US 8737951

I'll research this specific patent. Let me run searches against multiple sources.

Let me dig deeper into litigation and any 2026 Federal Circuit activity.

Let me retrieve the actual claim language and check for any Federal Circuit 2026 activity.

US Patent 8,737,951 — Analyst Summary

Important scope note: I was able to retrieve the authoritative full text of the patent (from Google Patents, fetched 2026-10-01) and confirm its bibliographic data, priority chain, and litigation footprint through search. I could not confirm verbatim granted claim language for every claim, and I found no Federal Circuit (CAFC) 2026 docket naming this patent. Where I'm relying on the specification's "summary of embodiments" rather than issued claim text, I say so explicitly.

1. Bibliographic Data (per Google Patents full text)

Representative classifications: H04W 4/90 (emergency/hazardous-situation services), G08B 13/196 (intruder TV-camera alarms), G08B 25/08 (alarm transmission via communication lines), H04M 11/04 (telephone + alarm systems), H04M 1/72418 (mobile UI for emergency services).

2. Abstract (quoted from the patent)

"Embodiments relating to an interactive personal surveillance and security (IPSS) system are provided for one or more users carrying one or more respective wireless personal communication devices (WCDs) that are capable of capturing and sending surveillance information (e.g., video, images, audio, sensor data, etc.) to one or more remotely located servers (RLSs). From the information, the RLSs can identify and secure dangerous environments, encounters, etc., and log events or take other actions. In some embodiments, the RLS is designed to follow user-definable parameters that establish the level or type of interactivity and that determine when alarms or messages to third parties are needed."

3. Plain-Language Overview of the Independent Claims

The patent's specification frames its disclosure as a series of alternative embodiments — several directed to the WCD side and several to the remote server (RLS) side. The independent claims track these embodiments. Listed below are the distinct inventive concepts described as separate "embodiments, among others," which correspond to the independent claim families (caveat: this is drawn from the specification's embodiment summary; I have not verified each literal claim's exact wording or the precise count of independent claims against the granted claim set):

A. Two-stage activity detection (WCD-side)
Enter a first mode with a first "investigation process" using sensors to capture first data; determine whether that data indicates a need for assistance, an accident, or a crime; and, if criminal activity is implicated, enter a second, different mode that captures additional/different data via the sensors.

B. Remote activity detection (server-side)
The RLS receives sensed data from the WCD, compares it against reference data, and sends back a message indicating whether the activity involves user need for assistance, an accident, or a crime.

C. HBPA-based mode selection (WCD-side)
Produce sensor data; determine the user's human body physical activity (HBPA) (e.g., walking, running, cycling, falling, being in a vehicle); select a mode of operation from a set of modes based on that HBPA — each mode initiating a different investigation process capturing different data types; and communicate the data to a remote system.

D. Criminal activity detection (WCD-side)
Sense a local environmental event with a sensor, send the data to a remote computer for analysis, and receive an indication whether the data corresponds to criminal activity.

E. Criminal activity detection (server-side)
Receive sensed data from the WCD, compare with reference data, and message the WCD whether the data involves criminal activity.

F. Location/time-indexed media retrieval (server-side)
Maintain a database of audio/video/image files tagged with reference location information; receive sensed info (audio/video/image + sensed location) from a WCD; retrieve a matching file based on reference location vs. sensed location; and return the file (or a derivative) to the WCD or to another user-designated system. A variant adds reference time information to the retrieval criteria.

G. Listen mode (WCD-side and server-side)
WCD: sense an event, send data to the remote computer, receive a command to enter a listening mode, activate the microphone, and stream captured audio back to the remote system. Server: receive sensed data, determine possible criminal activity, and command the WCD to enter listening mode by activating its microphone.

H. Alarm initiation (WCD-side and server-side)
WCD: sense an event, send data to a remote computer, and receive a command to initiate an alarm indicative of criminal activity. Server: receive sensed data, determine possible criminal activity, and command the WCD to raise the alarm.

I. Type-of-surveillance (TOS) and risk-level method
Select a TOS from a set of predetermined TOSs; select a risk level from a set of predetermined risk levels; and initiate a surveillance action based on the risk level involving activation of an I/O device on the WCD.

J. Switching surveillance mode (multiple variants)

• WCD receives an RLS instruction to enter a different mode with a different investigation process;
• WCD itself determines possible criminal activity and self-switches modes;
• RLS requests a code entry from the user and decides whether to switch modes based on the code response;
• RLS commands the WCD to enter a different mode with a different investigation process.

K. Cooperating WCDs
When criminal activity is detected, the RLS commands one or more nearby WCDs to take action. A variant uses first and second WCDs' sensed data plus location (e.g., GPS) information to determine the two devices are in close proximity and to detect an event in the shared environment.

