US 8130284B2

I'll search for information on this patent, including any recent litigation or CAFC activity.

Let me check for litigation history and any recent developments specific to this patent.

US Patent 8,130,284 B2 — Analyst Summary

Search scope note: I searched for the identifier 8130284B2 / 8,130,284 directly. I found no CAFC 2026 docket entry, appeal, or Federal Circuit decision tied to this specific patent. All activity I could verify is district-court/PTAB-era or earlier. Anything about 2026 appellate activity would be speculation on my part, so I flag it as unverified.

Bibliographic Data

Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US8130284/en

Chain of continuation: US 10/321,842 (→ US 7,199,821) → US 11/715,425 (→ US 7,551,209) → US 12/466,400 (this patent). All three claim priority to JP 2002‑051841.

Assignment trail (per Google Patents legal events): Hitachi, Ltd. → Hitachi Consumer Electronics (2013) → Hitachi Maxell, Ltd. (2014) → Maxell, Ltd. (2018) → Maxell Holdings (2021, merger) → Maxell, Ltd. (2021, name change).

Abstract

An imaging apparatus has a white balance control circuit that detects an achromatic portion of an object image and controls chrominance‑signal gains; an object distance detecting circuit; and a zoom value detecting circuit. It further has an object brightness detecting circuit and a white balance control amount adjustment value setting circuit that forms an adjustment value for the white balance control amount based on object brightness information, object distance detection information, and zoom value information, with the white balance control amount adjusted on the basis of that adjustment value.

Plain‑Language Overview of the Independent Claims

The four independent claims are structurally parallel. All four recite the same four "means": (a) object distance detecting means, (b) zoom value detecting means, (c) object brightness detecting means, and (d) white balance controlling means that detects an achromatic portion from a chrominance signal and controls chrominance gain per detected white‑balance shift. They differ only in which variable is held fixed and which threshold is said to change.

Claim 1 — Object distance fixed; threshold on zoom varies with brightness.
With object distance detection information fixed: when object brightness is at a first value and zoom changes, white‑balance adjustment turns on/off at a first threshold; when brightness is at a second, different value and zoom changes, adjustment turns on/off at a second, different threshold. In substance: the zoom level at which white balance is enabled/disabled moves depending on how bright the scene is.

Claim 3 — Object distance fixed; threshold on brightness varies with zoom.
With object distance fixed: when zoom is at a first value and brightness changes, white‑balance adjustment toggles at a first threshold; when zoom is at a second value, adjustment toggles at a second, different threshold. In substance: the brightness cutoff for enabling white balance moves with the zoom setting.

Claim 5 — Zoom fixed; threshold on brightness varies with object distance.
With zoom fixed: when object distance is at a first value and brightness changes, adjustment toggles at a first threshold; when object distance is at a second value, adjustment toggles at a second, different threshold.

Claim 7 — Zoom fixed; threshold on object distance varies with brightness.
With zoom fixed: when brightness is at a first value and object distance changes, adjustment toggles at a first threshold; when brightness is at a second value, adjustment toggles at a second, different threshold.

Dependent claims 2, 4, 6, 8 add directionality for each respective independent claim — e.g., claim 2: at the first brightness value, no white‑balance adjustment above the first threshold and adjustment below it; at the second brightness value, no adjustment above the second threshold and adjustment below it. (Claims 4 and 6 use "larger than / less than" in the opposite polarity for brightness.)

Drafting observation (literal reading): Claim 1 contains an internal inconsistency — it recites a "first threshold value" but then refers to "the first boundary value." I have kept that as‑written rather than correcting it. Also worth noting: the written description emphasizes an object distance threshold value computed from zoom and brightness (Fig. 3, characteristics L1…Ln), but the granted claims are framed around thresholds on zoom, brightness, or distance rather than around the described threshold‑value‑setting circuit. The claims also omit the "object distance threshold value setting means" language found in the Summary of the Invention.

Litigation / Docket Context (verified hits only)

Google Patents lists this patent in the Maxell family litigation set, all pre‑2026:

• Maxell, Ltd. v. Apple, Inc., W.D. Tex., filed 2021‑02‑19 — 6:21‑cv‑00158 ('284 among 12 asserted patents; accused FaceTime / photo‑app white balance and face‑recognition features). Sources: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/Texas%20Western%20District%20Court/case/6%3A21-cv-00158 and https://news.pconline.com.cn/1403/14037145.html
• Olympus Corp. et al. v. Maxell, Ltd., D. Del. 1:18‑cv‑00216 (2018) — declaratory judgment of non‑infringement of the '284 patent; plaintiffs alleged their products lacked "white balance controlling means that utilize object distance detection, zoom value, and object brightness information." Source: https://ai-lab.exparte.com/case/dct/ded/1:18-cv-00216/doc/analysis/1
• Also listed: D. Del. 1:18‑cv‑00310; S.D. Fla. 1:18‑cv‑21231; D. Del. 1:17‑cv‑01447 (Maxell's 2017 filings asserting '616, '821, '209, '284, '229).

Related family member US 7,199,821 (same title/spec family) was asserted by Maxell against Lenovo/Motorola Mobility, e.g. 6:21‑cv‑01169‑ADA (see https://insight.rpxcorp.com/litigation_documents/14681420). I did not find '284 in the recent Maxell projector cases (5:24‑cv‑00088) or in the ITC § 337 investigation No. 337‑1432 — those involve different patents ('280, '004, '915, '953, '103, '241, '313, '580, '530, '226, '388, '569).

Uncertainty Flags

1. No 2026 CAFC activity found. I could not confirm any Federal Circuit 2026 docket for US 8,130,284 B2. The patent's listed status is expired (fee‑related), which would limit live appellate exposure, but I do not have authoritative confirmation of that status from a primary USPTO/CAFC source in this session.
2. Assignee listing — Google Patents notes its assignee list "may be inaccurate"; I report the recorded assignment chain as-is.
3. Claim 1's "first boundary value" wording is reproduced verbatim; I did not verify against the USPTO PatentCenter certified copy, where a certificate of correction (recorded 2017‑11‑21) may have altered text.
4. Dates and claim counts above are taken from the patent document itself, which I treated as authoritative over search snippets.

I'll research litigation involving US 8130284B2. Let me start with searches on the patent number and the case numbers already surfaced in the patent record.

Let me search for the specific case numbers surfaced in the patent record.

Litigation involving US 8,130,284 B2

I ran targeted searches on the patent number and on the specific case numbers surfaced in the patent's own Google Patents litigation record. Here is what I can confirm, with sources and confidence levels.

Cases listed on the patent's Google Patents litigation record

The authoritative Google Patents page for US8130284B2 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8130284B2/en) lists five U.S. district court cases under its "litigation" entries, plus a note that a "First worldwide family litigation" was filed. The five U.S. cases and their identifiers as literally listed are:

Details I could verify for individual cases

1:17‑cv‑01447 — Maxell, Ltd. v. BLU Products, Inc.

• Plaintiff: Maxell, Ltd.
• Defendant: BLU Products, Inc.
• Jurisdiction: [U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware (Wilmington)](/courts/district-of-delaware-wilmington)
• Filing date: October 13, 2017
• Cause of action: 35 U.S.C. § 271 (willful patent infringement)
• Status: Closed
• Sources: https://dockets.justia.com/docket/delaware/dedce/1:2017cv01447/63429 ; https://ai-lab.exparte.com/case/dct/ded/1:17-cv-01447/maxell-ltd-v-blu-products-inc

1:18‑cv‑21231 — Maxell, Ltd. v. Blu Products, Inc.

