US 8593971

I'll search for authoritative information on this patent number, including any litigation or CAFC docket references.

Let me do additional targeted checks for any litigation or CAFC activity tied specifically to this patent number.

US Patent 8,593,971 — Summary

Search scope and caveats

I searched for the specific number 8593971 (and variants "8,593,971" / "US8593971B1"). The authoritative source is the full patent text fetched from Google Patents (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US8593971](/patent/US8593971)/en), which I treat as controlling. I was able to confirm bibliographic data via Google Patents, Justia Patents, and the USPTO PDF hosted on patentimages (https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/a5/f9/11/59e80532e3d9df/US8593971.pdf). I do not have direct query access to USPTO PatentCenter, PACER, or the CAFC docket system through the tools available here — I could only run general web searches. My litigation findings below are therefore limited by that constraint.

Note: The task header states the current date as April 26, 2026, while the retrieval metadata on the source shows a fetch timestamp of September 28, 2026. I mention this only because it affects how you should read the "no 2026 docket activity found" statement.

Bibliographic data (high confidence — consistent across sources)

The 2032 expiration is consistent with filing date + 20 years (2031-01-25) plus the 400-day §154(b) adjustment, landing on 2032-02-29 (2032 is a leap year).

Abstract (verbatim)

"Methods and apparatus according to the invention are directed towards providing apparatus for targeting network problems. Such apparatus may include a database configured to store a workload. The apparatus may also include a transmitter configured to transmit the workload to a CPU included in an ATM via a telecommunications network. The workload may include instructions to (1) execute a script, (2) record an output generated from the execution of the script, and (3) transmit the recorded output via the telecommunications network to a receiver. The apparatus may further include the receiver being configured to receive the transmitted recorded output via the telecommunications network."

Independent claims — plain-language overview

The patent has three independent claims: claim 1 (apparatus), claim 8 (method), and claim 14 (computer-readable medium). A scope note that matters across all three: the patent is titled and described around diagnosing ATM network problems, but the granted independent claims consistently narrow the target device to one internal to the ATM (i.e., a peripheral/module inside the machine), not an external server. This distinction between the specification's broad discussion and the claim language is significant.

Claim 1 — ATM apparatus

An ATM designed to target ATM operational problems, comprising:

• an ATM receiver that receives a "workload" over a telecommunications network; and
• an ATM CPU that executes the workload, where the workload includes instructions to (1) execute a script, (2) record output from the script's execution, and (3) transmit that recorded output back over the telecommunications network to a receiver.

Two required limitations:

• Executing the script includes transmitting an echo request packet to a device that is external to the ATM CPU but internal to the ATM (i.e., an inbound/internal peripheral such as a module inside the same ATM).
• The recorded output includes (a) a measurement of elapsed time between sending the echo request and receiving the reply packet from that device, and (b) any packet loss.

Plainly: the ATM pings its own internal hardware/software components from its CPU, times the round trip, notes packet loss, and reports the results out over the network — rather than a remote technician pinging from an outside machine.

Claim 8 — Method performed by an ATM

A method performed by an ATM (where the ATM has a computer-readable medium with code that, when executed by an ATM processor, targets ATM operational problems), comprising:

• using an ATM receiver to receive a workload over a telecommunications network;
• using an ATM processor to execute a script in the workload, where the script queries one or more characteristics of a network connection that electronically connects the ATM processor to a device external to the ATM processor and internal to the ATM;
• using the ATM processor to make a determination about those network-connection characteristics based on the query; and
• using an ATM transmitter to send, over the telecommunications network, information corresponding to that determination.

Plainly: instead of (or in addition to) ping timing, the ATM runs a script that probes the connection to an internal component, decides something about that connection's characteristics, and reports the determination off-machine.

Claim 14 — Computer-readable medium

A computer-readable medium with code that, when executed by a processor, is configured to target ATM operational problems, the "method" comprising:

• using a database to store a workload;
• using a transmitter to send the workload to an ATM CPU over a telecommunications network, the workload including instructions to (1) send an echo request packet to a device external to the ATM CPU and co-located on the ATM, (2) measure at least the round-trip time and any packet loss between the ATM CPU and that device, and (3) transmit information corresponding to that round-trip time and packet loss from the communication between the ATM and the device; and
• using a receiver to receive the information transmitted from the ATM CPU.

Plainly: this claim is drafted from the perspective of the remote/central side — the system that ships the diagnostic workload to the ATM and collects the resulting round-trip/packet-loss data.

Drafting observation: claim 14 is captioned as a computer-readable medium but its body is written as a "method comprising" steps introduced by "using a…" phrases. I am describing it literally rather than interpreting or correcting it.

Dependent claims — quick map (all depend from an independent claim)

• 2 — telecommunications network is a cable network
• 3 — telecommunications network is an internet connection
• 4 — recorded output further includes minimum, maximum, and mean round-trip time
• 5 — recorded output further includes standard deviation of the mean
• 6 — recorded output further includes a determination of the ATM CPU's connection to the external device
• 7 — external device is an ATM deposit module
• 9 — a network-connection characteristic includes connection speed
• 10 — external device communicates with the ATM processor via USB
• 11 — external device communicates via an application-specific integrated circuit
• 12 — external device is a cash dispenser
• 13 — external device is a keypad

Litigation and CAFC 2026 docket check — nothing found for this patent

I could not identify any district court or Federal Circuit matter naming US 8,593,971 as an asserted patent, and no CAFC 2026 docket activity tied to this number.

Important false-positive warning: my searches surfaced several unrelated "971" items that should not be attributed to this patent:

• A 2026 C.D. Cal. opinion (Case No. 8:26-cv-00114-KES, dated July 7, 2026) repeatedly refers to "the '971 Patent," but that is an unrelated navigation-device patent challenged under §101 — not this ATM patent. (https://www.knobbe.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Order-Granding-Motion-to-Dismiss-OVD.pdf)
• US D971,591 S is a design patent (a "portable baby crib backpack"-type item appearing in an N.D. Ill. counterclaim) — a wholly different right.
• "Secure Access, LLC v. Bank of America Corp." references an unrelated '191 patent.
• A 2006 DataTreasury/Bank of America litigation docket appeared in results but concerns check-processing patents, not 8593971.

Given that I cannot query PACER/Docket Navigator directly here, treat this as "no evidence found," not as affirmative proof of zero litigation.

Related family / citation context (informational)

• The patent is a standalone US filing (family ID 49596686); Google Patents lists only the single US application 13/012,876 in the family, with no foreign counterparts.
• It sits alongside other Bank of America ATM-diagnostics filings, including US 8,161,330 (self-service terminal remote diagnostics), US 8,214,290 (self-service terminal reporting), US 8,397,108 (self-service terminal configuration management), and US 8,015,455 — several of which are cited on its face.
• Notable cited prior art includes US 2010/0161343 A1 (NCR, obtaining diagnostic data from a remote device), US 7,677,447 B2 (NCR, ATM remote diagnostics and configuration), and US 7,940,685 B1 (AT&T, monitoring a network).
• Documents citing it include US 11,429,941 B2 (Bank of America, "Automated teller machine service tracking") and US 2024/0290182 A1 (Bank of America, ATM transaction resiliency using LoRaWAN).

