US 8634888

I'll search for authoritative information on this patent number and any related 2026 litigation.

Now let me search for any 2026 litigation and the actual claim text.

Let me pull the claim language and check for any litigation record.

Search scope and a threshold finding

I searched for the literal identifier 8,634,888 across the sources reachable from this environment (Google Patents, FreePatentsOnline, Justia Patents, Unified Patents portal, USPTO-derived aggregators, and open web/CourtListener-style docket material).

I found no record of any CAFC 2026 appeal or docket involving U.S. Patent 8,634,888. My searches for a 2026 Federal Circuit matter tied to this number returned only unrelated 2026 appeals (e.g., Exelixis v. MSN, SpaceTime3D v. Apple/Google — different patent numbers). I also did not locate any active district-court infringement suit asserting the '888 patent. Note two caveats: (1) I could not query USPTO PatentCenter/PAIR or the CAFC docket system directly (interactive/paywalled), and (2) reported hits for near-identical numbers (e.g., LiTL's 8,612,888) are different patents and were not treated as the '888 patent, per your no-auto-correct rule. So: absence of a 2026 CAFC record in the sources I can reach ≠ proof none exists; I'd verify against PACER/CAFC directly before relying on this.

US 8,634,888 B2 — bibliographic summary

Continuity (from the patent's own Cross-Reference): divisional of 11/963,576 (filed Dec. 21, 2007) → continuation of 10/336,466 (filed Jan. 3, 2003, now U.S. Pat. 7,346,374) → continuation-in-part of 09/979,199 (371(c) date Apr. 29, 2002, now U.S. Pat. 7,257,426) → national stage of PCT/US00/14692 (filed May 26, 2000) → provisional 60/135,979 (May 26, 1999).

Family/related U.S. patents: 7,257,426; 7,346,374; 7,349,722; 7,970,446; and 9,318,017 (from divisional 14/140,173). Sources: Google Patents US8634888, Justia, FreePatentsOnline. Note some aggregators list a current holder as "Johnson Controls Tyco IP Holdings LLP" — that appears to reflect later assignment/aggregator data, not the assignee printed on the granted patent (Johnson Controls Technology Company).

Abstract (verbatim)

"A wireless control system for use in a vehicle and for use with a remote electronic system is provided. The wireless control system includes a transceiver for mounting in the vehicle. The transceiver is configured to communicate according to a Bluetooth communications standard. The transceiver is further configured to provide a control signal to the remote electronic system. The transceiver is also trainable to provide a carrier frequency and control information for the control signal."

Plain-language overview of the claims

Important limitation on what I can state with confidence: several aggregator summaries (e.g., golden wiki) render the abstract text as though it were claim 1, and the issued claim set itself was not included in the full patent text supplied to me (the description I was given is truncated mid-sentence, before the claims). So below I distinguish (a) what is directly supported by the abstract and specification from (b) my inference about claim scope, which should be verified against the granted claims on USPTO PatentCenter/Google Patents before being relied on.

Based on the abstract, the specification's summary passages, and the classification profile, the patent appears to have two families of independent claims:

1. A "wireless control system" / transceiver-side independent claim (apparently claim 1). Likely requires, in substance:

• a transceiver mounted in a vehicle;
• configured to communicate according to a Bluetooth communications standard;
• further configured to provide a control signal to a remote electronic system (e.g., a garage door opener such as the Chamberlain Whisper Drive® unit, or an X10 lighting system — cited in the spec); and
• the transceiver being trainable — i.e., able to learn/provide a carrier frequency and control information (fixed, rolling, or cryptographically-encoded code) for that control signal.
• Plain English: a car-mounted Bluetooth transceiver that doubles as a HomeLink®-style trainable universal remote for home/remote appliances, where the transceiver "learns" the frequency and code of the original handheld transmitter.
• Inference flag: the abstract wording maps closely onto claim 1, but I have not verified punctuation/transitional language ("comprising" vs. "consisting"), and it is possible the independent claim adds limitations not visible in the abstract.

2. A "system for communicating information" independent claim (vehicle-interface variant). Per the Detailed Description's opening:

• a vehicle interface system configured to receive vehicle system information from a vehicle system (via data bus 26; ECM 28, fuel sensor 30, exhaust sensor 32, wheel speed sensor 34, etc.); and
• a trainable transceiver coupled to the vehicle configured to receive that vehicle system information through the vehicle interface system and to wirelessly communicate it to a first electronic device located external to the trainable transceiver (i.e., the transceiver acts as a wireless bridge/pre-pipe between vehicle systems and an external device).
• Plain English: the in-car trainable transceiver is used as a wireless gateway to move vehicle data out to an outside device, and (in related embodiments) to move outside data in.

3. Method counterparts. The disclosure also recites method embodiments: (a) a method for communicating information comprising receiving vehicle system information through a vehicle interface system and wirelessly communicating that information between a trainable transceiver coupled to a vehicle and an external electronic device; and (b) a method for wirelessly transferring information between first and second electronic devices each having a transceiver, at least one positioned within an automobile, the in-automobile transceiver being trainable.

Broader disclosure (likely dependent claims / alternative embodiments, not necessarily separately claimed): Bluetooth piconet/scatternet operation (2.4 GHz ISM, 1600 hops/s, ~10 m at 0 dBm up to ~100 m at 20 dBm), vehicle audio and display integration, text-to-speech, key-fob embodiments, Travelnote® speech recording/playback handshake, cellular-phone linking, GPS/points-of-interest, push services via gas-pump kiosks and drive-through menus, diagnostic/assembly-line applications, and fixed coupling of the trainable transceiver to a vehicle interior element (e.g., overhead console, visor, or instrument panel; see FIGS. 15–17). The spec expressly incorporates by reference U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,091,343, 5,854,593, and 5,708,415 for HomeLink®-type trainable-transceiver construction, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,810,420 (Travelnote®).

Uncertainty / verification notes

• Claims not verbatim-verified: I do not have the literal issued claim text in hand; the claim overview above is derived from the abstract, the specification's summary paragraphs, and classification data. Confirm on Google Patents (Claims tab) or USPTO PatentCenter.
• No 2026 CAFC activity found for this patent in the sources available to me. Treat as "not found," not as "confirmed none."
• Assignee drift: aggregator records show later transfer (e.g., Johnson Controls Tyco IP Holdings LLP). The granted-face assignee is Johnson Controls Technology Company; the 2013-07-01 reassignment record on Google Patents is an inventor-to-assignee assignment, not a transfer to a third party.
• Expiry: anticipated expiration 2020-05-26, status "Expired – Fee Related." Because the term runs from the 1999 priority chain and the patent expired in 2020, a 2026 Federal Circuit appeal on this patent would be unusual — which is consistent with my failure to find one, though it does not by itself rule one out.

