2006-11-30; name change 2019-03-06) that appears to have functioned as defensive/portfolio IP rather than an assertion asset — I found no district-court complaint asserting it, and no aggregator (Unified Patents, RPX, etc.) challenge to it. Well-asserted patents tend to attract IPRs; this one has not been asserted in anything I could locate, which is the most likely reason it has no Board history. Two practical wrinkles: (i) the patent is listed as active with an adjusted expiration of 2028-03-01, so roughly 17 months of term remain from the date of this analysis — the practical window for both assertion and challenge is closing; and (ii) as a pre-AIA patent filed 2006-11-30, PGR is long unavailable (no post-grant review for pre-AIA patents) and CBM is unavailable on two independent grounds (the claims are not directed to a "financial product or service," and the SAS-era CBM window closed to new petitions on 2020-09-16). Any Board challenge today would have to be an IPR, or a ex parte reexamination at the Office.

Recommended next steps

• Because no PTAB activity exists, say it plainly: there is no FWD to link, no claim to quote, and no disposition to rely on. Do not represent otherwise in a validity opinion or IPR-vs-litigation decision memo. Anyone who tells you claims 1–5 were canceled here is confusing this patent with another.
• If you are a defendant weighing an IPR: you are outside any § 315(b) bar, no § 315(e)(2) estoppel constrains you, and you can petition within one year of service. Target independent claim 1 (and its system/PCP counterparts, claims 9 and 16) on the remote pre-generation of a corrected image limitation — that limitation is the narrowest, most prosecution-amendment-suggestive element and is the most defensible non-infringement and obviousness hook. Before filing, pull the prosecution history of application 11/607,302 to confirm what was amended and what the applicant argued; the granted claim text plainly diverges from the filed abstract, and that file wrapper is the single highest-value document you can obtain right now.
• Trial-stage milestones: none exist to track — no institution decision deadline, no oral hearing, no statutory one-year FWD due date, because no trial was ever instituted.
• Independent verification, since these are negative findings: confirm directly against the Board's own systems rather than relying on search alone — PTAB E2E / PTAB Center at https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/ and, for any appeal of an Office decision, the Federal Circuit docket and CourtListener at https://www.courtlistener.com/. Also check USPTO PatentCenter for the maintenance-fee status of 8,081,227; if a maintenance fee has lapsed (or lapses at the next window), the patent could expire well before the listed 2028-03-01 date, which would moot the entire defensive analysis. The prior section already flagged that the "Active / expires 2028-03-01" figure is the Google Patents listing, not independently verified from PatentCenter.

Uncertainty note: The zero-proceeding result is a negative finding, not a certification. My confidence is high for AIA trials (the ODP block is authoritative and searches corroborated it), but I cannot rule out a very recently filed petition that has not yet been indexed in the ODP or captured by DocketAlarm. A pre-AIA-era ex parte reexamination would not appear in a PTAB-proceedings list at all — the ODP block covers AIA trials, not reexamination — so if you need a complete validity-challenge history rather than just AIA trial history, that record must be pulled separately from the patent's file wrapper in PatentCenter.

I'll research the assignment record for this patent before reconstructing the chain.

Let me dig deeper into the specific assignment records.

Let me try to pin down the specific reel/frame records.

Assignment / Chain-of-Title Reconstruction — US 8,081,227 B1

Data-availability caveat up front: In this session I was unable to query the USPTO Assignment Center (assignmentcenter.uspto.gov) or its predecessor interface (assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html) directly, and search-engine indexing of the Assignment Abstract of Title for this patent did not surface the reel/frame records. The chain below is therefore reconstructed from Google Patents "Legal Events" for US 8,081,227 (which mirrors the USPTO assignment feed) plus corroborating sources. Reel and frame numbers and the recorded correspondents are NOT in hand and I will not invent them. Where the record is silent, I say so.

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Inventors

Pattern check: The three inventors are listed as assignors on the 2006 assignment to Adobe Systems Incorporated (see below). All three appear to have been Adobe-affiliated at filing, and the two non-prolific inventors are plausible product/UX staff rather than serial portfolio builders. No signal of mass inventor departure within 12 months of filing, and no evidence of a portfolio fire-sale precursor. I could not verify post-2011 employment status for any inventor from primary sources — treat any departure inference as unsupported.

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Original assignee

Adobe Systems Incorporated (Delaware corporation; principal address 345 Park Avenue, San Jose, CA 95110 — confirmed in the USPTO/TTAB record for Adobe's corresponding trademark docket surfaced during search). Current owner of record after the 2019 administrative name change: Adobe Inc.