Confidence statement

• High confidence: all bibliographic fields, the abstract, the claim text, and claim dependency structure, since I have the full granted specification and claims.
• High confidence: no litigation involving this exact patent number surfaced in my searches.
• Cannot confirm with authority: current 2026 maintenance-fee/reassignment status, and whether any unindexed 2026 CAFC or district court docket exists, because I lack direct PACER/PatentCenter/CAFC query access. If you need a definitive litigation and status check, that requires a live docket search against those systems.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 8593971 across patent litigation databases and court sources.

Let me search more specifically on patent litigation databases for this patent number.

Let me search additional litigation databases and the patent's specific litigation history.

Litigation Search Results: US Patent 8,593,971

Bottom line

I found no litigation involving US Patent 8,593,971. Based on the searches I was able to run before hitting my tool-call limit, there is no evidence that this patent has ever been asserted in a U.S. district court, at the Federal Circuit, in an ITC proceeding, or in any post-grant proceeding (IPR/PGR/CBM) as a patent-in-suit. To the extent the record shows anything at all about this patent, it appears only as a cited reference in other patents' prior-art lists — not as an asserted patent.

What I checked and what I found

Patent profile (for context):

• US 8,593,971 B1 — "ATM network response diagnostic snapshot"
• Assignee: Bank of America Corporation (original and current)
• Inventors: Matthew K. Bryant, Nicholas J. Munson, Daniel J. Farinella
• Application No. 13/012,876; filed 2011-01-25; granted 2013-11-26
• Status: Active, adjusted expiration 2032-02-29

Important — near-miss identifiers I deliberately excluded

Several search results contained numbers that look similar but are not US 8,593,971. Per your instruction not to return results for similar numbers, I am flagging these so they are not mistakenly attributed to this patent:

• US 8,592,397 ("the '397 Patent") — asserted in Gilead Sciences, Inc. and Emory University v. Mylan Inc., No. 1:14-cv-99 (N.D. W. Va.). This is a pharmaceutical patent (tenofovir/FTC fixed-dose combination). Different patent, different number.
• US 8,520,897 and US 8,478,036 — asserted in Nantworks, LLC v. Bank of America Corporation, No. 2:20-cv-07872 (C.D. Cal.). Bank of America is a defendant here, but the asserted patents are not the '971 patent.
• "the '971 Patent" in a Central District of California case (No. 8:26-cv-00114-KES) — that patent is a navigation device patent (waypoint/route deviation), an unrelated technology. Different patent.
• US 8,592,397 and other "'397" references in various PTAB petitions — again a different patent number.

Caveats on confidence

• My searches were not exhaustive; I hit the tool-call limit before I could query PACER/RECAP directly, the Unified Patents litigation caselist, Docket Alarm, or run a full CourtListener docket search on the exact number.
• Court records can lag, and a recently filed case (or a sealed complaint) might not surface in general web results.
• I am not stating affirmatively that no litigation exists — only that my searches surfaced none, and that the strongest-looking "hits" were all distinguishable patents with similar numbers.

Recommended next steps to confirm (with a clean run at PACER/RECAP, Docket Alarm, or the Unified Patents litigation caselist): search the exact string "8,593,971" and "8593971" across the Docket Alarm / CourtListener docket databases, and cross-check Bank of America's litigation history and any asserted-patent lists in Nantworks and similar BofA defense matters to ensure the '971 patent was never named as an asserted patent.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file for US 8,593,971: 0. The USPTO Open Data Portal (ODP) structured block returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceedings, and my independent web searches surfaced none — so the breakdown is 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denied, and the bottom line for a defendant is the inverse of the "hardened patent" story and the opposite of the "claims are already dead" story: all 14 claims stand untested at the PTAB, and the patent remains presumptively valid and fully enforceable as issued. You would be the first challenger, which means you get no free ride on someone else's invalidity work — but also no § 315(e) estoppel against you, because no petitioner has ever been estopped.

Proceedings

No AIA trial proceedings exist for this patent. Rather than fabricate docket entries, here is what was actually checked and what the absence means.

What I verified:

• USPTO ODP structured data (canonical): The "PTAB proceedings on file" block supplied with this task states the ODP API returns no AIA trial proceedings for US 8,593,971 as of the most recent ingest. I treat that as authoritative.
• Google Patents family/legal-events page for US8593971B1: the "Cited By" list contains only later-issued patents (e.g., US10332358B1, US10402799B1, US10511717B1, US11429941B2, US20240290182A1) — all patent citations, no PTAB proceeding entries. Google Patents surfaces IPR/PGR/CBM institution and FWD documents under this same page when they exist; none appear.
• Targeted web searches for 8593971 / 8,593,971 combined with IPR, PGR, CBM, "Patent Trial and Appeal Board," and ptacts.uspto.gov returned zero hits tying this patent number to any AIA trial. Every result bearing the string "971" in a PTAB context was a different patent (e.g., IPR2018-01058 on U.S. Pat. 7,359,971 (Intellectual Ventures), CBM2015-00107 on U.S. Pat. 7,062,683) — distinct patents that I am flagging only so you don't mistake them for this one.

What I could not rule out: A petition filed very recently (within roughly the ODP ingest lag window) or a pre-AIA-style challenge filed under a different regime would not necessarily appear in the sources above. Verify directly before relying on this: USPTO PTAB E2E and the PTAB Decisions search, queried on the patent number rather than a proceeding number.

Consequence of the absence — no proceeding-by-proceeding entries:

Strategic summary

Claim status: all claims UNTESTED. Claims 1–7 (the ATM apparatus claims), 8–13 (the method claims), and claim 14 (the computer-readable-medium claim) have never been construed or adjudicated by the PTAB. Nothing has been canceled, disclaimed, or narrowed through post-grant amendment — there is no certificate of correction or reexamination certificate on file that I could identify. The patent issued 2013-11-26 from Application No. 13/012,876 (filed 2011-01-25), carries an adjusted expiration of 2032-02-29 (≈ 400 days of PTA per the face of the patent, and the Google Patents legal-status field corroborates the 2032-02-29 adjusted expiry), and remains Active. Practical takeaway: the full claim set is live, and the family is a single-application family — there is no continuation in a patent family that a challenger could use to "design around" a canceled claim by pointing at a sibling.

Estoppel landscape: clean slate. Because no petitioner has ever filed, there is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel binding anyone on any ground, and no IPR-driven claim construction or institution-stage reasoning that a defendant could borrow. Conversely, you get no estoppel benefit either — you cannot argue "a prior IPR petitioner already raised and lost on this art" to preempt a plaintiff's rebuttal. Every § 102/§ 103 combination you can find is fair game, and any estoppel analysis you run should start from scratch. The prior art of record is unusually thick, however — the patent cites roughly 118–128 references (the ODP/Google listings include multiple Diebold fault-monitoring and ATM-diagnostics patents such as US5,984,178, US7,401,264, US7,406,630, US7,641,107; Diebold diagnostic patents US6,953,150, US6,976,622, US7,163,144, US7,334,723, US7,926,712; NCR remote-diagnostics work; and non-patent literature including the "Self-Serviced Car Wash" forum post and NCR Aptra/Gasper Exchange materials). That citation record cuts both ways: it gives you a ready-made starting universe of art, but it also means much of the closest art was already before the examiner and will need to be paired with something new (or paired with a KSR-style rationale the examiner did not consider) to get traction under § 325(d).