I'll search litigation-focused sources for this specific patent number.

Let me run more targeted searches on litigation portals and specific identifiers.

Let me try more specific litigation-database searches.

Litigation search: U.S. Patent No. 8,634,888

Bottom line: I found no known litigation — district court, Federal Circuit, ITC, PTAB, or UPC — involving U.S. Patent No. 8,634,888. I searched across the litigation-specific sources reachable from this environment (Unified Patents litigation/PTAB portal, RPX Insight litigation documents, Docket Alarm PTAB records, CourtListener/RECAP dockets, Justia and FreePatentsOnline patent pages, and open-web queries pairing the number with the patentee and product names). Nothing came back that identifies the '888 patent as a patent-in-suit or as the subject of a validity challenge.

Result table

There is therefore no entry to populate for plaintiff, defendant, jurisdiction, case number, filing date, or outcome. I will not manufacture placeholder case data.

Near-miss identifiers I deliberately excluded (per your no-auto-correct rule)

These all appeared in searches for '888-type numbers and are different patents; none is U.S. 8,634,888:

Closest technology-adjacent matter (NOT a case on the '888 patent)

The only litigation touching the same commercial technology and parties I surfaced is Lear Automotive Dearborn, Inc. v. Johnson Controls, Inc. (E.D. Mich.), the "HomeLink 2" universal-transmitter/KeeLoq dispute over Lear's Koopman rolling-code patents. That case involves the HomeLink trainable-transmitter product line that is the commercial context of the '888 patent, but the patents-in-suit are Lear's Koopman patents (e.g., the '181/'752 family), not U.S. 8,634,888. I am flagging it only so you are not misled if a search engine surfaces it; it should not be reported as litigation of the '888 patent.

Why "no litigation found" is also consistent with the record

• The '888 patent's anticipated expiration is May 26, 2020 (term running from the 1999-05-26 priority chain), and its status is Expired – Fee Related. Damages claims for past infringement can outlive expiry, but assertion activity after 2020 is inherently limited.
• The '888 patent is a divisional in a family that also includes 7,257,426; 7,346,374; 7,349,722; 7,970,446; and 9,318,017. It is possible litigation exists on family siblings rather than on the '888 patent itself; I did not confirm any such case, so I am not asserting one.

Caveats on my confidence

• I could not query PACER, the CAFC docket, USPTO PatentCenter/PAIR, or the ITC EDIS directly (interactive/credentialed systems). My conclusion rests on indexed/aggregator sources reachable here.
• Absence of hits is "not found," not "confirmed none." Docket-level records for older, quietly settled, or voluntarily dismissed cases are frequently not indexed; a district-court case filed in, say, 2014–2018 and dismissed on stipulation could be invisible to these searches.

Recommended verification steps before you rely on this

1. Unified Patents litigation portal — search the exact number at portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation (and the PTAB case list) for any IPR/PGR/CBM naming the '888 patent.
2. RPX Insight and Docket Alarm — number-specific search for district-court and PTAB hits.
3. CourtListener/RECAP — full-text query for "8,634,888" (not "8634888"), since complaints spell the number with commas.
4. PACER and the CAFC docket — direct confirmation, including any appeal arising from a case in the family.
5. USPTO Assignment/PatentCenter — confirm the current owner of record (aggregators show later movement to Johnson Controls Tyco IP Holdings LLP), which determines who could have asserted the patent.

I'll verify the structured "no PTAB proceedings" finding against live sources before concluding, since ODP ingest gaps are a known risk.

Let me run additional targeted checks — Unified Patents portal, Docket Alarm, and any Federal Circuit appeal referencing this patent or its family members.

Let me check the family siblings and related HomeLink/Johnson Controls patents for any PTAB activity, which bears on the estoppel/pattern picture.

Proceedings overview

There are zero AIA trial proceedings on file for U.S. Patent 8,634,888 — no IPR, no PGR, and no CBM — so there is nothing to report at the proceeding level and no breakdown by status to compute. The canonical "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO Open Data Portal) returns an empty set for this patent, and my independent checks across Google Patents, the Unified Patents portal, Docket Alarm PTAB records, USPTO PTAB CTS petition documents, CourtListener/RECAP, and Justia/FreePatentsOnline surfaced no petition, institution decision, Final Written Decision, or appeal naming the '888 patent. Defensive posture: this is not "hardened by surviving IPRs" — it is untested at the PTAB. No claim has ever been canceled, and equally no claim has ever been confirmed. A defendant gets neither the gift of a canceled claim set nor the burden of PTAB-confirmed claims; the entire invalidity case stays open, and no petitioner estoppel exists to constrain anyone.

Important caveat on my confidence: I could not query PTAB E2E, USPTO PatentCenter, or PACER directly. My conclusion rests on indexed/aggregator sources. Treat this as "no proceeding found," not "confirmed none." Given the patent expired in 2020 and its expected assertion window has closed, a late-filed IPR would be unusual — but IPRs can be filed on expired patents to clear past-damages exposure, so expiry alone does not rule one out.

Proceedings on file

No proceedings to list. Per the instruction not to invent proceeding numbers or placeholder data, the table is intentionally empty:

Near-miss "888" identifiers I deliberately excluded (per the no-auto-correct rule)

These appear in web searches for "the '888 patent" but are different patents — none is US 8,634,888:

If a vendor's demand letter or a search engine snippet flags "IPR on the '888 patent," confirm the digits before relying on it — this patent number is a magnet for collisions.

Strategic summary

1. Claim-by-claim status: every claim of the '888 patent is UNTESTED. Because no AIA trial was ever instituted, there are no canceled claims, no sustained claims, and no FWD claim-level findings to build on. Nothing in the PTAB record narrows or strengthens the claims. Any statement that "claims X–Y survived IPR" or "were canceled" for this patent would be fabricated. (For the record, the issued claim set was also not present in the truncated full text supplied to me — see the earlier bibliographic section — so I cannot quote claim numbers from a FWD because no FWD exists, and I do not have the granted claims verbatim. Both gaps should be closed against PTAB E2E and Google Patents' Claims tab before filing anything.)

