US 8635311

I'll search for authoritative information on this patent, including any 2026 CAFC docket activity.

Let me dig deeper on the specific docket and any IPR involving 8635311 itself.

Now let me find the actual claim text for US 8,635,311 itself.

US 8,635,311 B2 — Analyst Summary

Search scope caveat: My tools here are general web search, not a direct PTAB/PatentCenter or CAFC docket-API query. The bibliographic data below is corroborated across Google Patents (the authoritative text you supplied), FreePatentsOnline, RPX Insight, and Justia. Where I could not verify something authoritatively, I say so.

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1. Bibliographic data

Chain of title note: The record shows Wildseed, Ltd. → Wildseed LLC → Varia Mobil LLC → Varia Holdings LLC → Wildseed Mobile LLC, plus a 2021 security interest to LIT-US Chisum 21-A, LLC. One search hit (the front page of US 9,843,907) renders the assignee as "Varis Holdings LLC" in the OCR — treat that as an OCR artifact, not a real party.

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2. Abstract (verbatim)

"The invention sends a hot link to a device. The device may be on a wireless network, a wired network, or directly coupled to the device sending the hot link. The hot link contains an associated action that is performed by the device receiving the hot link. The associated action may be performed when a user interface is activated or automatically when the hot link is received by the device. The action can be a broadcast action, Internet action, call action, download action, or upload action. The broadcast action instructs the device to tune to a particular broadcast in response to the selection of the user interface. The internet action instructs the device to access an Internet site in response to the selection of the user interface. The call action instructs the device to call a telephone number in response to the selection of use interface."

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3. Independent claims (plain language)

The patent has three independent claims — 1, 12, and 14 — in three different statutory formats:

Claim 1 — "A mobile device method" (sender-side)

• Determine an action to be performed by a mobile device when a user-interface element of that mobile device is activated. Key limitation: the UI element existed on the mobile device before the hot links were generated ("pre-existing button" concept).
• Generate a hot link that performs that action.
• Generate a message containing the hot link plus "assignment information" that assigns the hot link to that UI element.
• Send the message to the mobile device.

Claim 12 — "In a mobile device, a method of operation" (receiver-side)

• Receive a message containing a hot link and assignment information, where the hot link carries instructions to perform an action, and the assignment information binds it to a UI element that was already on the device before the assignment information was generated.
• Extract the hot link and assignment information.
• Assign the hot link to that UI element per the extracted assignment information.
• Execute the hot link to perform the action in response to selection of the assigned UI element.

Claim 14 — "An apparatus" (system/CRM format)

• A computing processor plus a non-transitory computer storage medium storing instructions enabling the apparatus to: determine a first action; generate a first hot link for it; generate a first message containing the hot link and assignment information binding it to the device's UI element; and send the first message to the mobile device.

Dependent-claim flavor: claims 2–11 depend from 1; 13 from 12; 15–20 from 14. Claim 20 is confirmed as reciting that generating the hot link comprises "generating instructions directing the mobile device to call a number," consistent with the specification's !CALL***-***-**** character-code examples. I did not retrieve the full verbatim text of every dependent claim, so treat the 2–20 content as partial.

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4. CAFC 2026 docket search — no 2026 appeal of the '311 patent found

I ran targeted searches for the 2026 Federal Circuit calendar and for Wildseed Mobile litigation. I found no CAFC appeal or 2026 docket entry naming US 8,635,311. That is consistent with its status: it lapsed for non-payment of maintenance fees and reached its anticipated expiration on May 10, 2022, making it an unlikely appellate subject.

What does exist in 2026 is Federal Circuit activity involving Wildseed Mobile LLC as owner of other patents in the same family — do not conflate these with the '311 patent:

• 24-2178, Google LLC v. Wildseed Mobile, LLC — decided Feb. 13, 2026 (nonprecedential). IPR2023-00247 on US 10,869,169 ("the '169 patent"), not the '311 patent. Board held claims 1–14 and 16–22 obvious but not claim 15; the Federal Circuit vacated and remanded because the Board never addressed claim 15's "instant messaging" alternative limitation. The panel quoted the '169 patent with the identical title and the identical "hot link contains an action…" language as the '311 patent.
• 24-1846, Wildseed Mobile, LLC v. Google LLC — decided April 30, 2026 (nonprecedential). Concerns US 7,376,414, the "targeted advertising" patent (Pub. No. 2007/0283384), claim 1 representative: a cellular device autonomously providing user information "taken… from a message sent to the cellular device from another user," receiving targeted ads, and stopping/recording content to play ads. The Federal Circuit affirmed the Board's obviousness invalidation. Note that the '414 patent also claims priority to the same 60/290,592 provisional as the '311 patent.

Both appeals share the same priority family as US 8,635,311 — and the '169 patent is a direct continuation of the 8,635,311 application (13/427,794). So the '311 patent sits in the lineage that produced the 2026 litigation, but it is not itself the appealed patent.

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5. Uncertainty flags

• Confidence: high on title, application number, filing/issue dates, inventors, and the three independent claims as summarized.
• Moderate on the exact verbatim wording of claims 12 and 14 — the text above is drawn from the RPX claim listing, which the search returned in condensed form.
• Not verified directly against USPTO PatentCenter or the CAFC docket system; if a formal litigation/fee-status certification is required, pull the PatentCenter "Patent Term Adjustment / Maintenance" record and the CAFC PACER docket directly.
• The apparent assignee spelling "Varis Holdings LLC" on one USPTO front page is an OCR/text artifact, not a separate entity.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 8635311 using multiple sources.

The results so far show litigation involving Wildseed Mobile's other patents, not '531. Let me search more specifically for the '531 patent.

Summary of Findings — U.S. Patent No. 8,635,311

Short answer: I found no litigation in which U.S. Patent No. 8,635,311 ("the '531 patent") is specifically identified as an asserted or challenged patent. All of the enforcement activity I could locate involving this patent's owner (Wildseed Mobile LLC, formerly Varia Holdings LLC) asserts sibling patents in the same family, not the '531 patent itself. Details and caveats below.

1. Patent identification (literal, as retrieved)

• Patent: US 8,635,311 B2 — "Method and systems for generating and sending a hot link associated with a user interface to a device"
• Application: 13/427,794; filed 2012-03-22; granted 2014-01-21
• Priority: 2001-05-11 (via PCT/US2002/014909; provisional 60/290,592)
• Original assignee: Varia Holdings LLC → Current assignee: Wildseed Mobile LLC (assignment recorded 2021-08-19)
• Google Patents status: "Expired - Fee Related" (anticipated expiration 2022-05-10)
• Google Patents family-litigation flag: the page displays "Family has litigation" with a Darts-ip link for family=23116693.
  • Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US8635311/en

2. Litigation found (but on sibling patents, NOT on '531)

The family-litigation flag on the '531 Google Patents page traces to litigation on other members of the same patent family. The principal case is:

Wildseed Mobile LLC v. Google LLC and YouTube, LLC

• Court: [U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, Waco Division](/courts/western-district-of-texas-waco) (Judge Alan D. Albright) — Case No. 6:21-cv-01245; filed December 1, 2021
• Later transferred to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (Judge William H. Orrick) — Order granting transfer 8/29/2022
• Patents actually asserted (per USPTO Form AO 120 filed in the case):
  1. US 7,376,414
  2. US 9,141,960
  3. US 10,251,021
  4. US 10,959,040
  5. US 10,869,169
• Note: US 8,635,311 is not on this list. The '531 patent's own continuations (US 9,843,907, US 10,869,169, US 11,223,930) are in the family, which is why the family-level flag appears.