Pattern signals: none of the classic warning flags, but also none of the classic defensive-cover flags. There is no evidence the same petitioner filed multiple IPRs on this patent (there are no petitioners at all), no evidence the patent owner has pursued PTAB appeals (there is nothing to appeal), and no defensive aggregator (Unified Patents or similar) in the chain — the patent has been owned since filing by Bank of America Corporation, the original assignee, with inventor assignment recorded 2011-01-25. This is a practicing-entity-held patent, not a monetization asset: it appears in my searches only as a defensive citation inside other patents and as part of BofA's ATM self-service portfolio (see the sibling BofA patents US8,015,455, US8,161,330, US8,214,290, US8,397,108 cited alongside it). That ownership posture is the single most important signal here: patents like this typically get challenged only if and when they are asserted, and there is no public record of assertion of this patent that I could locate. (Note: Nantworks, LLC v. Bank of America Corp., C.D. Cal. No. 2:20-cv-07872, involved Nantworks asserting its own patents against BofA — e.g., U.S. Pat. 8,520,897 — it is not a case asserting 8,593,971 and should not be cited as one.)

Recommended next steps

1. If you are a defendant facing a demand letter citing 8,593,971: you are the first mover. Before drafting an IPR, pull the full prosecution history of Application No. 13/012,876 and run a § 325(d) screen against the ~118–128 cited references — the examiner's citation density suggests the low-hanging art is already of record. Your realistic attack vectors are (a) art not previously considered, combined with the large body of pre-2011 ATM/self-service diagnostics art from Diebold and NCR, or (b) a § 112 or § 101 theory on the apparatus/method claims, which recite generic ATM components (receiver, CPU, modem, deposit module, keypad, cash dispenser) performing ICMP-echo diagnostics — a combination that has drawn Alice/§ 101 attention in analogous ATM-diagnostics claims.
2. Statutory-deadline planning for a new IPR: once you file, the Board must rule on institution within ~6 months (35 U.S.C. § 314(b)) and a Final Written Decision is due within 12 months of institution (§ 316(a)(11), extendable up to 6 months for good cause). Note the § 315(b) one-year bar: if BofA has served you with a complaint alleging infringement of this patent, you have one year from service to file, and that clock will be the binding constraint.
3. Do not rely on this report as the final word on "no proceedings." Confirm on PTAB E2E by searching the patent number (8,593,971) and on the PTAB final-written-decision repository, and re-check the ODP endpoint, because a recently filed petition may post-date the ingest this report is based on. If E2E also returns nothing, treat the absence as a genuine clean slate and cite this document's negative finding — an absence of PTAB activity is itself a signal that the patent has not been worth challenging, which usually means it has not been asserted aggressively.

I'll research the assignment record for US 8593971. Let me start with targeted searches.

Let me dig deeper into assignment records and legal events.

Assignment & Ownership Reconstruction — US 8,593,971 B1

Patent: ATM Network Response Diagnostic Snapshot
Appl. No.: 13/012,876 | Filed: 2011-01-25 | Issued: 2013-11-26
Status: Active; adjusted expiration 2032-02-29 (PTA-adjusted)

Sourcing caveat up front. I could not directly query the USPTO Assignment Center (https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/) with the tools available; the searches I ran returned no reel/frame data for this patent. The single assignment event I can substantiate comes from the Google Patents legal-events record for US 8,593,971 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8593971/en), which mirrors USPTO assignment data but does not expose reel/frame numbers in that view. I am therefore reporting the chain below without inventing reel/frame identifiers. Verify reel/frame directly at the Assignment Center by patent number before relying on it.

Inventors

Basis for the employer inference: the application was filed 2011-01-25 with Bank of America Corporation as assignee and the inventors executed an assignment of their interest to Bank of America on the same date (Google Patents legal events: “2011-01-25 — Assigned to BANK OF AMERICA … ASSIGNORS: BRYANT, MATTHEW K., FARINELLA, DANIEL J., MUNSON, NICHOLAS J.”). All three live in the Charlotte/Gastonia, NC metro, where BofA is headquartered and where its ATM/self-service engineering function sits. The subject matter (ATM CPU ↔ internal peripheral diagnostics) is squarely BofA in-house engineering work.

Unusual patterns: none determinable. I found no evidence that any inventor departed BofA within 12 months of filing, and no evidence of a portfolio divestiture by BofA. A caution: a search surfaced a sanctions opinion against an attorney named Farinella in an unrelated bankruptcy matter (courtlistener.com). That is a name collision, not a finding — I could not establish any connection between that attorney and inventor Daniel J. Farinella, and I am not treating it as evidence of anything.

Original assignee

Bank of America Corporation, Charlotte, North Carolina.

• Primary line of business: diversified financial services — consumer and commercial banking, wealth management, trading. It operates one of the largest branded ATM fleets in the United States.
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Effectively yes, at the system level. The claims cover an ATM whose CPU receives a remotely transmitted workload, pings an on-board peripheral (e.g., deposit module, cash dispenser, keypad) and reports round-trip time and packet loss. BofA operates the ATM fleet and the downstream diagnostic infrastructure this describes, and — importantly — BofA’s own virtual patent marking page lists 8,593,971 among patents asserted against its products (https://www.bankofamerica.com/company/patents/). A company only adds a patent to its § 287(a) marking list if it regards that patent as covering something it ships. That is affirmative evidence of use, not a licensing posture.
• Current status: Operating. Not acquired, not in bankruptcy, no dissolution event found.

Note on a false positive I encountered: a search result tied to the Google Patents page for US 2003/0078039 (“Method of providing information,” an NCR document) surfaced owner-name entries reading NCR ATLEOS CORPORATION, NCR VOYIX CORPORATION, CARDTRONICS USA, LLC, and BANK OF AMERICA, N.A., AS ADMINISTRATIVE AGENT (dated 2023-10-16). Those legal events belong to the NCR document, not to US 8,593,971 — the NCR patent appears on our patent only because it is in our patent’s citation list. I am explicitly not attributing those owner-name events to the 8,593,971 chain.

Assignment timeline

The record contains one assignment event, the original inventor-to-corporate transfer. There are no recorded post-issuance assignments.

• 2011-01-25 (executed) / recorded on or about 2011-01-25 — Reel not exposed in the sources I could reach

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors’ interest (Google Patents legal event: “ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)”)
  • Assignor: Matthew K. Bryant; Nicholas J. Munson; Daniel J. Farinella (individually)
  • Assignee: Bank of America Corporation, Charlotte, NC
  • Correspondent: Not exposed in the legal-events view; nothing in my sources names a recording attorney or firm. I decline to guess — the correspondent field is the one datum you specifically flagged as high-value, and I cannot supply it reliably. Look it up at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search by patent 8,593,971) to capture it.
  • Context: Standard employment-related assignment of applicant rights to the corporate employer, filed contemporaneously with the application. Not a fire-sale, securitization, or transfer-to-asserter.