2. Estoppel landscape: no § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches to anyone. Estoppel is triggered by a petitioner's participation in an IPR that reaches a Final Written Decision. With no IPR and no FWD, no party — and no privy of any party — is estopped from raising § 102/§ 103 grounds in district court or the ITC. Practically, that means the entire prior-art universe is available to a defendant: patents, printed publications, and system/product art and § 112 grounds (which IPR cannot even reach). A defendant is not limited to "grounds that could reasonably have been raised in a prior IPR," because no prior IPR exists. This is the single most favorable structural fact in this report.

3. Pattern signals: none. No petitioner filed even one IPR on this patent, so there is no repeat-petitioner pattern, no defensive-aggregator (e.g., Unified Patents) presence in the chain, and no patent-owner appeal activity to the Federal Circuit — consistent with the earlier owner-focused section, which found no CAFC matter. The technology context (HomeLink®-style trainable transceivers; the specification incorporates U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,091,343, 5,854,593, 5,708,415) is a well-litigated commercial space, so the absence of PTAB challenges is itself informative: it is more consistent with a patent that was not aggressively asserted during its enforceable life than with a patent that was fought and survived. I did not separately confirm IPR activity on family siblings (7,257,426; 7,346,374; 7,349,722; 7,970,446; 9,318,017) — that check should be run, because sibling IPRs bear on estoppel and on the family's overall prior-art posture even though they would not directly cancel '888 claims.

Recommended next steps

• If you are a defendant and the patent is being asserted (or threatened): you have no PTAB-based defense to inherit or rebut, because no PTAB proceeding exists. There is no FWD to cite and no canceled claim to point to. Your validity attack must be built from scratch in court (and can include § 112 and system art that IPR could never reach — a genuine advantage over a patent that had been through IPR and emerged intact).
• Before relying on "no PTAB activity," verify directly:
  1. PTAB E2E / USPTO PTAB CTS — search the exact patent number 8,634,888 for any IPR/PGR/CBM (including any terminated before institution proceeding, which ODP sometimes omits).
  2. USPTO Open Data Portal (ODP) — re-pull the AIA trial proceeding list for the patent to confirm the empty canonical set.
  3. Docket Alarm / Unified Patents portal / RPX Insight — number-specific PTAB search.
  4. CourtListener/RECAP and CAFC docket — search "8,634,888" (with commas) for any appeal, since an appeal could exist even where the PTAB index is silent; note the earlier section already found no 2026 CAFC matter.
  5. Family-level IPR check — run the same search for 7,257,426; 7,346,374; 7,349,722; 7,970,446; 9,318,017.
• Timing note: the '888 patent's anticipated expiration was 2020-05-26 (term from the 1999-05-26 priority chain) and its status is Expired – Fee Related. Even if an IPR were filed now, the practical value is limited to past-damages defenses; there is no forward injunctive or royalty exposure to design around. Treat any current infringement demand predicated on this patent with suspicion as to the accrual window (pre-2020 conduct only) and as to standing/ownership (aggregators show later movement toward "Johnson Controls Tyco IP Holdings LLP," which must be reconciled with the granted-face assignee, Johnson Controls Technology Company).

Bottom line for a defendant: the PTAB record on US 8,634,888 is blank. Do not represent that any claim has been canceled, and do not expect to free-ride on a prior petitioner's work — but also note that the patent is expired, no institution decision has ever endorsed its claims, and no estoppel constrains your art.

I'll research the assignment chain for US 8,634,888 across USPTO assignment records and related sources.

Let me dig into the specific assignment records and the corporate history of the HomeLink business.

Now I have a key corporate event. Let me verify whether the HomeLink IP (including this patent) was formally assigned to Gentex, and pull the specific USPTO assignment records.

Ownership reconstruction — U.S. Patent No. 8,634,888

Method note / limitation up front. I could not query the USPTO Assignment Center (assignmentcenter.uspto.gov) or assignment.uspto.gov interactively from this environment; those are form-driven systems. My reconstruction therefore rests on (a) the authoritative Google Patents record supplied for this patent, which includes the legal-events table, and (b) corroborating secondary sources for the corporate transactions. I did not obtain reel/frame numbers for this specific patent, and I will not invent them. Where the format below asks for a reel/frame that the sources did not expose, I say so.

Inventors

Employer basis: all five are named as assignors to "JOHNSON CONTROLS TECHNOLOGY COMPANY" in the recorded assignment event dated 2013-07-01 on the Google Patents legal-events table for this patent. Dykema and Zeinstra also appear as co-inventors on much older JCI HomeLink trainable-transceiver patents (e.g., US 5,646,701, filed 1995), indicating long-tenured JCI automotive-electronics personnel.

Unusual patterns — flagged:

1. Late-recorded inventor assignment, timed to a divestiture. Application 13/152,914 was filed 2011-06-03, but the inventors' assignment was not recorded until 2013-07-01 — 17 days before JCI announced the HomeLink sale (2013-07-18) and ~3 months before the 2013-09-27 closing. Recording inventor assignments immediately ahead of an asset-sale close is standard chain-of-title diligence, but the timing is a real signal that title was being cleaned up for the sale. (Inference from date proximity; the assignment document itself was not retrieved.)
2. Inventor migration to the buyer's successor line. Steven L. Geerlings (a named '888 inventor) later appears as an inventor on Gentex's own PCT application WO 2015/161122 ("Trainable transceiver and cloud computing system architecture"), filed 2015-04-16. This is consistent with the disclosed fact that JCI sold HomeLink "assets, intellectual property, testing facilities, and certain employees who manage and support the business" to Gentex. It is not evidence of a fire-sale of the '888 patent itself.
3. I found no evidence of inventors departing JCI in a way that suggests a portfolio fire-sale.

Original assignee

Johnson Controls Technology Company (Plymouth, MI) — the assignee named on the granted patent face.

• Primary line of business: IP-holding subsidiary of Johnson Controls, Inc. (NYSE: JCI), whose automotive group supplied vehicle interiors, seating, and automotive electronics. The patented subject matter maps to JCI's HomeLink® vehicle-based trainable transceiver — the system that lets a driver operate garage door openers, gates, entry locks, home lighting, and security systems from the vehicle. HomeLink had been integrated into Gentex auto-dimming mirrors for more than a decade before the 2013 sale.
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Yes — HomeLink is the commercial embodiment of this trainable-transceiver family, and the specification's FIGS. 15–17 (overhead-console/visor-mounted trainable transceiver) track the HomeLink form factor.
• Current status: Johnson Controls, Inc. did not fail; it underwent a series of strategic divestitures. It sold the HomeLink business and all HomeLink intellectual property to Gentex Corporation for ~$700 million, closing 2013-09-27 (announced 2013-07-18). JCI later merged with Tyco International (2016), becoming Johnson Controls International plc (NYSE: JCI), and its remaining IP is held through Johnson Controls Tyco IP Holdings LLP. (Note the earlier-generated sections flag aggregator data showing this entity; that is a corporate-successor / IP-holding designation and is not evidence of an NPE transfer.)

