US 8340667

I'll search for the patent and any 2026 litigation/docket activity.

Let me check for any 2026 Federal Circuit or district court activity specifically.

Let me verify the actual granted claim set for the '667 patent itself.

US 8,340,667 B2 — Bibliographic Summary

Abstract (verbatim): "Methods and systems to control wireless communications are provided. A particular network communication system includes a plurality of distributed mobile architecture gateways. Each distributed mobile architecture gateway includes at least one interface to communicate with one or more legacy communication networks and each distributed mobile architecture gateway also includes a data network connection. The data network connection is adapted to connect to at least one other distributed mobile architecture gateway of the plurality of distributed mobile architecture gateways. Additionally, the system includes a private Internet Protocol (IP) network connecting each distributed mobile architecture gateway to a respective set of distributed mobile architecture (DMA) servers. Each DMA server is coupled to a respective base transceiver station, and the private IP network also connects each DMA server in a particular set of DMA servers to the DMA servers in the other sets of DMA servers."

Technical problem addressed: conventional rural cellular build-outs require an MSC + BSC + HLR/VLR (spec-inflated cost "over $2.0 million") and ~10,000 subscribers to be viable. The patent instead distributes switching/routing logic into small "DMA servers" (one per BTS cluster) that interconnect over a private IP network, with "DMAG" gateways as the interfaces to legacy networks (PSTN, GSM/CDMA/TDMA/UMTS, GPRS/EDGE/WiMAX) and as the registries that track which DMA servers belong to which gateway.

Independent Claims — Plain-Language Overview

The issued claims I could confirm (from the granted-patent PDF) are a DMAG-centric system claim (claim 1), a routing method claim (claim 10), and a second DMAG system claim (claim 14), with dependent claims 2–9 and 11–13. See uncertainty note #3 before relying on the full claim count.

Claim 1 — System (the DMAG appliance): A network communication system built around a first DMAG that has (a) an interface to a legacy communication network, (b) a second interface to a private IP network, and (c) logic that forwards voice traffic received on the legacy interface out over the private IP network to a first DMA server. The forwarded traffic is destined for a wireless device associated with that DMA server, and that DMA server is one of a group of DMA servers the carrier has designated to communicate through this DMAG. The DMAG also must hold two registries: a home DMA server register listing every DMA server designated to communicate via this DMAG, and a visitor DMA server register listing "visitor" DMA servers that are only temporarily registered with it because they are designated to communicate via at least a second DMAG. In short: one gateway + local breakout to the radio edge + home/visitor rosters for DMA servers.

Claim 10 — Method (routing a call at the gateway): Steps are: (1) receive a call at a first DMAG from a legacy network; (2) using wireless-device registration data stored at the DMAG, identify that the called device should communicate via a first DMA server that is one of the DMA servers designated to work through this DMAG — and here the device is homed on a second DMA server (also designated to work through the same DMAG) but is only temporarily registered with the first DMA server; (3) register the device in the HLR associated with the second (home) DMA server, which is stored at the DMAG; (4) register the device in the VLR associated with the first (serving) DMA server, also stored at the DMAG; then (5) route the call from the DMAG to the first DMA server over a private IP network. Essentially: the gateway itself functions as the distributed HLR/VLR and performs the home/visitor bookkeeping for a roaming handset.

Claim 14 — System (registry-centric DMAG variant): A network communication system with a DMAG having a legacy-network interface and a private-IP-network interface, a home DMA server register, and a visitor DMA server register (visitors being DMA servers that are temporarily registered with this DMAG but designated for a second DMAG), and at least one of: (i) a home location register database holding one HLR per DMA server designated to communicate via this DMAG (each HLR listing the devices homed on that DMA server), or (ii) a community location register database holding HLRs for DMA servers designated to communicate via other DMAGs. This claim is drafted to require the DMAG's database layer rather than a specific forwarding step.

Note on the "plurality of DMAGs" concept: The '667 abstract recites a multi-DMAG system (DMAGs interconnected by a data-network connection, a private IP network linking each DMAG to its own set of DMA servers, and DMA servers in one set also reachable by DMA servers in other sets). The specification describes this at FIGS. 2–3 (DMAGs 202–206; DMAG 302/306; peer routing; redundant registration data so one DMAG can absorb another's traffic on failure). I could not confirm which issued claim number carries this multi-DMAG limitation in the granted '667 (see uncertainty note #3).

Litigation and Docket Status (as of April 2026)

I could not find any Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit 2026 docket involving US 8,340,667 — searches of CAFC 2026 activity returned nothing. District-court activity found:

• Lemko Corporation v. AT&T Inc. et al., No. 2:25-cv-00305 (E.D. Tex.), Judge Rodney Gilstrap — filed March 17, 2025. US 8,340,667 is one of the seven asserted patents (7,840,230; 7,979,066; 8,224,322; 8,310,990; 8,340,667; 8,359,029; 9,198,020). Accused product: AT&T Private 5G Edge / AT&T Private Mobile Connection, which runs Azure Private 5G software on commercial off-the-shelf servers (including Azure Stack Edge). Defendants: AT&T Enterprises LLC, AT&T Mobility LLC, AT&T Mobility LLC II, AT&T Services, Inc. (AT&T Communications LLC was terminated June 11, 2025). Lemko is represented by Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel and Hilgers Graben.
• Docket activity in 2026: On March 6, 2026, Judge Gilstrap issued a Memorandum Opinion and Order (Dkt. 79) denying AT&T's motion to transfer venue to the Northern District of Texas under the first-to-file rule (AT&T had argued overlap with Lemko v. Microsoft/Affirmed Networks, No. 3:22-cv-363-K (N.D. Tex.)). The docket was last updated April 13, 2026.
• The IPR/PGR record: a Lemko petition document concerning the related '988 patent (DMA peer-to-peer construction disputes) surfaced in searches; that proceeding is about a different Lemko patent, not the '667.
• Google Patents also flags "family has litigation" with a link to Texas Eastern District Court case 2:25-cv-00305 (the AT&T case above) and a Darts-IP "first worldwide family litigation" record (family ID 41445186).

Assignment/encumbrance trail on the '667 (from Google Patents' record): 2008-06-26 assignment to Lemko Corporation (assignor Pan); 2012-02-21 reassignment to Motorola Solutions, Inc. recorded as a "covenant not to sue" with Lemko as assignor (note: a secondary source states the Motorola covenant covered the '988 patent specifically — treat the scope of this covenant as unverified); 2015-05-12 assignment to Lemko Corporation; 2025-03-25 assignment to Piccadilly Patent Funding LLC, as security holder (patent security agreement), assignor Lemko Corporation.