Related N.D. Cal. decision: Wildseed Mobile LLC v. Google LLC — partial judgment on the pleadings granted under 35 U.S.C. § 101 as to the '960, '021, and '040 patents (Claims II, III, IV dismissed with prejudice). Source: https://case-law.vlex.com/vid/wildseed-mobile-llc-v-1056115305

Related PTAB proceedings (same case family, not '531): Google LLC v. Wildseed Mobile LLC — IPR2023-00245, IPR2023-00246 (filed Nov. 30, 2022). IPR2023-00246 reached a Final Written Decision (document 34) on May 29, 2024 holding all challenged claims unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. § 318(a). Source: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2023-00245/

Federal Circuit appeal: Wildseed Mobile, LLC v. Google LLC, No. 24-1846 (Fed. Cir.; opinion dated 2026-04-30 per the reporter source), addressing claim construction of the '414 patent. Source: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/cafc/24-1846/24-1846-2026-04-30.html

An earlier case, Wildseed Mobile LLC v. Google LLC et al., Docket 6:21-cv-01245 (W.D. Tex., Dec. 1, 2021), also appears in docket aggregators (e.g., UniCourt case pc-db5-wildseed-mobile-llc-v-google-llc-et-al-1088981).

3. What I could NOT confirm

• No case number, court, or complaint identifying "8,635,311" / "8635311" as an asserted patent was returned in any of my searches. Searches specifically pairing "8635311" with "litigation," "lawsuit," "infringement," "complaint," and with the parties (Varia Holdings / Wildseed Mobile) returned only the patent document itself or unrelated hits (e.g., an unrelated Brazilian court document ID and a PLOS ONE journal citation that merely happens to contain the number string "8635311").
• I could not directly query the Darts-ip family page (https://patents.darts-ip.com/?family=23116693) referenced on the Google Patents page; that database is subscription-gated. The "family has litigation" flag is therefore the strongest family-level signal I have, but it does not by itself establish that the '531 patent (as opposed to its siblings) was ever litigated.
• PACER / CourtListener / Unified Patents Portal results were not returned for the specific number in the searches I ran, and I reached my tool-call limit before I could retrieve a complete litigation docket list.

4. Bottom line

• Direct litigation on US 8,635,311: none known/found.
• Family-level litigation exists (Darts-ip family 23116693 flag), driven by the Wildseed Mobile LLC v. Google LLC / YouTube, LLC campaign (W.D. Tex. 6:21-cv-01245 → N.D. Cal.) and associated IPRs (IPR2023-00245/00246) and the Fed. Cir. appeal No. 24-1846 — but those cases asserted US 7,376,414, 9,141,960, 10,251,021, 10,959,040, and 10,869,169, not the '531 patent.
• Because I could not access the Darts-ip family record directly and hit my research-step limit, I cannot rule out a lower-visibility suit (e.g., a settled or dismissed action) naming the '531 patent. To be certain, the Darts-ip family page and a full PACER party search for "Varia Holdings LLC" and "Wildseed Mobile LLC" should be run directly.

Confidence: High that no prominent/asserted litigation names the '531 patent; moderate overall, limited by lack of direct Darts-ip/PACER access. I have not fabricated any case number, date, or party — where I could not confirm, I have said so explicitly.

I'll start by verifying the structured data against public sources.

Let me dig deeper for any proceeding naming this patent specifically.

The Google/Wildseed IPRs I found are on a different patent in the same family. Let me confirm whether anything names the '311 patent itself.

PTAB / AIA Trial Report — U.S. Patent No. 8,635,311

Patent: US 8,635,311 B2 — "Method and systems for generating and sending a hot link associated with a user interface to a device"
App. No. 13/427,794 · Filed 2012-03-22 · Granted 2014-01-21 · Priority 2001-05-11 · Assignee Wildseed Mobile LLC (orig. Varia Holdings LLC)
Report date: 2026-09-21

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Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings against US 8,635,311: 0. Breakdown: 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denied.

The structured USPTO Open Data Portal block is the canonical source here, and it records no AIA trial proceedings for this patent. My independent web searches (PTAB dockets via Docket Alarm/PTAB E2E, CourtListener, Law360/VitalLaw PTAB coverage, and practitioner commentary) surfaced no IPR, PGR, or CBM petition ever naming US 8,635,311 — nothing that contradicts the ODP result. Google's IPR2023-00244 through -00248 campaign against Wildseed Mobile hit this patent's continuation children, not the '311 itself (details below, clearly separated).

Bottom-line defensive posture: this is the opposite of a hardened patent — it is an un-challenged but expired one. The '311's 20-year term ran from the 2002-05-10 PCT filing, and Google Patents lists an anticipated expiration of 2022-05-10. As of today (2026-09-21) the patent has no enforceable forward-looking life. Any assertion you receive citing US 8,635,311 can only reach pre-2022-05-10 conduct, and a § 286 six-year damages lookback from the complaint date will clip much of that. Nobody filed an AIA trial against it in part because there was no economic reason to. The much more likely assertion targets are the live family members in the same continuation chain — and those have been through PTAB, hard.

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Proceedings (none on file for US 8,635,311)

There are no proceedings to list under the requested per-proceeding format. I am not going to populate that template with anything, because doing so would require inventing a proceeding number, and the constraints are explicit against that. The absence is the finding.

What I could not verify, stated plainly

• I found no CBM petition against the '311. CBM review was available for this class of claims (the patent classifies under G06Q30/02) but sunset on 2020-09-16, so that door is permanently closed regardless.
• I found no Federal Circuit appeal arising from any PTAB proceeding on the '311 — consistent with there being no such proceeding.
• I did not independently re-run the ODP query; I am relying on the structured block plus negative web-search results. If your review requires a docket-grade negative, pull PTAB E2E by application number 13/427,794 and patent number 8,635,311 directly.

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Adjacent family proceedings — NOT on the '311 patent (flagging per instruction)

These are proceedings on other patents in the same § 120 continuation chain, all sharing the 2001-05-11 priority and the "hot link" specification. They are not proceedings on US 8,635,311, but they are the single most useful intelligence available for anyone facing an assertion of the '311 or its siblings. All were filed by Google LLC (with YouTube, LLC as RPI) — 5 petitions filed 2022-11-30 (docketed FY2023).

Family chain: PCT/US2002/014909 → 10/477,046 → US 8,166,139 → 13/427,794 (US 8,635,311) → 14/158,708 (US 9,843,907) → 15/839,396 (US 10,869,169) → 17/119,468 (US 11,223,930). Related asserted patents: US 9,141,960 and US 7,376,414.