Assignment timeline

Only one assignment is recorded against patent 8,634,888 / application 13/152,914 in the authoritative source supplied:

• 2013-07-01 (recorded) — Reel/Frame: not exposed in the fetched record (Google Patents' legal-events table omits it; I did not retrieve the Assignment Center entry)
  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest (inventor → company)
  • Assignor: Witkowski, Todd R.; Dykema, Kurt A.; Geerlings, Steven L.; Zeinstra, Mark L.; Buege, Robert F.
  • Assignee: Johnson Controls Technology Company
  • Correspondent: not exposed in the sources reached — no basis to name an attorney or firm. Do not infer one.
  • Context: original inventor assignment, recorded late and immediately ahead of the HomeLink divestiture (chain-of-title clean-up, not a third-party transfer).

The following is a corporate-level transaction I verified exists, but could NOT verify covers this patent — treat it as a chain-of-title gap, not a recorded link:

• 2013-09-27 (effective) — Reels 032471/0695 and 032481/0222, with corrective re-recordings at 032514/0564, 032536/0877, 032621/0757, 032664/0688, 032664/0733, 032664/0761
  • Conveyance: Assignment (asset-purchase transfer of the HomeLink IP portfolio)
  • Assignor: Johnson Controls Technology Company
  • Assignee: Gentex Corporation
  • Correspondent: not retrieved. One adjacent data point, expressly not a finding: on an unrelated 2015 JCI assignment (reel 036530/0377, filed by submitter David A. Corley), the correspondent of record was "Johnson Controls, Inc. c/o Fletcher Yoder, P.O. Box 692289, Houston, TX 77269" — JCI's regular outside prosecution firm. A single appearance on an unrelated reel is not the "repeat correspondent" signal.
  • Context: strategic asset sale (HomeLink divestiture, ~$700M), not a fire-sale, securitization, or transfer to an asserter.
  • Critical caveat: the Google Patents legal-events table for US 8,634,888 itself shows no Gentex assignment event, and Google Patents still lists the current assignee as "Johnson Controls Technology Co." I could not confirm from reachable sources whether pending application 13/152,914 was on the schedules of reels 032471/0695 or 032481/0222. It may have been omitted (oversight or deliberate carve-out), or Google's data may simply lag. This is the single most important unresolved question in the chain.

If the Assignment Center returns no records for patent 8,634,888 beyond the 2013-07-01 inventor assignment, the plain reading is that JCI Technology Company remained of record, notwithstanding the corporate HomeLink sale.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 8634888
    1999 : Priority date from provisional
    2011 : Application 13152914 filed by JCI
    2013 : Inventor assignment recorded to JCI
         : HomeLink IP portfolio sold to Gentex
    2014 : Patent US 8634888 issued
    2020 : Anticipated expiration

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Verdict

Insufficient data.

The only assignment recorded against this patent number is the original inventor → Johnson Controls Technology Company assignment recorded 2013-07-01 — precisely the "only the original assignment" case that the rubric classifies as insufficient to reach any NPE conclusion. Every affirmative indicator I could test came back negative: no shell entity, no known asserter, no cascading LLC transfers, no bankruptcy, no defensive aggregator, and no litigation. The one genuinely open question — whether this patent rode along in the Johnson Controls Technology Company → Gentex Corporation HomeLink IP assignment effective 2013-09-27 (reels 032471/0695 and 032481/0222 and their corrective re-recordings) — I could not resolve for this number; Google Patents' legal events for US 8,634,888 show no such event and still name Johnson Controls Technology Company as current assignee. No NPE or patent-troll pattern is present on this record, but because the chain of title downstream of 2013 is unconfirmed for this specific patent, I cannot responsibly pick an "operating-company" verdict either.

Verify at: USPTO Assignment Center → search patent number 8634888 | legacy Assignment Search. To close the gap, pull three items: (1) the reel/frame and correspondent for the 2013-07-01 assignment; (2) the full property schedules of reels 032471/0695 and 032481/0222 to see whether application 13/152,914 (or patent 8,634,888) is listed; and (3) the CAFC/PACER check noted in the earlier litigation section.

I'll research the cited prior art for US 8,634,888 directly from the patent record.

I have the reference lists underway. Let me pull the full cited-reference list and the actual issued claims.

Let me retrieve the complete cited-reference lists from the patent record.

I hit my tool-call budget, so here is the analysis based on the records I was able to retrieve. Where I could not verify something, I say so explicitly rather than filling it in.

Prior art cited in US 8,634,888 — analysis

0. Source and method note (be read first)

• I queried the USPTO-derived records mirrored on Google Patents, Justia Patents, FreePatentsOnline (FPO) and Unified Patents' patent portal, since interactive USPTO PatentCenter/PAIR was not reachable from this environment. These mirrors reproduce USPTO front-page "References Cited" data.
• The specification text supplied to me is truncated mid-sentence in the description and does not include the issued claim set. So per-reference claim mapping below is by limitation and subject matter, with the claim number flagged as inferred. Treat the claim numbers as provisional until verified against the Claims tab on Google Patents or USPTO PatentCenter.
• The full "References Cited" block for this family runs to hundreds of entries (the corresponding sibling prints a list well over 200 U.S. patent numbers plus ~60 foreign documents). I was not able to retrieve and verify every single entry within budget. The list below is the subset I verified from the record, grouped by materiality, plus the items most relevant to the claims. I flag the ones I could not title-verify.

1. Confirming the literal identifier — and excluding look-alikes

The record I pulled is for US 8,634,888 B2, Wireless control system and method, Johnson Controls Technology Company, issued 2014-01-21, app. 13/152,914.

Per the strict no-auto-correct rule, I specifically excluded these numbers that surfaced during searching but are different documents:

2. What the claims cover (for the § 102 mapping)

The abstract is effectively the independent "wireless control system" claim:

"…a transceiver for mounting in the vehicle. The transceiver is configured to communicate according to a Bluetooth communications standard. …further configured to provide a control signal to the remote electronic system. …also trainable to provide a carrier frequency and control information for the control signal."

So the independent claim(s) combine three concepts: (i) an in-vehicle transceiver, (ii) that communicates per Bluetooth, and (iii) that doubles as a trainable universal transmitter (HomeLink®-type) sending a control signal to a remote electronic system. The summary/description also recite "system for communicating information" and method claims (vehicle-interface and PDA/portable-computing-device variants). I map § 102 against concept (iii) for the trainable-transmitter references, concept (ii) for the Bluetooth references, and combination for claim 1.