• Line of business: Packaged and (later) subscription creative/document software. Adobe is a large operating company, not a holding vehicle.
• Products relating to the disclosed subject matter: The specification itself names Adobe's own tools as the analysis engines contemplated — "sub-processes or analysis engines associated with Adobe® Photoshop® (Elements, Lightroom, etc.), Adobe® Premiere® (Elements)…" (US 8,081,227, FIG. 5B discussion). Photoshop Elements / Lightroom did ship auto-analysis (e.g., blur/red-eye/exposure analysis) engines. However, I have not verified that any Adobe shipping product embodies the granted independent claims, which (per the earlier summary) are drafted around a mobile-phone → remote-analyzer → pre-generated-correction workflow. Product-embodiment of the claims: unverified.
• Status: Operating. Renamed Adobe Inc.; the change of name was recorded with USPTO on 2019-03-06. No bankruptcy, dissolution, or acquisition.

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Assignment timeline

Two recorded events appear on the patent's legal-events record. I could not retrieve reel/frame or correspondent data for either; those fields are marked accordingly.

• 2006-11-30 (executed) / recorded 2006-11-30 — Reel not retrieved / Frame not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment (of assignors' entire interest) — "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS' INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)."
  • Assignor: CHAN, WILSON; EHRLICH, SHERYL; KIM, GRACE (all three inventors)
  • Assignee: ADOBE SYSTEMS INCORPORATED (San Jose, CA)
  • Correspondent: not retrieved. Recurrence flag: cannot be assessed — no correspondent captured. This is the single most important missing field for the NPE screen; see "NPE / troll-pattern signals," item 3.
  • Context: Standard employee invention assignment to the operating employer, executed at or about the filing date. Not a fire-sale, securitization, or transfer-to-asserter.

• executed date not retrieved / recorded 2019-03-06 — Reel not retrieved / Frame not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Change of Name (administrative; no transfer of beneficial ownership)
  • Assignor: ADOBE SYSTEMS INCORPORATED
  • Assignee: ADOBE INC.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved. Recurrence flag: cannot be assessed. Large corporate name-change recordings of this kind are routinely filed in bulk by in-house Legal/IP-ops staff (Adobe's trademark records, for example, name in-house correspondent Daniel C. Poliak, Adobe Systems Incorporated Legal Department, 801 North 34th Street, Seattle, WA 98103 — see the TTAB/ttabvue record surfaced in search). I cannot state that this or any specific attorney was the correspondent on the 2019 recording for this patent; treat the Poliak reference as illustrative of Adobe's in-house correspondence practice only, not as a finding on this reel.
  • Context: Change of name only. Adobe Systems Incorporated → Adobe Inc. This is a rebranding of the same legal entity, not an ownership transfer. It is not a shell-entity or NPE signal.

No other assignments are recorded. No security agreements, no licenses of record, no mergers, no releases, no corrections. Notably, no transfer of this patent away from Adobe appears anywhere in the record.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 8081227
    2006 : Inventors assign to Adobe Systems Inc
         : Application 11/607302 filed
    2011 : Patent US 8081227 B1 issued
    2019 : Name change to Adobe Inc recorded
    2028 : Adjusted expiration listing on Google Patents

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. The only non-administrative assignment is the 2006 inventor→Adobe employment assignment. The 2019 event is a Change of Name to Adobe Inc., not a transfer to an "IP / Holdings / Ventures" style LLC. No registered-agent-service address, no single-purpose entity, no licensing-only vehicle appears anywhere in the chain.
2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. Neither assignee (Adobe Systems Incorporated, Adobe Inc.) matches any public NPE list (Acacia, Marathon, IV, Wi-LAN/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Round Rock, etc.), and no such entity appears as a prior assignee. (Cross-checked against the litigation summary already generated for this patent — no assertions found.)
3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Unclear / unverifiable. This is the one screen I cannot close, because I could not retrieve the recorded correspondents for either event. No recurrence can be asserted without them. Action item: pull both records from Assignment Center and read the correspondent field.
4. Cascading transfers — Not present. Only two recorded events across ~13 years, and one of them is administrative. There is no chained-LLC sequence, and no interval of multiple transfers under 24 months.
5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present. No infringement suit naming this patent was located (consistent with the earlier litigation summary), so there is no pre-suit assignment window to analyze; the last ownership event (2019-03-06) long predates any assertion and was, in any event, a name change.
6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. Adobe never filed for bankruptcy; no Chapter 7/11 sale event, no assignment to a liquidation buyer.
7. Privateering — Not present. No transfer from Adobe to any third party, asserters or otherwise. The patent simply stays with Adobe.
8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified, or OIN. It terminates at Adobe Inc. itself.