IPR2023-00247 detail (the closest analogue to the '311, same title and specification). Panel: Judges Prost, Hughes, and Stark on appeal; the Board's FWD is Paper 33 (P.T.A.B. 2024-06-03). Google challenged claims 1–22 under § 103, on grounds including Rothschild (US 8,645,211) alone (claims 1–18, 21–22), Rothschild + Saltanov (US 6,839,411) for claim 19, and Rothschild + Saltanov + Maes (US 2002/0002502) for claim 20. The Board held claims 1–14 and 16–22 unpatentable as obvious and claim 15 not shown unpatentable. On appeal, the Federal Circuit (nonprecedential) held the Board improperly failed to address the IM limitation of claim 15 — it analyzed only the SMS limitation — and vacated and remanded for an explanation. The panel did not hold claim 15 valid; it held the Board's silence unreviewable. CourtListener 24-2178 · Justia

IPR2023-00248 detail (US 7,376,414). The Board held claims 1–7 and 9–14 unpatentable over a three-reference combination. Panel: Judges Prost, Hughes, and Stark. On 2026-04-30 the Federal Circuit affirmed, rejecting Wildseed's claim-construction and APA challenges (the "taken" vs. "determined" argument). CourtListener 24-1846 · CAFC opinion PDF

Parallel litigation. Wildseed Mobile LLC v. Google LLC et al.: 6:21-cv-01245 (W.D. Tex., filed 2021-10-08, voluntarily dismissed); 6:22-cv-00357 (W.D. Tex., filed 2022-04-04), docketed after transfer as 3:22-cv-04928 (N.D. Cal., filed 2022-08-29). I did not verify whether US 8,635,311 was among the asserted patents in those cases, and I am not asserting that it was.

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Strategic summary

Claim status on the '311 itself: entirely UNTESTED. No claim of US 8,635,311 has ever been construed by the PTAB, canceled, or confirmed in an AIA trial. There are no surviving-through-IPR claims to list and no canceled claims to point to, because no proceeding exists. The patent's term expired 2022-05-10, so the practical question is not validity but whether any live damages theory survives the § 286 lookback and the expiration cutoff.

Estoppel landscape. § 315(e)(2) estops Google (and its privies) only as to the patents it actually challenged — primarily US 10,869,169 (IPR2023-00247), US 9,141,960, US 7,376,414, and, subject to verification, US 10,251,021 and US 10,959,040. Estoppel is patent-by-patent; it does not automatically extend to US 8,635,311, a different patent, even though the '169 and the '311 share a specification and priority date. So Google (or any other party) would face no § 315(e)(2) bar to running the same Rothschild/Chen/Saltanov/Maes art against the '311 in district court. Conversely, a different defendant gets no estoppel benefit from the Google petitions and is free to file its own IPR against the '311 — but the expired term makes that a poor investment. Practically, the estate's prior-art exposure has already been largely mapped by the Google campaign, and the mapping is favorable to an accused infringer: the same specification produced broadly invalidated claims.

Pattern signals. Google filed five IPRs in a single day (2022-11-30) across the family, an obvious coordinated campaign responding to Wildseed's 2021–2022 W.D. Tex. filings; it won claim cancellations on at least two of the patents. Wildseed (now represented by Kramer Alberti Lim & Tonkovich, with Sterne Kessler on the appellate side) appealed both ways — it lost the '414 affirmance (24-1846) and won a narrow vacate-and-remand on '169 claim 15 (24-2178), which is a procedural win, not a validity holding. No defensive aggregator (e.g., Unified Patents) appears in the chain as petitioner for this family; the challenges are pure competitor-vs-NPE. The ambient 2025–2026 institution climate (Director-controlled institution, Magnolia Medical Technologies, Inc. v. Kurin, Inc., IPR2026-00097 (Dir. 2026-05-14)) has sharply reduced IPR filings generally, which further reduces the likelihood that anyone files fresh against a 25-year-old expired patent. Patently-O, "The Survivors: IPR Petition Filings Stay Low and Highly Targeted in 2026"

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Recommended next steps

1. If a demand letter cites US 8,635,311, lead with expiration. The term ran out 2022-05-10 (20 years from PCT/US2002/014909). Confirm via USPTO Patent Center whether any terminal disclaimer, PTA, or PTE extended that date — the file history for this family is unusually terminal-disclaimer-heavy, and the '169's front page carries a "subject to a terminal disclaimer" notice, so verify the '311 independently. Absent an extension, any damages period ends 2022-05-10 and any pre-2016 conduct may fall outside § 286's lookback.
2. Check whether the assertion is really about a live sibling. The commercially meaningful members are US 9,843,907, US 10,869,169, US 11,223,930, US 10,251,021, and US 10,959,040. For US 10,869,169, the operative document is the Board's FWD (IPR2023-00247, Paper 33, 2024-06-03): claims 1–14 and 16–22 held unpatentable, claim 15 remanded. Do not describe claim 15 as "surviving" — the Federal Circuit vacated the Board's treatment of it and remanded on 2026-02-13; a live claim 15 validity question remains with the Board.
3. For US 7,376,414, treat claims 1–7 and 9–14 as dead. The affirmance in 24-1846 (2026-04-30) is final on those claims. Any theory built on them is unviable.
4. If you want a docket-grade negative on the '311 rather than this report's search-based negative, pull PTAB E2E by patent number 8,635,311 and application 13/427,794, and query Docket Alarm and the Unified Patents litigation portal for any post-2026 filing the ODP ingest may not yet contain.
5. Preserve the expired-patent defense in any litigation hold. Even if the '311 is asserted, the correct first move is a § 271/§ 286 expiration analysis, not an IPR — an IPR against an expired patent is possible but rarely worth the fee, and the 2025–2026 discretionary-denial environment makes it even less so.

Caveats on sourcing. Everything in the "Adjacent family proceedings" table beyond the FWD outcomes, the two Federal Circuit dispositions, and the IPR2023-00246 institution is drawn from search results rather than a primary docket pull; outcome data for IPR2023-00244 and IPR2023-00245 is unverified and should not be quoted. I have not verified the '311 patent's exact claim set or independent-claim count, and I make no representation about which of its claims would or would not have survived a challenge. Where the record is silent, I have said so rather than filling the gap.

I'll reconstruct the assignment record for US 8635311 using the patent text provided plus targeted searches. Let me gather the assignment and entity details.

Good — I found a key assignment document. Let me dig into the Wildseed/Varia/Chisum chain and any litigation.

Let me pin down the specific reel/frame records and the entity history.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US 8,635,311 B2

Scope note on sources. I could not open the USPTO Assignment Center / Patent Assignment Search UI in this session, so I was unable to capture reel/frame numbers or correspondent-of-record names directly. Rather than fabricate them, I flag every place they are missing. The events below are grounded in (a) the Google Patents legal-events record embedded in the authoritative patent text, and (b) the actual recorded assignment documents reproduced as exhibits in the Google v. Wildseed PTAB proceedings (Docket Alarm, IPR2023‑00248, Exhibit 1002 "414 Family History"). Those exhibits are primary-source images of the USPTO filings, so the substance is reliable even though the reel/frame is not yet verified.

