US 8249617

I'll search for litigation/docket information on this specific patent number, then summarize from the authoritative full text.

US Patent 8,249,617 — Summary

Source of truth: Full patent text fetched from Google Patents (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US8249617](/patent/US8249617)/en), fetched 2026-09-24. I also searched for USPTO/CAFC docket activity; see the note at the end.

Bibliographic data

Abstract

Communications is executed between users through wireless terminals thereof without fear of being located by each other. On terminal 1x, area 4 in which wireless communication is enabled with terminal 1x is divided into proximity area 6 and external area 7 and the radius (distance between boundary 5 and terminal 1x) is temporally varied by random number. A control block of terminal 1x detects terminals located inside the communicable area 4 and in the communication enabled state and processes the other terminals located inside proximity area 6 as out-of-service-area among the detected other terminals, not displaying the users of these other terminals located inside proximity area 6 onto display screen 2x. The control block processes only other terminals located inside external area 7 as in-service area and displays the users of these other terminals onto display screen 2x.

Plain-language overview of each independent claim

Claim 1 — Method (proximity/external area; with rejected-communication carve-out).
A method for a first terminal that wirelessly talks to other terminals. It (a) detects a second terminal inside a communicable area; (b) transmits to and/or receives information from that second terminal; (c) determines whether the second terminal is in a "proximity area" of the first terminal or in an "external area" (the external area is inside the communicable area but outside the proximity area); (d) if the second terminal is in the external area, displays information about it on the first terminal's screen. The claim then adds that when the "second terminal" is actually a plurality of terminals, a terminal located in the external area and flagged with a rejected-communication setting is treated as out-of-service-area.

Claim 7 — Method (N-nearest terminals hidden).
A method for a first terminal that detects a plurality of other terminals inside its communicable area, transmits/receives information, processes the N nearest of those detected terminals (N a positive integer) as out-of-service-area terminals, and displays the rest on the screen. It adds that if the detected plurality contains fewer than a predetermined number of terminals and is specified with a rejected-communication setting, each detected terminal is processed as out-of-service-area.

Claim 9 — Wireless terminal (apparatus counterpart of claim 1).
A wireless terminal with (a) an information processing block that processes information sent to/received from another terminal; (b) a transmission/reception block; and (c) a control block that detects the other terminal in the communicable area, determines whether it is in the proximity area or the external area (external area being within the communicable area but outside the proximity area, treated as out-of-service), and, if in the external area, displays information about it. The control block also processes a terminal located inside the external area and specified with a rejected-communication setting as out-of-service-area.

Claim 14 — Wireless terminal (apparatus counterpart of claim 7).
A wireless terminal with an information processing block, a transmission/reception block, and a control block that detects a plurality of terminals in the communicable area, processes the N nearest as out-of-service-area, and displays the rest. The control block also processes a terminal located inside the external area and specified with a rejected-communication setting as out-of-service-area.

Claim 16 — "Memory storing a program" (N-nearest embodiment).
Recites a memory storing a program that causes a processor to perform a user-interface method on a first terminal. Notably, the claim body as issued recites an information processing block, a transmission/reception block, and a control block that detects a plurality of terminals, processes the N nearest as out-of-service-area, displays the remaining ones, and processes a terminal located inside the external area and specified with a rejected-communication setting as out-of-service-area. (The claim is labeled a memory/program claim but its body is worded in apparatus-block terms — an apparent drafting artifact. I am reporting the text literally rather than correcting it.)

Claim 17 — "Memory storing a program" (proximity/external embodiment).
Similar to claim 16 but reciting the detect → determine proximity-vs-external → display-if-external logic, plus the rejected-communication-setting out-of-service-area processing.

Key dependent claims (for context)

• Claim 2: the proximity/external boundary position is temporally varied.
• Claim 3: the boundary position is varied by random number.
• Claim 4: if fewer than a predetermined number of terminals are detected, all detected terminals are out-of-service-area.
• Claim 5: only a specially specified terminal inside the proximity area is out-of-service-area.
• Claim 6: a specially specified terminal inside the proximity area is displayed as in-service-area.
• Claim 8: N varies stepwise with the total number M of detected terminals (N increases as M decreases).
• Claims 10–13, 15: apparatus counterparts of claims 2, 4, 5, 6, and 8.

Core technical concept

The patent addresses a privacy problem in ad-hoc/proximity wireless networks: if a terminal's screen lists everyone in radio range, two users standing near each other can infer each other's location. The invention splits the communicable area into a proximity area (nearby terminals) and a external area (further away), listing only the external-area users as "in-service-area" and hiding nearby users as "out-of-service-area." The proximity boundary is varied over time (e.g., by random number) so positions can't be inferred from display changes. A second embodiment hides the N nearest terminals instead of using a fixed geographical boundary. Overrides are provided for explicitly specified out-of-service, in-service, and rejected-communication terminals.

Docket / litigation search

I ran web searches for CAFC 2026 docket activity and litigation involving this specific number (8,249,617). I found no authoritative USPTO litigation record, CAFC appeal, or 2026 docket entry for US 8,249,617. The patent family record (Google Patents) shows no "Cited by examiner" litigation references that indicate suit, and the legal-status events show only prosecution, allowance, maintenance-fee payments (4th year 2016; 8th year 2020), a 2024 reminder, and lapse in 2024. I do not have high-confidence confirmation that any CAFC 2026 docket exists for this patent, and I could not retrieve a PACER/Docket Alarm record confirming one way or the other. Treat the "no litigation found" statement as a negative search result rather than a verified negative, since I did not query PACER directly.

Two caveats on accuracy:

1. All bibliographic and claims data above come from the authoritative full patent text supplied; I did not auto-correct any identifiers (e.g., "APPARENT" claim-drafting oddities in claims 16–17 are reproduced as written).
2. Docket/litigation status is based on limited web search only and is explicitly uncertain.

I'll search litigation databases for US patent 8249617.

The initial searches returned unrelated results (other patents like '961). Let me refine with targeted litigation-focused queries.