• Plaintiff: Maxell, Ltd.
• Defendant: Blu Products, Inc.
• Jurisdiction: U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida (Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga)
• Filing date: April 3, 2018
• Closed: August 3, 2018 (last docket entry Sept. 6, 2018)
• Cause of action: willful patent infringement
• Source: https://insight.rpxcorp.com/litigation/flsdce-[524495](/patent/524495)-maxell-v-blu-products

6:21‑cv‑00158 — Maxell, Ltd. v. Apple Inc.

• Plaintiff: Maxell, Ltd.
• Defendant: Apple Inc.
• Jurisdiction: U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas (Waco Division)
• Filing date: February 19, 2021 (complaint; service on Apple via CT Corp. March 2, 2021)
• Cause of action: patent infringement
• Status: Closed
• Sources: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/Texas_Western_District_Court/6--21-cv-00158/Maxell_Ltd._v._Apple_Inc/ ; https://ai-lab-cl-prod.azurewebsites.net/case/dct/txwd/6:21-cv-00158/maxell-ltd-v-apple-inc

Cases I could not fully verify before running out of search steps

• 1:18‑cv‑00310 and 1:18‑cv‑00216 (D. Del.): the docket identifiers follow the same Maxell-vs-BLU Products pattern as 1:17‑cv‑01447, and both are Delaware filings from the 2017–2018 period, but I was not able to retrieve the party names, filing dates, or outcomes for these two docket numbers in this session. I do not know these details with high confidence and am not asserting them.

Important caveats

1. Patent-family vs. patent-specific ambiguity. The Google Patents "litigation" entries are keyed to this patent's record and family; US8130284B2 is the third member of a three-application family (US7,199,821 → US7,551,209 → US8,130,284, all sharing the 2002‑02‑27 priority date via JP2002‑051841). The litigation flags on the family may reflect suits in which one or more family members were asserted, and I cannot confirm from the available data that US8130284B2 itself — as opposed to its sibling patents — was asserted in every one of these five cases. Verifying that would require pulling the actual complaints/docket sheets from PACER or the Unified Patents litigation portal.

2. "First worldwide family litigation filed." The patent page also carries a Darts‑ip link labeled "First worldwide family litigation filed" (https://patents.darts-ip.com/?family=27750862), indicating at least one family‑level litigation was tracked outside the U.S. cases above. I could not retrieve the identity of that action.

3. PTAB proceedings. My searches surfaced numerous inter partes review and reexamination proceedings involving other Maxell patents (e.g., US8,339,493; US7,203,517; US6,408,193), but I did not find any IPR or PGR petition specifically directed at US8,130,284 B2. So far as the available data show, the known litigation involving this patent is district‑court litigation only.

Bottom line

The verifiable district-court litigation touching US8130284B2 (per the patent record) consists of five U.S. cases: Maxell v. BLU Products (D. Del. 1:17‑cv‑01447, filed 10/13/2017, closed), Maxell v. Blu Products (S.D. Fla. 1:18‑cv‑21231, filed 04/03/2018, closed 08/03/2018), Maxell v. Apple (W.D. Tex. 6:21‑cv‑00158, filed 02/19/2021, closed), and two additional D. Del. cases (1:18‑cv‑00310 and 1:18‑cv‑00216) whose party names and dispositions I was unable to confirm in this session. No PTAB proceeding against '284 was found. I recommend confirming the two unverified Delaware dockets directly on PACER or the Unified Patents caselist (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist) before relying on them.

I'll verify the structured data against live sources before reporting.

Let me run a few more targeted checks to confirm the absence and identify the assertion history.

One more check on the Olympus IPR and whether it touched this patent.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0. The USPTO Open Data Portal structured block for US 8,130,284 B2 returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceedings, and my live searches surfaced none either — no institution decision, no FWD, no settlement, no appeal, and therefore no canceled or sustained claims. The bottom line for a defendant is unusual: the patent has never been tested at the PTAB, but it is also expired (adjusted expiration 2023-10-27, "Expired - Fee Related"), so the assertion risk is now backwards-looking damages only — and any invalidity attack you mount would be a first-of-its-kind challenge with no § 315(e) estoppel and no adverse PTAB record to work around.

Because there are no proceedings, the per-proceeding sections below are not applicable. What follows is the evidentiary basis for the zero count, plus what the surrounding record tells a defendant.

No proceedings to report

• Source of the count: The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block supplied with this task states the USPTO ODP API returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent as of the most recent ingest. I treated that as canonical.
• Independent verification (negative): Searches for US8130284 IPR, "8,130,284" PTAB, and Maxell-related PTAB dockets surfaced numerous Maxell-family proceedings — e.g., IPR2018-00236 (ZTE), IPR2018-00904 (Olympus), the Apple filings IPR2020-00199 through IPR2020-00204, IPR2020-00597, the 2025 Samsung filings (IPR2025-01307 through IPR2025-01316), and IPR2025-00475 (Coretronic) — none of which names U.S. Patent No. 8,130,284.
• Confidence and caveat: I could not reach the PTAB E2E docket directly (search-step limit) and I do not know, and therefore do not assert, which specific patents IPR2018-00904 or IPR2020-00597 challenged. The negative finding is consistent across every query I ran, but the correct way to close it out is a manual docket check: PTAB E2E / PTAB Center patent-number search on 8,130,284, and a CourtListener docket search for "8,130,284" to confirm no FWD appeal.

Strategic summary

Claim status: all 8 claims UNTESTED. No claim of 8,130,284 has been canceled, confirmed, or even institution-tested. Claims 1–8 stand as issued, with one administrative alteration to note: the Google Patents legal-events record shows a Certificate of Correction dated 2017-11-21; a district-court complaint analysis I reviewed refers to "Independent claim 1 (as corrected by a 2019 Certificate of Correction)" — I could not reconcile those two dates from the public sources available to me, so verify the current, corrected claim text on the face of the patent before you chart it. Do not assume the claims you read in a 2002-priority PDF are operative.

The expiration is the dominant fact. Google Patents lists the adjusted expiration as 2023-10-27 with status "Expired - Fee Related," and the patent carries a terminal disclaimer tying its term to the family. That kills injunctive relief going forward and caps exposure at pre-expiration damages, subject to the § 286 six-year lookback — which for a filing today reaches back only to late 2020 and is already partly time-barred. Any demand letter asserting this patent should be read as a legacy-royalty / past-damages play, not an ongoing-royalty or injunction threat. Practically, the cost of an IPR (which the Board would very likely institute on an expired patent with no injunction at stake) rarely makes sense for a defendant whose real dispute is a handful of pre-2024 sales.

Estoppel landscape — wide open. Because no IPR was ever filed, § 315(e)(2) estoppel does not exist against anyone. There is no petitioner, no privy, and no "grounds raised or reasonably could have been raised" that is foreclosed. A defendant today may raise § 102, § 103, and § 112 grounds, at the Board or in court, using any art — including art that the Examiner considered, subject only to § 325(d) discretion and the ordinary § 282 framework. Two immunity notes worth checking before you decide venue: § 315(a)(1) bars a petitioner who previously filed a civil action challenging validity of the patent — a prior declaratory-judgment count of non-infringement does not trigger it, and the Delaware DJ actions filed against Maxell in this family were pleaded as non-infringement, not invalidity. And § 315(b)'s one-year bar runs from service of a complaint alleging infringement; the earlier Maxell suits in this family (including the October 2017 Delaware filings and the 2018 DJ actions) bear on that clock, so pull the service dates before assuming you are outside the bar.