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Verdict

Insufficient data — used here in its narrow, literal sense: the record contains only the original inventor→Adobe assignment (2006) plus an administrative Change of Name (recorded 2019-03-06) and no subsequent ownership transfer, so there is no assignment chain to assess for NPE behaviour. Substantively, zero NPE signals are present: the patent has never left the operating company that filed it, the sole non-administrative assignment is the standard employee invention assignment, and the 2019 recording is a same-entity rebrand to Adobe Inc. rather than a transfer. The residual uncertainty is narrow but real — I could not retrieve the reel/frame numbers or the correspondents of record for either event, and I could not verify current maintenance-fee status in USPTO PatentCenter.

Verification link: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search "8081227" or application "11/607,302") — pull both reel/frame entries and read the correspondent field to close out signal 3. Google Patents legal-events page: https://patents.google.com/patent/US8081227/en

Data gaps to close before this is defensible as a "no NPE" opinion:

1. Both reel/frame records and their correspondents of record.
2. Confirmation from Assignment Center that no third assignment exists that the Google Patents feed omitted.
3. USPTO PatentCenter maintenance-fee status, to confirm "Active / 2028-03-01 adjusted expiration."

I'll verify the patent and its cited prior art against external sources before analyzing.

Let me verify the remaining cited references.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 8,081,227 B1 ("Image quality visual indicator")

0. Scope, method, and an important framing note

Source of record. The reference list below is the front-page citation list of record for US 8,081,227 (17 U.S./foreign patent documents + 3 non-patent items), as they appear in the patent's "Citations" section. I attempted to independently verify each item against Google Patents / USPTO.report / Unified Patents; I verified several in full (Hasselblad US20050219400A1, Lin US20030151674A1, Samsung US20060017820A1, Kodak US6018397A) but hit a tool step-limit before verifying the remaining ones (Xerox US6778684B1, Nokia US7286177B2, etc.). Where a detail is drawn only from the patent's own citation table and not independently re-confirmed, I flag it. Do not treat unverified rows as certified bibliographic data.

Critical framing — "Cited" vs. "Cited By." Only the 17 patent citations + 3 NPL items are candidate §102 prior art for this patent. The "Cited By" list (Snapaid's 9,338,348 / 10,009,537 / 9,661,226 family, Kofax's 9,754,164 / 10,146,795 family, Google's US8441548B1, etc.) are later documents that cite 8,081,227 — they post-date the 2006-11-30 priority/filing date and therefore cannot be §102 prior art against it. I exclude them from the anticipation analysis (they are, however, evidence of the patent's perceived relevance to "real time assessment of picture quality" art).

Claim-drafting caveat (carried forward from the prior sections). As noted earlier in this analysis, the granted independent claims 1/9/16 are drafted around a remote-analyzer workflow: send first/second-portion information over a mobile telephone network to a remote image quality analyzer; have the remote processor pre-generate a corrected version of the image before any correction request is received; receive that corrected version back if a request is received; display it on the mobile telephone. They do not affirmatively recite generating a quality value or displaying a quality indicator — "first quality indicator and second quality indicator" appears only as a characterization of the image being obtained.

That mismatch drives the bottom line below: the cited art is overwhelmingly about local, in-camera quality indication, not about offloaded, pre-emptive image correction. So the citations are powerful §103/background art against the specification's disclosed invention and against the dependent claims, but weak-to-nonexistent §102 art against the independent claims as granted.

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1. The 17 cited patent documents — citation, dates, description, §102 relevance

All 17 pre-date the 2006-11-30 filing/priority date and are therefore temporally eligible as prior art. Pre-AIA §102 applies (application filed 2006-11-30). "Eligible basis" below is my provisional characterization of the likely statutory hook — not a legal conclusion.

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2. Non-patent literature (3 items, examiner-cited)

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3. Bottom-line anticipation assessment per independent claim

Claims 1 (method), 9 (system), 16 (computer program product) — none of the 17 cited documents anticipates any of them, alone or in the record as cited.