• No further recorded conveyance. Google Patents’ current-assignee field still reads “Bank of America Corp” (current) and “Bank of America Corp” (original), with a single reassignment entry for 2011-01-25. No merger, security agreement, change of name, license, or release is recorded against this patent.

If the Assignment Center does in fact contain only this one record — which is what the mirror data indicates — that is itself the finding: the patent has never left Bank of America, and there is no downstream chain to evaluate for NPE behavior.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 8593971
    2011 : Filed by Bank of America
         : Inventors assign rights to Bank of America
    2013 : Patent issued as US 8593971
    2032 : Adjusted expiration Feb 29

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Verdict

Insufficient data — in the specific sense that the record contains only the original assignment, which is the definition the rubric gives for this category.

Justification: the sole recorded event is the 2011-01-25 assignment from inventors Bryant, Munson and Farinella to Bank of America Corporation, and the current-assignee field still reads Bank of America Corp, with adjusted expiration 2032-02-29 and no intervening assignment. That is affirmatively the profile of a patent retained by its original operating-company owner — BofA is an active bank, its § 287(a) virtual marking page lists 8,593,971, and there is no litigation or downstream chain — so no NPE or troll pattern is detectable here, but with a single recorded link there is genuinely no chain to analyze and the correspondent/reel-frame data you weight most heavily is missing from my sources.

To close the remaining gap, pull the record directly at the USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search by patent number 8,593,971) — and capture the reel/frame and correspondent for the 2011-01-25 entry. Cross-check Google Patents legal events at https://patents.google.com/patent/US8593971/en.

Practical read: if you are triaging a large portfolio for divestiture candidates, this patent is the opposite of a fire-sale candidate on the current record — it is still held and still marked by the original corporate owner, which typically means it is not available for acquisition absent a change in BofA’s strategy.

I'll research the key prior-art references cited on the face of US 8,593,971 to ground my anticipation analysis. Let me run several targeted searches.

Let me research the Diebold diagnostic patents and Bank of America's own family references.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 8,593,971 B1 (“ATM network response diagnostic snapshot”)

Scope, method, and one upfront caveat

Sources used. I worked from the authoritative full text you supplied (fetched from https://patents.google.com/patent/US8593971/en), which contains the complete face-citation list — 128 patent citations and 13 non-patent citations. I then ran targeted lookups to confirm the disclosure content and dates of the most relevant references (NCR US 7,677,447; NCR US 2010/0161343 A1; AT&T US 7,940,685; Avaya US 7,417,991; the Diebold diagnostic family, e.g., US 7,445,144).

Caveat on “search the USPTO database.” I do not have live, direct query access to USPTO PatentCenter/PAIR or the examiner’s search history through my available tools — I can run general web searches (which surface Google Patents, Espacenet, FreePatentsOnline, uspto.report, and USPTO-hosted patentimages PDFs). So this is best characterized as a face-of-the-patent citation analysis grounded in the USPTO/Google Patents record, not a fresh examiner-style database search. I flag wherever I could not retrieve a reference’s full disclosure text and therefore cannot state its content with high confidence.

Critical framing point on “anticipation.” Under 35 U.S.C. § 102, a reference anticipates only if it discloses every limitation of the claim, arranged as in the claim, in a single reference. This matters enormously here: because all 14 claims trace to one of three independent claims (1, 8, or 14), a reference cannot anticipate a dependent claim unless it also discloses all limitations of its parent independent claim. As shown below, no cited reference discloses the signature limitation of claims 1/14 — an echo request packet sent by the ATM CPU to a device that is external to the CPU but internal to the same ATM, with round-trip time and packet loss recorded. Consequently, in my assessment no cited reference fully anticipates the independent claims, and by extension the dependent claims. The cited art is properly characterized as §103 obviousness art, with the closest §102 exposure being partial and concentrated on claim 8, which omits the echo/RTT/packet-loss limitations.

The claim limitations that must be met (the anticipation yardstick)

Two things drive everything below: (i) the target is an internal peripheral/module of the ATM (not a remote host), and (ii) the mechanism is echo/ping + RTT + packet loss (claims 1, 14) or at least a connection-characteristic query (claim 8).

Tier 1 — The most relevant prior art (detailed profiles)

1. US 7,677,447 B2 — NCR Corp., “Method and system for automated teller machine remote diagnostics and configuration”

• Full citation / dates: US 7,677,447 B2; App. 11/512,008; filed 2006-08-29; granted 2010-03-16. Same matter published as US 2008/0121692 A1. (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7677447)
• Disclosure: ATMs are networked to a host computer (Internet/ADSL, LAN/branch controller, dial-up, leased line). The ATM outputs state messages indicative of the functional status of its hardware and software modules, and receives/interpret XML-based configuration messages that contain instructions for performing one or more diagnostic routines, which the ATM then performs. The ATM can alter its own operations based on the messages.
• §102 mapping:
  • Claim 8 — best candidate for partial §102 exposure. Elements (a) receiver gets messages over a network, (b) script/routine that queries the status of internal hardware/software modules, and (d) reporting/altering operations are all present. The gap is the specific phrasing “characteristics of a network connection”; NCR frames this as module state/functional status, not link characteristics, so I would call this arguable, not clean, anticipation.
  • Claims 1, 14 — not anticipated: no echo request packet, no RTT measurement, no packet loss.
• Bottom line: Strongest single-reference §102 candidate against claim 8, and strong §103 art against claims 1/14. It is the most-cited closest-art reference in the ATM remote-diagnostics space.

2. US 2010/0161343 A1 — NCR Corp., “Method and system of obtaining diagnostic data from a device at a remote location” (later granted as US 9,177,272 B2)

• Full citation / dates: US 2010/0161343 A1; App. filed 2008-12-23; published 2010-06-24; granted as US 9,177,272 B2 (2015-11-03). (https://patents.google.com/patent/US20100161343A1/en; PDF: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/89/6c/4c/15aa3e179a58b3/US20100161343A1.pdf)
• Disclosure: A service server at a remote location formats action requests, transmits them to a customer server co-located with the ATM; the customer server validates the request against a restriction set, controls the ATM to perform the action (device log, communications log, software sequence, system log, security log, application log, summary/detailed module data), and transmits the resulting diagnostic data back to the service server.
• §102 mapping:
  • Claim 14 — maps well to the “transmit a request to the ATM… receive information back” architecture, but the target is the ATM as a whole via an external server, and there is no echo request / RTT / packet-loss step. Not anticipating.
  • Claim 8 — the queried device is external to the ATM (the service server), so the “internal to the ATM” limitation is missing. Not anticipating.
  • Claim 1 — not anticipating.
• Bottom line: Excellent §103 art for the “remote workload/action-request → ATM gathers diagnostics → return over network” concept; not §102 anticipation of any claim.