Critical § 102 dating point (flag before using any of this): the '888 patent claims priority to 1999-05-26 (Prov. 60/135,979) through PCT/US00/14692 → 09/979,199 → the 2003-01-03 CIP (10/336,466) → 2007 divisional. Under § 102, a reference must predate the claim's effective date. Anything published 2000–2009 (Harwood, the Chuey family, the applicant's own 2007–2009 publications, Levin 2009) is not § 102 prior art against 1999-supported claims; it becomes § 102 art only if the relevant limitation relies on new matter added as of the 2003-01-03 CIP date. Whether the Bluetooth-trainable-transceiver subject matter is entitled to 1999 or only to 2003 materially changes the art picture. I flag this as the single most important issue and I could not resolve it without the prosecution history.

3. Verified cited references — the trainable-transmitter / appliance-remote-control core

These are the references most directly aimed at the "trainable … carrier frequency and control information … control signal to a remote electronic system" element.

4. Vehicle-based appliance remote control / vehicle bus (Chuey family — applicant's own)

5. Wireless / Bluetooth / gateway art (aimed at the Bluetooth + vehicle-relay concepts)

6. Applicant's own family / co-pending publications (cited, but generally self-art, not third-party § 102 art)

• US 7,257,426 B2 (Witkowski et al., 2007-08-14); US 7,346,374 B2 (Witkowski et al., 2008-03-18); US 7,349,722 B2 (Witkowski et al., 2008-03-25); US 7,970,446; US 9,318,017 (from divisional 14/140,173) — same inventors, same specification; listed in the continuity data.
• US 2008/0045274 A1, US 2008/0161047 A1 (Witkowski et al.) — published family members.
• US 2007/0061067 A1 (Zeinstra et al., 2007-03-15) — "System and method for using speech recognition with a vehicle control system."
• US 2007/0082706 A1 (Campbell et al., 2007-04-12) — vehicle speech-profile selection.
• US 2007/0233725 A1 (Michmerhuizen et al., 2007-10-04) — text-to-grammar for media files.
• US 2009/0079712 A1 (Levin et al., 2009-03-26) — control knob with force feedback.
• US 2006/0168627 A1 (Zeinstra et al., 2006-07-27) — configuring a wireless communication system in a vehicle.
• US 2006/0070102, 2006/0034481, 2005/0281414, 2005/0239434, 2005/0235327, 2005/0235326 — vehicle entertainment/audio-integration publications (Vitito, Barzegar, Simon, Marlowe).

§ 102 view: because these share inventors/specification with the '888 patent, they are self-art; they do not operate as third-party § 102 anticipation of the same inventive entity, and the post-2000 items are outside the 1999 priority window in any event. They appear primarily as § 102(e)/§ 103 context and as the applicant's own earlier disclosures, not as collateral § 102 art.

7. Pre-1999 U.S. patents in the cited list (number / date / first inventor verified, titles not retrieved)

From the Justia "U.S. Patent References" block for 8634888: 5,896,375 (Dent, 1999-04-20); 5,898,392 (Bambini, 1999-04-27); 5,903,226 (Suman, 1999-05-11); 5,917,907 (Kela, 1999-06-29); 5,926,087 (Busch, 1999-07-20); 5,940,502 (Hirai, 1999-08-17); 5,966,285 (Sellers, 1999-10-12); 5,967,851 (Ozer, 1999-10-19); 5,974,333 (Chen, 1999-10-26); 5,974,334 (Jones, 1999-10-26); 5,982,149 (Shih, 1999-11-09); 5,990,840 (Chang, 1999-11-23); 5,992,807 (Tarulli, 1999-11-30); 5,995,824 (Whitfield, 1999-11-30); 5,995,898 (Tuttle, 1999-11-30); 6,009,320 (Dudley, 1999-12-28); 6,023,241 (Clapper, 2000-02-08); 6,028,537 (Suman, 2000-02-22); 6,031,492 (Griffin, 2000-02-29); 6,038,441 (Slaven, 2000-03-14); 6,052,603 (Kinzalow, 2000-04-18); 6,055,468 (Kaman, 2000-04-25); 6,056,175 (Mieglitz, 2000-05-02); 6,058,184 (Frank, 2000-05-02); 6,058,298 (Stamegna, 2000-05-02); 6,058,319 (Sadler, 2000-05-02); 6,069,558 (Kershaw, 2000-05-30); 6,069,588 (O'Neill, 2000-05-30); 6,076,777 (Farm, 2000-06-20); 6,078,252 (Kulczycki, 2000-06-20); 6,081,237 (Sato, 2000-06-27); 6,085,078 (Stamegna, 2000-07-04); 6,091,343 (Dykema, 2000-07-18); 6,101,403 (Masuda, 2000-08-08); 6,108,566 (Albanese, 2000-08-22); 6,108,567 (Hosonuma, 2000-08-22); 6,122,514 (…, 2000-09-19).

Caveat: for these I verified number, issue date and first inventor only — I did not pull titles or teachings, so I will not assert § 102 anticipation for any of them individually. The ones issued after 1999-05-26 (i.e., the 2000 entries) are § 102 candidates only via their earlier filing dates or via the CIP-date argument in § 2.

8. Foreign patent documents cited (verified from the Justia record)

DE 34 17 956 (1985-11); DE 43 23 144 (1995-01); DE 196 29 408 (1998-01); DE 197 28 083 (1999-02); DE 199 17 169 (2000-11); EP 0 148 714 (1985-07); EP 0 410 698 (1991-01); EP 0 592 163 (1994-04); EP 0 663 749 (1995-07); EP 0 746 129 (1996-12); EP 0 751 043 (1997-01); EP 0 770 749 (1997-02); EP 0 780 992 (1997-06); EP 0 821 429 (1998-01); EP 0 845 392 (1998-06); EP 0 847 899 (1998-06); EP 0 904 984 (1999-03); EP 0 920 170 (1999-06); EP 0 926 648 (1999-06); EP 0 941 532 (1999-09); EP 1 024 626 (2000-08); EP 1 043 179 (2000-10); EP 1 052 834 (2000-11); EP 1 194 903 (2002-04); EP 1 216 900 (2002-06); EP 1 246 414 (2002-10); EP 1 852 836 (2007-11); GB 2 264 613 (1993-09); GB 2 279 852 (1995-01); GB 2 296 157 (1996-06); WO 96/32783; WO 98/04051; WO 98/25248; WO 98/53384; WO 98/53584; WO 98/57824 (all published ≤1998 except EP 1 852 836).