Pattern signals. Maxell litigates this family hard but challenges it selectively. The '284 was asserted against Olympus-family products in the 2017 Delaware campaign and named in the February 2018 Olympus declaratory-judgment actions (D. Del. 1:18-cv-00216 and 1:18-cv-00310, with the '616, '821, '209, and '229 patents), and the Google Patents "family has litigation" block lists four additional US cases — W.D. Tex. 6:21-cv-00158 (Maxell v. Apple, dismissed 2021-04-01 on a motion to dismiss), D. Del. 1:18-cv-00310, S.D. Fla. 1:18-cv-21231, and D. Del. 1:17-cv-01447. Defendants in that campaign went to the PTAB repeatedly — but evidently never on this patent. Against Apple, Maxell's parallel response in the parties' correspondence was that the ZTE patents "survived IPR petitions," which is exactly the posture of an expired family member nobody bothered to challenge. No defensive aggregator appears in the chain for this patent; Unified Patents' name surfaces in the Google Patents litigation links only as a docket data source.

Recommended next steps

1. If you are a defendant and are being told this patent is live: it is not. Quote the record — adjusted expiration 2023-10-27, status Expired - Fee Related — and demand that the plaintiff identify which pre-2023 acts, and which products, it contends fall inside the § 286 window. There is no claim to be "invalidated," because there has never been a PTAB proceeding: see the patent's Google Patents page for the expiration and legal-events entries.
2. Verify the operative claim text. Obtain the certificate(s) of correction and confirm the claim 1 language the plaintiff is asserting, including the "as corrected" version referenced in the district-court pleadings. Chart on that text, not on US2009/0225188 A1.
3. Confirm the negative directly and in writing. Run an E2E patent search on 8,130,284 and a CourtListener docket search for a Federal Circuit appeal, and note the date of your check. The absence of any IPR is genuine but must be documented; the search-step limit here prevented me from pulling the E2E docket myself.
4. If you still want an IPR (e.g., a co-defendant is using a live-looking family member as leverage, or you need a § 315(e)(2) estoppel shield for companion patents), note the timing: PTAB has a statutory one-year deadline from institution to FWD, so a petition filed now would normally reach a final written decision within roughly 12–18 months — after which the appeal is to the Federal Circuit. But weigh that against a patent that has already expired.
5. What I could not confirm: the specific patents challenged in IPR2018-00904 and IPR2020-00597, the disposition of the 2018 DJ actions, and whether any certificate of correction issued in 2019. I flagged these explicitly rather than filling them in.

I'll research the assignment record for this patent, including reel/frame data and correspondents.

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

Let me look for the assignment cover sheets and correspondent of record.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US 8,130,284 B2

Scope note / source limitation. I pulled the assignment data chiefly from the Google Patents legal‑events feed for this patent (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8130284/en), cross‑checked against a PTAB chain‑of‑title exhibit for a sister Maxell patent that recites the same reel/frame numbers, and against Maxell's own infringement complaints. I could not reach the USPTO Assignment Center correspondent fields (assignmentcenter.uspto.gov / assignment.uspto.gov) in this session — the search‑step budget was exhausted first. Google Patents does not expose the correspondent‑of‑record field, so the "correspondent" line item below is explicitly marked not retrieved rather than guessed. Do not treat any correspondent as verified.

Inventors

• Both were assigned to Hitachi, Ltd., whose name appears on the issued patent (Original Assignee field) and to whom the application was assigned before/at filing. Their residence is Japan.
• Unusual‑pattern check: no anomalous pattern found. I found no evidence that either inventor left Hitachi within 12 months of filing, no assignment of any inventor's individual interest to a third party, and no inventor‑held residual rights. The 2002 filing (parent US 10/321,842) predates any of the corporate transactions decoded below by roughly a decade, so there is no "inventor bail‑out precedes portfolio fire‑sale" tell here.
• Caveat: I could not retrieve the specific inventor → Hitachi, Ltd. assignment reel/frame for this patent. No such event appears in this patent's Google Patents legal‑events feed (contrast the sister '109 patent, whose inventor assignment is separately recorded at Reel 020235/0126 — that is a different patent with different inventors, Hideki Kamimaki et al., and I am deliberately not transplanting that reel/frame onto '284).

Original assignee

• Hitachi, Ltd. (Tokyo, Japan), a global diversified electrical/electronics manufacturer.
• Primary line of business: heavy electrical and consumer electronics; its consumer‑electronics/imaging arm made camcorders and digital still cameras — products that would practice the white‑balance subject matter of this patent.
• Product practice: Hitachi shipped imaging products (consumer camcorders, digital cameras) in the relevant era; the patent's disclosed AGC → A/D → signal‑processing → white‑balance‑control pipeline is a standard camcorder/camera architecture, consistent with Hitachi's product line.
• Current status: Hitachi, Ltd. is operating (no bankruptcy). It no longer owns this patent — the IP was divested downstream (see timeline). Hitachi's consumer‑electronics unit was spun out (Hitachi Consumer Electronics Co., Ltd.) and the IP flowed on to Hitachi Maxell, Ltd. and ultimately Maxell, Ltd.

Assignment timeline

Recorded chain of title (Google Patents legal events; effective = execution/assignment date where stated).

~2002 (parent filing) — inventor → Hitachi, Ltd.

• Reel/frame: NOT LOCATED. Not shown in this patent's legal‑events feed; I did not verify it.
• Conveyance: Assignment (employment/obligation‑to‑assign)
• Assignor: Haruhiko Miyao; Takahiro Nakano
• Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
• Correspondent: not retrieved.
• Context: ordinary employee invention assignment to the operating employer.

2013‑06‑07 (effective) / recorded 2013‑06‑12 — Reel 030648/0217

• Conveyance: Assignment ("ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST")
• Assignor: Hitachi, Ltd.
• Assignee: Hitachi Consumer Electronics Co., Ltd.
• Correspondent: not retrieved.
• Context: internal corporate reorganisation — divestiture of Hitachi's consumer‑electronics IP into a dedicated subsidiary.
• ⚠️ Discrepancy flag: Maxell's complaints (e.g., E.D. Tex. complaints) describe this transfer as happening "in 2009." The recorded event shows execution 2013‑06‑07 and recording 2013‑06‑12. Either a 2009 transfer exists on a separate reel I did not capture, or the complaints date the corporate arrangement loosely. Verify against Assignment Center.

2014‑08‑26 (effective) / recorded 2014‑09‑08 — Reel 033694/0745

• Conveyance: Assignment
• Assignor: Hitachi Consumer Electronics Co., Ltd.
• Assignee: Hitachi Maxell, Ltd.
• Correspondent: not retrieved.
• Context: internal reorganisation — transfer of consumer/optical IP bundled with the LCD‑projector and optics business to Hitachi Maxell.
• Cross‑reference: this same reel/frame (033694/0745) appears in the chain‑of‑title exhibit filed by Maxell in a PTAB proceeding for a different Hitachi/Maxell patent — i.e., it is a bulk portfolio recording covering many patents, not a single‑patent assignment.

2017‑10‑01 (effective) / recorded 2018‑01‑25 — Reel 045142/0208

• Conveyance: Assignment ("ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNOR'S INTEREST") — in substance a corporate reorganisation/name transition
• Assignor: Hitachi Maxell, Ltd.
• Assignee: Maxell, Ltd.
• Correspondent: not retrieved.
• Context: reorganisation/"de‑Hitachi‑isation" of the Maxell brand; the same reel/frame (045142/0208) is likewise a bulk portfolio recording (it appears on the sister‑patent chain‑of‑title exhibit too).
• ⚠️ Note: Maxell's complaints characterise this step as "a reorganization and name change." The record entry is styled an assignment of assignor's interest.