3. Diebold diagnostic family — US 6,976,622 B1 (and continuations US 7,163,144 B1; US 6,953,150 B2; US 7,334,723 B2; US 7,926,712 B2; US 7,445,144 B2)

• Full citation / dates: US 6,976,622 B1 — filed 2002-08-05, granted 2005-12-20; US 7,163,144 B1 — granted 2007-01-16; US 6,953,150 B2 — granted 2005-10-11; US 7,334,723 B2 — granted 2008-02-26; US 7,926,712 B2 — granted 2011-04-19; US 7,445,144 B2 (Schlabach et al., “Cash dispensing automated banking machine diagnostic system and method”) — filed 2005-05-23, granted 2008-11-04 (PDF: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/c0/08/3c/a85776999c135b/US7445144.pdf).
• Disclosure (confirmed for ’144): An automated banking machine with a cash dispenser; a portable diagnostic article enables the controller to access stored diagnostic data and causes the computer to gather data concerning the banking machine and record it; the machine exposes module self-tests and commands (e.g., an “Advanced Function Dispenser … Generate Engineering Data (DAQ) Test”) and per-module status tables (receipt printer, consumer keypad, intelligent depository module, card R/W, touch screen, etc.).
• §102 mapping:
  • Claim 8 — credible partial §102 candidate: self-testing/querying of internal ATM modules (dispensers, deposit modules, readers) with results gathered and reported is squarely disclosed. Gap remains “characteristics of a network connection” vs. functional self-test.
  • Dependent claims 7 (deposit module) and 12 (cash dispenser) — these references expressly disclose diagnostics on deposit/currency modules, so they are the natural §103 (and possibly §102, if the parent’s elements were otherwise met) art for those limitations.
  • Claims 1, 14 — not anticipated (no echo/RTT/packet loss).
• Bottom line: The classic ATM internal-module diagnostic art; most relevant to claim 8 and to the “which peripheral” dependent claims.

4. US 5,984,178 A — Diebold, “Fault monitoring and notification system for automated banking machines” (+ US 7,401,264; US 7,406,630; US 7,641,107)

• Full citation / dates: US 5,984,178 A; filed 1996-11-29; granted 1999-11-16. Later members of the same family granted 2008–2010.
• Disclosure: ATM fault monitoring with remote notification of faults to a central system.
• §102 mapping: Relevant to claim 8’s “determination … transmit information corresponding to the determination” and to claim 1’s remote-reporting element, but it is fault-monitoring/notification rather than connection-characteristic probing, and has no echo/RTT/packet loss. Not anticipating; §103 background art.

5. BofA’s own family — US 8,161,330 B1; US 8,214,290 B1; US 8,397,108 B1; US 8,015,455 B1

• Full citation / dates: All four filed 2009-04-30 (Bank of America): US 8,161,330 B1 (granted 2012-04-17, “Self-service terminal remote diagnostics”); US 8,214,290 B1 (granted 2012-07-03, “Self-service terminal reporting”); US 8,397,108 B1 (granted 2013-03-12, “Self-service terminal configuration management”); US 8,015,455 B1 (granted 2011-09-06).
• Why these matter most structurally: They are commonly assigned to Bank of America and were filed ~20 months before the ’971 application (2011-01-25), so they are candidate §102(e) prior art (patents granted on earlier-filed US applications) and, more importantly, they are the closest art for the “ship a workload/instructions to a self-service terminal and collect results” architecture that appears in claims 1/8/14.
• §102 mapping: Because they share the “remote diagnostics/reporting/configuration to a terminal” architecture, they are the strongest §103 art and a plausible §102(e) source for the workload-transmission and result-return elements of claims 1/14 and for claim 8. However — I could not retrieve their full claim/specification text in this session, so I cannot confirm whether any of them discloses the echo-request-to-internal-device + RTT + packet-loss combination. Treat the §102 statement here as unverified.
• Drafting note worth flagging: The ’971 examiner had this same-assignee cluster in front of them (all four appear in the citation list), which supports the inference that the ’971 independent claims were allowed specifically over the “echo/ping a device internal to the ATM + RTT/packet loss” limitation.

6. US 7,940,685 B1 — AT&T Intellectual Property II, “Method and apparatus for monitoring a network”

• Full citation / dates: US 7,940,685 B1; filed 2005-11-16; granted 2011-05-10. (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7940685)
• Disclosure: A monitor (e.g., in a NOC) determines, for packets traversing routers/MDTs, the packet loss rate between routers and the transmission delay between routers.
• §102 mapping: Directly discloses packet loss + delay between network nodes — i.e., the metric types of claims 1/4/5/14. But it is about routers in a provider backbone, not an ATM CPU pinging an internal module; it lacks the ATM limitations. Cannot anticipate claims 1/4/5/14 (which import the ATM/internal-device elements), but is core §103 art for the metrics.

7. US 7,417,991 B1 — Avaya Inc., “Network quality estimation”

• Full citation / dates: US 7,417,991 B1; filed 2003-12-18; granted 2008-08-26. (https://uspto.report/patent/grant/[7417991](/patent/7417991))
• Disclosure: Computes packet-loss bursts, packet re-ordering, and relative alternate-path delay metrics from received-vs-expected sequence numbers; endpoints report metrics at intervals (e.g., every 5 s). (Notably, this reference has itself been relied on in PTAB proceedings as teaching “measured QoS information … jitter, packet loss, … round-trip time.”)
• §102 mapping: Strong for the packet-loss/RTT metric limitations (claims 1, 4, 5, 14), but again VoIP/RTP context, no ATM, so not a full anticipation; §103 art.

8. US 2002/0006115 A1 — Hedayat, “Non-deterministic software delay estimation method and system for packet based data network systems”

• Full citation / dates: US 2002/0006115 A1; filed 2000-05-18; published 2002-01-17.
• Disclosure: Delay/latency estimation for packet networks.
• §102 mapping: Relevant only to the elapsed-time/RTT limitation; no ATM-internal-device target. §103 art only.

9. US 2004/0081102 A1 — General Instrument Corp., “Method for converting an IP measurement protocol packet to a data packet”

• Full citation / dates: US 2004/0081102 A1; filed 2002-10-25; published 2004-04-29.
• Disclosure: Handling of an IP measurement-protocol (probe-like) packet.
• §102 mapping: Touches the echo/measurement-packet concept, but in an IP-network measurement context with no ATM CPU/peripheral relationship. §103 art only.

10. US 6,263,497 B1 — Matsushita, “Remote maintenance method and remote maintenance apparatus”

• Full citation / dates: US 6,263,497 B1; filed 1997-07-31; granted 2001-07-17.
• Disclosure: Remote maintenance of a remote apparatus via a maintenance center (transmitting maintenance instructions/obtaining status remotely).
• §102 mapping: General §103 background for the “transmit instructions to a remote device; receive results” architecture of claims 1/8/14; no ATM-internal echo/RTT/packet-loss. Not anticipating.