§ 102 view: the pre-1999-05-26 items (all the DE, GB, WO, and EP documents through EP 0 941 532) are § 102(b)/§ 102(a) candidates; the 2000–2007 EP documents are § 102 art only against CIP-dated subject matter. I did not retrieve teachings for these, so I am not assigning them to specific claims.

9. Bottom line on the § 102 question

1. No single cited reference anticipates independent claim 1 as I read it, because claim 1 affirmatively requires Bluetooth, and none of the cited trainable-transmitter references (Suman '226, King '681, Dykema '343/'593) or appliance-remote references (Chuey family) discloses a Bluetooth-compliant in-vehicle transceiver. The realistic posture is § 103 (trainable transmitter art + Bluetooth/wireless-link art) for claim 1, with § 102 applying only to claims that drop the Bluetooth limitation.
2. The strongest § 102-type references are the pre-1999 trainable-transmitter documents: US 5,903,226 (Suman, 1999-05-11) and US 6,556,681 (King; filed 1998-08-26) — both attack the "trainable … carrier frequency and control information" element directly, and King is third-party (Lear) art.
3. US 7,196,278 (Harwood) is the reference most on point for the gateway/vehicle-interface claims, but its 2007 publication date makes it § 102 art only if those claims rely on the 2003 CIP matter.
4. The Chuey and Witkowski family items are same-assignee self-art, useful for § 102(e)/§ 103 context rather than as collateral § 102 anticipation.

10. What I could not verify (please confirm before relying)

• The verbatim issued claim set — the supplied full text is truncated before the claims. All claim-number mappings above are by limitation.
• The complete References Cited list (hundreds of entries); I verified the subset shown.
• Titles/teachings for the pre-1999 U.S. numbers in § 7 and all foreign documents in § 8.
• The effective priority date of the Bluetooth-trainable-transceiver claim language (1999 vs. 2003 CIP) — this governs whether the 2000–2009 references are prior art at all.

Recommended next steps: pull the Claims tab at patents.google.com/patent/US8634888/en and the "References Cited" block there; confirm dates/filings on USPTO PatentCenter for app. 13/152,914; and check the file wrapper for which references the examiner applied under § 102 versus § 103.

I'll start by trying to retrieve the actual "Prior Art"/cited-references section for this patent, since the patent text supplied to me is truncated before the claims and contains no citations list.

The supplied page text does not include a citations list, so let me try to retrieve the actual claims and cited references for this patent from other indexed sources.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 8,634,888 (“Wireless control system and method”)

35 U.S.C. § 103 (pre-AIA), Johnson Controls Technology Co., priority chain from 1999-05-26, filed 2011-06-03, granted 2014-01-21

0. Threshold contradiction I must flag before anything else

The task instruction assumes a "Prior Art section" on this page that the authoritative text supplied to me does not contain. The Google Patents text provided contains only two prior-art-adjacent items:

1. A "Prior art keywords" field: vehicle; information; transceiver; wireless control; wireless.
2. The "Prior art date: 1999-05-26" assumption.

There is no "References Cited," "Patent Citations," or NPL citation list in the supplied text. I cannot build a reference-by-reference § 103 attack from a source that is silent. Rather than fabricate citations, I did two things:

• Substituted the patent's own printed cited-art lists, recovered from its FreePatentsOnline and Justia mirrors (which reproduce the front-page "References Cited" and the IDS/NPL listings): FreePatentsOnline US 8,634,888, Justia US 8,634,888. This is a substitution and is flagged as such — every citation below should be re-verified against the printed patent.
• Used the four "prior art keywords" as the art-scope definition. They confirm that the examiner/system located this disclosure squarely at the intersection of vehicle + wireless + transceiver — i.e., in-vehicle RF remote-control transceivers and in-vehicle wireless data radios. That is precisely where the cited art lives, which is itself probative of the state of the art.

Second contradiction carried forward from the prior sections: the issued claims were not in the supplied text. The element-by-element mapping below uses a reconstructed claim 1 (abstract + § Summary + specification). If the granted claim 1 contains limitations not visible in the abstract, the analysis needs revision. Get the claim set from PatentCenter before relying on this.

1. Governing law and the one threshold question that decides most of the case

The '888 was filed June 3, 2011 — before March 16, 2013 — so pre-AIA §§ 102/103 apply, including pre-AIA § 103(c) and pre-AIA 102(e) prior art.

The decisive threshold issue is the effective filing date of the claims under attack, because the asserted chain contains a continuation-in-part (CIP):

60/135,979 (1999-05-26) → PCT/US00/14692 (2000-05-26) → 09/979,199 → 10/336,466 (2003-01-03, CIP) → 11/963,576 → 13/152,914

• Subject matter disclosed in the 1999 provisional/2000 PCT gets 1999-05-26.
• New matter added by the 2003-01-03 CIP gets only 2003-01-03.

The trainable-transceiver/vehicle-interface subject matter that dominates the '888's abstract (FIGS. 15–17; the vehicle interface system 24 coupled to the trainable transceiver 112; the Bluetooth 10b radio inside the trainable transceiver housing) is the subject matter most plausibly added by the CIP. If it is CIP-only matter, the critical date is 2003-01-03, not 1999-05-26 — and that materially expands the § 102(b) and § 102(e) art available.

Corroborating (but not conclusive) signal: the printed cited-art list includes a large volume of 2004–2009 documents. If the critical date were truly 1999-05-26, most of those would be irrelevant surplusage. Examiner-cited references are not proof of the critical date, but the pattern is consistent with a later effective date for the claims at issue.

Bottom line: the § 103 case is stronger on a 2003-01-03 critical date and weaker (though still viable via 102(a)/102(e) art) on 1999-05-26. Plead it in the alternative.

2. The claim to be tested (reconstructed from the abstract / § Summary)

The '888 abstract is written in claim form (typical for this family). Reconstructed claim 1:

Family context (from sibling claim sets I could retrieve, e.g., US 7,346,374 on Justia) shows the family also claims "system for communicating information" variants requiring a vehicle interface system receiving vehicle system information, and PDA/cellular hands-free variants. Those are addressed in § 5.

Claim 1 is, on its face, an aggregation of four known things: (A) a vehicle-mounted radio, (B) Bluetooth, (C) a remote-control transmitter, (D) a trainable remote-control transmitter. No claim element, as worded, requires the Bluetooth link and the trained control signal to share anything — no shared antenna, no shared die, no shared protocol stack, no interaction between Bluetooth data and the trained code. That framing is fatal in a KSR regime.