Summary: No known litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 8,249,617

Based on my searches, I found no litigation (district court, ITC, or Federal Circuit) involving U.S. Patent No. 8,249,617. I could not identify any plaintiff, defendant, jurisdiction, case number, filing date, or outcome, because I found no case in which this patent was asserted, challenged in court, or otherwise at issue.

What I searched

• General web queries for "8249617" / "8,249,617" litigation, infringement lawsuit, and docket terms.
• Queries aimed at the Unified Patents litigation portal, CourtListener/RECAP, Justia, and PTAB/CAFC materials.

Result: No hit referenced U.S. 8,249,617 as an asserted or litigated patent.

Important caution against false positives

The searches returned numerous results referring to different patents that merely contain the digits "961," including:

• U.S. 6,594,961 (Leines vinyl decking)
• U.S. 7,289,961 (Sony; IPR2022-01544)
• U.S. 6,465,961 (reexamination)
• U.S. 6,594,961 / 6,465,961 / 7,289,961 as cited in Leines v. Homeland Vinyl (E.D. Cal. 2:18-cv-00969), and various PTAB/CAFC proceedings

None of these is U.S. 8,249,617. Per your strict instruction, I am not treating any of these as the patent at issue.

Patent status details (for context)

• Patent: U.S. 8,249,617 B2, "Wireless terminal and user interface method"
• Assignee/Owner: Sony Corporation (original and current assignee)
• Application: US 11/918,834; PCT/JP2006/307119 filed 2006-04-04
• Priority: JP 2005-122360 (2005-04-20)
• Granted: 2012-08-21
• Status: Expired – Fee Related; maintenance fees lapsed, patent expired for failure to pay maintenance fees (effective 2024-08-21; docket entries 2024-09-23/2024-10-15). Adjusted expiration listed as 2029-08-02.

Confidence / limitations

• High confidence that no reported or indexed litigation exists for this specific number, given that it surfaced in none of the litigation-oriented searches.
• Caveat: I was able to search via general web tools rather than direct, authenticated queries into the Unified Patents Portal or PACER. It is conceivable but unlikely that a case asserting this patent exists in a database I could not fully index. If such a case existed and were publicly reported, it would ordinarily appear in Google Patents' litigation section, Justia's patent page, or Unified Patents' litigation list — and it did not.

Bottom line: To the best of the available evidence, there is no known litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 8,249,617. If you need a definitive negative, I recommend a direct PACER/RECAP docket search and the Unified Patents litigation portal confirmed by case-number lookup, which I was unable to complete here.

If you'd like, I can attempt additional targeted searches (e.g., specific district court dockets, ITC Section 337 investigations, or PTAB proceedings) to further confirm the absence of activity.

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings are on file for US 8,249,617. The USPTO Open Data Portal (ODP) canonical proceeding list returns no IPRs, PGRs, or CBMs, and independent web searches for a petition, institution decision, final written decision, or PTAB/CourtListener docket naming the '617 patent returned no proceeding numbers. The defensive bottom line is therefore not the usual "this patent was hardened by IPR" nor "claims are dead" — it is that no petitioner has ever contested these claims at the Board, and the patent itself lapsed for failure to pay maintenance fees on 2024-09-23 (effective 2024-08-21), placing it in the public domain. That lapse is, for a defendant, a materially stronger fact than any IPR outcome would have been.

Verification caveat (do not over-read the silence): The absence of an ODP record is strong but not mathematically conclusive evidence of zero proceedings. ODP trial records are keyed to the patent number as indexed; a petition naming the patent under a related continuation, a terminated-before-institution petition (which still gets a number), or a proceeding filed very recently could in principle sit outside the ingest window. I found no such artifact in search. I did not find — and therefore am not reporting — any proceeding number, panel, or FWD. No proceeding numbers have been invented.

No proceedings to itemize

Because the count is zero, there is no claims-invalidated proceeding to place at the top, no institution decision to summarize, and no FWD to quote. Anything purporting to be a claim-level disposition of US 8,249,617 at the PTAB would be fabrication. For completeness, the fields the template asks for resolve as follows:

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Strategic summary

Claim status: no claim has ever been canceled, confirmed, or construed by the PTAB. All seventeen claims (1–17) are UNTESTED in AIA trial practice. Claims 1–6 are the "proximity area / external area" method claims; claim 7–8 are the "N nearest terminals" method claims; claims 9–13 are the corresponding terminal claims; claims 14–15 are the second terminal claims; and claims 16–17 are the memory/program claims. Every one of them stands as issued, subject only to the prosecution history and the two Japanese references the applicant disclosed in the specification — Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2004-135086 ("Patent Document 1") and Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2003-219453 ("Patent Document 2"). If you were building an IPR today, those two documents plus the eighteen references on the face of the patent (including US 2004/0203902 to Wilson, US 2003/0186716 to Dorenbosch, EP 1482321, and WO 2005/083956) are the natural starting points.

Estoppel landscape: there is none. Because no IPR, PGR, or CBM was ever instituted, no § 315(e)(2), § 325(e)(2), or AIA § 18(d)(2) estoppel attaches to anyone. A defendant today is free to raise any prior-art ground in district court — § 102, § 103, § 112, § 101 — with no estoppel shadow. The only related timing constraint is the ordinary § 315(b) one-year window if you are later served with a complaint; but see below, because that window is academic: you cannot practically benefit from an IPR against a patent that has expired and whose owner cannot amend (the Board generally declines to institute where no amendment or claim-scope change is possible and the real dispute is historical damages). Practically, the invalidity fight is now a district-court / § 282 fight, not a PTAB fight.

Pattern signals: none of the usual ones. There is no serial petitioner (no party has filed even a first IPR), no PTAB appeal history on this patent, and no defensive-aggregator footprint (no Unified Patents or similar filing appears in search or in the ODP list). The patent's assignment history shows it was granted to Sony Corporation (assignment recorded 2007-10-19, inventors Nakamura, Sako, Terauchi, Asukai, Miyajima, and Takehara) and appears to have remained with Sony; there is no indication in the record before me of assignment to a non-practicing entity, which is consistent with the absence of assertion-driven IPR activity. Foreign counterparts exist (EP 1874073 B1, JP 4457953 B2, CN 101161015 B, KR 20080009087 A — KR withdrawn), but those are not US AIA trials and do not affect US validity.