Family / Related Applications (not to be confused with the '667 itself)

• WO 2009/158154 A2 and PCT/US2009/045951 (filed 2009-06-02), claiming priority to 12/146,618.
• Chinese family: CN 102057638 B plus divisionals CN 103795619 B, CN 103795620 B, CN 103812766 B, CN 103812767 B (all priority 2008-06-26).
• Continuation US 2013/0148578 A1 (published 2013-06-13), expressly a continuation of Ser. No. 12/146,618 (i.e., of the '667), with a 20-claim set (independent claims 1, 9, 19). Its abstract is the same as the '667's.
• Same-title/same-inventor sibling US 8,046,420 B2 (Ser. No. 12/108,209, filed 2008-04-23) and US 2009/0271491 A1 — a related but distinct patent, not the '667.
• Other Lemko family members cited in the '667's "citing" list: US 8,706,105 (fault-tolerant DMA), US 8,106,409 (OAMP for DMA), US 7,855,988 (routing calls using DMA), US 8,310,990, US 7,979,066 (multiple IMSI connections), US 8,359,029.

Uncertainty and Verification Notes

1. Priority-date discrepancy (1 day): Google Patents lists the '667 priority/filing date as 2008-06-26; the Unified Patents portal lists the '667 priority date as 2008-06-25. I am treating 2008-06-26 as correct (it matches the application filing date 12/146,618 and the PCT/CN family), but the discrepancy is unresolved.
2. Full text authority: I used the supplied Google Patents text as authoritative for the spec/abstract, and cross-checked against the granted-patent PDF (patentimages.googleapis) and the RPX/Unified Patents records. I did not have direct live USPTO PatentCenter or PACER access; PACER-derived content came from third-party aggregators (Justia, PacerMonitor, dockets.justia.com). Docket entries can lag — the April 13, 2026 "last updated" stamp is the most recent I could verify.
3. Granted claim set is incomplete in my sources: The granted-patent PDF excerpt shows claims 1–9, 10–13, and claim 14; I could not retrieve the complete issued claim listing (total claim count and whether claims corresponding to the abstract's "plurality of DMAGs" system, or the DMA-server routing-module system, were issued as independent claims). The pre-grant publication US 2009/0325584 A1 has 25 claims with independent claims 1, 11, 17, 20, 25 — but the issued '667 appears to have been amended/renumbered relative to that publication (e.g., issued claim 10 corresponds to publication claim 11, and issued claim 14 does not match publication claim 25). Anyone relying on the exact issued independent-claim set should pull the granted patent's claims directly from USPTO PatentCenter/Patent Public Search.
4. Motorola covenant scope: The Google assignment record associates the 2012-02-21 Motorola Solutions "covenant not to sue" with this family, while the Mondaq litigation commentary attributes a Motorola covenant to the '988 patent. I could not definitively resolve which patent(s) the covenant covered.
5. No CAFC 2026 docket found for this patent; absence of results is not proof of absence, but nothing surfaced linking the '667 to a Federal Circuit appeal in 2026.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 8340667. Let me search multiple sources.

Let me confirm the specific case details and check for any other cases.

Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. 8,340,667 (the "'667 Patent")

Bottom line: The '667 Patent ("System and method to control wireless communications," Lemko Corporation, inventor ShaoWei Pan, filed 2008‑06‑26, granted 2012‑12‑25) is, as far as I can confirm, currently asserted in only one active district‑court case: Lemko Corp. v. AT&T in the Eastern District of Texas. It is not asserted in Lemko's separate suit against Microsoft/Affirmed Networks. I found no IPR or other post‑grant proceeding specifically targeting the '667 Patent.

Note on sourcing/caveats up front: my findings below are drawn from the Google Patents litigation flags for US‑8,340,667, Justia dockets, the RPX case analysis, PTAB filings (via PTACTS), and Law360 headlines. I could not independently pull the PACER docket for every matter, so defendant/naming details should be treated as reported rather than court‑verified.

1. Lemko Corporation v. AT&T (and AT&T subsidiaries)

2. Lemko Corporation v. Microsoft Corporation and Affirmed Networks, Inc. — '667 Patent NOT asserted

This case is relevant background (same patent family, same owner, common technical issues) but is not a case involving the '667 Patent.

3. Motorola, Inc. v. Lemko Corp., et al. — ownership dispute (related, not an infringement case on '667)

Post‑grant proceedings (IPRs) — none found on the '667 Patent

I identified IPR activity against Lemko patents, but none specifically challenging U.S. 8,340,667:

• IPR2023‑00530 — Microsoft v. Lemko, targeting the '763 patent (Board declined institution; not appealed).
• IPR2023‑00531 — Microsoft/Affirmed v. Lemko, targeting the '988 patent; Final Written Decision Sept. 10, 2024; appealed by Lemko to the Federal Circuit. Law360 (April 10, 2026) reports Lemko lost its bid to revive claims — but that ruling concerns the '988‑family patent, not the '667 Patent.
• IPR2025‑01142 — concerning the '990 patent (sibling of '667 in the AT&T set); Lemko sought discretionary denial.

If you need only matters in which the '667 Patent itself is asserted, the operative answer is Lemko v. AT&T, 2:25‑cv‑00305 (E.D. Tex.), filed March 17, 2025, still pending.

Things I could not confirm

• No filing date or outcome is reported for 2:25‑cv‑00305 beyond the complaint stage — no claim construction, summary judgment, trial, or settlement data was found.
• I found no evidence that the '667 Patent has ever been the subject of a Federal Circuit appeal.
• I could not verify whether '667 was among the "eight patents/ten applications" in the Motorola ownership case; that requires the underlying exhibit list, which I did not retrieve.
• Some PTAB briefing excerpts reference both "Petitioner AT&T" and "Petitioner Microsoft" in a manner that appears internally inconsistent across documents; I've flagged IPR2025‑01142 as AT&T‑related but could not fully reconcile the parties from the excerpts alone.

If you'd like, I can attempt to pull the live PACER docket for 2:25‑cv‑00305 to confirm current status, and/or check the USPTO PTAB Patent Trial Tracker for any petition I may have missed against the '667 Patent.