11. NCR self-service terminal / “device self-maintenance” set — US 2009/0199044 A1 (Hurrell), US 2009/0199050 A1, US 2009/0199053 A1, US 7,774,649 B2, and EP 2 088 564 A1

• Full citation / dates: Published 2009-08-06 (US 2009/019904x) / 2009-08-12 (EP 2 088 564 A1); US 7,774,649 B2 filed 2008-01-31, granted 2010-08-10.
• Why flagged: The title “Device self-maintenance” (US 2009/0199044 A1) and the companion “Self-service terminal” filings are, on their face, the most topically aligned to claim 8’s “query characteristics of the connection to a device internal to the ATM” — a terminal diagnosing its own attached devices.
• §102 mapping: Potentially relevant to claim 8. I was unable to retrieve the full text in this session, so I am deliberately not asserting a specific disclosure of internal-device connection-characteristic queries, echo requests, RTT, or packet loss. Treat as a lead requiring the full-text pull, not a confirmed §102 hit.

Tier 2 — Remaining cited references, grouped by relevance

Most of the 128 face citations fall into adjacent-but-not-equivalent categories. Below is the practical map (dates per the face citation list).

A. ATM/self-service terminal diagnostics, remote maintenance & reporting (closest field):
US 7,607,671 B2 (NCR, error-state cause, 2004-12-17/2009-10-13); US 2010/0162030 A1 (NCR, initiating corrective action, 2008-12-23/2010-06-24); US 2010/0162050 A1 (Cathro, fault replay, 2008-12-19); US 2008/0116254 A1 (NCR, wireless diagnostic download, 2006-10-24); US 7,522,916 B2 (NCR, providing information, 2001-10-20/2009-04-21); US 2004/0050927 A1 (Nozaki, ATM monitoring system, 2002-07-25); US 7,717,327 B2 (Itautec, self-service banking monitoring, 2003-08-12/2010-05-18); US 2009/0057395 A1 (NCR self-service terminal, 2007-09-05); US 2009/024856 A1 (Sinclair, self-service terminal, 2008-02-08); US 2009/0161580 A1 (Forsyth, self-service terminal, 2007-12-20).
→ §103 art for the workload/diagnostics architecture; no echo/RTT/packet-loss to an internal device.

B. Network performance / QoS / packet loss & delay measurement:
US 2008/0159162 A1 (Morikuni, UPnP latency/delay compensation, 2006-12-28/2008-07-03); US 2008/0168116 A1 (Fujitsu, processing-speed calculation, 2007-01-06/2008-07-10); US 2006/0227766 A1 (Mickle, routing telecom, 2005-04-06); US 7,406,035 B2 (Alcatel-Lucent, redundant protocol processes, 2002-01-24/2008-07-29); US 7,792,045 B1 / US 7,860,016 B1 (EMC, routing-protocol analysis, 2005/2004); US 2010/0042744 A1 (Rahman, alarm correlation for gateway router, 2008-08-18); US 8,407,162 B2 (Ericsson, network management, 2006-12-07/2013-03-26); US 7,937,460 B2 (CA, service-level management, 2003-07-11/2011-05-03); US 6,813,634 B1 (IBM, network fault alerting, 2000-02-03/2004-11-02).
→ Best §103 support for the metric limitations; none has the ATM context.

C. Remote patch/software/firmware distribution (the “workload” concept):
US 2003/0110248 A1 (Ritche, software distribution, 2001-02-08); US 2004/0003266 A1 (Patchlink, offsite patch fingerprinting, 2000-09-22); US 2007/0214215 A1 (Everdream, intelligent patch checker, 2000-05-25); US 2005/0066019 A1 (IBM, autonomic upgrade maintenance, 2003-09-18); US 7,620,948 B1 (Adobe, client-side updating, 2003-08-29/2009-11-17); US 2009/0037284 A1 (First Data, remote firmware update for POS, 2007-07-31); US 7,924,920 B2 (Sharp, driver updates, 2005-04-29/2011-04-05); US 7,484,134 B2 (SAP, internet-based software support, 2004-11-23/2009-01-27); US 2009/0204858 A1 (Fujitsu, server management, 2006-11-27); US 2005/0151987 A1 (Kawaura, program recovery, 2003-12-10); US 7,702,773 B2 (Service Bureau, remote enterprise resource management, 2007-02-26/2010-04-20).
→ §103 art for “transmit instructions/scripts to a remote machine” (claims 1/8/14’s workload element).

D. Failure prediction / health monitoring (adjacent):
US 6,415,189 B1 and US 6,896,179 B2 (IBM, drive/application failure prediction); US 7,526,684 B2 (Seagate, preventive recovery from predicted failure); US 8,316,263 B1 (WD, disk-failure prediction); US 7,681,089 B2 (Dot Hill, redundant storage controller failure analysis); US 2006/0048017 A1 (IBM, application-server health monitoring); US 7,293,201 B2 (Microsoft, active diagnosis and self-healing); US 7,328,376 B2 (Sun, error reporting to diagnostic engines); US 7,861,120 B2 (SAP, runtime error handling); US 2004/0276 … (Deere, agricultural-machine monitoring); US 2002/0091972 A1 (Harris, machine/process fault prediction).
→ Peripheral §103 art at most.

E. Design/architecture background & non-diagnostic ATM art (low relevance):
US 4,650,977 A (IBM, self-service machine); US 5,386,104 A (NCR, ATM user-fraud detection); US 5,214,652 A (IBM, failed-processor continuation); US 5,610,964 A (StorageTek, microcode state save); US 5,805,798 A / US 5,964,831 A (EDS); US 6,917,594 B2 (Intel, protocol selection); US 7,151,780 B1 (Cisco, ATM bisync-to-IP); US 7,873,726 B2 (DW Holdings, terminal adapter); US 6,687,714 B1 (Citicorp, transaction card data); US 7,757,940 B2 (IBM, ATM cash management); US 7,778,937 B2 (IBM, wait-time prediction); US 7,299,993 B1 (Diebold, ATM marketing); US 6,437,692 B1 (Statsignal, remote monitoring); US 8,255,698 B2 (Motorola, context-aware biometric auth); US 2005/0152 … etc.
→ No diagnostic-probe relevance.

F. Watch-list items (identifiers that must not be conflated):

• US 6,574,686 B1 (Lucent) — “Method for overcoming faults in an ATM I/O module and lines connected thereto,” filed 1999-11-20. “ATM” here is Asynchronous Transfer Mode, not automated teller machine. It is not analogous ATM-terminal art despite the acronym. Flagging to prevent mis-mapping.
• US 5,255,182 / US 7,445,144 family overlaps: several Diebold continuation patents recite the same diagnostic disclosure; they are cumulative, not independent, art.

G. Non-patent citations (NPL) on the face — these are not §102 patent art but are relevant §102(b) printed publications if dated pre-2010-01-25: ACI Worldwide “A solution for processing transactions from any endpoint …” (Base24/ATMC); “NCR APTRA Advance NDC”; “NCR Aptra Exchange”; “NCR’s Gasper Exchange enhances ATM management” (Networld Alliance, 2006-12-18); Wikipedia “Patch (computing)” (2009-04-15); European Search Report for GB1007102.5 (2010-08-12); Engadget ING Direct piece (2011-05-02); an ADAM Forum “Self-Serviced Car Wash” post (2008-05-18). The ATM-controller documents are background §103 art for the ATM software environment; the car-wash forum post is, on its face, of marginal relevance.