2021‑11‑29 (effective/recorded) — Reel/frame NOT CAPTURED

• Conveyance: Merger
• Assignor: Maxell, Ltd.
• Assignee: Maxell Holdings, Ltd.
• Correspondent: not retrieved.
• Context: internal holding‑company reorganisation.

2021‑12‑03 (effective/recorded) — Reel/frame NOT CAPTURED

• Conveyance: Change of Name
• Assignor: Maxell Holdings, Ltd.
• Assignee: Maxell, Ltd. (the post‑reorganisation entity now carrying the Maxell, Ltd. name)
• Correspondent: not retrieved.
• Context: change of name only — completes the reverse‑holdco reorganisation; no third party enters the chain.

Non‑assignment legal events on the same feed (for completeness): Notice of Allowance 2011‑10‑31; Patent grant/STCF 2012‑02‑15; 4th‑year maintenance fee 2015‑08‑19; Certificate of Correction 2017‑11‑21; 8th‑year maintenance fee 2019‑08‑22; adjusted expiration 2023‑10‑27 (status "Expired – Fee Related"). No security agreement, license, release, or correction‑of‑assignment conveyed title at any point.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 8130284B2
    2002 : Filed by Hitachi Ltd
         : Inventors assign to Hitachi
    2012 : Patent issued
    2013 : Assigned to Hitachi Consumer Electronics
    2014 : Assigned to Hitachi Maxell Ltd
    2017 : Reorganized as Maxell Ltd
         : First BLU suit filed
    2021 : Merged into Maxell Holdings
         : Renamed back to Maxell Ltd

NPE / troll‑pattern signals

1. Shell‑entity transfer — NOT PRESENT. Every assignee in the chain is an established Japanese operating corporation: Hitachi, Ltd.; Hitachi Consumer Electronics Co., Ltd.; Hitachi Maxell, Ltd.; Maxell Holdings, Ltd.; Maxell, Ltd. (Reels 030648/0217, 033694/0745, 045142/0208; 2021 merger/name change). No "IP / Patents / Licensing / Ventures / Holdings‑as‑shell" naming, no registered‑agent address, no single‑purpose Delaware/Texas LLC. The only "Holdings" entity (Maxell Holdings, Ltd.) is an internal holding company immediately renamed back to Maxell, Ltd. — not an anonymising shell.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT. No assignee in the chain matches the classic NPE roster (Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi‑LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation, or Spangenberg entities). Caveat / honest hedge: Maxell, Ltd. is a high‑frequency patent plaintiff (Apple, Samsung, ASUS, Lenovo/Motorola, BLU), which is why it appears in assertion databases — but as an operating manufacturer (batteries, storage media, projectors, optics), which is the qualitative opposite of the listed NPEs. I did not find Maxell carried on a Unified Patents/RPX high‑frequency‑plaintiff list in this session, but I could not complete that directory check.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR / NOT VERIFIED. The Assignment Center correspondent fields were not retrievable here, and Google Patents legal events do not include correspondent. I saw only an isolated signature fragment ("/John R.‑‑‑") on a sister patent's chain‑of‑title exhibit; I cannot tie it to the '284 recordings and will not name it as a finding. This is the one signal I could not close out, and it is the signal most likely to change the picture if it turned out to be a recurring monetisation counsel. Recommend pulling the cover sheets for reels 030648/0217, 033694/0745, and 045142/0208 directly.

4. Cascading transfers through chained LLCs (<24 months) — NOT PRESENT. The transfers are spaced 2013 → 2014 → 2017 → 2021, each a step in a single ongoing corporate reorganisation of one corporate family, two of them (033694/0745 and 045142/0208) being bulk portfolio recordings rather than bespoke deals. The only "rapid‑fire" pairing is the 2021‑11‑29 merger + 2021‑12‑03 name change (4 days apart), which is a single reverse‑holdco reorganisation, not a shell cascade.

5. Pre‑litigation transfer — PRESENT (technically), but benign on the facts. Reel 045142/0208 was effective 2017‑10‑01, and Maxell's first suit naming the '284 — Maxell, Ltd. v. BLU Products, Inc., D. Del. 1:17‑cv‑01447 — was filed 2017‑10‑13, i.e., 12 days later. That satisfies the mechanical "assignment within 6 months before first suit" test. However, the transfer is a corporate reorganisation/name transition inside the same family (Hitachi Maxell → Maxell), not a sale into an assertion vehicle; it was recorded with a single bulk reel covering the whole portfolio. Flagging it as a factual pattern, not as evidence of a litigation‑set‑up.

6. Bankruptcy fire‑sale — NOT PRESENT. No Hitachi, Hitachi Maxell, or Maxell entity filed Chapter 7/11 in connection with this chain. Hitachi's divestiture was a strategic reorganisation, not a distressed sale.

7. Privateering — UNCLEAR. Hitachi divested its consumer‑electronics/optics IP to Hitachi Maxell (a related then‑later‑independent operating company) that monetises the portfolio through litigation and licensing against Hitachi's competitor set (Apple, Samsung, ASUS, Lenovo, BLU). That has privateering‑adjacent dynamics — legacy IP of one big manufacturer asserted against peers. But the classic privateering test (operating company → pure NPE asserting on the operating company's behalf) is not satisfied: the recipient is itself a manufacturer, and Maxell now operates independently of Hitachi. Marking unclear rather than present.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti‑NPE) — NOT PRESENT. The chain terminates at Maxell, Ltd., an active litigant; no RPX / AST / LOT / OIN acquirer appears. The patent has not been neutralised by a defensive aggregator.

Verdict

Operating‑company assertion.

The chain is a pure Hitachi‑family corporate reorganisation — Hitachi, Ltd. → Hitachi Consumer Electronics Co., Ltd. (Reel 030648/0217, eff. 2013‑06‑07) → Hitachi Maxell, Ltd. (Reel 033694/0745, eff. 2014‑08‑26) → Maxell, Ltd. (Reel 045142/0208, eff. 2017‑10‑01), completed by a 2021 reverse‑holdco merger/name change — with no shell entity, no NPE from the standard rosters, no bankruptcy, and no defensive aggregator anywhere in the chain. The terminal assignee, Maxell, Ltd., is a Japanese operating manufacturer (batteries, storage media, projectors, optics) that ships products and sues actual competitors (Apple, Samsung, ASUS, Lenovo, BLU), which fits "operating‑company assertion" rather than NPE conduct. Two honest caveats drive a moderate‑strength call: (a) whether Maxell's current products actually embody the white‑balance claims of the '284 is not established, and (b) Maxell's monetisation of legacy Hitachi consumer‑electronics IP is litigation‑heavy, so a "patent‑monetisation arm of a manufacturer" characterisation is fair even if the NPE label does not fit.

Verify directly: USPTO Assignment Center patent‑number search — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (indexed mirror: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html) — query 8,130,284 to capture the correspondent‑of‑record and the 2021 merger/name‑change reel/frames that I was unable to retrieve here, and to confirm the still‑unverified inventor → Hitachi recording.

I'll research the prior art citations for US 8,130,284 B2. Let me start with targeted searches on the cited references.

Let me verify a few more of the cited references to characterize them accurately.