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Inventors

Pattern note. All three are the founding/engineering core of Wildseed, Inc., the Seattle mobile‑software startup (circa 2000) whose work produced U.S. Provisional 60/290,592 (filed 2001‑05‑11), the priority document for this patent. There is no evidence in the record of the inventors departing within 12 months of filing; the more relevant corporate event is that Wildseed itself was reportedly acquired by AOL in 2005, with the patent family later surfacing under Varia Holdings LLC and then Wildseed Mobile LLC. I could not independently verify the Wildseed→AOL→Varia chain in this session, so treat the corporate-lineage portion as reported, not confirmed.

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Original assignee

Varia Holdings LLC — the assignee named on the face of the issued patent (Google Patents "Original Assignee: Varia Holdings LLC").

• Primary line of business: a patent-holding entity for the former Wildseed wireless-software portfolio. It does not appear to sell a product; its observable activity is holding and licensing/transferring the Wildseed family (the Aug. 2021 assignment it executed covers at least six patents: 6,952,597; 7,376,414; 8,166,139; 8,635,311; 9,141,960; 10,251,021).
• Did it ship a product embodying the claims? No evidence that Varia Holdings LLC itself shipped anything. The operating predecessor was Wildseed, Inc., which built a mobile handset/software platform in the early 2000s.
• Current status: Varia Holdings LLC conveyed the entire right, title and interest in this family out in 2021 (see timeline). Whether the LLC was later dissolved is not established in the sources I could reach.

⚠️ This is the weakest section of the analysis. The claim that Wildseed, Inc. is the operating origin and Varia Holdings LLC its holding successor is supported by the inventor set, the 2001 Seattle provisional, and the 2021 assignment's recital of a Wildseed-derived portfolio — but I could not pull a corporate registry record, an SEC filing, or a bankruptcy docket to confirm it.

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Assignment timeline

All reel/frame numbers below read "not retrieved." USPTO records should carry them, but I could not query the Assignment Center in this session and will not invent numbers. Correspondent-of-record names are likewise unretrieved. The execution dates, parties, conveyance types and property lists are taken from the recorded documents reproduced in the PTAB exhibit and from Google Patents legal events.

• 2001‑05‑11 — U.S. Provisional App. 60/290,592 filed (priority document). No recorded assignment expected at this stage.

  • Conveyance: (none of record retrieved)
  • Assignors/Assignees: inventors → presumably Wildseed, Inc.
  • Context: original invention disclosure.

• 2021‑08‑19 (executed) / recorded on or about 2021‑08‑19 — Reel/frame not retrieved

  • Conveyance: ASSIGNMENT (of assignors' interest)
  • Assignor: Varia Holdings LLC (signed by Michael Ferarsho, stated to be Manager of Varia Holdings LLC, acknowledged before a notary on Aug. 19, 2021)
  • Assignee: WILDSEED MOBILE LLC, "a limited liability company organized under … the laws of the State of Texas," at 1356 Broadway, c/o Michael Jemal, New York, NY 10018
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Property list (6): U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,952,597; 7,376,414; 8,166,139; 8,635,311; 9,141,960; 10,251,021
  • Context: transfer to an assertion vehicle. The assignee takes the patents together with "all causes of action … for (1) damages, (2) injunctive relief, and (3) any other remedies of any kind for past, current, and future infringement" — express anti-suit-transfer language typical of monetization deals.

• 2021‑09‑20 (per Google Patents legal events) — Reel/frame not retrieved

  • Conveyance: SECURITY INTEREST (SECURITY INTEREST — SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)
  • Assignor: WILDSEED MOBILE LLC
  • Assignee: LIT‑US CHISUM 21‑A, LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: securitization / litigation funding. "LIT‑US Chisum 22‑B LLC" is described by the N.D. Cal. court as "the litigation funder" in Entangled Media, LLC v. Dropbox, Inc., No. 5:23‑cv‑03264 (Dkt. 132). The "21‑A" sibling is the same Chisum program, named for the 2021 vintage. Only ~1 month separates the assignment in and the lien out.

• 2021‑11‑08 (executed) — Reel/frame not retrieved

  • Conveyance: ASSIGNMENT
  • Assignor: VARIA HOLDINGS LLC
  • Assignee: WILDSEED MOBILE LLC (1356 Broadway, c/o Michael Jemal, New York, NY 10018)
  • Properties (4): App. 17/119,468; U.S. Pat. Nos. 10,959,040; 10,869,169; 9,843,907
  • Context: second tranche of the same portfolio sale — evidence the family was moved in batches, not as a single deal.

Litigation overlay (for context, not an assignment):

• 2021‑12‑01 — Wildseed Mobile LLC v. Google LLC, W.D. Tex. 6:21‑cv‑01245 — voluntarily dismissed 2022‑04‑04.
• 2022‑04‑04 — Wildseed Mobile LLC v. Google LLC & YouTube, LLC, W.D. Tex. 6:22‑cv‑00357; transferred to N.D. Cal. 3:22‑cv‑04928 on 2022‑08‑29. Asserted patents: 7,376,414; 9,141,960; 10,251,021; 10,959,040; 10,869,169 — note that US 8,635,311 is NOT among the asserted patents.
• 2022‑11‑30 — Google filed IPR2023‑00245 / ‑00246 / ‑00248 (and further petitions) against the Wildseed family; IPR2023‑00248 concerns U.S. 7,376,414 and was terminated 2024‑04‑09, later upheld on appeal (Fed. Cir., Apr. 2026).
• 2022‑05‑10 — US 8,635,311 expired by term (20 years from the PCT international filing date of 2002‑05‑10); Google Patents shows status "Expired – Fee Related."

No assignment record retrieved for US 8,635,311 was NOT the case — there are recorded post‑issuance transfers, identified above. What is missing is only the reel/frame metadata.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 8635311
    2001 : Provisional filed by Wildseed inventors
    2002 : PCT application filed
    2003 : US national stage entered
    2012 : Continuation filed by Varia Holdings
    2014 : Patent issued Jan 21
    2021 : Varia assigns to Wildseed Mobile
         : Chisum 21-A takes security interest
         : Wildseed sues Google in WDTX
    2022 : Wildseed case moved to NDCA
         : Patent expires by term

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — PRESENT (moderate-to-strong).
US 8,635,311 moved from Varia Holdings LLC to Wildseed Mobile LLC on 2021‑08‑19 (recorded assignment, PTAB Ex. 1002). Wildseed Mobile LLC is a Texas LLC with a c/o Michael Jemal, New York, NY address, is not known to sell any product, and immediately began asserting the family. Caveat: the entity name carries no "IP/Patents/Ventures" suffix, and I could not confirm a registered-agent service address or single-member status, so this rests on the non-practicing-assertion evidence rather than naming alone.

2. Known asserter in the chain — UNCLEAR.
Wildseed Mobile LLC is a repeat patent plaintiff (WDTX/N.D. Cal. suits against Google and YouTube, 2021‑2022, plus five asserted patents in the '414 family), and LIT‑US Chisum 21‑A, LLC is tied to a program the court has expressly called a litigation funder. However, I could not confirm wildcard placements on the RPX or Unified Patents high-frequency-plaintiff lists for either name in this session. Not established.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR (evidence gap).
Correspondent-of-record names for both the 2021‑08‑19 assignment and the 2021‑09‑20 security interest were not retrievable, so recurrence cannot be tested. Two names are on the documents but are not correspondents: Michael Ferarsho (signatory for assignor Varia Holdings LLC) and Michael Jemal (c/o addressee for assignee Wildseed Mobile LLC). The Jemal c/o address recurs on the 2021‑11‑08 second-tranche assignment — i.e., the same receiving-party contact is used across tranches, which is a weak proxy for the "same handler" pattern. Flag for follow-up: pull the correspondent field from the Assignment Center for both filings.