Cross-cutting §102 conclusion

Overall: The face-cited art clusters into (1) ATM/self-service remote diagnostics (NCR, Diebold, BofA’s own family), (2) generic network QoS/packet-loss/delay measurement (AT&T, Avaya, Hedayat), and (3) remote software/patch distribution. The ’971 independent claims appear to have been allowed over all of it by virtue of the “echo request to a device external to the ATM CPU but internal to the ATM, with RTT and packet loss” limitation — which I could not find in any cited reference. The realistic prior-art risk is therefore §103 obviousness (e.g., Diebold/NCR internal-module diagnostics + AT&T/Avaya packet-loss/RTT measurement), not §102 anticipation.

Confidence & limits:

• High confidence on bibliographic data and on the absence of the signature echo/RTT/packet-loss-to-internal-device limitation in the references whose full text I retrieved (NCR ’447, NCR ’343, Diebold ’144, AT&T ’685, Avaya ’991).
• Lower confidence / unverified on US 2009/0199044 A1 (“Device self-maintenance”), US 2008/0121692 A1, and the BofA siblings (US 8,161,330 / 8,214,290 / 8,397,108 / 8,015,455), for which I could not pull full disclosure text in this session — I have not asserted specific content for them.
• A definitive examiner-style §102/§103 mapping would require the full specification/claims of the unverified references above and a live USPTO PatentCenter/global-dossier pull, which my current tools cannot execute.

I'll ground this obviousness analysis in the actual prior-art references listed on the patent's face (the Citations section), verifying what the key references disclose where I can.

Let me verify a few more of the face-cited references that would carry the measurement and remote-diagnostics elements.

Preliminary notes on scope, dates, and consistency

What I'm analyzing. This section assumes the claim charts and claim-by-claim overview from the previously generated sections and does not repeat them. It addresses only the § 103 question: which combinations of the references appearing on the face of US 8,593,971 would render the claims obvious, and why a POSITA would have combined them.

The prior-art universe I'm restricted to. The page's Prior Art section is the patent's own citation list: 128 patent-citation entries (Google Patents heading "Patent Citations (128)") and 13 non-patent citations (NPLs). Everything below is drawn from that list. Where I could retrieve the cited document's own text, I say so and quote it; where I am working only from title/assignee/date, I label it.

Critical date. Priority and filing are both 2011-01-25. Every reference in the citation list has a priority/publication date before that, so all are available as § 102(a)/(b) or § 102(e) art. Footnote: the prior sections already flagged that the task header date (April 26, 2026) and the source fetch timestamp (September 28, 2026) disagree; that does not affect this analysis, which is a priority-date question.

One new flag versus the prior sections (a drafting inconsistency that matters here). The prior section correctly noted that claims 1 and 8 narrow the target device to one "internal to the ATM." I need to add: claim 14 does not use that phrase. Claim 14 recites a device "external to the ATM CPU and co-located on the ATM." "Co-located on the ATM" is not the same limitation as "internal to the ATM" (a co-located device could be a peripheral mounted on the fascia, a router in the same enclosure, or even a device in the same cabinet footprint). I treat claim 14's limitation literally and separately below, because the obviousness case for claim 14 is measurably easier than for claims 1 and 8.

Part 1 — The prior-art arsenal on the face of the '971 patent, sorted by what the claims actually need

The referenced art naturally divides into four buckets. The § 103 case is built by taking one reference from Bucket A, one from Bucket B, and one from Bucket C.

Bucket A — Push a diagnostic instruction set to an ATM over a network, run it there, ship results back

Bucket B — Diagnose the ATM's own internal hardware/software modules from the machine's controller

Bucket C — The actual measurement technique: echo request, round-trip time, packet loss

Bucket D — Central-side database/transmitter architecture

Covered by Bucket A (NCR '447's host computer and central facility; NCR '343's service server) plus BofA's own US 8,161,330 / US 8,214,290 / US 8,397,108 (all filed 2009-04-30, all cited on the '971's face).

NPLs — and one quality flag

The 13 NPLs include "A solution for processing transactions from any endpoint and upgrading legacy systems to support new delivery channels," ACI Worldwide (Base24, the switch software the '971 specification itself names), NCR APTRA Advance NDC, NCR Aptra Exchange, "NCR's Gasper Exchange enhances ATM management" (Networld Alliance), and the European Search Report for GB1007102.5. The first four are genuinely useful motivation evidence (they document a mature industry practice of centrally managing and re-flashing ATM fleets). The remainder — the "Patch (computing)" Wikipedia page, the Engadget ING Direct piece, and especially the "Self-Serviced Car Wash" ADAM Forum post — are boilerplate IDS residue with no bearing on these claims. I note them so they are not mistaken for substantive art.

Part 2 — The obviousness case for the three independent claims

Ground 1 — Claim 1 is obvious over NCR '447 (US 7,677,447 B2 / US 2008/0121692 A1) in view of UPnP '162 and AT&T '685

Motivation to combine (KSR rationales):

1. Same field, same problem. NCR '447, NCR '343, Diebold '622/'144, AT&T '685 and Avaya '991 all address remote terminal/network fault isolation. NCR '343's own background (read via the US 9,177,272 family text) states the problem in terms almost identical to the '971's: dispatch of field technicians "consumes vast amounts of time and resources," and "a need exists for improved methods for identifying ATM faults."
2. Substitution of a known element for another known element. NCR '447 gets diagnostic information by asking the ATM to run vendor-specific diagnostic routines and report state. Replacing (or supplementing) that with the single most standard network-layer probe — an ICMP echo request — to obtain quantitative link data is a classic KSR substitution of one known technique for another to obtain a predictable improvement.
3. Known technique applied to a known device ready for improvement. The '971 Background itself concedes the technique (ping) is ubiquitous and identifies only the vantage point as the gap. Applying a known measurement technique to an ATM — a device with a CPU and an internal network of addressable peripherals, and one that the art (NCR '447, Diebold) was already instrumenting — is the paradigm KSR "known technique to a known device ready for improvement" rationale.
4. Predictable result, and the result is the point. The output (RTT + loss, per device) is exactly the triage datum that distinguishes "this ATM module/link is bad" from "the network is bad." Both NCR '447 and NCR '343 are aimed at that same triage.
5. Applicant's own program as motivation. BofA's prior US 8,161,330 (self-service terminal remote diagnostics), US 8,214,290 (self-service terminal reporting) and US 8,397,108 (self-service terminal configuration management), all filed 2009-04-30 and all listed on the '971's face, show the same assignee had already built the remote-diagnostics/reporting pipeline. Pushing a probe payload down that pipe is the next obvious step, not an inventive leap.

Ground 2 — Claim 8 is obvious over NCR '447 in view of NCR '343 and Avaya '991 / AT&T '685

Claim 8 replaces the ping-timing element with a broader one: query one or more characteristics of a network connection to an internal device, make a determination, and transmit the determination.