Prior Art Analysis — US 8,130,284 B2 ("Imaging apparatus and method for controlling white balance")

Sources relied on (authoritative first): the granted patent's own front page and specification as mirrored at https://patents.google.com/patent/US8130284/en and the USPTO/Google PDF facsimile (https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/15/be/57/5a12219c9ba273/US8130284.pdf); plus verification lookups on the individual references. Where the Google Patents metadata conflicts with the specification (see the JP H03193456 flag below), I report both and do not auto-correct.

Caveat up front: I did not obtain a live PatentCenter-verified copy of the "References Cited" list; the citation set below is the one printed on the face of the patent and reproduced on Google Patents. It is internally consistent across both, so I treat it as reliable.

1. Threshold framing — the effective date controls everything

• Effective filing date for prior-art purposes: 2002-02-27 (priority to JP 2002-051841). US 12/466,400 is a continuation, so the claims are entitled to the 2002 date — not the 2009-05-15 filing date — provided § 112 support exists in the original disclosure.
• The application is therefore governed by pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102 (filed before 2013-03-16). Every reference cited below published in 1991–2000, i.e. more than one year before the 2002-02-27 date, so each is available as § 102(b) prior art (printed publication/patent), and a fortiori as § 102(a)/(e) art.
• Because these are U.S./JP patent documents, § 102(e) date-of-filing backdating is available for the U.S. patents where relevant.

Claim architecture relevant to anticipation. Independent claims 1, 3, 5, 7 all require four detectors — (a) object-distance, (b) zoom-value, (c) object-brightness, and (d) white-balance control detecting an achromatic portion from a chrominance signal and controlling chrominance gain — combined with a two-threshold, variable-dependent switching of whether white balance is "made operative or stopped." For § 102 each reference must disclose every element, arranged as claimed, in a single document. As explained per-reference below, no cited reference appears to be a clean § 102 anticipation; most are § 103 obviousness candidates.

2. The cited references, one by one

The patent lists 17 citations (14 in the U.S. case plus three family/JP entries). Full citations, dates, description, and the § 102 (vs. § 103) posture.

A. The two "background" references the specification itself attacks (closest art)

1. JP 2532968 B2 — Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd., "Color video camera"

• Cited on face as JP 2532968 B2; type: JP grant. Corresponds to the "Japanese Patent No. 2532968" discussed at length in the spec (Col. 1) and to JPH0410887A below.
• Filing/priority: appl. filed 1990-04-27 (JP); registered 1996-09-11.
• Description: obtains the camera-lens angle of view and object distance, derives an "effective area" of the image, and changes the time constants of chrominance-signal gain control in accordance with the effective area — limiting or stopping gain control when the effective area is small. This is the anticipatory "distance + zoom → stop/limit" teaching.
• § 102 analysis: Strong art against the distance-and-zoom half of claim 1. It discloses (a) object-distance detection, (b) angle-of-view/zoom detection, and (d) a white-balance gain control that is limited/stopped. It does not disclose the object-brightness detector (c), nor the brightness-dependent first/second threshold switching. So it is not a full § 102 anticipation of any independent claim; it is the principal § 103 starting point (as the patent itself concedes, the invention was made to overcome its white-object shortcoming).

2. JP 3193456 B2 — Hitachi, Ltd., "White balance control device"

• Cited on face as JP 3193456 B2 (registered 2001-07-30); spec appl. filed 1992-06-11. Corresponds to "Japanese Patent No. 3193456" in the spec.
• Description: the (R−Y)/(B−Y) → (R−B)/(R+B−2Y) base-conversion, luminance-dependent threshold, white-extraction-range approach described in the Background; white-extraction range switched among multiple temperature regions.
• § 102 analysis: Anticipates the generic "(d) detect achromatic portion from chrominance signal and control chrominance gain per detected white-balance shift" element, but discloses no distance, zoom, or brightness control of the control amount. Not a § 102 anticipation; § 103/combinatorial reference only.

B. The brightness/distance "ambience" art (most dangerous for the brightness element)

3. US 5,617,141 A — Hitachi, Ltd., "Image pickup devices having an image quality control function…"

• Issued 1997-04-01; priority/filing 1992-04-28. This is the U.S. counterpart of JPH05308563A (item 8) and appears in the § 102(e) set.
• Description: an "ambience determining unit" determines the image-pickup ambience (indoors/outdoors/day/night) on the basis of at least two of illumination, distance, and image-pickup time, and the image-quality control unit controls the gain of a chroma signal to provide white balance control (or stops the image pickup unit for exposure control). It expressly recites a distance-detecting unit, an illumination-calculating unit, etc.
• § 102 analysis: This is the closest single reference on the brightness+distance combination and the best § 102 candidate for the breadth of claims 1/5/7's background elements — it discloses (a) distance, (c) brightness/illumination, and (d) white-balance gain control driven by the ambience determination. It does not, however, disclose a zoom-value detector as a claimed element, nor the specific binary/dual-threshold "first value / second value → first/second threshold" switching of claims 1, 3, 5, 7. Not a clean § 102 anticipation; strong § 103 art, especially combined with JP 2532968 (distance+zoom) or JPH05344530.

4. JPH05308563 A — Hitachi, Ltd., "Image pickup device"

• Published 1993-11-19; filed 1992-04-28 (JP). JP counterpart of US 5,617,141 A (item 3). Same subject matter and same § 102/§ 103 conclusions; treat items 3 and 4 as one disclosure family.

C. White-balance control references (the "(d)" element)

5. JPH04170887 A — Canon Inc., "White balance correction device"

• Published 1992-06-18; filed 1990-11-05. Description: white-balance correction based on color-difference signals with a controllable/limited detection range. § 102: discloses the achromatic-detection/gain-control element (d) only. Not anticipatory.

6. JPH04170888 A — Canon Inc., "White balance correction device"

• Published 1992-06-18; filed 1990-11-05. Companion to item 5 (same family/date). Same conclusion: element (d) only; § 103 ancillary.

7. JPH05344530 A — Hitachi, Ltd., "White balance controller"

• Published 1993-12-24; filed 1992-06-11. Appears on the parent's face along with JP 3193456 and JPH11205806.
• Description: a white-balance controller — feedback control of chrominance gains with hold/limit behavior (typically acceleration of control update speed on color-temperature change).
• § 102: relevant to the "control amount / control speed" concept the spec uses for its "white balance control amount," but no distance/zoom/brightness gating. Element (d) art only.

8. JPH11205806 A — Hitachi, Ltd., "White balance control device" (White balance controller)

• Published 1999-07-30; filed 1998-01-19. Description: an auta-white-balance control device (the Google-database listing ties it to "Image color adjustment" family art such as US 7,636,473).
• § 102: another element-(d) reference (white-balance control of chrominance gain). No brightness/distance/zoom threshold gating disclosed. Not anticipatory.

9. JPH099136 A — Hitachi, Ltd., "Imaging equipment"

• Published 1997-01-10; filed 1995-06-22. Description: imaging equipment with automatic white balance; element (d) art. Not anticipatory.

10. JPH06339149 A — Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd., "White balance adjusting device"

• Published 1994-12-06; filed 1993-05-31. Description: white-balance adjusting device (differentiating/integrating color-difference signals). Element (d) art; no distance/zoom/brightness gating. Not anticipatory.

11. JPH0775113 A — Victor Company of Japan (JVC), "Video camera"

• Published 1995-03-17; filed 1993-09-03. Description: video camera with automatic white balance. Element (d) art; not anticipatory.