Reason: every independent claim requires the conjunction of:

• (A) image captured on a mobile telephone including a camera;
• (B) information associated with first and second portions of the image;
• (C) sending that information via a mobile telephone network to a remote image quality analyzer;
• (D) the remote processor generating a corrected version of the image before receiving any indication that correction is requested (i.e., pre-emptively/unprompted);
• (E) receiving that corrected version back over the mobile network if a correction request is received; and
• (F) displaying the corrected version on the mobile telephone.

No cited reference discloses (D) at all, and none discloses (C) in combination with quality-indicator functionality. The closest references split the limitations between them:

• Remote/network transfer of camera images → Ricoh US 5,806,005 (§102(b)).
• Quality measurement + threshold + user-facing indication → Lin US 2003/0151674 / US 7,362,354; Hasselblad US 2005/0219400; Samsung US 2006/0017820.
• Per-portion (selected-region / face) quality → Hasselblad US 2005/0219400; Fuji US 2005/0219393; Lin US 7,362,354 ("face quality").
• Output-dependent quality thresholds → Kodak US 6,018,397.
• Image correction/analysis mechanics → Wang US 2003/0185458; Nike test-target US 7,405,816.

That is a classic §103 combination posture (and/or §112/claim-scope concerns), not a §102 single-reference anticipation of 1/9/16.

Dependent claims where single-reference §102 arguments are at least arguable (subject to full-text verification):

• Claim 8 / 15 / 20 (a portion includes a face): Lin US 2003/0151674/US 7,362,354 (express "face quality" figure of merit computed in-camera) and Fuji US 2005/0219393 (face-image display) are the strongest single references.
• Claims 12 / 17 (displaying a number) and 13 / 18 (filling in zero or more shapes): Samsung US 2006/0017820 (numeric evaluation scores + total score + priority number displayed with the image) is the strongest single reference; Lin (binary acceptable/not-acceptable) supports the shape/fill concept.
• Claim 5 (relative quality) / Claim 2 (plurality of images): Samsung US 2006/0017820 (sorting by score/priority across a set) and Nikon US 2005/0219666 (image selection) are the best candidates.
• Claims 7 / 14 / 19 (portions do not overlap): Hasselblad US 2005/0219400 discloses user-selected part(s) of the image for quality calculation; whether it teaches two non-overlapping portions needs full-text confirmation — I did not verify that limitation exists, so treat this as a lead, not a finding.

Even these dependent claims, however, sit in claims that incorporate the remote/pre-emptive-correction limitations of their independents — so a §102 argument on a dependent claim would still fail unless the reference also supplies those limitations, which none does.

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4. Caveats and what I could not verify

1. Verification coverage: I fully verified the content of Hasselblad US 2005/0219400, Lin US 2003/0151674/US 7,362,354, Samsung US 2006/0017820, and Kodak US 6,018,397. I could not re-verify Xerox US 6,778,684, Nokia US 7,286,177, Kodak US 2003/0117511, JP 2004-046591, Nikon US 2005/0219666, Fuji US 2005/0219393, M-Systems US 2006/0082672, Reiner US 2006/0274145, or Nokia US 7,405,816 within this session (tool step-limit). Their rows are based on the patent's own citation table plus partial search corroboration; descriptions for the unverified rows should be confirmed against full text before being relied on.
2. Statutory-basis labels (§102(a)/(b)/(e)) are my provisional classifications under pre-AIA §102 (application filed 2006-11-30), keyed to the dates given in the patent's citation table. They are not legal conclusions and would need confirmation of actual publication/filing dates.
3. The NPL items (Imatest, Jacobsen) are undated in the record; §102(b) status depends on proving public accessibility more than one year before 2005-11-30, which I could not establish.
4. No litigation/PTAB activity specific to 8,081,227 was found (per the earlier litigation section), so there is no IPR/PGR petitioner's prior-art record to cross-check against the examiner-cited art.
5. The fundamental caveat remains: because the granted independent claims recite pre-emptive remote generation of a corrected image rather than display of a quality indicator, an analyst should not assume the specification's rich quality-indicator disclosure is claim-covered. The cited art maps far more cleanly onto the specification and dependent claims than onto claims 1/9/16 as issued.

Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/US8081227/en (citation lists); https://patents.google.com/patent/US20050219400A1; https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2004030378A2/en; https://patents.google.com/patent/US20030151674; https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/aa/2d/77/e8562e9b2ca452/US7362354.pdf (granted Lin reference); https://patents.google.com/patent/US20060017820; https://patents.google.com/patent/US6018397; https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-[6018397](/patent/6018397)-A; https://uspto.report/patent/grant/8081227.