The controlling fact is the lapse, not the PTAB. The patent's adjusted expiration was carried as 2029-08-02, but the maintenance-fee record shows: reminder mailed 2024-04-08, fee lapse recorded 2024-09-23, and the "Lapsed due to failure to pay maintenance fee" event with effective date 2024-08-21. Under 35 U.S.C. § 41(b) and § 1.362, an unreinstated lapse means the patent stopped being enforceable as of that effective date. For a demand letter or complaint served today (2026-09-29), the patent owner has no prospective infringement theory and, under § 286, recoverable pre-lapse damages reach back only six years — i.e., to roughly 2020-09-29 — subject to any interim maintenance payments keeping it in force during that window (the 8th-year fee was paid 2020-02-12, which supports enforceability through the 12th-year window until the lapse).

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Recommended next steps

• Lead with expiration and the maintenance-fee lapse, not with invalidity. Pull the USPTO PatentCenter / Patent Application Information Retrieval record for US 11/918,834 and confirm the 12th-year maintenance fee was never paid and no petition to accept an unintentionally delayed payment under 35 U.S.C. § 41(c)(1) / 37 C.F.R. § 1.378 has been granted. If the fee remains unpaid and the lapse unreinstated, the correct response to any assertion is that the patent is expired and unenforceable for any post-2024-08-21 conduct, with a six-year § 286 lookback for any belated pre-lapse claim. Source: US 8,249,617 on Google Patents (legal events and status) and USPTO PatentCenter.
• If (and only if) the patent lapses is reinstated or you are sued on pre-lapse conduct, the invalidity record is untouched and fully open: no estoppel, no prior FWD, no panel findings to distinguish. The seventeen claims have never been construed by the Board, so nothing constrains your claim-construction or prior-art narrative. Start from the disclosed art at columns/citations in the specification (JP 2004-135086; JP 2003-219453) and the eighteen cited references.
• Do not describe this patent as "hardened by IPR" or "invalidated by IPR." Neither is true. The accurate statement to a client or court is: no PTAB activity exists, and the patent has expired for fee default.
• Active-proceeding milestones: none apply. There are no pending trials, so there is no institution-decision deadline, no oral hearing date, and no statutory one-year FWD due date under 35 U.S.C. § 316(a)(11) to calendar.
• Link trail for any future verification: PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/) for petition/FWD documents; USPTO PTAB Decisions (https://www.uspto.gov/patents/ptab/decisions) for opinions; CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com) for any CAFC appeal — noting that none was located and none is cited here because none exists on this record.

I'll verify the assignment record from independent sources before drafting.

Let me cross-check for litigation and any post-issuance transfers.

Assignment & Ownership Reconstruction — US 8,249,617 B2

Scope note / data provenance: I was able to retrieve the full patent document, the Google Patents legal-events register (which mirrors USPTO assignment recordation data), and litigation/registry coverage through live search. I could not directly query the USPTO Assignment Center API in this session, so the reel/frame below is taken from the legal-events register embedded in the patent record and should be re-verified at Assignment Center and the legacy Assignment Search by searching 11/918,834 or 8249617. No facts below are inferred beyond what those records show.

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Inventors

All six are named on the face of the patent and all six appear as assignors on the single recorded assignment (reel 020047/0411), signing between 2007-08-22 and 2007-09-10. This is the ordinary corporate employee-invention assignment pattern — no inventor-side transfers, no individual assignees, no partial-interest fragmentation.

Unusual-pattern check: none. There is no evidence of inventors departing the original assignee or retaining/recovering rights. The six-inventor roster is consistent with a Sony R&D team (the art is wireless-terminal UI / ad-hoc proximity handling, a Sony consumer-electronics research area). I found no secondary sources indicating spin-outs, inventor-side LLCs, or reversion. (Caveat: I could not verify individual employment histories beyond the assignment itself; the Sony employment inference rests on the corporate assignment, which is strong but not a payroll record.)

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Original assignee

Sony Corporation (Japan; 1-7-1 Konan, Minato-ku, Tokyo). Named as assignee on the issued patent and as the sole assignee on reel 020047/0411.

• Primary line of business: operating consumer-electronics / entertainment conglomerate (hardware terminals, audio, gaming, imaging). The claimed subject matter — a wireless terminal that hides nearby peers from its in-service-area list — sits squarely in Sony's handheld/networked-device product space.
• Product embodiment: The patent claims a wireless terminal and user-interface method. Sony shipped networked handheld devices in the relevant era, but I found no secondary source tying this specific patent's claims to a named shipped Sony product, and no adjudicated product mapping. I am not asserting a confirmed product embodiment — that is an unresolved question, not a finding.
• Current status: Operating (no bankruptcy, no dissolution, no acquisition of the parent). Still an active multinational.

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Assignment timeline

The register shows exactly one recorded assignment for this patent and no post-issuance transfers. There is no shell-entity chain, no securitization, and no defensive-aggregator acquisition — this is itself the primary finding.

• 2007-08-22 → 2007-09-10 (executed) / recorded 2007-10-19 — Reel 020047/0411
  • Conveyance: Assignment (inventor-to-corporate)
  • Assignor: Takatoshi Nakamura; Yoichiro Sako; Toshiro Terauchi; Masamichi Asukai; Yasushi Miyajima; Mitsuru Takehara (all six named inventors)
  • Assignee: Sony Corporation (Japan)
  • Correspondent: Not exposed in the records I could retrieve. The legal-events entry lists only the assignee and the free-format text; the correspondent-of-record field was not surfaced. I am not naming a correspondent because I would have to fabricate it. (This is the one field the task specifically asks for, and it is the one I could not confirm — flag for direct Assignment Center pull.)
  • Context: Ordinary pre-issuance corporate assignment — inventors assigning to their employer of record, roughly 15 months after the PCT filing and ~5 years before grant.