4. Cascading transfers — PRESENT.
Three recorded events in under four months: Varia → Wildseed Mobile (2021‑08‑19), security interest Wildseed Mobile → LIT‑US Chisum 21‑A (2021‑09‑20, ~32 days later), and a second Varia → Wildseed Mobile tranche (2021‑11‑08). Thematically linked, chronologically compressed, and sharing a single assignee contact address.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — PRESENT for the family / NOT PRESENT for the '311.
The transfer to Wildseed Mobile (2021‑08‑19) preceded Wildseed's first Google suit (2021‑12‑01) by ~3.5 months. But the '311 itself was never identified as an asserted patent; the asserted set was 7,376,414 / 9,141,960 / 10,251,021 / 10,959,040 / 10,869,169. So this is a family-level signal, not a patent-specific one.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. No Chapter 7/11 proceeding involving Varia Holdings LLC or Wildseed appears in the sources reviewed. The portfolio did change hands near end of term (the '311 expired by term on 2022‑05‑10, ~8 months after transfer), but that is a term-expiry, not an insolvency sale.

7. Privateering — UNCLEAR. Wildseed Mobile LLC is asserting against Google/YouTube on a wireless-advertising family, and the family's 2001 internal documents describe "serving ads to a wireless phone." That is consistent with a monetization campaign, but I found no SEC filing or reporting tying a still-operating former owner to an on-behalf-of assertion arrangement. Not established.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. It terminates at a litigation-funder security interest, the opposite end of the spectrum.

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Verdict

NPE — high confidence.

Two independent strong signals converge on the same short window. First, on 2021‑08‑19, the entire right/title/interest in US 8,635,311 — including all past, present and future causes of action for damages and injunctive relief — passed from Varia Holdings LLC to Wildseed Mobile LLC, a Texas LLC with no products that began suing Google and YouTube on the sibling patents within ~3.5 months (Google Patents family-litigation flag; PTAB Ex. 1002). Second, just 32 days later (2021‑09‑20), Wildseed Mobile LLC granted a security interest to LIT‑US CHISUM 21‑A, LLC, an arm of the litigation-funding program that the N.D. Cal. court identified as the funder in Entangled Media v. Dropbox (Dkt. 132) — a textbook monetization/standing arrangement. The '311 itself, however, was not among the asserted patents and expired by term on 2022‑05‑10, so the value actually extracted came from the family, not this specific claim set.

Confidence caveat and next step. The reel/frame numbers and correspondent-of-record names are missing from my working set and must be pulled directly: USPTO Assignment Center → https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (or https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html), search by 8,635,311 and by assignee Wildseed Mobile LLC / LIT‑US CHISUM 21‑A, LLC. If a single correspondent recurs across the 2021‑08‑19 assignment, the 2021‑09‑20 security interest, and the 2021‑11‑08 tranche, signal 3 would flip from unclear to present and the case from "high confidence" to "overwhelming."

I'll research the actual prior-art citations on the face of US 8,635,311.

Initial results are noise. Let me target the actual patent document and its front-page citations.

I found the FreePatentsOnline citation list but it's truncated. Let me retrieve the complete reference list.

Prior-Art Citation Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 8,635,311 B2

Patent: US 8,635,311 B2 · App. 13/427,794 · Filed 2012-03-22 · Granted 2014-01-21 · Priority 2001-05-11 · Inventors Engstrom, Zatloukal, Graham · Original assignee Varia Holdings LLC

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0. Search-scope statement — read before relying on anything below

I could not query a USPTO primary database. My available tool is a general web search; I have no authenticated PatentCenter / Patent Public Search / Patent Assignment API access. What follows is therefore not a USPTO-database pull. It is reconstructed from the FreePatentsOnline record page for this exact number (https://www.freepatentsonline.com/8635311.html, showing the "US Patent References" table) plus the Google Patents text you supplied.

I verified the number literally and did not substitute a neighbor. Searches for the string "8635311" return this patent plus a large amount of false-positive noise for the identical digit string — e.g. PMID 8635311 (Chun & Wolfe, Cogn. Psychol. 1996;30:39–78, a visual-search psychology paper), a Montana court fee schedule line item, and a New Journal of Physics article (UGent catalogue pug01:8635311). None of those are this patent and I have excluded them. Similarly, a search hit for US 8,633,112 B2 ("Thermal anneal of block copolymer films…", an Espacenet result) is a different patent and is excluded — I am not auto-correcting 8,635,311 to any other number.

A contradiction to flag: the task header states the current date as April 26, 2026, while the session metadata and the previously generated "PTAB challenges" section use 2026-09-21. The previously generated sections were internally inconsistent on this point (the Obviousness section is dated April 26, 2026; the PTAB section is dated 2026-09-21). Nothing in this analysis turns on which is correct, but I am flagging it rather than silently picking one.

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1. What the citation record actually looks like — and why it matters

The citation table returned for US 8,635,311 is set out below exactly as retrieved, in the order FreePatentsOnline presents it. Two structural observations drive the entire §102 analysis:

1. The list is dominated by post-2001 references. Every single issued patent on the retrieved list has an issue date of 2004–2008. For a patent whose priority date is 2001-05-11, an issue date of 2006 or 2008 is prima facie fatal to any §102(a) or §102(b) theory. Such a reference can only be prior art under §102(e) (pre-AIA) — i.e., only if its own effective U.S. filing date predates 2001-05-11 — or if the priority claim is defeated. I have not verified the filing dates of these references, so I cannot state which, if any, qualify under §102(e).
2. Several references are the applicants' own patents, not prior art to the applicants. 7433922 (Engstrom), 7376414 (Engstrom), 7319863 (Engstrom), 7065333 (Engstrom) are Engstrom-family patents flowing from the same 2001 provisional lineage. An applicant's own disclosure is not §102 prior art against that applicant absent a §102(b)/§102(e) date analysis, and these are more likely family artefacts or §102(e) self-disclosures than true anticipatory art.
3. The topic mix is advertising/radio/content-delivery, not hot-link messaging. That topic profile matches the US 7,376,414 "targeted advertising" family (same priority) far better than it matches the hot-link claims. This strongly suggests the FPO table is aggregating references across the related-application family rather than reproducing only the Examiner's citations on the '311 face. I could not retrieve the actual (56) "References Cited" block, the "Foreign Patent Documents" section, or the "Other References" section from the patent's own face.

I am therefore unable to confirm that the list below is the true (56) list printed on US 8,635,311. Treat it as the best available proxy, not as the Examiner's citation record.

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2. The citation list as retrieved

(The retrieved excerpt truncates after entry 26; the earlier section of this analysis recorded the same table continuing through 6,832,102 / 6,823,225 / 6,813,501 / 6,799,201 — consistent with the above.)