I'll verify the structured block's "no proceedings" signal against live sources before writing the memo.

The first pass surfaced IPRs on other Lemko patents ('988, '990, '763). I need to pin down whether any 2023 Microsoft petition hit the '667 patent specifically.

Now let me check IPR2023-00570's target patent and whether any 2025 petitions (the AT&T/Microsoft family) touch the '667 patent.

Proceedings overview

There are zero AIA trial proceedings on U.S. Patent 8,340,667. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO Open Data Portal, most recent ingest) returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM for this patent, and I could not corroborate any such filing through live search either. So the breakdown is: 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denials.

Bottom line for a defendant: none of the claims of the '667 patent have ever been tested at the PTAB. The patent is untested, not hardened — the two are not the same, and this family's PTAB track record suggests the difference matters. The '667 patent is currently being asserted (Lemko asserts at least exemplary Claim 1 in Lemko Corp. v. AT&T Inc., E.D. Tex. No. 2:25-cv-00305, filed 2025-03-17), while close siblings in the same portfolio have gone through Microsoft/Affirmed IPRs with mixed results — one sibling patent's challenged claims were canceled and affirmed on appeal. No § 315(e)(2) estoppel therefore attaches to any ground against the '667 patent.

No proceedings on US 8,340,667

I am stating this affirmatively rather than filling the template with invented case numbers. What I searched and found:

• The 2023 Microsoft Corp. / Affirmed Networks IPR quartet against Lemko covered U.S. Patents 7,548,763, 7,653,414, 7,855,988, and 9,191,980 — not the '667 patent.
• The 2025 Microsoft + AT&T Services challenge, IPR2025-01142, is directed to U.S. Patent 8,310,990 — not the '667 patent.
• The 2022 N.D. Tex. case (Lemko Corp. v. Microsoft Corp. and Affirmed Networks, Inc., No. 3:22-cv-00363-L-BT) asserted eight Lemko patents — the '763, '414, '988, '409, '111, '980, '478, and '931 — and, per the court's own recitation of the asserted patents, did not include the '667 patent. That is consistent with no IPR ever having been filed against it: the '667 patent was not in the case that generated the IPR wave.

Caveat / open item: the ODP ingest can lag recent filings. If AT&T had filed a timely petition on the '667 patent after being served in the 2025 E.D. Tex. case, the one-year § 315(b) clock would have run out around March 2026, with an institution decision due roughly six months thereafter (i.e., around now). I found no trace of such a petition in search. Before relying on this memo, run a direct party-name and patent-number search in PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptabweb/#/baseSearch) and check the USPTO PTAB decisions page (https://www.uspto.gov/patents/ptab/decisions). If nothing appears there, treat the "no PTAB activity" conclusion as firm.

Adjacent proceedings — sibling patents ONLY (not US 8,340,667)

These are not proceedings on the '667 patent. They contain no proceeding number that may be cited as an IPR of the '667 patent. They are included solely as Pattern Signals.

IPR2023-00531 — Microsoft Corp. and Affirmed Networks, Inc. v. Lemko Corp. (U.S. 7,855,988)

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2023-02-14
• Status: Final Written Decision — appealed; Federal Circuit affirmed the Board (per Law360 telecommunications docket entry dated 2026-04-10: "Lemko Corp. lost its bid to revive claims in a distributed mobile architecture patent after the Federal Circuit backed the Patent Trial and Appeal Board's finding that Microsoft was able to show the claims were invalid").
• Judge panel: Judges Frances L. Ippolito, Brian D. Range, and Scott Raevsky (per the July 11, 2024 oral hearing transcript); the oral argument transcript is available at https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2023-00529/Microsoft_Corporation_v._Lemko_Corp/docs/08-19-2024-Board/Other__Hearing_transcript-40-Other__Hearing_transcript.pdf. The CAFC argument recording is at https://www.courtlistener.com/audio/[104162](/patent/104162)/lemko-corp-v-microsoft-corporation/. (I did not independently confirm the Federal Circuit docket number — I will not guess one.)
• Petition grounds: § 102 anticipation of claims 1, 3–9, and 20 over U.S. Patent Application Publication 2007/0021120 (Flore), supported by 3GPP TS 23.002 v7.1.0. (Challenged-claim list per the Board's institution decision, republished at https://bannerwitcoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/IPR2023-00531.pdf.)
• Institution decision: instituted; Lemko sought Director Review of the institution decision (2023-10-10) and was denied (2023-11-17 per the Docket Alarm docket).
• Final Written Decision: issued 2024-09-10; the challenged claims were held unpatentable. The Board's treatment of "communications information" is what Lemko attacked on appeal. I have the FWD's effect (claims invalid) from the appellate briefing and press, not the FWD text itself; the specific claim-by-claim disposition language should be quoted from the FWD before being relied on.
• Appeal: Lemko's Notice of Appeal filed 2024-09-16; appellant's brief filed 2025-01-29 (available via https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1558047](/patent/1558047)/download-documents). Issues: (1) erroneous construction of "communications information"; (2) failure to construe "distributed." Disposition: affirmed.
• Defensive value for a '667 defendant: not precedential and not estoppel-generating as to '667, but it shows that a Flore-based § 102 theory persuaded a panel against a Lemko "distributed mobile architecture" patent and survived appeal.

IPR2023-00529 — Microsoft Corp. and Affirmed Networks, Inc. v. Lemko Corp. (U.S. 7,653,414)

• Filed: 2023-02-14. Heard jointly with -00531 on 2024-07-11.
• Grounds: § 103 over U.S. 7,395,085 (Mauer) in view of U.S. 8,184,603 (Waylett), attacking a "destination preference register"/"community location register."
• Outcome: per Lemko's appellate brief, Microsoft filed four IPRs, of which "two were denied institution and a third resulted in a Final Written Decision upholding the patentability of all challenged claims" — i.e., Lemko prevailed in this one. I did not independently confirm the exact FWD date.

IPR2023-00530 (U.S. 7,548,763) and IPR2023-00570 (U.S. 9,191,980) — Microsoft Corp. and Affirmed Networks, Inc. v. Lemko Corp.