Post-issuance events on the register (non-assignment):

• 2011-12-28 / 2012-04-23 — Notice of Allowance
• 2012-08-21 — Patent granted (US 8,249,617 B2)
• 2016-02-11 — Maintenance fee, 4th year paid
• 2020-02-12 — Maintenance fee, 8th year paid (large entity)
• 2024-04-08 — Maintenance fee reminder mailed
• 2024-09-23 — LAPSE for failure to pay maintenance fees; patent expired 2024-08-21 (37 CFR 1.362), recorded 2024-10-15

Family ownership check: The same family (WO2006114996A1, EP1874073B1, JP4457953B2, KR20080009087A, CN101161015B) carries Sony as owner in the country-status table. The EP member is shown "Expired – Lifetime"; the KR member "Withdrawn." No family member surfaced a later third-party assignee in the sources reviewed.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 8249617
    2005 : Priority JP filing
    2006 : PCT application filed
    2007 : Inventors assign to Sony Corp
    2012 : US patent issued to Sony
    2020 : Eighth year fee paid
    2024 : Patent expired for unpaid fees

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. No assignment to any "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" entity exists. The sole recorded conveyance (reel 020047/0411) runs from six named inventors to Sony Corporation, an operating company, with no LLC in the chain.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. Neither the original assignee nor any successor appears on any public NPE/PAE list (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Converso/Mosaid, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, etc.). The chain has one node: Sony.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — not present / not assessable. There is only one recorded assignment, so recurrence cannot occur. The correspondent-of-record was not retrievable, so I cannot cross-check the recording attorney against Unified Patents / RPX assertion lists. Marked unclear on the field itself, not present on the pattern (a single recording is never a recurrence finding under the stated rule).

4. Cascading transfers — not present. No consecutive assignments of any kind, let alone multiple chained LLCs within 24 months. The register shows a single 2007 assignment followed immediately by allowance/grant.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. I found no district-court or ITC action naming US 8,249,617 in the searches performed. There is consequently no trigger suit to measure a 6-month lookback against. (Note: search results did surface a different "'617 patent" in an ANDA/Paragraph IV counterclaim and an IPR on a different patent — those are unrelated and must not be conflated with US 8,249,617.)

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. Sony Corporation is not, and has not been, in Chapter 7/11. No patent-sale proceeding is associated with this asset.

7. Privateering — not present. No transfer to an NPE, no SEC-disclosed divestiture to an asserter, no Patent Progress / EFF coverage of Sony using an NPE proxy on this patent.

8. Defensive aggregator — not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. It terminates at the original operating assignee and then at statutory expiration.

Additional negative signal (worth stating): the patent expired 2024-09-23 for nonpayment of the 12th-year maintenance fee, while still held by Sony. An abandoned-expired patent is economically inert — nobody is monetizing it, which further undercuts any assertion narrative.

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Verdict

Insufficient data — only the original assignment exists.

The entire recorded chain of title is a single inventor-to-employer assignment to Sony Corporation, executed 2007-08-22→2007-09-10 and recorded 2007-10-19 at reel 020047/0411; there are no post-issuance transfers, no LLC assignees, no NPE, and no litigation naming this patent, so the ownership record is complete but contains nothing to analyze beyond a normal corporate assignment. The patent then lapsed 2024-09-23 for unpaid maintenance fees while still Sony-owned, confirming it was never transferred to or asserted by a third party. All eight NPE signals are not present; the only field I could not close is the correspondent-of-record on reel 020047/0411, which should be pulled directly from Assignment Center.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent 8249617) · https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html

Confidence: High on the "single assignment / no transfers / expired" conclusion (corroborated by the patent record's legal-events register and the absence of any contrary litigation or registry hit); the correspondent field is the sole open item.

I'll search the USPTO database for this specific patent number and gather the citation details.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 8,249,617 B2

Patent under analysis: US 8,249,617 B2 ("Wireless terminal and user interface method")
Source of record: https://patents.google.com/patent/US8249617/en
Assignee / Applicant: Sony Corporation
Inventors: Takatoshi Nakamura; Yoichiro Sako; Toshiro Terauchi; Masamichi Asukai; Yasushi Miyajima; Mitsuru Takehara
Priority date: 2005-04-20 (JP 2005-122360) | PCT filing: 2006-04-04 (PCT/JP2006/307119) | US filing: 2006-04-04 | Grant: 2012-08-21
Status: Expired – Fee Related (lapsed 2024-08-21 for non-payment of maintenance fees)

Method note: The USPTO/Google Patents record for US 8,249,617 lists 18 patent citations (three marked * as cited by the examiner) plus 2 non-patent citations and 2 "family-cited" applicant references. The analysis below is built from that citation record as reproduced in the patent document text. Because the full specification/claims of each secondary reference were not retrieved here, the § 102 assessments are element-level screening opinions, not conclusive anticipation findings. A definitive § 102 rejection requires that every element of a claim be disclosed in a single reference, arranged as claimed.

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A. Legal framework applied

Because the application was filed 2006-04-04 with a 2005-04-20 priority date, pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102 governs (the AIA first-inventor-to-file provisions do not apply). Relevant subsections:

• § 102(a): reference published/patented before the applicant's invention date.
• § 102(b): reference patented or published more than one year before the US filing date (i.e., before 2005-04-04) — statutory bar.
• § 102(e): US patent/publication (or PCT designating the US and published in English) having an effective filing date before the applicant's invention date.
• § 102(c)/(d)/(f)/(g): (abandonment, foreign patenting, inventorship derivation, and prior public use/sale) — not implicated by these documentary references.

Note that references published after 2005-04-20 but with an earlier effective filing date are potentially § 102(e) art but not § 102(a)/(b) art.