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3. § 102 claim-mapping — assessment

Bottom line first, stated plainly: on the list I retrieved, no single reference appears to disclose all elements of independent claim 1, 12, or 14. My mapping below is accordingly a candidate mapping — identifying which reference is most relevant to which claim — not a conclusion that any reference anticipates. Anticipation requires every element, arranged as in the claim (Net MoneyIN v. VeriSign); nothing here clears that bar on the information I have.

Claim 1 (sender-side method): elements are (a) determine an action performable by a mobile device upon activation of a UI element; (b) that UI element pre-existed the hot links; (c) generate the hot link; (d) generate a message containing the hot link and assignment information binding it to the UI element; (e) send the message to the mobile device.

• US 7,146,578 B2 (Kim) — the closest fit for elements (a)+(b)+(d). A user-customised menu in a portable radio telephone is, on its face, about binding functions to UI elements that already exist on a handset. This is the reference I would expect a challenger to lead with. Its §102 exposure depends entirely on its filing date — it issued 2006-12-05, so it is §102(a)/(b) unavailable and can only reach the claim as §102(e) art if its effective U.S. filing predates 2001-05-11. Unverified.
• US 6,799,201 B2 (Lee et al.) — remote configuration of a multimedia device addresses elements (a), (c), (d), (e) at a generic level, but a "remotely configurable multimedia entertainment and information system for vehicles" is a different receiving-device class from "a mobile device," and I have no evidence it discloses assignment information binding a hot link to a pre-existing UI element. §102(e) candidate only, pending filing-date verification.
• US 6,914,897 B2 (Schuster) — accessing radio programs via a data-network telephone touches the "broadcast action" aspect, which is a dependent-claim feature (see below), not an independent-claim limitation.

Claim 12 (receiver-side method): receive → extract hot link + assignment info → assign to pre-existing UI element → execute on selection. None of the retrieved references is a receiver-side hot-link disclosure. No credible §102 candidate on this list.

Claim 14 (apparatus/CRM): same elements as claim 1 in apparatus form. Same analysis — US 7,146,578 (Kim) and US 6,799,201 (Lee) are the only plausible §102(e) candidates, both unverified on date.

Claim 20 (dependent from 14): "generating instructions directing the mobile device to call a number." No reference on the retrieved list addresses call-launch instructions. As the Obviousness section flagged, the real art for this limitation is WTAI-style URI handling (wtai://wp/mc;<number>), which does not appear in this table. I cannot name a §102 reference for claim 20 from the retrieved citations.

Dependent claims generally: the retrieved list is overwhelmingly advertising art (refs 3, 5, 7, 15, 17, 19, 20) and radio/broadcast art (refs 13, 14, 18, 22). That topic profile bears on dependent claims directed to broadcast tuning and to ad content, but I do not have the verbatim text of claims 2–11 and 13 and 15–19, so I will not assign a §102 reference to a claim I cannot read. Assigning one would require me to invent claim scope.

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4. The dispositive date problem — this is the finding that matters

For a patent with a 2001-05-11 priority date, the §102 analysis of this citation list collapses to a single question: which references have an effective U.S. filing date before 2001-05-11?

• Every issued patent on the list issued between 2004-09-28 and 2008-10-07. None qualifies under §102(a) or §102(b).
• The only path is pre-AIA §102(e) — a U.S. patent or published application "granted on an application for patent by another filed in the United States before the invention thereof by the applicant." This requires filing-date data I do not have.
• Additional §102(e) wrinkle: the Engstrom-family references (7,433,922, 7,376,414, 7,319,863, 7,065,333, and any that trace to the same 2001 provisional) share the same priority chain as the '311. A reference claiming the same 2001-05-11 priority cannot be "by another filed before the invention by the applicant" on that priority date — they are the same inventive entity or a common-priority family. That removes the four Engstrom references from the §102(e) pool entirely, as a matter of date, not of disclosure.
• The published applications on the list (2005/…, 2007/…, 2008/…) are all far post-priority and cannot be §102(e) art against a 2001 priority date under any construction.

Net: the retrieved citation list, taken as printed, is largely unusable as §102 anticipatory art against US 8,635,311. Its utility is as §103 background/analogous art — which is precisely what the previously generated Obviousness section concluded, and my date analysis here is consistent with it.

The 6,8xx,xxx- and 6,9xx,xxx-series patents (refs 18, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26) are the only ones that could conceivably carry a pre-2001-05-11 U.S. filing date, and they are exactly the ones whose filing dates must be pulled.

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5. What I could not verify — stated explicitly

1. The true (56) list on the '311 face. I did not retrieve the patent's own "References Cited" / "Foreign Patent Documents" / "Other References" blocks. The table above is the FreePatentsOnline "US Patent References" table, which I could not confirm is face-identical.
2. Filing dates for every reference. §102(e) status is unresolvable without them. This is the single most important missing input.
3. Whether the list includes the references actually cited against the 2001 PCT parent (PCT/US2002/014909) and its US national stage 10/477,046. The relevant earliest art would have been cited there, not in the 2012 continuation. The previously generated Obviousness section referenced an EBSCO record (library.cnu.ac.kr) listing PCT/US02/14594, /14872, /14908, /14909 and /14912 search reports — the ISR for PCT/US2002/014909 is the document that would show the Examiner's true earliest-art citations, and I did not retrieve it.
4. The OCR-ambiguous numbers flagged earlier — 5,694,435 vs 5,694,455 (Goodman) and 5,734,487 vs 5,734,687 (Rossi) — do not appear on the list I retrieved in this session. I cannot reconcile that with the earlier section's account of having seen them. Either the earlier account drew them from a different (family) table, or there is an error in one of the two retrievals. Flagged as unexplained; do not rely on either number without a fresh pull.
5. No (56) reference on this list is a "hot link" reference. The terms "hot link," "hotlink," and "assignment information" appear in none of the retrieved titles. That absence is itself informative: it suggests the hot-link concept was not the basis of the Examiner's rejections in the '311 prosecution — consistent with a continuation that issued without substantive art rejection.

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6. Recommended verification steps (to convert this into a citable record)

1. Pull the certificate-of-correction-corrected (56) block from USPTO Patent Public Search or PatentCenter for patent number 8,635,311 (not a neighbor), and confirm the table in §2.
2. Pull the ISR/written opinion for PCT/US2002/014909 — the earliest-art citations live there.
3. For each of the seven pre-2004 references (refs 18, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26), pull the front page and record the §102(e) filing date. Only those with a U.S. filing date before 2001-05-11 are available as anticipatory art.
4. Do not assert §102 anticipation from this list as it stands. It supports §103 combinations (as set out in the previously generated Obviousness section), not anticipation.

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Confidence: High that the table in §2 is what FreePatentsOnline presents for this exact number, and high that its members are predominantly post-2001 and therefore §102(a)/(b)-unavailable. Moderate that it is the face-identical (56) list. Low / not established as to §102(e) status of any individual reference, because filing dates were not retrievable. No reference on this list is confirmed to anticipate any claim, and I have not asserted otherwise.

I'll ground this analysis in the actual cited prior art and claim text rather than memory. Let me pull those.

I have claim 1. Now let me pull the full claim set and the actual "References Cited" (prior-art) list from the patent's front page.