• Filed: 2023-02-13/14 and 2023-02-15 respectively.
• Status: Institution denied — 2023-09-25 and 2023-09-26 respectively.
• Reasoning of note: in the '763 case, the Board rejected Microsoft's argument that Waylett's "network-in-a-box" necessarily disclosed a "computer readable medium," finding that Waylett's functions "are implemented in hardware" (Decision Denying Institution, IPR2023-00530, Paper 8 at 19). Lemko has since weaponized that holding under § 325(d)/Advanced Bionics against Microsoft's later petitions.
• Defensive value: a '667 defendant attacking a software-vs-hardware "computer readable medium"/"computer readable storage medium" limitation should study this denial before filing.

IPR2025-01142 — Microsoft Corp. and AT&T Services, Inc. v. Lemko Corp. (U.S. 8,310,990)

• Filed: 2025 (Microsoft + AT&T Services, jointly).
• Status: I could not confirm the outcome. Lemko filed a Request for Discretionary Denial (available via the PTAB document portal) in which Lemko states the decision-on-institution deadline in that case is 2026-01-08.
• Relevance to '667: this is the closest structural analogue — the patent asserted as exemplary Claim 1 in the same E.D. Tex. action, challenged by the same defendants. It confirms the defendants in the 2025 case are running IPRs, which makes the absence of a '667 petition conspicuous (and consistent with a § 315(b) timing bar or a strategic choice to lead with other patents).

Strategic summary

Claims CANCELED / SUSTAINED / UNTESTED as to 8,340,667. Every claim of the '667 patent is UNTESTED. Nothing has been canceled, nothing sustained, nothing narrowed by certificate. What has happened is that Lemko asserted exemplary Claim 1 of the '667 patent against AT&T's Private 5G Edge product in E.D. Tex. No. 2:25-cv-00305, alleging that AT&T's servers act as "DMAGs" with HLR/VLR/CLR functionality via UDM/UDR, and that voice traffic from a legacy network is routed to the appropriate DMA server. Because no IPR has touched the '667 patent, you cannot tell a client "claim 1 is dead." You can tell them claim 1 has never been tested, and that the patent's family record cuts both ways.

Estoppel landscape. With no IPR on this patent, § 315(e)(2) estops nobody, as to any ground, on the '667 patent. Estoppel is patent- and claim-specific; Microsoft's losses and wins in the -00529/-00530/-00531/-00570 quartet do not travel to the '667 patent. Practically, that leaves the full § 102/§ 103 field open for a '667 challenge — subject to two qualifications: (1) § 315(b)'s one-year bar, which for a defendant served in the 2025 E.D. Tex. action likely closed in roughly March–April 2026 (verify the service date before planning any petition); and (2) § 325(d) discretionary risk if you re-run Flore, Waylett, or Mauer and a panel views the art as already "presented to the Office" in the sibling cases — the -00530 denial shows the Board has actually credited that argument when Lemko raises it.

Pattern signals. (1) The same petitioner pair (Microsoft Corp. and Affirmed Networks, Inc.; later Microsoft + AT&T Services, Inc.) has filed multiple IPRs against this patent family — the 2023 quartet plus at least the 2025 '990 petition. (2) Lemko is an aggressive PTAB defender: it filed preliminary responses, Director Review requests (2023-10-10, denied 2023-11-17), sur-replies, and took the '988 loss to the Federal Circuit — and lost. (3) No defensive aggregator appears in the chain. The Unified Patents portal merely mirrors the E.D. Tex. litigation data; the petitioners are large operating companies (Microsoft, Affirmed/Microsoft, AT&T), not a Unified-style challenger. (4) Ownership-side signals: a 2012 "covenant not to sue" assignment to Motorola Solutions, Inc. (assignor: Lemko Corporation) and a 2025-03-25 "PATENT SECURITY AGREEMENT" naming Piccadilly Patent Funding LLC, as security holder — i.e., the patent is collateral in a financing arrangement. That is worth pricing into any settlement discussion.

Recommended next steps

1. Confirm the negative directly. Search PTAB E2E by patent number 8,340,667 and by "Lemko Corporation" as patent owner, and re-check in 30 days. If a petition existed, you want to know before the institution decision, not after.
2. If the accused product is the AT&T Private 5G Edge / Azure Private 5G Core architecture, the most valuable prior art in this family is Flore (US 2007/0021120) — it carried a Lemko "distributed mobile architecture" patent to a full invalidation in IPR2023-00531 (affirmed on appeal). Read the -00531 FWD and the Lemko appellate brief together before drafting anything.
3. Do not assume the -00531 win transfers. The '667 claims recite a different combination (first DMAG interfaces + home/visitor/community DMA server registers + forwarding voice traffic to a designated DMA server). Map Flore, Waylett, and Mauer against the '667 claim language independently, and expect Lemko to argue § 325(d) and the hardware/software distinction it won in -00530.
4. Watch IPR2025-01142 ('990 patent). Its institution outcome is the single best read on how this panel treats Lemko's § 325(d) and Fintiv arguments in the AT&T litigation context — the same arguments Lemko would deploy against a '667 petition.
5. If you are past your § 315(b) window, your realistic invalidity path is the district court (§ 282) or an ex parte reexam filed by a third party, not an IPR. Verify the service date now.
6. Quote discipline: before filing anything that characterizes the -00531 FWD, pull the FWD itself from the USPTO PTAB decisions page and quote its disposition at claim level — I have the outcome from appellate briefing and press, not from the FWD text.

I'll ground this in the sources I can actually reach before writing anything up.

Let me pull the financing entity and try to surface the actual assignment reels.

Ownership reconstruction — US 8,340,667 B2

Patent: "System and method to control wireless communications" · App. 12/146,618 · Filed 2008-06-26 · Granted 2012-12-25 · Current assignee of record: Lemko Corp (per Google Patents).