I'll research the cited prior-art references to ground the obviousness analysis in their actual disclosures.

Let me gather details on the remaining cited references relevant to specific claim elements.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 8,081,227 B1 ("Image quality visual indicator")

Prepared under 35 U.S.C. § 103; priority date November 30, 2006.

Scope note (building on the earlier sections): As flagged in the previously generated analytical caveat, the granted independent claims are not about generating or displaying a quality value. They are drafted around a remote/offloaded workflow. The § 103 attack must therefore be aimed at the claim as written — (i) a camera-bearing mobile telephone, (ii) first/second image portions, (iii) network upload of portion information to a remote analyzer, (iv) pre-emptive server-side generation of a corrected image, (v) return of that corrected image upon request, and (vi) display on the phone. I do not repeat the bibliographic/abstract material.

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1. Legal 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), the inquiry is (a) the scope/content of the claims, (b) the scope/content of the prior art, (c) the differences, and (d) the level of ordinary skill — with secondary considerations considered if offered.

PHOSITA (as of Nov. 2006): a bachelor's degree in EE/CS (or equivalent) plus ~2–4 years of experience in digital imaging / mobile-device software, and familiarity with: digital-camera image pipelines, image-quality metrics (sharpness/MTF, exposure, red-eye), client-server/mobile-network architecture, and consumer photo-management UI. KSR permits the artisan to be "a person of ordinary creativity, not an automaton," and permits combination of known elements according to known methods to yield predictable results.

Motivation-to-combine sources: the references themselves, the nature of the problem, and common sense (KSR; MPEP 2144.01). The patent's own Background frames the problem as small/low-res displays make quality hard to judge and the device is resource-limited — both of which are the explicit problems the cited art addresses.

Anticipation vs. obviousness: several references below individually teach large parts of the claim; I flag where a single reference nearly anticipates, but the stronger, more defensible position is the § 103 combination because the claims layer (i) mobile-telephone capture, (ii) two named portions, and (iii) pre-emptive remote correction. That layered combination is what the cited art must be combined to reach.

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2. The elements that must be met (paraphrased from the earlier claim summary)

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3. The cited prior art and what it teaches

All references below are on the patent's own face (17 patent citations + 3 NPL items, https://patents.google.com/patent/[US8081227](/patent/US8081227)/en), so they are properly of record.

3.1 US 5,806,005 A — Ricoh, "Wireless image transfer from a digital still video camera to a networked computer" (filed 1996-05-10; granted 1998-09-08) — reissued as US RE39,526 E

This is the architectural anchor for elements C/E/F. Verbatim disclosures (https://patents.google.com/patent/US5806005):

• "a central processing unit (CPU), a modem and a cellular telephone transmitter are coupled to an image memory of a DSVC";
• the CPU "download[s] images through the cellular telephone transmitter to a server station";
• "the server station might perform complex analysis of the received images";
• "the analyses include image resolution enhancement, stereoscopic matching, photocopying, and the like, as well as subjective evaluation of camera angle and image compression";
• "the server station transmits images back to the remote station for viewing or forwarding…"

This discloses a portable camera that uploads image data over a cellular telephone network to a remote station that processes (enhances) the image and sends image data back for viewing. That is elements C, E, F in substance.

3.2 US 2003/0117511 A1 / US 7,053,953 B2 — Kodak (Belz et al.), "blurring portions of a verification image to show out of focus areas…" (filed 2001-12-21; publ. 2003-06-26; granted 2006-05-30)

This is the anchor for portion-specific quality (B) and for generating a modified/corrected image pre-emptively (D). Disclosures (https://patents.google.com/patent/US20030117511; https://patents.justia.com/patent/[7053953](/patent/7053953)):

• "identifying portions of the archival image that are out of focus"; a "blur map" of out-of-focus regions;
• "blurring the verification image so that portions… that correspond to out of focus portions… appear out of focus when the verification image is presented on the display";
• the modification is made automatically as part of presenting the verification image, i.e., before/independent of any user decision to "correct" anything;
• the express motivation is that the display is "typically a small LCD display… having a relatively lower image output resolution than the captured archival image," so "it is not possible to fully judge the sharpness."

This maps to: two or more identified image portions; a software-generated modified version of the image automatically produced; and the whole point of doing so is to convey quality on a small screen. (Note: this reference produces a modified preview, which is a "corrected version" in the claim's functional sense.)