Let me verify the front-page (56) references cited specifically on the '531 patent, and get the dependent claims.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 8,635,311 B2

"Method and systems for generating and sending a hot link associated with a user interface to a device"

Analysis date: April 26, 2026 | Statutory framework: pre‑AIA 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) (effective filing date May 11, 2001; continuation filed Mar. 22, 2012, so the AIA first‑inventor‑to‑file provisions do not apply)

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0. Sourcing caveats — read first

I must be explicit about what I could and could not verify in this session, because a §103 opinion is only worth the fidelity of its reference disclosures.

1. The authoritative full text you supplied does not contain a "References Cited" (Prior Art) table. The Google Patents page as fetched includes only a short "Prior art keywords" set — hot link, action, mobile device, message, user interface — which is Google's auto‑generated keyword cloud, not an Examiner's citation list. The (56) references, claim text, and drawings are absent from the fetched HTML.
2. I therefore reconstructed the prior art of record from the front pages of later members of the same family (U.S. 9,843,907 and U.S. 10,869,169, both continuations whose specifications are the same), plus the FreePatentsOnline US Patent References table for 8,635,311. Those lists are close but not guaranteed identical to the (56) list printed on the '531 face.
3. OCR digit corruption exists in the sources and I have not auto-corrected it (per your rule). Examples I observed: Goodman's patent appears as both 5,694,435 and 5,694,455; Rossi's as both 5,734,487 and 5,734,687. The verified Rossi number is 5,734,487 (title confirmed: "Computer system incorporating an infrared link for reduced interference communication with a radio transceiver", https://patents.google.com/patent/[US5734487](/patent/US5734487)).
4. Where I characterize what a pre‑2001 reference discloses, that characterization is my recollection and is flagged. It must be checked against the reference itself before use in an invalidity contention or IPR petition. I will not present unverified column/line citations.
5. Claims 2–13 and 15–19 are not in the material available to me. I analyze claims 1, 14 and 20 (text below, sourced from RPX Insight's reproduction of the granted claims) plus the features the specification discloses.

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1. The claims as issued

Claim 1 (independent, method):

"A mobile device method, comprising: determining an action to be performed by a mobile device upon activation of a user interface element of the mobile device, the user interface element being on the mobile device prior to generation of hot links associated with the user interface element; generating a hot link to perform the action; generating a message containing the hot link and assignment information assigning the hot link to the user interface element of the mobile device; and sending the message to the mobile device."

Claim 14 (independent, apparatus) is the same four steps, implemented as instructions on a "non‑transitory computer storage medium" executed by "a computing processor," producing a "first hot link," "first message," and "first assignment information."

Claim 20: "The apparatus of claim 14, wherein said generating of the first hot link comprises generating instructions directing the mobile device to call a number."

Drafting observations that matter for §103:

• Claim 1 is captioned "A mobile device method" yet ends "sending the message to the mobile device." The actor that "determines," "generates," and "sends" is nominally a mobile device, and the addressee is the mobile device. The broadest reasonable reading is self‑delivery (or delivery from one mobile device to a like mobile device). This breadth helps an obviousness case: the art need only show a device that builds a message carrying an executable link plus a binding instruction and transmits it.
• The only apparent point of novelty over the parent's original disclosure is the negative/positional limitation "the user interface element being on the mobile device prior to generation of hot links associated with the user interface element" — i.e., the link is bound to a pre‑existing key or soft key rather than creating a new UI object. That framing is relevant because it is precisely the type of limitation that WAP‑era "bookmark/hotkey assignment" art reaches.

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2. Person of ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA)

A bachelor's degree in electrical engineering or computer science (or equivalent), plus two to three years of experience in wireless messaging (GSM/SMS, WAP), mobile device user‑interface software, and/or interactive broadcast data services — or a master's degree with less experience. This is a convergence field: the invention sits at the intersection of (a) broadcast/receiver control, (b) wireless messaging, and (c) handset UI event binding. A PHOSITA would be familiar with SMS User Data Headers, WAP, over‑the‑air provisioning, and existing handset soft‑key/command‑button behavior. Notably, the specification itself presumes this baseline: it explains SMS User Data Headers, GSM vs. UCS2 encoding, 160/140/70‑character limits, and multipart concatenation (see the ¶ discussing "Special characters or strings may be placed into an SMS message"), none of which the applicants present as their invention.

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3. Claim chart against the prior art of record

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4. Combinations that would have rendered the claims obvious, with motivations

Combination A (primary) — Remote tuner control + message‑borne device commands

A1: US 5,734,487 (Rossi) — a computing device linked (infrared) to a radio transceiver, i.e., a portable platform that selects a broadcast station on a separate receiver. Title verified.
A2: A messaging reference teaching that a short message can carry a machine‑executable command or address that the handset acts upon. On the record, the closest are the SMS/OTA and network‑address delivery references (e.g., US 6,108,584; US 6,097,441; US 6,047,327; US 6,014,090 — user‑appliance/terminal delivery of data and services). The '531 specification's own treatment of SMS with special command strings ("!RS****") and User Data Headers supplies the framing.

Motivation to combine: (i) Both references are in the same field of wireless/portable device control of a broadcast receiver — no field‑crossing problem. (ii) The '531 Background expressly admits the market driver: users "are talking with their friends about what they are currently listening to on the radio… The user may want their friends to listen to the same radio or television broadcast they are experiencing… However, cellular telephones do not provide this ability." That admitted, pre‑existing need is itself the articulated motivation. (iii) Under KSR, "[t]he combination of familiar elements according to known methods is likely to be obvious when it does no more than yield predictable results." Substituting a short‑message transport for an IR link in A1's tuner‑control architecture, and delivering the tuning command as message payload, is a predictable substitution of one known transmission medium for another (see MPEP 2144.03, mere substitution of equivalents). (iv) Result: same function (remote tune), same way (command carried to the receiver), better result (works over the wireless network at arbitrary distance rather than line‑of‑sight IR).

Combination B — Broadcast/program identification + one‑touch binding to an existing key

B1: US 6,253,069 (Mankovitz) — recollection, verify: automatic identification of radio programs and correlation of the program to network resources.
B2: Handset UI customization art, plus the '531 admission that a device key can be a "predetermined button" (the spec says the "*" key, and FIG. 13 says the "#" key, may be the assigned UI).

Motivation to combine: B1's stated purpose is to let a listener act on the identified program; the only design question left is how the user triggers the action. Binding it to a key that already exists on the device is (a) the ergonomically obvious choice for a handset with a fixed keypad, and (b) expressly contemplated by the '531 specification as a user preference, not as an invention. Under MPEP 2143, "obvious to try" and "design incentive" rationales apply: the design space (assign to a pre‑existing key vs. create a new UI object) was small and the result (one‑press execution) entirely predictable.

Combination C — Broadcast‑embedded hot links (Throckmorton / Rhoads) + two‑way messaging

C1: Throckmorton — pointers/references (URLs) embedded in the VBI of a television signal, presented as a clickable reference on a "human interface," where clicking "connects to and retrieves the referenced information from the appropriate source" (grounded in the IPR2017‑02092 petition record cited above).
C2: Rhoads — an "address link" embedded in a video object; the user "needs merely to point and click," and the browser "identifies the object as a hot link object, reads the URL address that is embedded within the object and routes the user to the linked web site… just as if the user had used a conventional web link" (same petition record).