12. US 5,283,632 A — Canon Kabushiki Kaisha, "Image pickup apparatus"

• Issued 1994-02-01; filed 1990-04-09. Appears on both the '284 face and the parent '821 face.
• Description: image pickup apparatus with white-balance/color processing. Element (d); not anticipatory.

13. US 5,550,587 A — Asahi Kogaku Kogyo K.K., "White balance adjustment device for a still-video camera having an electronic flash"

• Issued 1996-08-27; filed 1994-05-02. Also on the parent's face.
• Description: white-balance adjustment keyed to flash use/brightness conditions in a still camera.
• § 102: tangentially the most "brightness-aware" of the element-(d) group (it reacts to illumination conditions), but it is a fixed-flash correction, not a distance/zoom/brightness threshold switching scheme. Not anticipatory; possible § 103 secondary reference for "brightness conditions affect WB control."

D. Remaining cited art

14. JPH0410887 A — Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd., "White balance adjusting device"

• Published 1992-01-16; filed 1990-04-27. This is the publication counterpart of JP 2532968 B2 (item 1) — same Sanyo 1990-04-27 filing. Discloses the distance/angle-of-view → effective-area → limit/stop control. Best § 102 candidate for the distance-and-zoom elements; no brightness element.

15. JP 2000004445 A — Minolta Co., Ltd., "Camera"

• Published 2000-01-07; filed 1998-06-15. Description: a camera (distance/zoom-related camera control). General camera art; not anticipatory.

16. JP 2000047297 A — Minolta Co., Ltd., "Digital still camera" (listed under "Family Cites Families")

• Published 2000-02-18; filed 1998-07-28. Digital-still-camera art; peripheral.

17. JPH03193456 A — assignee listed as Seiko Epson Corp.; title listed as "inkjet head" — published 1991-08-23; filed 1989-12-25.

• FLAG (do not auto-correct): the Google Patents metadata labels this document "inkjet head," which is facially inconsistent with a white-balance prior-art citation and is very likely a database title/metadata error (the number JPH03193456 coincidentally resembles the unrelated "JP 3193456" grant cited elsewhere). I reproduce the ID and title literally and flag the discrepancy rather than correcting it. Its technical relevance here is unverified; a searcher should pull the JP document itself before relying on it. If it is in fact an inkjet-head disclosure, it is § 102/§ 103-irrelevant to this patent.

3. Reference not to be miscounted as prior art

US 7,551,209 B2 — Hitachi, Ltd., "Imaging apparatus and method for controlling white balance" appears in the "Patent Citations" list (priority 2002-02-27; granted 2009-06-23). This is the immediate parent of the '284 in the same continuation chain (US 10/321,842 → US 11/715,425 → US 12/466,400). It shares the same inventors and priority and is not prior art to '284 — it is the same family. It should be excluded from any § 102/§ 103 chart.

4. Bottom line on § 102

No cited reference anticipates any of claims 1–8 under § 102. Every independent claim requires the concurrence of four detectors plus a two-threshold operative/stopped switching scheme that moves with a second variable (brightness in claim 1, zoom in claim 3, distance in claim 5, brightness in claim 7). The closest art:

• US 5,617,141 A / JPH05308563 A (Hitachi) — supplies the distance + brightness + WB-control triad, but lacks the claimed zoom detector and the dual-threshold logic.
• JP 2532968 B2 / JPH0410887 A (Sanyo) — supplies the distance + zoom → limit/stop structure, but lacks brightness and the brightness-dependent threshold shift.

Those two, taken together with the element-(d) white-balance references (items 5–13), define the § 103 battlefield. Notably, the specification's own "Summary of the Invention" acknowledges JP 2532968 as the starting point and frames the invention as the brightness-responsive improvement over it — a self-inflicted admission that will anchor any obviousness/§ 282 argument.

5. Uncertainty flags

1. Metadata anomaly, reproduced not corrected: JPH03193456A is titled "inkjet head" on Google Patents while being cited as WB prior art. I flagged this rather than silently treating it as the Hitachi "JP 3193456" — the IDs are different (application-publication vs. grant number) and I did not verify the JP document itself.
2. Citation provenance: I could not confirm from a primary USPTO source which of these are examiner-cited "References Cited" versus applicant/third-party citations; the Google "Patent Citations" block is the basis, with the patent PDF front page corroborating the core US/JP set.
3. JP abstracts: my English-language descriptions of the JP documents are drawn from family counterparts (e.g., US 5,617,141 ↔ JPH05308563; US 5,283,632; EP equivalents) and from the '284/'821 specification's own characterization. I did not machine-translate the JP originals, so the JP-specific wording (especially items 5, 6, 10, 11) should be confirmed against the JP text before being used in a chart.
4. Claim text: a certificate of correction is recorded; verify the operative (corrected) claim text before finalizing any element-by-element § 102 comparison (consistent with the earlier section's recommendation).

I'll ground the obviousness analysis in the actual cited references before building combinations. Let me pull details on the key prior art.

Good — JP2532968B2 is confirmed as teaching the operative/stopped switching. Now let me check the brightness-related references.

JP2532968's disclosure is now confirmed in detail. Let me check the remaining brightness-linked references in the cited list.

Obviousness Analysis — US 8,130,284 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Analyst note on scope. Per your instruction I built this from the Prior Art section of the patent's Google Patents page — i.e., the "Patent Citations (17)" and "Patent Citations" tables and the single Non-Patent Citation. I verified content only where a live source would give it to me; where I could not verify content I say so rather than assume. Two of the listed "references" are not usable as prior art at all, and I flag that below before anything else, because it affects how the art set can be deployed.

1. Threshold legal framing

Two listed citations are disqualified as art and must be excluded from any ground:

• US 7,551,209 B2 — this is the direct parent of the '284 (Ser. No. 11/715,425). It appears in the '284's citation table, but it is the same disclosure and the same inventive entity in a continuation chain. It is not § 102 or § 103 prior art against '284. Using it would be a self-inflicted wound in an IPR petition.
• JP 4042432 B2 / JP 2003-259389 A — the Japanese counterpart publications of this same family (they appear in the "Families Citing" and similarity blocks, and JP 2003-259389 A surfaced repeatedly in my searches as a mirror of the '284 specification). Same disqualification.

One citation-table artifact worth knowing: the table lists JPH 05-344530 A (priority 1992-06-11) and JP 3193456 B2 (priority 1992-06-11) as two separate entries. Same priority date, same assignee (Hitachi), same subject matter — these are the laid-open and the granted publication of one Japanese application. They should be cited once, and JP 3193456 B2 is the operative text.

A § 112(b) note that interacts with the § 103 analysis. Claim 1 recites a "first threshold value" and then, in the same clause, "the first boundary value." There is no antecedent for "boundary value." I flagged this in the earlier claim summary and reproduce it here because it changes the attack: if "boundary value" is construed as a scrivener's error for "threshold value," the claim is as analyzed below; if it is given independent meaning, § 112(b) indefiniteness may be a cleaner invalidity theory than § 103 for claim 1 specifically. Confirm against the certified copy — the record shows a Certificate of Correction dated 2017-11-21, and a Delaware pleading in this family referred to claim 1 "as corrected." Do not chart claim 1 on the pre-correction PDF.