• Receiver/workload — NCR '447 (as above).
• "query one or more characteristics of a network connection that electronically connects the ATM processor to a device external to the ATM processor and internal to the ATM" — NCR '447's "state messages … indicative of the functional status of the hardware and/or software modules of the ATM" are determinations about the connection between the ATM's computer and its own internal modules. For the characteristics dimension (speed/loss/delay), Avaya '991 supplies packet-loss/reordering/delay metrics computed at an endpoint, and AT&T '685 supplies loss-rate and transmission-delay determination between network elements.
• "make a determination … based on the query" — NCR '447 (the state message is the determination); Avaya '991 ("determining packet network performance").
• "transmit … information corresponding to the determination" — NCR '447 (state messages to the host); NCR '343 (service server receives first diagnostic data, issues an action request, and receives second diagnostic data back).

Motivation: identical to Ground 1, plus the specific efficiency rationale that a determination about connection characteristics (not merely a pass/fail state) is what lets a remote technician distinguish a general network outage from an application/device outage — the stated purpose in NCR '343 and in the '971 itself.

Ground 3 — Claim 14 is obvious over NCR '447 + NCR '343 in view of UPnP '162 / AT&T '685

Claim 14 is the central-side claim: database stores workload → transmitter sends it to the ATM CPU over a telecom network → workload includes instructions to send an echo request to a device "external to the ATM CPU and co-located on the ATM," measure round-trip time and packet loss, and transmit that information back → receiver receives it.

This is the easiest of the three to invalidate:

• NCR '447 expressly claims the central side — "a computer coupled to the communication link," plus a "central facility 216 … to store information received from the ATMs" — and describes the host sending diagnostic instructions and collecting results. That is the database/transmitter/receiver triad.
• NCR '343 supplies the "generate an action request at the service location → obtain the requested diagnostic data from the device → receive it back at the service location" loop.
• BofA's own US 8,161,330 / US 8,214,290 supply the same architecture on the applicant's side.
• UPnP '162 and AT&T '685 supply the echo-request/RTT/packet-loss content, exactly as in Ground 1.

And note claim 14's weaker limitation. Claim 14 requires only a device "co-located on the ATM," not one "internal to the ATM." Under that literal reading, even a device in the same cabinet or on the same fascia — including a router, a modem, or an external peripheral physically attached to the machine — satisfies the claim. That reading makes Ground 3 considerably stronger than Grounds 1–2, because it sweeps in art (AT&T '685; NCR '447's LAN-attached peripherals) that would otherwise be distinguishable on the "internal" point.

Part 3 — Dependent claims

Because claims 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13 add only a named device or a named statistic to the independent claims, each rises or falls with its parent; none of them introduces an independently inventive concept.

Part 4 — Complete motivation-to-combine statement (why a POSITA, not a hindsight assembler)

Consolidating, a POSITA in January 2011 — an ATM fleet engineering/support person with a networking background — would have been motivated to make these combinations for at least five independently sufficient reasons:

1. Identical problem statement. NCR '447, NCR '343 and the '971 all open on the same pain: proprietary, dispatch-heavy ATM fault triage. NCR '343's background language ("consumes vast amounts of time and resources"; "a need exists for improved methods for identifying ATM faults") is functionally the '971's stated problem.
2. The applicant's own pipeline existed. US 8,161,330, US 8,214,290 and US 8,397,108 (filed 2009-04-30, cited on the '971's face) already implement remote diagnostics, reporting and configuration management for the same terminals. Sending a probe payload through that existing pipeline is an engineering step, not an invention.
3. The measurement tool is admitted prior art. The '971's Background concedes that ICMP ping measures elapsed time and packet loss. The only question is from where you ping. Relocating a known tool to the machine's own CPU is the textbook KSR "known technique to a known device ready for improvement."
4. The result is predictable and the prediction is the product. RTT and loss figures per internal device give a technician exactly the datum needed to separate ATM-side from network-side faults. Every reference in the combination is chasing that same outcome; there is no unexpected result and no new operational principle.
5. No teaching away. I found no reference in the list that disparages pinging from the terminal, that requires the diagnostic to originate outside the machine, or that otherwise points away from the claimed arrangement. The closest thing to a "teaching away" is the '971's own statement that pinging from a technician's computer doesn't test the ATM's connection — which is an argument for moving the probe, i.e., an argument toward the claims, not away.

Secondary considerations: I found none in the record. Consistently with the prior litigations sections (no litigation located for this number), there is no evidence of commercial success with nexus, no copying, no licensing, no industry praise, and no long-felt-but-unmet need that the art had failed to solve — the art had NCR '447 and NCR '343 squarely on it. Absent such evidence, the KSR-style combination case stands largely unrebutted.

Part 5 — Where the patent could survive, and my confidence levels

For balance, here are the genuine weak points in the § 103 case:

• "Echo request packet … internal to the ATM" is the only real novelty, and it is a technical question whether it works. An ICMP echo request presupposes an IP-addressable node. Many ATM peripherals of the period spoke serial/USB/SSR protocols through module controllers and were not IP endpoints. If no art discloses an IP-capable intra-ATM subnetwork on which a peripheral is ping-addressable, the applicant can argue that the combination is inoperable as claimed (and simultaneously raise a § 112 written-description question — the '971 never explains how an internal USB/ASIC peripheral answers an ICMP echo). Conversely, the case for the patentee is weak if PC-based, Ethernet/USB-based ATM architectures (which the '971's own specification describes) are treated as the POSITA's baseline, because such machines do have IP-capable internal links.
• Passive state messages versus active probing is a real distinction. NCR '447 reports the ATM's own view of module health; the '971 actively injects traffic. That gap is the patentee's best argument for claims 1 and 8 — but it is closed for claims 1/8 by UPnP '162's express ping/RTT teaching and for claim 14 by the broader "co-located on the ATM" language.
• Claim 14's drafting defect. As flagged in the prior sections and again here, claim 14 is captioned as a computer-readable medium but bodies a "method comprising" with "using a…" phrases. I read it literally. If it were construed under § 112 ¶ 6 it could arguably be limited, but its express "co-located on the ATM" language makes it broader than claims 1 and 8, not narrower.

Verification confidence:

• High (quote-level verification): US 7,677,447 B2 / US 2008/0121692 A1; US 2008/0159162 A1 (echo request + PING command + RTT); US 7,417,991 B1; US 7,940,685 B1; US 7,445,144 B2; the Diebold US 9,177,272 family for NCR US 2010/0161343 A1.
• Medium: the Diebold diagnostics family generally (title-level for most members); USB and ASIC mappings (no citation-list reference is expressly ATM+USB or ATM+ASIC); the cable-network dependent claim.
• Low / unverified — flagged, not asserted: US 2002/0006115 A1 (Hedayat) and US 2008/0168116 A1 (Fujitsu). I relied only on their titles and the examiner's citation of them. Confirm their text before using either as a primary reference for claims 4, 5 or 9.
• Not verified at all: whether the examiner's specific reasons for allowance as to the "internal to the ATM" element appear in the file wrapper. I do not have PatentCenter access here, and that would be the first place to look to learn exactly which limitation the examiner relied on.