Sourcing caveat — read first. The USPTO Assignment Center record itself did not render in any source I could reach (the Assignment Center UI at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ is not crawlable, and no third-party index exposes the reel/frame numbers for this patent to me). Accordingly I do not have reel/frame numbers or correspondent-of-record fields for any link below, and I will not invent them. The timeline below is built from the Google Patents legal-events record (which mirrors the USPTO assignment filings but suppresses reel/frame and correspondent), cross-checked against the underlying court docket and the asserted-in suit record. Everything labeled "not captured" must be pulled directly from Assignment Center by hand. Link for verification: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html#/searchResults?q=[8340667](/patent/8340667)

Inventors

Unusual patterns / title risk — this is the notable one for this patent family, not the standard "inventors left within 12 months" pattern:

• Pan was a Motorola, Inc. employee from August 1994 (staff engineer → Director of Advanced Technology and Development by ~Sept 2000) and left Motorola in late March 2004, joining Lemko shortly after. Pan had signed a Motorola employment agreement assigning to Motorola "the entire right, title and interest in all my inventions … related to the actual or anticipated business activities of Motorola."
• Motorola sued Lemko and 14 individuals (including Pan) in N.D. Ill. No. 1:08-cv-05427, seeking a declaratory judgment that it was the rightful owner of eight issued patents and ten pending applications filed 2004–2009, plus trade-secret claims. The court denied the Lemko/Pan/Labun summary-judgment motion on 2012-01-10, i.e., the ownership cloud was not cleared by summary judgment — it was cleared commercially. See Motorola, Inc. v. Lemko Corp., No. 08 C 5427 (N.D. Ill. Jan. 10, 2012).
• The '667 was filed 2008-06-26, squarely inside the 2004–2009 window Motorola put at issue. Title to this patent was contested for roughly four years, which is why the 2012 covenant below matters to the chain.
• Co-founder Nicholas Labun is a named inventor on other Lemko patents in this family, but not on the '667.

Original assignee

Lemko Corporation (recorded as "LEMKO, CORPORATION"), Schaumburg, Illinois.

• Shipped a product embodying the claims — yes, and it is documented. Lemko commercialized the "Distributed Mobile Architecture" (DMA) as the Node1 and Node2 product lines and later the X4T20 portable LTE system. Lemko's own IPR briefing asserts it "commercialized the claims of the '990 Patent, in its various patent-practicing products," marked the Node1 units with its patent numbers, and demonstrated them to AT&T in 2013. Deployed customer networks include Bristol Bay Cellular Partnership ("originally deployed Lemko's CDMA based Node1 system in 2005"), TelAlaska Cellular (2009), and a rural broadband service in Cairo, Illinois.
• Primary line of business: telecom network infrastructure / software — virtualized mobile core (EPC/5G core) and edge ("Mobile Edge Computing") networks for rural broadband, private 4G/5G, emergency response and public safety.
• Current status: Operating, private, not dissolved and not in bankruptcy. PitchBook (2025 profile): private, ~25 employees, ~$14.3M raised, "formerly VC-backed," last deal a secondary transaction in Dec 2022; headquartered Schaumburg, IL. The company publicly announced litigation as recently as March/April 2025.
• One adjacent entity note (not the US assignee): the Beijing affiliate Lemko(Beijing) Communication Technology Co., Ltd. (朗锐科（北京）通信技术有限公司) was deregistered 2025-01-16. That is a Chinese operating affiliate being wound down; it does not affect the US assignment chain.

Assignment timeline

Four post-filing/legal-event records appear in the Google Patents mirror of the USPTO assignment record. No reel/frame numbers were retrievable; the record is date-exact and otherwise consistent.

1) 2008-06-26 (executed) / recorded 2008-06-26 — Reel not captured

• Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors Interest (inventor → company)
• Assignor: ShaoWei Pan
• Assignee: Lemko Corporation (LEMKO, CORPORATION)
• Correspondent: not captured (not exposed in the mirror)
• Context: Initial assignment of the inventor's rights to the employer, recorded contemporaneously with the application filing.

2) Executed date not captured / recorded 2012-02-21 — Reel not captured

• Conveyance: Covenant Not to Sue (recorded under the trademark/holdings "reassignment" bucket — not a title transfer)
• Assignor: Lemko Corporation
• Assignee: Motorola Solutions, Inc.
• Correspondent: not captured
• Context: Commercial settlement of Motorola, Inc. v. Lemko Corp. (N.D. Ill. 1:08-cv-05427) — a defensive covenant extinguishing Motorola's ownership/trade-secret claims against the Lemko family, not a sale. Independent corroboration: Mondaq reports "USPTO records indicating that Lemko granted Motorola Solutions a covenant not to sue for infringement of the '988 [a sibling patent] in 2012."

3) Executed date not captured / recorded 2015-05-12 — Reel not captured

• Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors Interest
• Assignor: ShaoWei Pan
• Assignee: Lemko Corporation
• Correspondent: not captured
• Context: Confirmatory / corrective re-recordation — same assignor/assignee pair as link 1, three years post-issuance and three years post-Motorola settlement. Consistent with cleaning title after the ownership challenge closed. (I cannot confirm from the sources available whether this is a duplicate filing or a recordation of an originally unrecorded 2008 instrument.)

4) Executed date not captured / recorded 2025-03-25 — Reel not captured

• Conveyance: Patent Security Agreement (security interest / collateral pledge — not an ownership transfer)
• Assignor: Lemko Corporation
• Assignee: Piccadilly Patent Funding LLC, as Security Holder
• Correspondent: not captured
• Context: Securitization / third-party litigation financing — Lemko pledged the patent as collateral, recorded eight days after it filed Lemko Corp. v. AT&T Inc., No. 2:25-cv-00305 (E.D. Tex., filed 2025-03-17). Piccadilly Patent Funding LLC is tied to Davidson Kempner Capital Management LP (co-listed as a participant in MYW Semitech, LLC v. Apple, No. 1:25-cv-00504) and appears in International Legal Finance Association third-party-litigation-funding disclosure materials — i.e., a litigation funder, not a patent owner.

Note on Google Patents' "Priority to" entries dated 2009-06-02 (CN 200980121864.6, PCT/US2009/045951, etc.): these are foreign/PCT counterparts claiming priority to this application. They are not assignments and are excluded above.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 8340667
    2008 : Application filed
         : Pan assigns rights to Lemko
    2012 : Motorola covenant not to sue
         : Patent issued to Lemko
    2015 : Confirmatory assignment to Lemko
    2025 : Lemko sues AT&T in EDTX
         : Security interest to Piccadilly

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT. The patent has never left the operating assignee. Every title-bearing record (2008-06-26 and 2015-05-12) runs to Lemko Corporation, and Google Patents lists Lemko as both original and current assignee. There is no "IP/Holdings/Ventures" successor in the ownership chain.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT. No assignee in this chain matches the Acacia / Marathon / IV / IPNav / Wi-LAN / Conversant / Vringo / Pendrell / Innovatio / MPHJ / Lumen View / Round Rock / Spangenberg lists. The only third-party entity is Piccadilly Patent Funding LLC (security holder), which is a funder, not an owner, and is not an asserter. Both the Ex Parte case classifier and the private-practice coverage tag Lemko's plaintiff posture as "Operating Company."