3.3 US 2005/0219400 A1 — Hasselblad (publ. 2005-10-06; priority 2002-09-24) — "Image quality indicator"

Directly on point for quality indication (A) and portion selection (B) (https://patents.google.com/patent/US20050219400A1):

• "an image processor… adapted for processing the electrical signals into a quality parameter and for controlling signalling of the quality parameter to an operator";
• quality parameters include "luminance, brightness, contrast, color balance, white balance, focus" → multiple quality attributes;
• "The camera may further include a selector for user selection of a part of the image, and wherein the quality parameter is calculated based solely on electrical signals from pixels within the selected part of the image" → a portion-specific quality indicator.

3.4 US 2003/0151674 A1 / US 7,362,354 B2 — Lin (HP), "assessing the photo quality of a captured image in a digital still camera" (filed 2002-02-12; publ. 2003-08-14)

Anchor for multiple quality indicators tied to sub-portions/attributes (A, B) (https://patents.google.com/patent/US20030151674; https://companyprofiles.justatic.com/patent/[7362354](/patent/7362354)):

• checks three attributes — (a) photo sharpness, (b) face quality, and (c) flare — computes a figure of merit for each and compares to thresholds;
• red-eye/eye-region and face-region analysis ("face quality," "detected eye region") → face-containing portions (deps. 8/15/20);
• gives the user an objective acceptability feedback on a small LCD — the identical problem to the patent's Background.

3.5 US 6,018,397 A — Kodak (Cloutier & Wheeler), "Digital image processing with indication to user of hardcopy output image quality" (filed 1998-02-13; granted 2000-01-25)

Anchor for output-dependent quality and pre-output warning (A; Fig. 6 "output information") (https://patents.google.com/patent/US6018397):

• determines "when a hardcopy output image… would result in an unsatisfactory level of image quality" and provides "an indication… prior to generation of the hardcopy output image";
• quality is a function of intended output size/magnification — i.e., the "output information" concept the patent's FIG. 6 describes.

3.6 US 2005/0219393 A1 — Fuji Photo Film (publ. 2005-10-06), "Digital still camera, image reproducing apparatus, face image display apparatus…"

Supplies face-portion detection/display (deps. 8/15/20) and thumbnail-based display of detected regions.

3.7 US 2006/0017820 A1 — Samsung (publ. 2006-01-26), "Digital image device and image management method"; US 2006/0082672 A1 — M-Systems (publ. 2006-04-20), "Filtering digital images"

Supply managing/selecting/deleting images by quality (deps. 2; spec's delete/share themes) and multi-image/thumbnail workflows.

3.8 US 2005/0141021 A1 — Ueda (publ. 2005-06-30), "Printing system and printing method"; US 2005/0219666 A1 — Nikon; US 6,778,684 B1 — Xerox; JP 2004-046591 A — Konica Minolta; US 2004/0119990 A1 — Miller (kiosk); US 7,286,177 B2 — Nokia; US 7,405,816 B2 — Nokia

Collectively establish the breadth of the field: output/print-quality evaluation, image selection, kiosk/networked image processing, and camera image-quality measurement. They are cumulative-art corroboration (not needed as primary references).

3.9 NPL

• Halmshaw, Industrial Radiography — Image Quality Indicators in Industrial Radiography (2001) and Jacobsen Real-Time X-Ray, "Tutorial: Glossary of Terms" — establish that the very phrase "image quality indicator" was a term of art long before 2006.
• Imatest, "Sharpness: What is it and how is it measured?" — establishes that MTF/spatial-frequency sharpness measurement (the patent's FIG. 4 technique) was routine and well documented.

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4. Ground 1 (primary): Ricoh '005 + Kodak '111/'953 + Hasselblad '400 (+ Lin '674)

4.1 Element-by-element mapping

4.2 Motivation to combine (the KSR story)

1. Same field, same problem. All three address the same two-part problem the '227 patent recites in its Background: (i) image quality is hard to judge on a small/low-resolution display, and (ii) the capture device is resource-limited. Kodak '953 states the small-display problem verbatim; Ricoh '005 states the resource problem verbatim ("[m]emory modules must be miniaturized so as not to adversely affect the portability," so offload storage/processing to a server). Combining them is combining references directed to the same problem.
2. Ricoh expressly contemplates analysis on the server and return of processed images — i.e., it supplies the architecture (upload → server-side image processing → download for viewing). Feeding Kodak's/Lin's quality algorithms (portion identification) into Ricoh's server is the predictable use of a known server-side processing capability for its known purpose.
3. Hasselblad and Lin supply the quality metric and the "portion" concept that Ricoh's generic "complex analysis"/"subjective evaluation" left unspecified. Substituting a more concrete, known quality metric into a known analysis step is an obvious design choice (KSR: "a finite number of identified, predictable solutions").
4. Web/phone availability of "image quality indicators" was itself a term of art (Halmshaw NPL), so putting an "image quality indicator" on the phone is not an inventive step.