Motivation to combine: Throckmorton's express goal is "real time" interactivity during program reception, and the art already treats the embedded reference as a selectable object that performs a function on activation — i.e., element 1.1/1.3. The remaining step (put the reference into a message directed to a different device) is motivated by the admitted desire to share the experience with a friend who is not tuned to the same program — which Throckmorton/Rhoads' broadcast‑embedded model cannot do. A PHOSITA with SMS and WAP in the toolkit would use the message channel as the delivery vehicle for the same reference, with the predictable result that the recipient's device executes the same action.

Combination D — Tag/scanning → network information + message delivery

D1: US 6,331,825 (Ladner et al.) — recollection, verify: scanning a tag/barcode to retrieve associated information over a network.
D2: The message‑delivery references of Combination A2.

Motivation to combine: The '531 specification itself equips the mobile device with barcode input/output 462 ("may be used to scan and identify items including a barcode") as one more source of "the action" for a hot link. That is the applicants' own bridge between the tag‑retrieval art and the hot‑link architecture, and it removes any argument that D1 is non‑analogous art.

Combination E — The strongest single‑family attack: WAP Push / OTA provisioning as printed publications

This is the theory I would expect a validity challenger to lead with, and the one not on the (56) face.

• WAP 1.2 Push architecture and Service Indication / Service Loading specifications (WAP‑165, WAP‑167, WAP‑168) define a push message carrying a URI plus an explicit ACTION attribute (execute‑high, execute‑low, signal‑high, signal‑none, etc.) that the receiving handset parses and represents as a selectable item — i.e., a hot link bound to a device UI element, with the "action" and the "assignment" as separate fields. That maps onto elements 1.1, 1.3, 1.4, and 1.5 nearly one‑to‑one.
• WTAI (Wireless Telephony Application Interface) URIs, e.g., wtai://wp/mc;+15551212, are URIs whose execution causes the handset to place a call — squarely the subject matter of claim 20.
• SMS Over‑The‑Air provisioning / Nokia Smart Messaging (v3.x, 2000–2001) teaches that a specially formatted SMS with a User Data Header and port numbers can reconfigure handset behavior and add selectable items — the same mechanism the '531 spec describes at length.

The only real gap is element 1.2 — that the bound UI element pre‑exists on the device. That gap is closed by Combination B's secondary reference (menu/soft‑key/hotkey customization art) with the KSR "known technique to improve similar devices in the same way" rationale. Date caution: the 2001‑05‑11 priority date is very close to WAP 1.2.1 (June 2001). The challenger must use the as‑of‑May‑2001 versions (WAP 1.2, WAP‑165/167/168 and the WTA specifications dated 2000–early 2001) and establish public accessibility as of that date; otherwise the later revisions are unavailable and/or may be §102(a)/(b) art only if published before the actual 2002 filing (they would still be relevant to the 2012 continuation claims only under narrow conditions).

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5. Anticipated counter‑arguments and how they fare

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6. Serious evidentiary problems the challenger must confront

1. Post‑priority references on the reconstructed list. The FreePatentsOnline table for 8,635,311 includes items dated 2006–2008 (e.g., 7,433,922; 7,376,414; 7,319,863; 7,146,578; 7,107,063; 7,099,700; 7,065,333; 7,006,807; 7,003,478; 6,952,559; 6,947,396; 6,914,897; 6,832,102; 6,823,225; 6,813,501; 6,799,201, and the 2007–2008 published applications). For a May 11, 2001 priority date these generally cannot be §102(a)/(b) or §103 prior art. They can qualify only under §102(e) if they have an earlier effective U.S. filing date, or they may simply reflect art cited in later continuation prosecutions. Any contention built on them is presumptively defective. Note also that several are the applicants' own sibling patents (Engstrom et al.), which are family members, not art.
2. Family double‑patenting / obviousness‑type double‑patenting. Issued family members (9,843,907; 10,869,169; 11,223,930; and the related 7,319,863 / 7,433,922 / 7,376,414 / 7,065,333) represent claim sets of differing scope over one specification; that history is a useful roadmap of exactly which limitations the applicants needed to survive art, and supports the argument that the surviving differences are "unpatentable subject matter of a narrow, mechanical character" (see In re Freeman line of argument on obviousness‑type double patenting arguments).
3. §112 support for the "hot link"/"assignment information" terms was thin. The specification's treatment of "link assign" is conclusory; in a §103 posture this cuts toward a broad construction of "hot link" (any address/command pointer that, when selected, performs a function), broadening the art that reads on it.
4. Sources to verify before filing anything. Every reference characterization flagged (recollection) above; the exact (56) list on the '531 face; the publication dates and public availability of the WAP/SMS specifications; and the OCR‑ambiguous patent numbers 5,694,435 / 5,694,455 and 5,734,687 / 5,734,487.

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7. Bottom line

• Claim 1 and claim 14 are, on the available record, strong candidates for invalidation under §103(a) as obvious over (a) a remote receiver‑control / broadcast‑program‑identification reference (e.g., US 5,734,487; US 6,253,069) in view of (b) a message‑borne device‑command or network‑address‑delivery reference, and further in view of (c) a handset UI/soft‑key binding reference to supply the "pre-existing user interface element" limitation. The claimed architecture is essentially a message format and a binding instruction; the specification presents its components (SMS, UDH, tuning, dialing, IR/cable links, barcode I/O, bookmarking) as conventional.
• Claim 20 (call action) is the most vulnerable claim, because "instructions directing the mobile device to call a number" is precisely what WTAI‑style wtai://wp/mc;<number> URIs did in the 2000–2001 timeframe, and the specification itself lists "!CALL***--*" as ordinary notation.
• The strongest combination the record supports is not a two‑reference combination but a three‑reference one, and the decisive reference for element 1.2 is likely to come from the WAP Push / OTA provisioning and soft‑key‑customization art rather than from the (56) face of this patent.
• Caveat on my confidence: I could not retrieve the (56) "References Cited" table for the '531 patent in this session, and I could not verify the disclosures of most of the references listed. The combinations above are analytically sound but the reference‑by‑reference disclosures must be confirmed against each reference's own text (with column/line support) before they are relied upon. Anything marked (recollection; verify) is not currently citable.

Sources cited: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US8635311](/patent/US8635311)/en (authoritative full text supplied); https://insight.rpxcorp.com/patent/[US8635311B2](/patent/US8635311B2) (claims 1, 14); https://www.freepatentsonline.com/8635311.html (references table); https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/34/9d/1f/3a0daf5a201da6/[US10869169](/patent/US10869169).pdf and https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/1b/17/6e/d8854067d80a10/[US9843907](/patent/US9843907).pdf (family front‑page (56) lists); https://patents.google.com/patent/US5734487 (Rossi title verification); https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/1498074 and .../1462931 (IPR2017‑02092 Throckmorton/Rhoads record on U.S. 6,233,736); https://library.cnu.ac.kr/eds/detail/edspgr_edspgr.08635311 (other references of record — the PCT/US02/14594, /14872, /14908, /14909 and /14912 search reports).