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR / NOT DETERMINABLE. The correspondent-of-record field was not exposed in any source I could reach, so I cannot test for recurrence. This is the single most valuable field to pull by hand from Assignment Center for all four records; given that three of the four links involve Lemko as a party, a single repeat prosecution/recording firm across 2008, 2012, 2015 and 2025 would be routine rather than probative — but it should still be captured and compared against the underlying NPE-Network-of-Lawyers name lists.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT. Four records over seventeen years, of which only two are title assignments and both are the same inventor-to-employer pair. There is no chained-LLC sequencing, no shared-address cluster, no <24-month cascade.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — PRESENT IN MODIFIED FORM (financing, not ownership). Recorded 2025-03-25, i.e. 8 days after the 2025-03-17 AT&T complaint naming the '667 (Count X/XI, per the complaint text: "AT&T's indirect infringement of the '667 Patent"). It is a Patent Security Agreement, not an assignment, so it does not create standing or venue for a newly-minted plaintiff — the plaintiff was already Lemko and had been asserting Lemko patents since Feb 2022 (Lemko v. Microsoft/Affirmed Networks, N.D. Tex. 3:22-cv-00363). Read it as litigation-financing collaterally secured on the day the campaign was underway, not as a pre-suit standing-transfer device.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. No Chapter 7/11, no §363 sale. PitchBook shows Lemko as a going concern through Dec 2022 with an active product line and 2025 litigation.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT. Lemko sues in its own name against direct competitors in its own market (AT&T's Private 5G Edge; Microsoft's Affirmed Mobile Core + Azure Stack Edge) — the accusation is copying of technology Lemko showed AT&T under NDA in 2013, not an operating company funding a proxy to attack its own rivals. There is no visible operating-company→NPE handoff, and no SEC filing surfaces one (Lemko is private).

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. (The 2012 Motorola covenant not to sue is defensive in character — it neutralizes a title/adverse-ownership claim — but Motorola is a practising operating company, not a defensive aggregator.)

Extra signal not on your list — third-party litigation funding (TPLF), PRESENT. The 2025-03-25 security agreement to Piccadilly Patent Funding LLC, a Davidson Kempner–linked funding vehicle, is a concrete, recorded indicator that the 2025 AT&T campaign is externally financed. This is the one genuine "monetization" tell in the chain, and it sits on top of an operating-company assertion rather than replacing it.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

The two title-bearing records both run Pan → Lemko Corporation (recorded 2008-06-26 and 2015-05-12), and Google Patents shows Lemko Corp as the current assignee — an entity that indisputably ships patent-practicing product (Node1/Node2/X4T20, deployed at Bristol Bay since 2005 and TelAlaska since 2009) and is suing direct market competitors AT&T and Microsoft in its own name, not a passive licensing shell. The 2012-02-21 Motorola covenant is a defensive settlement record, and the 2025-03-25 Piccadilly entry is a security interest / litigation-financing pledge, not an ownership transfer — so neither converts the chain into an NPE chain, though the Piccadilly pledge is a real TPLF-monedization flag worth watching if title ever does move.

Verification (pull these by hand — I could not): reel/frame and correspondent-of-record for all four links at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html (search 8340667) and https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ ; litigation docket at https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/Texas%20Eastern%20District%20Court/case/2%3A25-cv-00305 ; case docket https://dockets.justia.com/docket/texas/txedce/2:2025cv00305/[236690](/patent/236690) .

I'll research the prior art citations for US 8,340,667. Let me search multiple sources.

Let me get the specific cited references from Justia and Google Patents.

Let me pull the specific "References Cited" table from Justia and check the Google Patents citation list.

Prior Art Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 8,340,667

0. Patent identification (verified)

This matches the authoritative Google Patents text supplied to me, so the number was not auto-corrected and no "close but wrong" numbers (e.g., 8,340,668) were substituted.

1. Sourcing caveat (read first)

I was not able to pull the verbatim "References Cited" (Box 56) table from USPTO PatentCenter or the Justia "References Cited" grid within the search budget available. What follows is drawn primarily from the Unified Patents patent portal entry for US-8340667-B2 ("Patent Art" list, ~167 items), cross-checked against the Google Patents record. Two consequences:

1. I can present the identifiers, dates, titles and assignees of the cited art, but I cannot certify which items were cited by the examiner vs. by the applicant, nor that the title↔assignee pairings in the portal are perfect. At least one entry below (a 2010 advertising/"monetization platform" publication) looks like a field mismatch and should be treated skeptically.
2. Forward citations ("Cited By") are NOT prior art for § 102. The '667 patent has many forward citations (e.g., US 9,215,098; US 10,750,423; US 11,246,031; US 11,671,893, etc.). These appear throughout the portal but are irrelevant to anticipation and are excluded here.
3. Where I cannot verify a date, I mark it. Interpret all IDs literally.

2. Prior-art references (backward citations)

Dates below are as reported by the portal (they appear to be filing/priority dates, not necessarily grant dates). "Field relevance" is my assessment against the '667 claims.

3. § 102 anticipation analysis (per reference)

Framing. The '667 independent claims are demanding. Claim 1 requires, in a single first DMAG: (a) an interface to a legacy network; (b) an interface to a private IP network; (c) logic to forward voice traffic to a specific DMA server out of a service-provider-designated set; (d) a home DMA server register; and (e) a visitor DMA server register for DMA servers temporarily registered with that DMAG but designated to a second DMAG. Claim 11 is the method counterpart, and the spec discloses further independent embodiments (a DMA-server-side routing method; a multi-DMAG system) that likely map to additional independent claims I could not fully enumerate from the available claim excerpt (claims 1–13 were visible).

Under § 102 a single reference must disclose every element. None of the references I could examine discloses the DMAG-level home/visitor DMA-server register pair. Therefore:

Bottom line on § 102

• No reference I could examine anticipates (fully discloses) claim 1, claim 11, or the other independent claims. The distinctive DMAG-resident home DMA-server register + visitor DMA-server register (designating a second DMAG) combination is absent from every third-party reference.
• The references most likely to have been substantively relied on during prosecution cluster around four third-party themes — (i) wireless telephony/VoIP over a packet network (US 6,795,444; US 6,751,207; US 6,542,497; US 6,791,988); (ii) public/private network interworking & roaming registers (US 7,133,670; US 7,299,039; US 7,424,313; US 6,763,233); (iii) portable/ad-hoc base-station architectures (US 5,623,495); and (iv) routing to VoIP terminals (US 2006/0142011). Together these are obviousness ( § 103) references, not anticipatory art.
• The same-inventor Lemko/Pan family members (US 7,840,230; US 7,486,967; US 7,855,988) appear in the citation set but cannot anticipate, because § 102(a)/(e) require the reference to be "by another."