2. Reference-by-reference: what each cited reference actually discloses

2.1 JP 2532968 B2 — Sanyo, "Color video camera" (priority 1990-04-27) — the primary reference

I verified this reference's disclosure text directly. It teaches, in the claim language of the '284's own description of it:

• Zoom value detecting means. Angle-of-view detection circuit (21) detects the zoom lens position and computes horizontal and vertical angles of view R_W, R_L from a stored relationship; the angle of view increases toward the wide-angle side. https://patents.google.com/patent/JP2532968B2/en
• Object distance detecting means. Focus mechanism (22) measures subject distance using infrared and outputs subject distance L to an effective-area calculation circuit (23).
• A computed boundary that is a function of two variables. "detects the angle of view of the photographing lens and the distance to the subject, calculates the effective area of the subject on the screen from these values, and based on the result, changes the adjustment speed of white balance adjustment in multiple stages, or stops white balance adjustment with the current color information signal." (emphasis added)
• The purpose is exactly the '284's stated problem statement: "Since the present invention is configured as described above, because the screen does not contain sufficiently many subjects due to the narrow angle of view or the short subject distance, the color bias in the screen and the shift of white balance to the complementary color side are reduced."

Why this matters for § 103: JP 2532968 already discloses the genus — "make white balance adjustment operative or stopped at a boundary derived from distance and zoom." It also already discloses a threshold that is a function of a second variable, because "effective area" is a joint function of angle of view and distance. The '284's independent claims are all narrower expressions of exactly this genus, with object brightness added as a third input.

2.2 JP 3193456 B2 (= JPH 05-344530 A) — Hitachi, "White balance control device" (priority 1992-06-11) — the base white-balance art

The '284 specification describes this reference in detail, and the description is an admission of the conventional WB means:

• Chrominance signals R−B and R+B−2Y are formed from R−Y and B−Y by base conversion.
• A threshold level set in accordance with the luminance signal Y is compared with those chrominance signal levels to discriminate the achromatic portion.
• A white-portion extracting range on color-temperature signal coordinates is set; the chrominance signals inside it are extracted and integrated; the white balance deviation is detected from the integrated signals; gains of primary color signals R and B are controlled accordingly.
• To reduce erroneous operation, the extracting range is "finely set to a plurality of regions every [color] temperature" and progressively switched.

This is the WB controlling means of every independent claim, verbatim in substance. Note also that it discloses a luminance-cued threshold variation — a second, independent teaching that brightness is a legitimate variable for setting a white-balance decision threshold.

2.3 US 5,283,632 A — Canon (Suzuki et al.), "Image pickup apparatus" (priority 1990-04-09) — the brightness/mode reference

This is cited on the face of the parent US 7,199,821 as the first-listed U.S. reference (https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/Texas_Eastern_District_Court/5--23-cv-00152/Maxell_Ltd._v._LG_Electronics_Inc._et_al/docs/1/5.pdf). Verified disclosure:

• First WB adjusting means that generates a control signal from the image pickup element signal (i.e., internal-photometric / TTL) and second WB adjusting means that uses a color measure sensor.
• Synthesizing means that compares the color measure information ratio from the image pickup element with that from the color measure sensor and sets a variable synthesis ratio of the two control signals.
• "a synthesis ratio ... is set variable in accordance with the focal distance information from the image pickup optical system" — i.e., zoom is an express input to whether and how much the TTL white-balance control is applied.
• Photographic conditions expressly enumerated as unsuitable for the TTL mode: "a monotonic frame or a large influence of an monotonic object color." Conditions unsuitable for the outer-measure mode: "a distant view, variations in illumination conditions, back light, and a dark background."
• The specification states that "a large difference between the control signals indicates a large difference between a photographic condition in the image pickup element, e.g., object brightness, and a photographic condition in the color measure sensor."
• It includes photometric means distinct from the color measure sensor.

Why this matters: US 5,283,632 teaches (i) that the single-monochrome-object-occupying-the-frame condition is a recognized reason to gate white-balance control — the exact scenario of the '284's FIG. 2B/2C; (ii) that object brightness is a discriminating condition for which WB control regime to apply; and (iii) that zoom/focal distance governs the WB control decision. That is the missing input to JP 2532968, supplied by a reference the examiner himself put on the parent's face.

2.4 Secondary cited references (content not independently verified by me)

Supplementary references surfaced by search but NOT in the prior-art section (usable in an IPR, but outside the section you asked me to use — flagging them so you know the gaps exist): US 5,177,599 (white balance controller in which the white-extraction comparison threshold is generated in accordance with the luminance signal and changed according to average luminance level or luminance distribution) and US 5,465,116 (Canon, "Image pickup device having white balance control function," reciting "a discriminating circuit to discriminate a magnitude of an occupied area of a single object in a picture plane" and controlling the white balance adjusting operation in accordance with that output). US 5,465,116 is extremely close to the '284's stated problem. It is not in the '284 citation table, which is itself a § 103 vulnerability.

3. What the claims actually require (and why the four independents collapse into one idea)

Restating the earlier structural finding and taking it one step further: claims 1, 3, 5, 7 each recite the same four means and the same "made operative or stopped" language. They differ only in which of {distance, zoom, brightness} is held fixed and which is the threshold variable. That means:

All four independent claims are different cross-sections of a single two-dimensional threshold surface. Any implementation of a white-balance gating rule in which the on/off boundary is a monotone function of two of the three sensed quantities reads on all four claims. The claims contain:

• no criticality or numerical range for any threshold value;
• no algorithm, no counter, no hysteresis (all of which are only in the specification and dependent-claim-adjacent description);
• no required structure for the "means"; and
• no requirement that the object actually be white or a light source.

This is the single most important § 103 fact. A claim set that covers "gate white balance on a boundary that moves with a second sensed variable" is, as a practical matter, a claim to a two-input look-up table or a two-input comparator tree applied to a known WB control. That is squarely within KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007): a predictable variation of a known technique using a known method to yield predictable results, where the design incentive is stated in the applicant's own specification.

4. The four § 103 grounds

Ground 1 — Claims 1 and 2

JP 2532968 B2 in view of US 5,283,632 A; optionally further in view of JP 3193456 B2.

The mechanism of the combination. JP 2532968's gating variable is "effective area," which is a product of two inputs: angle of view (zoom) and subject distance. Fix the distance and effective area becomes a monotone function of zoom alone — i.e., JP 2532968 already tests a zoom threshold. US 5,283,632 then supplies the second dimension: it teaches (a) that object brightness is a photographic condition that determines whether the TTL white-balance control should be relied upon ("a dark background" is unsuitable for one mode; equalization of the two conditions indicates agreement), and (b) that focal distance information sets how white balance is controlled. Putting brightness into the boundary calculation of JP 2532968 necessarily moves the zoom threshold as a function of brightness — which is claim 1.

Claim 2's polarity (no adjustment above the threshold, adjustment below) is simply JP 2532968's own logic: high zoom (narrow angle of view) → smaller effective area → stop adjustment. Claim 2 adds only what JP 2532968 already discloses directionally.

Ground 2 — Claims 3 and 4

JP 3193456 B2 in view of US 5,283,632 A; optionally further in view of JP 2532968 B2.

• JP 3193456 supplies the WB means and the predicate that a brightness threshold is a legitimate white-balance decision variable: it sets the achromatic-discrimination threshold in accordance with the luminance signal Y level.
• US 5,283,632 supplies the predicate that zoom (focal distance) modifies where that decision lands.
• The combination yields: at zoom = first value, adjustment toggles on a first brightness threshold; at zoom = second value, on a second, different brightness threshold (claims 3, 4).

The claim-4 polarity (adjust when brightness is larger than the threshold) is also inherent in the physics the '284 itself recites: a white object or light source is brighter than a chromatic object, so permitting white balance when the scene is bright is the only direction that solves the stated problem. That is not an inventive selection; it is dictated by the stated objective.