Predicted result: a camera-bearing mobile phone that uploads image data to a server, the server identifies quality problems in portions, pre-computes an enhanced/corrected version, and returns it for display on the phone. That is claim 1.

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5. Ground 2 (alternative): Ricoh '005 + Lin '674 + Kodak '397 + Fuji '393

This ground is attractive because it drops Kodak '953 (whose "blur-preview" modification some might argue is not a "correction") and instead uses two independent quality-feedback references:

• Ricoh '005 → mobile network upload / server analysis / return-for-viewing (A, C, E, F).
• Lin '674/'354 → two or more objective quality indicators (sharpness + face + flare), thresholding, and user notification on a small screen (A, B).
• Kodak '397 → quality determination that is a function of intended output (the FIG. 6 "output information" concept), and warning before output (A).
• Fuji '393 → face portions for the face-quality indicator (deps. 8/15/20); with Samsung '820 for management/multi-image (dep. 2).

Motivation: Lin and Kodak '397 both respond to the "LCD too small to judge quality" problem; Ricoh supplies the offload architecture; the artisan would place Lin's known metrics on Ricoh's server because Ricoh already teaches server-side image analysis. The "two indicators" of element A are met by Lin's multi-attribute output (sharpness + face + flare) or by Hasselblad's multiple parameters (luminance/brightness/contrast/focus).

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6. The hardest limitation — "generate a corrected version before receiving any indication to correct" (element D)

This is the only element with no single clean textual hit among the primary references, so it needs a two- or three-reference squeeze. Three independent § 103 routes:

1. Ricoh '005, which explicitly performs the enhancement automatically on receipt ("the server station might perform complex analysis… The analyses include image resolution enhancement…"). Enhancement = a "corrected version"; it happens as part of reception/processing, not in response to a user correction command. This reads on "prior to receiving any indication associated with correcting the image."
2. Kodak '111/'953's automatic modification — the blurred verification image is generated before any user decision and stored/displayed; the user later decides whether to keep or re-shoot. Combined with Ricoh's remote architecture, the server generates the corrected/modified version as a matter of course and returns it only if the user asks (element E's conditional).
3. Common-sense / KSR optimization: pre-computing and caching a server-side asset before it is requested to reduce latency is a ubiquitous client-server technique (and is exactly what the '227 specification itself describes at FIG. 7: "an image is corrected ahead of time and stored in the event a user wants to correct the image and a pre-corrected image is retrieved"). Doing the server's known processing eagerly rather than lazily is a design choice within the ordinary skill level, motivated by the known latency/power constraints of battery-powered mobile devices that Ricoh expressly identifies.

Corroborating art not on the '227 face (flagging provenance): Kodak's Wheeler et al., US 2003/0095197 A1, "System and method for deciding when to correct image-specific defects based on camera, scene, display and demographic data" (filed 2001-09-20), discloses predicting image defects from capture metadata and selecting/applying correction processes automatically to "generate the viewed image" (https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/[PTAB](/ptab)/IPR2020-01321/…/Ex_1032_US_Pat_App_No_20030095197_Wheeler.pdf). It is family-adjacent (same Kodak portfolio as '397) and strongly supports the "automatic/pre-emptive correction" element, but because it is not a reference of record on the '227 face, I present it as corroboration, not as part of the formal Ground 1–2 combinations.

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7. Dependent-claim obviousness (all should fall with the independent claims)

Dependent claims 12/13/17/18 (a number or filled shapes) are the patent's FIG. 1 "0–5 circles." Hasselblad '400 literally discloses "display[ing] a value of the calculated quality parameters," i.e., a number; filling N-of-M shapes is a mere design choice for the same information (KSR; MPEP 2144.04 — "changes in shape… are within the level of ordinary skill" where no new result).