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B. The 18 cited references — citation, date, description, § 102 screen

B.1 References bearing on the core "proximity vs. external area" concept

1. WO 2005/083956 A1 — 6th Sense Communications

• Full citation: WO 2005/083956 A1, "Method and system for proximity-based information retrieval and exchange in ad hoc networks."
• Priority date: 2004-02-23 | Publication: 2005-09-09
• Description: Proximity-based information retrieval/exchange in ad hoc networks — determining which nodes are near a given node and exchanging information accordingly.
• § 102 screen: Most relevant single reference. Its "proximity-based" ad hoc model reads on the detect-nearby-terminals-in-a-communicable-area and proximity classification concepts of claims 1 and 9. Its publication (2005-09-09) is after the 2005-04-20 priority date, so if it designates the US and was published in English it is only available under § 102(e) as of its PCT filing date (~2005-02-23). It does not appear to disclose the claimed inverse logic — i.e., actively suppressing near terminals from the display as "out-of-service" to preserve privacy — so full anticipation of claim 1, 7, 9, 14, 16, or 17 is unlikely without that showing.

2. US 2004/0203902 A1 — Brian Wilson (examiner-cited *)

• Full citation: US 2004/0203902 A1, "Data structures and methods for location-based services within a wireless network."
• Priority/filing: 2002-06-14 | Publication: 2004-10-14
• Description: Data structures and methods enabling location-based services for mobile nodes in a wireless network (position determination and service delivery).
• § 102 screen: Prior art under § 102(b) (published >1 yr before 2005-04-04). Potentially anticipates the detection / location-determination backbone of claims 1 and 9, but its focus is providing location-based services, not concealing nearby users — the privacy-suppression limitation is absent. Best characterized as § 103 material on the detection/display elements rather than a § 102 anticipation.

3. US 2002/0183052 A1 — NEC Corporation

• Full citation: US 2002/0183052 A1, "Private information supplying system for mobile stations, method for displaying private information and method for roughly positioning users."
• Priority/filing: 2001-05-29 | Publication: 2002-12-05
• Description: Supplying private information to mobile stations and "roughly" positioning users — i.e., deliberately degrading/blurring location granularity for privacy.
• § 102 screen: Prior art under § 102(b). Directly on point for the privacy purpose recited in the specification. Its "rough positioning" concept maps to the concealment rationale, but it accomplishes privacy by coarsening position information rather than by ruling near terminals out-of-service. Useful § 103 art against the privacy-motivated claims; unlikely to anticipate any claim as a whole.

4. EP 1 482 321 A2 — Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba

• Full citation: EP 1 482 321 A2, "Method and apparatus for location search of portable device in wireless communication system."
• Priority/filing: 2003-05-30 | Publication: 2004-12-01
• Description: Locating/searching portable devices within a wireless communication system.
• § 102 screen: Prior art under § 102(b) as to its publication. Relevant to the detect another terminal and its distance step (claim 1 / claim 9 preamble and detection step). Does not disclose proximity-vs-external partitioning for display suppression. Not anticipatory.

5. JP 2003-284124 A — Seiko Epson Corp. (non-patent citation)

• Full citation: JP 2003-284124 A, "Method for providing location information, search system and terminal." (Listed in the record with the non-patent citation "Kazumi et al., JP 2003-284124 … English translation of the Abstract Page.")
• Priority/filing: 2002-03-25 | Publication: 2003-10-03
• Description: Providing location information / location search system and terminal.
• § 102 screen: Printed publication prior art under § 102(b) (published >1 yr before 2005-04-04). Its abstract-page citation indicates the examiner used it for the location-search between terminals teaching. Relevant to the detection/location elements of claims 1 and 9; not to the suppression logic. Not anticipatory.

B.2 References bearing on ad-hoc / group communication and display of users

6. US 2003/0186716 A1 — Dorenbosch, Jheroen P. (examiner-cited *)

• Full citation: US 2003/0186716 A1, "Method and apparatus for establishing a talk group."
• Priority/filing: 2002-04-02 | Publication: 2003-10-02
• Description: Establishing a talk group among communication units, including affiliation/roster management.
• § 102 screen: Prior art under § 102(b). Bears on how a terminal identifies/selects other terminals as communication partners — relevant background for the "in-service-area = selectable as chat mate" concept. Does not disclose proximity-based out-of-service suppression. Not anticipatory.

7. JP 2003-219453 A — Toshiba Corp. (applicant / family-cited; "Patent Document 2")

• Full citation: JP 2003-219453 A, "Location management system, program, location management method."
• Priority/filing: 2002-01-17 | Publication: 2003-07-31
• Description: As described in the patent's own Background Art: "a method of managing the location of each user while protecting the privacy of each user in a location management system made up of a server and wireless terminals carried by users."
• § 102 screen: Prior art under § 102(b). This is the applicant-acknowledged closest art for the problem (privacy-preserving location management). However, it is server-based and manages (rather than suppresses) location — the patent distinguishes it on that basis. Relevant under § 102/§ 103 to the general privacy goal, but it does not disclose client-side proximity-area out-of-service processing. Not anticipatory of the claims.

8. JP 2004-135086 A — NTT DoCoMo (applicant / family-cited; "Patent Document 1")

• Full citation: JP 2004-135086 A, "Communication system for notifying location information of mobile radio terminal."
• Priority/filing: 2002-10-10 | Publication: 2004-04-30
• Description: As described in the patent's Background Art: "a method of getting the positional information of a mobile wireless terminal in a communications system having a base station … without requiring a dedicated server or a dedicated line."
• § 102 screen: Prior art under § 102(b). Relevant to the detect distance between terminals absent a server element (claim 1 / claim 9). Does not disclose proximity suppression / out-of-service handling. Not anticipatory.

9. JP 2002-259251 A — Nippon Telegraph & Telephone (NTT)

• Full citation: JP 2002-259251 A, "Method and system for distributing information between group members using semantic information network, transmitting terminal and receiving terminal."
• Priority/filing: 2001-02-28 | Publication: 2002-09-13
• Description: Group-member information distribution in a semantic information network.
• § 102 screen: Prior art under § 102(b). Background on group/peer information distribution; not on proximity suppression. Not anticipatory.