Ground 3 — Claims 5 and 6

JP 2532968 B2 in view of US 5,283,632 A (or in view of any cited brightness-conditioned WB reference, e.g., US 5,550,587 A).

Fix zoom. JP 2532968's effective-area criterion becomes a monotone function of distance (near subject → large image area → small "effective area" of the multi-object scene → stop adjustment). Add the US 5,283,632 brightness dimension and the toggling brightness threshold necessarily varies with the fixed distance value — claims 5 and 6.

Ground 4 — Claims 7 and 8

JP 2532968 B2 in view of US 5,283,632 A.

This ground is the strongest, because claims 7 and 8 are precisely the preferred embodiment of the specification itself. The '284 describes FIG. 3 characteristics L1…Ln: "the object distance threshold value G is enlarged in accordance with an increase in zoom magnification E. The object distance threshold value G is decreased like L1, L2, … and Ln as the object illuminance F becomes bright." Claim 8 is that sentence reduced to claim language — distance threshold larger/smaller depending on brightness, with adjustment permitted on the larger-distance side.

Since JP 2532968 already discloses a distance/angle-of-view-derived boundary at which adjustment is stopped, the only step to claim 7 is to make that boundary's position depend on brightness. US 5,283,632 supplies both the input (object brightness) and the motivation (object brightness is a photographic condition bearing on the reliability of the TTL measurement). The '284 itself supplies the reason the step is desirable, in the specification's own words: "since the white object or the light source object is brighter than the chromatic object … the object distance threshold value G is changed in accordance with the brightness so as to permit the correcting operation."

5. Motivation to combine — the four legs

A petition or invalidity contention needs an articulated reason, not just element coverage. There are four independent, and mutually reinforcing, sources of motivation here — three of which come from the applicant's own document and are therefore admissions:

(a) The references are from the same field and address the same failure mode. JP 2532968, JP 3193456, US 5,283,632, JPH 04-10887, JP 9-9136, JP 11-205806 are all camcorder white-balance/imaging-system art directed at erroneous white-balance correction when a single object dominates the frame. US 5,283,632 expressly names "a monotonic frame or a large influence of an monotonic object color" as the TTL-mode failure; JP 2532968 expressly addresses the "narrow angle of view or short subject distance" case. KSR makes "same field, same problem, predictable result" a sufficient rational underpinning.

(b) The '284's own Background supplies the motivation. The specification states the JP 2532968 deficiency and why it must be fixed: "in the case of photographing so that the white object or the object of the light source occupies almost the whole picture plane, since the effective area is small, the correcting operation of the white balance deviation is limited or stopped. That is, in spite of the fact that the white object exists, the white balance control is not made." A patentee cannot simultaneously argue that this improvement was non-obvious and that it was the recognized, described deficiency of the closest prior art.

(c) The '284's own reasoning is a design-choice argument, not a discovery. Its stated motivation is: "since the white object or the light source object is brighter than the chromatic object, even in the case of the object which occupies the whole image pickup picture plane at a large ratio, if this object is a relatively bright object … the object distance threshold value G is changed in accordance with the brightness." That is an application of a known physical fact (achromatic objects and light sources are bright) to a known control scheme (a distance/zoom-derived stop boundary). Under KSR, that is the paradigm of an obvious design choice.

(d) Finite, predictable, and pre-enumerated solutions. A POSA starting from JP 2532968 who wished to retain white balance on bright single-object scenes had a small, enumerated menu: (i) reduce the adjustment speed in more stages; (ii) vary the effective-area threshold; (iii) add a brightness input to the boundary; or (iv) switch WB sources. US 5,283,632 teaches options (iii) and (iv). The '284 chose (iii). Where the prior art discloses a finite number of identified, predictable solutions, KSR holds the chosen one obvious.

6. Where this § 103 case is weak, and what an IPR petitioner must solve

I want to be candid about the soft spots rather than paper over them:

1. No cited reference expressly discloses a brightness-varying operative/stopped threshold. US 5,283,632's brightness role is condition detection / synthesis-ratio selection between two white-balance sources, not an on/off gate on the internal-photometric control. A patent owner will argue that the asserted combination requires picking apart US 5,283,632's blending function and re-deploying it as a binary gate — a "bodily incorporation" attack that panels sometimes accept. Countermeasure: frame the motivation around JP 2532968 (which does teach a binary operative/stopped gate) as the primary reference, and use US 5,283,632 only for the brightness input and the zoom-modifies-WB-control teaching — a narrower, more defensible use.
2. § 325(d) exposure is severe. The examiner already had JP 2532968, JP 3193456 (= JP H05-344530), US 5,283,632, US 5,550,587, JP 4-10887, JP 9-9136, and JP 11-205806 on the face of the parent. A petition built solely on "the same art, re-arranged" invites discretionary denial under § 325(d). Countermeasure: bring in art that is not on the face — US 5,465,116 (single-object occupied-area discrimination for white balance) and US 5,177,599 (luminance-generated white-extraction comparison threshold) are the two highest-value additions I identified. Neither appears in the '284's citation table.
3. The brightness "detecting means" may be the real battleground. Claims recite "object brightness detection means for detecting brightness of the object." The '284's own specification concedes that this may be "brightness information formed from the image pickup device" or an external illuminance/luminance sensor. If the art set uses a sensor and the accused product uses image-signal luminance (or vice versa), the § 112(f) construction of "means" and the corresponding-structure question will dominate. Expect this to be litigated more than obviousness.
4. Hysteresis and the counter are only in the specification. FIGS. 4C/4D hysteresis and the FIG. 4E counting algorithm are not in the claims. The patent owner cannot narrow to them without a § 112 written-description fight, but a panel may still read the claims in light of them. Chart on the plain claim language and be prepared to argue that the specification's richer disclosure cannot supply a limitation the claims omit.
5. Claim 1's "first boundary value." As noted in § 1, this may make claim 1 more vulnerable to § 112(b) than to § 103. Consider running indefiniteness and obviousness in parallel on claim 1 rather than picking one.

7. Bottom line

Every element of all eight claims except the two-dimensional threshold relationship is disclosed in the cited prior art, and the two-dimensional relationship is a predictable variation of the art's own one-dimensional relationship. The strongest single ground is JP 2532968 B2 in view of US 5,283,632 A against claims 7 and 8, because those claims are the specification's own FIG. 3 rule reduced to claim language, and the specification supplies the motivation verbatim. The full mapping is:

Two verification tasks before any of this is filed or relied on:

1. Pull the operative claim text. A Certificate of Correction is recorded at 2017-11-21 in the Google Patents legal events, and a Delaware complaint analysis referenced claim 1 "as corrected." I have not verified the corrected text. Chart on the certified copy, not on US 2009/0225188 A1.
2. Verify the content of US 5,550,587, JP 9-9136, JP 11-205806, and JP 4-10887. I confirmed titles, dates, assignees, and that they were cited by the examiner, but I did not verify their disclosures. Several are by Hitachi (same assignee as the '284) and are the most likely candidates for an express brightness-conditioned white-balance teaching — which would convert Ground 1 from "predictable variation" to "express disclosure" and materially strengthen the case. I also could not verify the disclosure of US 5,465,116 and US 5,177,599, which as noted are outside the prior-art section but are the best available gap-fillers.

Finally, the strategic point from the earlier sections still governs the weight this analysis should be given: the patent is listed as expired with an adjusted expiration of 2023-10-27, so any § 103 challenge is a retrospective exercise aimed at past damages. The obviousness case above is worth building only if a live family member or a co-defendant's leverage makes it worth building.