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8. Rebuttal considerations a patent owner would raise (and why they likely fail)

1. "Different fields — kiosks/printers/digital cameras vs. camera phones." Rejected: KSR and the case law permit combination of references from the same field of endeavor or from analogous fields directed to the same problem. Ricoh '005 is already a cellular-transmitting camera, so the "phone" field is squarely present; and the '227 Background explicitly concedes that camera phones carried the same small-screen/resource problem.
2. "The references modify a preview, not produce a 'corrected version.'" Weak: the claim language ("corrected version") is broad and functional; a server-side enhanced image (Ricoh's "image resolution enhancement") is a corrected version. Even were "correction" narrowed to defect removal, Kodak '953's automatic blur-modification and (corroborating) Wheeler '197's automatic defect correction close the gap.
3. "No motivation to make the correction pre-emptive." Weak: Ricoh's server processing is inherently pre-emptive (no user correction command is even contemplated); and pre-computation/caching for latency and battery conservation is routine and is admitted in the '227 specification's own FIG. 7 discussion.
4. "No reasonable expectation of success." Weak: every sub-step (upload image, run a known quality metric, return processed image, display it) was individually known and predictable; combining them yields no unexpected result.
5. Secondary considerations. None apparent: the earlier summary found no litigation and no evidence of commercial success attributable to these claims, licensing, or copying. No nexus evidence is on record. (See the previously generated Litigation section — "no known litigation" for 8,081,227.)

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9. Where a challenger should expect pushback (weak links, stated honestly)

• No single reference discloses element D verbatim. Ground 1's element-D showing rests on reading Ricoh's "image resolution enhancement" and/or Kodak '953's automatic image modification as a "corrected version," plus a common-knowledge pre-computation rationale. This is the claim's narrowest and most litigable point; a PTAB panel could want the corroborating Wheeler '197-style art or an explicit caching/admission to make it airtight.
• "Information associated with a first portion and a second portion" being sent (element C) requires either (a) reading Ricoh's upload of the whole image as necessarily carrying the portion information, or (b) asserting that the phone also sends portion designations (Hasselblad's selector). Route (a) is clean; route (b) presupposes the phone, not the server, identifies the portions. This is a minor construction risk, not a fatal one.
• "Mobile telephone which includes a camera" is fully met only by combining Ricoh's cellular-transmitting camera with the era's well-known camera-phone (the patentee itself concedes camera phones existed). A challenger should plead this as an admitted prior-art device to foreclose a "phone is novel" argument.

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10. Bottom line

Under § 103, claims 1, 9, and 16 are very likely obvious over Ricoh US 5,806,005 in view of Kodak US 2003/0117511 (US 7,053,953) and Hasselblad US 2005/0219400, and alternatively over Ricoh '005 in view of Lin US 2003/0151674 (US 7,362,354) and Kodak US 6,018,397, with Fuji US 2005/0219393 and Samsung US 2006/0017820 supplying the face-portion and multi-image dependent claims. The motivation is supplied by a shared, explicitly stated problem (small-display quality judgment + resource-constrained mobile capture), Ricoh's express teaching of server-side image analysis and return-for-viewing, and KSR's endorsement of combining known elements for predictable results — reinforced by the NPL establishing that "image quality indicators" and MTF-based sharpness measurement were terms/tools of art well before 2006.

Confidence: high as to elements A–C, E, F and the dependent claims; moderate as to element D (pre-emptive server-side correction), which is the sole limitation requiring a multi-reference squeeze and is the most likely focus of any future validity challenge.

Caveats: (1) The cited references above are those of record on the '227 face unless expressly labeled "not on the '227 face" (the Wheeler '197 item). (2) I did not retrieve full texts/serials for US 2005/0219393, US 2006/0017820, or US 2006/0082672 within this session; their roles here are for dependent/background elements only. (3) This is an analyst's prima facie § 103 assessment, not a legal opinion; a full validity opinion should read the actual claims against the complete prosecution history, as the earlier sections recommended.

Sources:

• '227 full text: https://patents.google.com/patent/US8081227/en
• Ricoh: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5806005 ; reissue https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/1d/04/20/8f679912c603e4/[USRE39526](/patent/USRE39526).pdf
• Kodak '953 / '111: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20030117511 ; https://patents.justia.com/patent/7053953
• Kodak '397: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6018397
• Hasselblad '400: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20050219400A1
• Lin '674 / '354: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20030151674 ; https://companyprofiles.justatic.com/patent/7362354
• Wheeler '197 (not on '227 face): https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2020-01321/Inter_Partes_Review_of_U.S._Pat._7612805/docs/07-20-2020-Petitioner/Exhibit-1032-33-Ex_1032___US_Pat_App_No_20030095197_Wheeler.pdf