10. JP 2000-167233 A — Masanobu Kujirada

• Full citation: JP 2000-167233 A, "Meeting/communication supporting system."
• Priority/filing: 1998-06-30 | Publication: 2000-06-20
• Description: Supporting meetings/communication among users (proximity-based matching of attendees).
• § 102 screen: Old prior art under § 102(b). Relevant to the idea of enabling communication between physically proximate users (the prior-art behavior the patent seeks to avoid). Not anticipatory — it teaches the opposite of the claimed suppression.

B.3 References bearing on location display / notification and terminal architecture

11. JP H10-170625 A — NTT

• Full citation: JP H10-170625 A, "Position information display method and device."
• Priority/filing: 1996-12-11 | Publication: 1998-06-26
• Description: Displaying position information of a mobile entity.
• § 102 screen: § 102(b) art. Generic location-display teaching; relevant only to the display-on-screen element. Not anticipatory.

12. JP 2002-016956 A — Toshiba Corp.

• Full citation: JP 2002-016956 A, "Position information acquisition system and position information acquisition method."
• Priority/filing: 2000-06-30 | Publication: 2002-01-18
• Description: Acquiring position information (of terminals/users).
• § 102 screen: § 102(b) art; supports the distance/position acquisition element of claims 1 and 9. Not anticipatory.

13. JP 2003-161771 A — NEC Corp.

• Full citation: JP 2003-161771 A, "Device for converting position information and control method thereof, and system for providing position information and control method thereof."
• Priority/filing: 2001-09-12 | Publication: 2003-06-06
• Description: Converting/processing position information for provision to users.
• § 102 screen: § 102(b) art; relevant to position-information handling only. Not anticipatory.

14. JP 2003-092778 A — Denso Corp.

• Full citation: JP 2003-092778 A, "Mobile communication terminal device, its program and location search server."
• Priority/filing: 2001-09-18 | Publication: 2003-03-28
• Description: Mobile terminal + program + location search server for locating users.
• § 102 screen: § 102(b) art. Notably a server-based architecture, which the patent expressly distinguishes (the patent operates terminal-to-terminal). Relevant to location search element; not anticipatory.

15. JP 2003-3259425 A — NEC Soft Ltd.

• Full citation: JP 2003-259425 A, "User arrival time notification system, user arrival time notification method, and program."
• Priority/filing: 2002-03-05 | Publication: 2003-09-12
• Description: Notifying a user of another user's arrival time.
• § 102 screen: § 102(b) art; remote (non-proximity) awareness of users — i.e., the problem the patent addresses when users are far apart. Not anticipatory.

16. JP 2004-173260 A — Toshiba Corp.

• Full citation: JP 2004-173260 A, "Wireless communication device, portable terminal, program for controlling wireless communication device."
• Priority/filing: 2002-11-05 | Publication: 2004-06-17
• Description: Wireless communication device / portable terminal and its control program — architecture-level teaching.
• § 102 screen: § 102(a)/(b) art. Relevant to the claimed wireless terminal architecture (the information processing block, transmission/reception block, control block of claims 9 and 14 and the memory-storing-a-program form of claims 16 and 17). A generic device+program reference does not disclose the proximity/suppression control logic, so it is § 102-relevant only to structural preamble elements and is otherwise § 103 material. Not anticipatory of the full claims.

17. JP 2004-201031 A — Sony Corp.

• Full citation: JP 2004-201031 A, "Wireless communication method, wireless communication system, and wireless communication device."
• Priority/filing: 2002-12-18 | Publication: 2004-07-15
• Description: Wireless communication method/system/device (same assignee as the patent).
• § 102 screen: § 102(b) art. Same-assignee ad hoc wireless communication teaching; relevant to the environment of the invention but not to the proximity-suppression claims. Not anticipatory.

18. US 2006/0223518 A1 — Haney, Richard D. (examiner-cited *)

• Full citation: US 2006/0223518 A1, "Location sharing and tracking using mobile phones or other wireless devices."
• Priority/filing: 2005-04-04 | Publication: 2006-10-05
• Description: Sharing and tracking user locations among mobile phones/wireless devices.
• § 102 screen: Published (2006-10-05) after the 2005-04-20 priority date, so it is not § 102(a)/(b) art. Its effective filing date (2005-04-04) precedes the priority date by only 16 days, so it is potentially available only under § 102(e). Critically, it is directed to sharing/tracking location — i.e., the antithesis of the claimed concealment. It is relevant as examiner-cited background to the detection/display of other users' locations, but it does not disclose proximity-area out-of-service suppression or the rejected-communication-setting limitation. Not anticipatory.

B.4 Remaining cited references

19. US 6,226,589 B1 — Fujitsu Limited

• Full citation: US 6,226,589 B1, "System for providing guiding information for use in detecting and accessing a mobile object."
• Priority/filing: 1999-03-12 | Publication: 2001-05-01
• § 102 screen: § 102(b) art on detecting/accessing a mobile object. Peripheral; not anticipatory.

20. JP 2003-087847 A — Sony Corp.

• Full citation: JP 2003-087847 A, "Telephone equipment."
• Priority/filing: 2001-09-14 | Publication: 2003-03-20
• § 102 screen: § 102(b) art; telephone-equipment architecture. Peripheral; not anticipatory.

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C. Assessment: does any cited reference anticipate a claim?

Bottom line: On the citation record, no single cited reference discloses all elements of any independent claim, and the signature limitations — (i) partitioning a communicable area into a proximity area and an external area and suppressing near terminals from the display, (ii) temporally randomizing the proximity boundary, and (iii) the rejected-communication-setting suppression of an external-area terminal — are not found in the cited prior art. The cited references are best viewed as § 103 combination art supporting the general environment (ad hoc proximity networks, location determination, privacy motivations), rather than § 102 anticipatory art.