4. Most relevant prior art (ranked)

1. US 7,424,313 B2 — Public-Land-Mobile-Network / private-wireless-network integrated service network (closest third-party teaching of the "legacy network + private network" dual-interface DMAG concept). § 103, possibly read against cl. 1/11 elements.
2. US 6,795,444 B1 (Ericsson) and US 6,751,207 B1 (Airtouch) — wireless telephony / VoIP over a packet-switched cellular network. § 103 against cl. 11.
3. US 7,133,670 B1 (Sprint) — roaming-agreement database between private and public wireless networks. § 103 against the register/roaming concepts of cl. 1.
4. US 6,791,988 B1 — terminating-call processing in a packet-switched cellular network. § 103 against the terminating-call routing steps.
5. US 2006/0142011 A1 (Nokia) — routing to a VoIP terminal in a mobile system. § 103 against the routing/termination logic.

5. What I could not confirm (stated explicitly)

• The verbatim examiner-cited list from USPTO PatentCenter (the authoritative Box 56) — I did not retrieve it. The table above is the portal's prior-art compilation and should be verified against PatentCenter before being relied on in any filing.
• Whether each item was cited by the examiner vs. by the applicant (IDS) vs. merely aggregated by the portal.
• The full claim set of the '667 patent beyond claims 1–13; I therefore could not map references to every independent claim I suspect exists (DMA-server independent claim; multi-DMAG system claim).
• The truncated EP 0 365 885 B… entry and any items beyond the first ~24 in the portal's list.
• Dates I took from the portal are filing/priority dates as reported, not independently verified grant dates.

If you want, I can attempt to retrieve the USPTO PatentCenter "References Cited" table and the complete claim listing directly so the mapping can be certified, or run the same analysis against the family members (US 9,215,098; WO 2009/158154) whose foreign-search reports may contain additional art.

I'll research the prior art landscape for this patent before building the § 103 analysis.

Let me pull the actual claims of the '667 patent and its face-of-patent references, plus the key IPR art.

Let me retrieve the full claim set of the '667 patent and its face-of-patent references.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 8,340,667 Under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Scope note / caveats up front. I was able to retrieve the full text of claims 1–9 and claim 23 of the '667 patent (claim 23 is the other independent system claim). I could not retrieve the verbatim text of claims 10–22, and I could not pull the complete "References Cited" front page of the '667 patent itself. The analysis below therefore focuses on independent claim 1, dependent claims 2–9, and independent claim 23, and uses the prior art flagged for this patent and its family in the "Patent Art" list on the Google Patents/Unified Patents page (e.g., US 7,840,230; US 7,855,988; US 7,486,967; US 7,548,763; US 2006/0098661; US 8,046,420; US 2009/0271491) plus the art that has actually been litigated against the sibling Lemko patents (Flore/–US 2007/0021120 A1; 3GPP TS 23.002). Where I am inferring rather than quoting a reference, I say so.

I also flag one contradiction with the previously generated litigation section: that section listed IPR2025‑01142 as "AT&T"‑related and noted a party-naming inconsistency in the PTAB excerpts. The more complete petition data I found identifies the petitioners as Microsoft Corporation and AT&T Services, Inc. (filed June 20, 2025, challenging U.S. 8,310,990, on Ground 1 anticipation by Flore). Either way, that IPR does not directly target the '667 patent — but it is highly probative of what the § 103 attack on '667 will look like.

1. Person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA)

A POSITA at the June 26, 2008 priority date would have a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, computer engineering, or computer science (or equivalent) and approximately two or more years of experience in wireless/cellular network architecture and IP telephony; additional experience can substitute for formal education and vice versa. This is the conventional level articulated in the parallel Lemko IPRs (e.g., Dr. Madisetti's declaration in the VoIP‑Pal matter and Dr. Cooklev's in IPR2023‑00531).

2. Key claim terms (construed for this analysis)

(The claim text as printed contains the apparent typo "visitor DMA location"; read literally it is "visitor DMA [servers] that are temporarily registered with the first DMAG and that are designated to communicate via at least the second DMAG.")

3. The prior-art references

Caution: US 7,855,988 and US 8,310,990 (and their '667‑sibling disclosures) were filed after the '667 application (July 14, 2008 vs. June 26, 2008). Unless they carry an earlier priority chain to the 2004–2006 Lemko applications, they are not § 102 prior art against '667; they are best used as obviousness-type double patenting (ODP) references. This is an important boundary and I did not independently verify their priority chains.

4. Grounds of rejection

Ground 1 — Pan '230 in view of Pan '414

• '230 supplies the DMA-server / BTS / private-IP-network architecture and the forwarding of traffic between legacy networks and DMA-served wireless devices.
• '414 supplies the register architecture almost element-for-element: HLR data "provides information related to a community location register at a second distributed mobile architecture system" (community register), plus a second community location register and a visitor location register for "temporarily registered" roaming subscribers — i.e., the home / community / visitor trio of claim 1.

Motivation. Both references are by the same inventor in the same field and address the same problem (rural/low-density coverage; avoiding the >$2M MSC/BSC/HLR/VLR build-out recited in the '667 background). '414's own text points directly to storing HLR data as a community register of another DMA system, which suggests the claimed arrangement. Combining a known gateway/router with a known distributed register set to route calls to roaming subscribers is the "predictable use of prior-art elements according to their established functions" (KSR Int'l v. Teleflex).

Ground 2 — Flore in view of 3GPP TS 23.002 and Pan '230

• Flore teaches the gateway-vs-gateway routing and storage of communications/register information at a first gateway (Inter‑AS Anchor) for a device to be served by a second gateway (SGSN), over a legacy interface.
• 3GPP TS 23.002 provides the HLR/VLR register semantics that Flore's PDP-context/GGSN-emulation is mapped onto (the exact mapping AT&T/Microsoft used against '990).
• '230 supplies the DMA-server/base-transceiver/private-IP edge.