3. The prior-art universe (as recovered; partial list — verify)

Group 1 — Vehicle-mounted trainable transceivers (elements A, C, D)

Group 2 — Bluetooth / short-range RF in and around vehicles (element B)

Group 3 — Vehicle-bus-integrated trainable transmitters / gateway (vehicle-interface variants)

Group 4 — Vehicle information / personalization / speech (dependent-claim support)

US 7,173,400 (Cowelchuk et al., vehicle settings/sounds, 2007-01-30); US 7,106,171 (Burgess, keyless command, 2006-09-12); US 7,034,238 (Uleski et al., wireless key fob, 2006-04-25); US 7,113,857 (Ilan et al., handwriting/voice control of vehicle components, 2006-09-26); US 7,049,982 (Sleboda et al., vehicle information display w/ antenna array, 2006-05); US 7,047,039 (Lalley, streaming broadcast from automobiles, 2006-05); US 7,145,507 (Luo et al., GPS vehicle locating, 2006-12); US 2007/0233725 (Michmerhuizen et al., text-to-grammar for media files, 2007-10); US 2009/0079712 (Levin et al., control knob with force feedback, 2009-03). All cited on the '888's face.

Group 5 — The applicant's own family (context only — not § 103 art)

US 7,257,426; US 7,346,374; US 7,349,722; US 7,974,466 (pub. US 2008/0161047); US 2004/0203379 ("Bluetooth transmission of vehicle diagnostic information"); US 2004/0110472; US 2004/0048622; US 2002/0197955; US 2006/0168627 (Zeinstra); US 2007/0061067 (Zeinstra); US 2007/0082706 (Campbell).

Legal flag (pre-AIA § 103(c)): the above are commonly owned by / obligated to Johnson Controls and share inventors (Witkowski, Dykema, Geerlings, Zeinstra, Buege — who are the '888 inventors themselves in several instances). Where they qualify as prior art only under § 102(e)/(f)/(g), they are disqualified from use in a § 103 rejection against the '888. They are usable for obviousness-type double patenting, which is a separate and real exposure (see § 7). Any § 103 theory built on Group 5 is legally defective.

4. The obviousness case against reconstructed claim 1

4.1 Element-by-element

Every element is disclosed. The question is only motivation and predictable result.

4.2 Combination 1 — the core rejection: trainable vehicle transmitter + Bluetooth

Proposed rejection: US 5,854,593 (or US 5,708,415 / US 6,091,343, all incorporated by reference into the patent itself) in view of the Bluetooth Technology Overview (Witkowski, 1999-04-27) / the Bluetooth SIG specification, optionally further in view of US 6,340,928 or US 6,377,825.

Motivations a PHOSITA would have had (MPEP 2143 rationales):

• (A) Known elements combined by known methods → predictable result. Both references are RF transceivers; integrating two RF transceivers into a common control circuit, housing, power source, and vehicle interface is the ordinary work of an automotive electronics engineer. The '888 itself implements the combination as one control circuit 130 / one memory 174 / one RF transceiver 10b inside the trainable transceiver 112 — the very architecture a PHOSITA would arrive at by using a single microcontroller for two radios.
• (D)/(F) Design incentive / market forces. Kennedy, Wang, McCurdy and the 1999 Bluetooth Overview all evidence strong, contemporaneous demand to put short-range wireless links (hands-free telephony, data exchange) into vehicles. Bluetooth's stated design goals — low-cost, low-power, single-chip CMOS, small form factor, ad-hoc/automatic connection — are exactly the properties the '888 spec recites. The Bluetooth Overview NPL (dated before the priority date) supplies this motivation on the face of the patent's own file.
• (C) Known technique improving a similar device in the same way. The vehicle interior module (overhead console / visor / mirror) already housed the trainable transmitter. Adding a Bluetooth chipset there reuses the mounting, power, antenna routing, and console real estate already amortized by US 5,708,415 / US 5,854,593.
• Cost/BOM pressure. The '888's background frames the whole invention around eliminating application-specific cabling and controlling cost. Once cost/cabling is the articulated problem, "put a Bluetooth radio where the other vehicle radio already is" is a predictable, cost-reducing design choice, not an invention.
• No teaching away identified. Nothing in the trainable-transmitter art (260–470 MHz UHF FSK/ASK) teaches away from also providing a 2.4 GHz ISM data radio; different bands, no mutual interference, no shared tuning constraint.

Reasonable expectation of success: high. Bluetooth was a published, standardized, commercially available chipset (single-chip CMOS per the spec); the trainable-transmitter learning techniques were mature and reduced to practice (5,854,593; 6,091,343). A PHOSITA would expect the two-radio module to work.

4.3 Combination 2 — SWAP-CA/HomeRF primary standard variant

HomeRF/Seybold (1998-03-31) + US 5,854,593 / US 6,091,343, optionally + Bluetooth Overview. The '888 spec expressly names SWAP-CA and Bluetooth as interchangeable alternatives ("the specific protocol or standard may be the Bluetooth communications standard or the SWAP-CA specification, or any other suitable wireless communications specification"). An applicant who describes two references as interchangeable alternatives cannot argue that substituting one for the other is non-obvious — that is MPEP 2144.04 / "obvious to try" territory and, more directly, an admission that the protocol choice is a result-effective design choice.

4.4 Combination 3 — the "vehicle interface / vehicle system information" claims

For the sibling "system for communicating information" claims (vehicle interface system 24 receiving vehicle system information from ECM 28 / fuel sensor 30 / exhaust sensor 32 / wheel speed sensor 34, and the trainable transceiver communicating that information to an external device):

US 7,184,941 (Chuey, Bus-based appliance remote control) + US 7,197,278 (Harwood et al., garage-door-opener as communications gateway) + Bluetooth NPL (and/or US 6,377,825).

• Motivation: Chuey already places the trainable remote control on the vehicle data bus — i.e., it already "receives vehicle system information through a vehicle interface system." Harwood already teaches using the in-vehicle garage-door-opener transmitter as a communications gateway to shuttle information between a vehicle hands-free system and an external device. Combining the two (bus-coupled trainable transceiver + gateway function) to move vehicle data outward, and Bluetooth to do it, is a combination of references addressing the same problem (getting vehicle-side data to an external device without cabling) with a predictable result. US 5,661,651 (wireless vehicle parameter monitoring) independently shows transmitting vehicle parameter data over a wireless link.
• Motivation (F): diagnostics and manufacturing-verification value propositions are recited in the '888's own background as the raison d'être; the market pull to eliminate diagnostic cables in service bays and assembly lines supplies the motivation.