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D. Most relevant prior art — ranked

1. WO 2005/083956 A1 (6th Sense Communications) — proximity-based retrieval/exchange in ad hoc networks. Closest to the proximity concept; potential § 102(e) reference (PCT filing ~2005-02-23).
2. JP 2003-219453 A (Toshiba) — applicant-cited Patent Document 2; server-based location management with privacy protection. Closest to the privacy objective.
3. US 2004/0203902 A1 (Wilson) — examiner-cited; location-based services/data structures in a wireless network; § 102(b) as to publication.
4. US 2002/0183052 A1 (NEC) — "roughly positioning users" / private-information display; § 102(b); directly on the privacy-by-location-degradation idea.
5. JP 2004-135086 A (NTT DoCoMo) — applicant-cited Patent Document 1; server-free terminal position determination; § 102(b).
6. US 2006/0223518 A1 (Haney) — examiner-cited; location sharing/tracking; potential § 102(e) only (filed 2005-04-04, published 2006-10-05).
7. US 2003/0186716 A1 (Dorenbosch) — examiner-cited; talk-group establishment; § 102(b).

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E. Caveats

1. Citations ≠ rejections. The presence of these 18 references on the face of the patent reflects examiner search/consideration and applicant disclosure; the record does not indicate that any was applied as an anticipatory rejection, and the patent issued over them.
2. My § 102 determinations are screens based on titles, the patent's own characterizations, and the citation metadata — I did not retrieve and read each reference's full specification and claims in this pass. A conclusive anticipation opinion requires element-by-element mapping of each claim against the reference's complete disclosure, arranged as claimed.
3. Effective-date nuances matter for WO 2005/083956 A1 and US 2006/0223518 A1 (both depend on §§ 102(e) availability as of their earlier effective filing dates).
4. Recommendation: obtain full texts of the top seven references above for a definitive § 102/§ 103 chart, with particular attention to whether the proximity-concealment and rejected-communication-setting limitations appear anywhere in that group.

Primary source: USPTO/Google Patents record for US 8,249,617 B2 — https://patents.google.com/patent/US8249617/en (citations list, family citations, non-patent citations, and legal events) and the corresponding Justia record — https://patents.justia.com/patent/[8249617](/patent/8249617).

I'll research the prior art references from the patent's citation record to ground the §103 analysis.

Obviousness Analysis Under 35 U.S.C. § 103 — US 8,249,617 B2

Patent: US 8,249,617 B2, "Wireless terminal and user interface method" (Sony; app. 11/918,834; PCT filed 2006‑04‑04; JP priority 2005‑04‑20).
Source of truth: https://patents.google.com/patent/US8249617/en (fetched 2026‑09‑24) and the "Citations (18)" / "Family Cites Families (2)" lists on that page.
Instruction followed: analysis is built exclusively on the prior art listed in the Prior Art section of the patent page, and builds on the previously generated summary rather than repeating it.

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1. Legal framework and evidentiary caveats

Governing law. This application has an effective filing date of 2006‑04‑04 and a foreign priority date of 2005‑04‑20, so pre‑AIA § 103(a) applies. The controlling analysis is Graham v. John Deere (scope/content of the prior art; differences; PHOSITA level; secondary considerations) as qualified by KSR Int'l v. Teleflex (2007), which supplies the enumerated rationales I use below:

• (A) combining prior‑art elements according to known methods to yield predictable results;
• (B) simple substitution of one known element for another;
• (C) use of a known technique to improve a similar device in the same way;
• (D) applying a known technique to a known device ready for improvement;
• (E) "obvious to try" from a finite number of identified, predictable solutions;
• (F) design incentives / market forces; and
• (G) teachings, suggestions, or motivations in the references themselves.

No single reference in the record appears to anticipate the independent claims; the analysis below is therefore combination‑based. Under KSR, a motivation may be supplied by the ordinary creativity of the skilled artisan and by the shared problem the references address — no express "teaching, suggestion, or motivation" is required.

What I actually read vs. what I only have by title/abstract. I retrieved and reviewed substantive text for five references (WO2005083956A1; US 2004/0203902 A1; US 2006/0223518 A1, published as US 7,353,034; US 2002/0183052 A1, granted as US 7,039,427; EP 1 482 321 A2/A3, granted as US 7,095,319). For the remaining Japanese references I relied on title/abstract only and say so. I do not have the file wrapper for 11/918,834 — my attempts to retrieve the office actions/amendment history were unsuccessful, so I cannot state what rejection the examiner actually made or what the pre‑amendment claims looked like. The unusual appended "rejected‑communication‑setting" limitation in every independent claim (see prior summary) suggests an amendment to overcome art, but I flag this as inference, not verified fact.

Effective prior‑art dates (a point that matters here). Two of the most on‑point references published after the 2005‑04‑20 priority date and are therefore only available under pre‑AIA § 102(e) as of their earlier filing dates:

Because Haney and 6th Sense are both non‑commonly‑owned, § 103(c) disqualification does not apply. This matters: Haney is the closest art to the "radius‑based display filtering" concept, and it is only prior art by 16 days.

The prior art as a whole (from the patent page's citation list). Grouped by what they contribute:

PHOSITA. A bachelor's degree in EE/CS (or equivalent) plus 2–3 years of experience in wireless/mobile application development, including peer‑to‑peer or ad‑hoc discovery, presence/contact list user interfaces, and location‑based services. This is a modest skill level; the asserted invention is an application‑layer UI/selection rule, not a new physical layer or protocol.

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2. Independent claims 1 and 9 (and program claim 17) — the proximity/external embodiment

Claim 1 element map

Combination and motivation (claims 1/9/17). Primary combination: Wilson + 6th Sense + Haney (Toshiba and NEC as secondary, for the nested‑region and relative‑distance elements).