Motivation. Inter-system mobility and legacy interworking were the express design goals in both Flore and the Lemko architecture; 3GPP TS 23.002 supplies the standard register structure, and a POSITA would apply standard register data to a gateway routing between a DMA network and legacy networks to achieve reliable call delivery. This is the ground I would expect a challenger to lead with for '667, because the Board already credited substantially the same Flore mapping against the sibling '988 patent.

Ground 3 — EP 0 708 571 (La Porta) in view of Pan '230 / Pan '414

• La Porta discloses distributed call/connection control and visitor location servers tracking roaming mobiles with direct signalling between servers and base stations in different networks.
• '230 / '414 supply the DMA/BTS/private-IP and register specifics.

Motivation. La Porta is directed to eliminating the need for an MSC to be "anchored for the duration of a call" — the same cost/architecture problem the '667 background decries — so a POSITA seeking to commoditize core-network functions would look to it.

Ground 4 — Flore in view of Pan '414

• Flore supplies the interface/forwarding/gateway-storage elements; '414 supplies the home/community/visitor register set. Same motivation as Ground 2, without depending on 3GPP.

Ground 5 — Anticipation-adjacent (claim 23)

Claim 23 requires a home DMA server register, a visitor DMA server register, and a VLR database. Flore's gateway plus standard HLR/VLR data (3GPP TS 23.002) and '414's express CLR/VLR recitations supply each limitation; framed as § 103 this is a strong, narrow ground.

5. Why a POSITA would combine (Common motivation)

1. Same field and problem. All references address wireless/cellular core-network routing, roaming between networks, and low-cost coverage deployment.
2. Same inventor/family for the Lemko art. '230, '414, '967, '763, and '2006/0098661 share a common specification lineage; combining them is "obvious to try" and, more strongly, the references teach or suggest the combination (e.g., '414's express HLR→community-register linkage).
3. Predictable result. Placing HLR/VLR/CLR data at a gateway and routing legacy-originated voice traffic to an edge server over a private IP network is the ordinary, expected way to deliver calls to a roaming subscriber.
4. Industry pressure / design incentive. The '667 specification itself recites the million-dollar-plus cost of MSC/BSC/HLR-VLR deployments and the 10:1+ urban/rural penetration gap; the AT&T-led 2012 NFV whitepaper is independent evidence that network-function virtualization was an articulated, well-known goal (Lemko's "long-felt need" evidence, which cuts against non-obviousness in part but supports the existence of the incentive).

6. Dependent claims

• Claims 2–5 (determination logic; HLR database; CLR database; VLR database) are the direct implementation of the independent-claim registers and are disclosed by '414 and 3GPP TS 23.002.
• Claim 6 (legacy network = IP/VoIP) and claim 7 (legacy network = wireless data network) are conventional network types recited in the '667 specification and disclosed by Flore/'230; these are also arguably indefinite/functional recitations if not tied to structure.
• Claim 8 (VLR gateway) reads on gateway-based VLR aggregation (La Porta's visitor location servers; '414's distributed VLR).
• Claim 9 (global title to determine carrier from IMSI) is standard SS7/GT functionality (3GPP TS 23.002; ANSI‑41/MAP signaling cited in the '667 specification itself), and a POSITA would recognize GT/IMSI-based carrier lookup as a known technique.

7. Secondary considerations (assessment)

• Long-felt need / failure of others. Lemko's own record (the '988/'990 briefing) emphasizes a long-felt need for low-cost rural coverage and Lemko's role in pre-dating "NFV." This favors the patentee on some claims — but it attaches to the DMA architecture generally, not to the specific register-at-the-gateway limitations of claims 1/23, which the earlier Lemko references ('414) already described. Nexus to the claimed advance is therefore weak.
• Industry praise / adoption (Azure Private 5G Core et al.) post-dates the patent and is tied to accused products, not to the claimed register arrangement.
• Copying has not been established (the AT&T case is at the pleading stage).

8. Additional invalidity theories and risks

• Obviousness-type double patenting is a serious exposure: US 8,046,420 (filed April 22–23, 2008; same inventor, same title) and the '988/'990 family issued from materially the same disclosure. The '990 prosecution already drew an ODP rejection over '988's claims and a terminal disclaimer — a direct precedent for a similar '667 exposure. Note the same-inventor status also defeats § 102(e) treatment of US 2009/0271491, so this art belongs in an ODP theory rather than a § 103 ground.
• § 112 written-description/indefiniteness risks attach to "logic to forward" (functional without algorithm? arguably fine for a system claim) and to the "designated by a communications service provider" language, which is a business designation rather than a technical limitation and may be attacked as failing to distinguish the art.
• Open items I could not verify: claims 10–22 verbatim; the full References Cited front page; the priority chains of '988/'990 relative to the 2004–2006 Lemko applications. If any of '988/'990 claims earlier priority, they would move from ODP targets to available § 102(e)/§ 103 art and would materially strengthen Grounds 1–2.

Bottom line. Independent claim 1 (and claim 23) is, in my assessment, vulnerable to § 103 over (i) Pan '230 in view of Pan '414, and equally over (ii) Flore in view of 3GPP TS 23.002 and Pan '230, with EP 0 708 571 (La Porta) as an additional secondary reference. The register limitations that distinguish the '667 claims from the rest of the Lemko family are expressly described in Lemko's own earlier '414 patent, and Flore has already been credited by the PTAB against the sibling '988 patent. The strongest independent (non-§ 103) attack is obviousness-type double patenting against the '420/'988 disclosures.

Sources: Google Patents US8340667 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8340667/en; claim text and PDF at https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/40/5c/7f/2ce654a8dc40d3/US8340667.pdf); IPR2023‑00531 FWD (Flore anticipation of '988) and IPR2025‑01142 petition/PO materials (https://ptacts.uspto.gov; https://ai-lab.exparte.com/case/ptab/IPR2025-01142/doc/summary/1); US 2007/0021120 A1 (Flore) (https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2023-00531/Microsoft_Corporation/02-14-2023-Petitioner/Exhibit-1005-Ex_1005____US_Patent_App_Pub_No_20070021120_Flore/); US 7,653,414 file history (https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2023-00529/.../Exhibit-1002); EP 0 708 571 A2 (La Porta) (https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/4a/29/c6/27f834a41d6c19/EP0708571A3.pdf); Unified Patents patent-art list (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-8340667-B2).