4.5 Combination 4 — PDA / portable-device / hands-free claims

US 6,308,083 (King, cellphone integrated with programmable transmitter) + US 6,377,825 (Kennedy, hands-free wireless in vehicle) + US 6,484,040 (Wang, phone↔car hi-fi) + Bluetooth NPL.

King teaches the portable-device-with-trainable-transmitter, and Kennedy/Wang teach the wireless phone↔vehicle-audio link that is the core of the '888's FIGS. 1 and 8 embodiments. Adding the known Trainnote® system (US 5,810,420, incorporated by reference into the '888) as the audio endpoint is a simple substitution of one known vehicle audio interface for another (MPEP 2144.04) — with no new result.

4.6 Combination 5 — key-fob, personalization, TTS, GPS/push dependent claims

5. The strongest counterarguments (so the analysis is not one-sided)

1. The claim requires one transceiver that is both Bluetooth-capable and trainable. The trainable-transmitter references (5,854,593 et al.) are single-band UHF learning transmitters; the Bluetooth references are data radios. A patentee would argue this is a juxtaposition of two independent radios (a "duplication," not a "combination"), citing the line of authority that mere aggregation of separate devices performing separate functions is not obviousness-type combination. Rebuttal: (a) the '888's own architecture uses one control circuit/memory and expressly treats the two functions as modes of one transceiver (transceiver 10b inside trainable transceiver 112), so the references do interact; (b) KSR supplies design-incentive and predictable-variation rationales that cover this exact aggregation; (c) the claim language imposes no structural integration requirement, so the aggregation argument is really an infringement/claim-construction argument, not a validity one.

2. Timing. Bluetooth 1.0 was released July 1999, ~two months after the asserted 1999-05-26 priority date. A patentee will argue the specific standardized Bluetooth protocol was not "prior art" as of May 1999. Rebuttal: the cited NPL "Welcome to the Bluetooth Adopter Site: Technology Overview," April 27, 1999 is one month before the priority date and evidences public disclosure; HomeRF/SWAP-CA (March 1998) is squarely pre-1999; and if the claims' effective date is the 2003-01-03 CIP date, the timing argument evaporates entirely. This is why § 1 matters most.

3. Secondary considerations. No evidence located here of unexpected results, long-felt need, copying, industry praise, or licensing attributable to the claimed combination. Note the nexus problem: HomeLink®'s commercial success predates any Bluetooth integration, so it is unlikely to be probative of the Bluetooth-plus-trainable combination. (No litigation was found on this patent — see the prior sections — so no judicial findings on secondary considerations exist to cite.)

6. Statutory-disclaimer-adjacent issues that also bite

• Pre-AIA § 103(c): several of the most tempting references (all Witkowski/Dykema/Zeinstra/Campbell/Chuey-family documents) are commonly owned by Johnson Controls. Where they are prior art only under § 102(e)/(f)/(g), they cannot be used in a § 103 rejection against the '888. Any obviousness theory must be anchored in third-party art: US 5,854,593/5,708,415/6,091,343 (Prince Corp.), the Bluetooth and HomeRF NPL, King's 6,308,083/6,556,681/6,525,645, McCurdy 6,340,928, Kennedy 6,377,825, Wang 6,484,040, Roddy 6,333,698, Flick 6,320,514. Verify the assignee of each before relying on it — in particular US 7,197,278 (Harwood) and US 7,184,941 (Chuey), which I could not confirm as third-party this pass.
• Obviousness-type double patenting (ODP): the '888 is a divisional of 11/963,576 (issued as US 7,970,446) and sits beside US 7,346,374, US 7,257,426, and US 9,318,017 — all titled "Wireless control system and method," all claiming substantially overlapping subject matter off one priority chain. Group 5 references are fully available for ODP despite § 103(c). If the § 103 case is contested, ODP is the cleaner attack, because it does not require third-party art at all — only that a sibling claim is not patentably distinct.

7. Bottom line

• Claim 1 as reconstructed is very likely obvious over US 5,854,593 (or US 6,091,343 / US 5,708,415) in view of the Bluetooth Technology Overview (1999-04-27) and/or the Bluetooth/HomeRF specifications, with the strongest motivations being (i) reuse of an already-vehicle-mounted, already-funded trainable-transmitter module and location, (ii) Bluetooth's own advertised low-cost/single-chip/low-power/ad-hoc profile, and (iii) the art-recognized demand for hands-free and cable-free in-vehicle data exchange. Adding US 6,340,928 (Bluetooth in vehicles) or US 6,377,825 (hands-free wireless in vehicle) makes the motivation express rather than implicit.
• The vehicle-interface, PDA, key-fob, TTS and location-based dependent subject matter is also obvious over the combinations in § 4.4–4.6, nearly all of them cited on the patent's own face.
• The two things that could defeat this analysis are (1) the actual issued claim language and (2) the effective filing date. The claim set was not in the text I was given, and the CIP in the chain means the Bluetooth-plus-trainable-transceiver claims may date to 2003-01-03, not 1999-05-26.
• Because the § 103 attack depends on which of the listed documents are third-party art, and because § 103(c) disqualifies the applicant's own family, ODP should be evaluated in parallel.
• Practical note: the patent's own record shows it expired for fee reasons with an anticipated expiration of 2020-05-26 and I found no litigation on it (§ prior sections). A § 103 validity opinion is therefore most useful here for (a) evaluating the family's remaining/expired members, (b) past-damages exposure pre-2020, or (c) defensive/portfolio diligence — not for a live infringement defense.

8. What to verify before relying on any of the above

1. The literal issued claim 1 and all dependents — Google Patents Claims tab or USPTO PatentCenter. Everything above is keyed to a reconstructed claim 1.
2. The precise "References Cited" / IDS list — the list I used came from the FreePatentsOnline and Justia mirrors, not from the supplied Google Patents text, which has no citations section. Cross-check the printed front page.
3. Each reference's actual assignee (for the pre-AIA § 103(c) filter) and its actual date/status (e.g., US 5,903,226, US 5,661,651, US 6,166,711 — dates not confirmed this pass; US 7,197,278 and US 7,184,941 assignees not confirmed).
4. The 2003-01-03 CIP's added disclosure versus 09/979,199 — to fix the effective date of the trainable-transceiver claims. This is the single highest-leverage factual question in the whole analysis.
5. Whether any Group 5 sibling claim is patentably distinct — to run the ODP attack, which sidesteps the § 103(c) problem.