1. Same field, same problem. Wilson ¶[0166] frames the invention around "options to protect user's privacy"; 6th Sense states its goal is to "ameliorate" the privacy problem of disclosing who is nearby; Haney ¶[0006] states "To alleviate privacy concerns, it would be useful to be able to turn off location sharing…." All three are wireless/peer‑presence services addressing exactly the problem the '617 specification identifies (users inferring each other's location from a displayed peer list). This is a textbook KSR rationale (G) plus (F) (known market pressure toward privacy controls).
2. Known techniques, predictable combination. Filtering a displayed list by a distance threshold is taught by Haney and Wilson; filtering by a user‑set permission flag is taught by Wilson and Haney. Combining two known filters (distance AND permission) on the same list yields the predictable result of removing a terminal from the display only where both conditions call for it. This is KSR rationale (A)/(C).
3. The order of the combined conditions is arbitrary. Claim 1 places the "rejected‑communication" test on terminals that pass the distance test. An artisan implementing two independent exclusion rules would just as readily apply the flag first or last; no new technical effect is asserted for the ordering.
4. The preamble ("method for presenting a user interface") carries no patentable weight — it is an intended‑use/field‑of‑use statement describing the environment of the old filtering steps.

Claim 9 is the same combination in apparatus form (information‑processing block, transmit/receive block, control block). Wilson's FIG. 41 already discloses the structural counterpart: "a processor unit … a non‑removable memory or a removable memory … the mobile device could store friend list information … the list of other subscribers who will always be denied permission to locate the user," with a software flag "to indicate the 'be invisible' status of the mobile device." Claim 17 merely re‑casts the same subject matter as a program stored in memory; Wilson ¶[0060] expressly recites instructions "stored or distributed on computer‑readable media." (Note: as flagged in the prior summary, claims 16–17 are labeled memory/program claims but recite apparatus blocks — a § 112 issue outside the scope of this § 103 analysis; under either construction the § 103 result is unchanged.)

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3. Independent claims 7 and 14 (and program claim 16) — the N‑nearest embodiment

Combination and motivation (claims 7/14/16). Primary combination: Haney + Wilson + NEC (and Toshiba for the region concept).

1. N‑nearest is the same filter expressed as a count instead of a radius. Haney literally teaches hiding members that fall outside a configurable distance (the "Group Map Size" split) and exposing members that come within a radius (radar inclusion). NEC teaches computing the relative distance between users. Given those teachings, ranking detected terminals by distance and excluding the nearest N is the straightforward, predictable implementation of the same privacy rule — KSR rationales (A), (B) and (D). The choice between a count‑based and a distance‑based cutoff is a classic design choice with predictable results; the specification itself offers no technical advantage for one over the other beyond the privacy goal, and even cross‑references them as alternatives.
2. A numeric cap on displayed peers is expressly suggested. Wilson ¶[0113] discloses a system that locates "no more than 20 friends at a time," or 10, or 30 — an express source of the idea that the number of displayed contacts is a tunable parameter.
3. Claim 7's final conditional ("fewer than a predetermined number … and specified with a rejected‑communication setting") is the weakest‑supported limitation in the entire patent. No reference in the record describes gating hide‑all behavior on a low‑population condition combined with a block flag. The motivation is nevertheless available from the field: the specification itself states the reason (with only 1–3 users in range, "the locations of user X and another user may be easily known by each other even if these users are away from each other"), i.e., the low‑population case leaks location, and an artisan seeking privacy would predictably suppress the entire list. Whether that rises from "obvious to try" (KSR) to nonobvious is the closest question in this patent. I would expect a § 103 rejection here to be contestable.

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4. Dependent claims

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5. Rebuttal considerations the patent owner could press

1. "Teaching away" from terminal‑side detection (6th Sense). WO 2005/083956 states the invention "does not necessitate peer‑to‑peer interaction, [so] no resource intensive application must reside on the user devices," and moves the matching function to a server. Claim 9 recites a terminal‑side control block that itself detects and classifies. An owner could argue this cuts against combining 6th Sense with Haney/Wilson. Counter‑argument: claims 1 and 7 do not exclude server assistance, and Haney supplies the missing terminal‑side peer‑to‑peer teaching; the KSR inquiry is whether the combination was obvious, not whether one reference alone would have suggested it.
2. Hiding the near terminals is arguably the opposite of the art's teaching. The art (Haney's radar inclusion; Wilson's "find nearby friends"; 6th Sense's neighbor matching) is generally directed toward surfacing nearby peers, not suppressing them. The '617 invention inverts the objective. This is the most substantive nonobviousness argument available against claims 1, 7, 9, 14, 16, 17: the problem is stated as a privacy problem the art did not squarely frame as a function of distance-to-peer. It is a genuine but not decisive argument — privacy‑driven suppression is the express purpose of Wilson's and Haney's "disable/invisible/deny" features, and the only alleged difference is the trigger (distance rather than an explicit flag), which KSR treats as a design choice.
3. No secondary considerations are available on this record. The patent lapsed for non‑payment effective 2024‑08‑21 (per the legal‑events table), so there is no ongoing commercial‑success, licensing, or industry‑praise evidence; and the specification contains no data showing unexpected results. Nothing here rebuts a prima facie § 103 case.
4. Claim‑construction leverage runs against the patent. "Proximity area," "external area," "near," and "out‑of‑service area" are relative terms whose disclosed substance is simply "not displayed / not selectable as a chat mate" (spec: "only users A and C … are shown … user B … is not shown"). Read in light of the specification, the core limitations reduce to not displaying peers that are flagged or within a distance — conduct squarely within Wilson and Haney.

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6. Bottom line

Key uncertainties I am not resolving by assertion: (i) I could not retrieve the 11/918,834 file history, so I cannot confirm which references the examiner applied or what the claims looked like before amendment — the appended "rejected‑communication‑setting" language in each independent claim strongly suggests amendment‑over‑art, but I have not verified it; (ii) I read only title/abstract for the twelve Japanese references and US 6,226,589 (all of which are potentially significant — e.g., JP 2000‑167233 A (Kujirada, "Meeting/communication supporting system") could plausibly disclose a proximity‑based peer display and would materially strengthen or weaken claims 1/7 depending on its content); (iii) WO 2005/083956 A1's availability depends on whether it designated the US and was published in English — I could not confirm its international filing date from the sources I retrieved, and its 2005‑09‑09 publication date falls after the 2005‑04‑20 priority date.