L. Request-for-user-input
RLS requests the user to take an action; if the user fails to act, treat the sensed data as criminal activity; if the user acts (e.g., enters a deactivation code), treat it as non-criminal.

M. Assistance entity selection
RLS determines whether the user needs assistance and, if so, contacts the appropriate assistance-providing entity. A variant selects the entity based on the determined user activity plus location information.

4. Litigation and Docket Status

The patent has a substantial litigation history and is part of a multi-patent portfolio (US 8,559,914; US 8,737,951; US 8,452,273; US 9,049,558; US 10,521,846) asserted by Big Will Enterprises, Inc. (an NPE). Reported assertions include Montblanc, Unaliwear, Kronoz, Alinsco, Kia, Matrix Telematics, Solera Holdings, Loomis Armored, Geometris, and most recently Enterprise Holdings (1:26-cv-00652). The Google Patents litigation panel also lists numerous 2025–2026 Texas filings (e.g., 1:25-cv-01650, 1:25-cv-01929, 4:25-cv-03961, 1:26-cv-00652).

On the CAFC 2026 docket question specifically: My searches did not surface any Federal Circuit appeal, petition, or 2026 appellate docket entry associated with US 8,737,951. The closest Federal Circuit material returned was an unrelated en banc rehearing petition in a treadmill case (Woodway v. LifeCORE, No. 25-1431). I cannot affirmatively rule out a pending appeal, but I have no authoritative evidence of CAFC 2026 activity on this patent. The authoritative sources to confirm this would be the Federal Circuit's PACER/CM-ECF docket and the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) proceedings — I did not have direct access to those databases in this session, so treat the "no CAFC activity found" conclusion as uncertain rather than definitive.

5. Key Caveats / Confidence Levels

• High confidence: patent number, title, inventors, filing/issue dates, assignee chain, priority date, and abstract — all taken directly from the authoritative full text.
• Moderate confidence: the plain-language claim overviews. These are faithful paraphrases of the specification's enumerated embodiments, but I did not retrieve the verbatim granted claim set, so the exact number and precise wording of independent claims should be confirmed against the issued claims (or the USPTO PatentCenter record).
• Explicit uncertainty: the absence of a CAFC 2026 docket is based on web search only, not a direct PACER/Federal Circuit query, and should be independently verified before being relied upon.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 8737951. Let me search multiple sources.

Let me search for the specific litigation cases involving this patent, including the Unified Patents portal and the named defendants.

I have substantial results. Let me identify the parties in the remaining cases listed on the patent's litigation record and verify which cases actually asserted the '951 patent.

Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. 8,737,951

Important framing note: U.S. 8,737,951 ("Interactive personal surveillance and security (IPSS) systems and methods"), filed 10/09/2013, issued 05/27/2014, is owned by Big Will Enterprises, Inc. (an assertion/NPE entity; prior assignees included IOT Human Messaging LLC; inventors M. Kelly Jones and Scott A. Horstemeyer). It is enforced as part of a portfolio of sibling patents (U.S. 8,559,914; U.S. 9,049,558; U.S. 8,452,273; U.S. 8,977,230; U.S. 10,521,846) filed by the same plaintiff and counsel (Brett T. Cooke). Nearly every complaint pleads several of these patents together and attaches the '951 patent as one exhibit.

Because the patent's own Google Patents record aggregates whole-family litigation, some case numbers below could assert only sibling patents rather than the '951 patent itself. I flag my confidence per case. I was unable to independently verify every docket beyond the sources cited, and I did not reach results for a few case numbers before hitting the research limit.

A. Cases where assertion of the '951 patent is confirmed by the complaint's exhibit list or a litigation database

B. Cases on the patent's family litigation record — parties not fully verified, and '951 assertion not independently confirmed

The Google Patents litigation feed for the family lists these additional Texas actions. I could not confirm the defendant or that '951 was specifically asserted in each:

• 6:22-cv-00993 (W.D. Tex.)
• 6:23-cv-00341, 6:23-cv-00403, 6:23-cv-00571 (W.D. Tex.)
• 2:23-cv-00090 (E.D. Tex.)
• 4:23-cv-00257, 4:24-cv-00078 (N.D. Tex.)
• 4:23-cv-04847 (S.D. Tex.)
• 1:24-cv-00042, 1:24-cv-00799, 1:24-cv-01392, 1:24-cv-01393 (W.D. Tex.)
• 1:25-cv-00129, 1:25-cv-01650, 1:25-cv-01929 (W.D. Tex.)
• 1:26-cv-00652 — Big Will Enterprises Inc. v. Enterprise Holdings Inc. (W.D. Tex., filed 2026) — complaint analysis references the telematics/'846 and '558 patents; whether '951 was also asserted is unconfirmed.
• 1:24-cv-01563 — Big Will Enterprises Inc. v. Shenzhen Viofo Technology Co., Ltd. (W.D. Tex., filed ~Nov 14, 2024) — appeared in a PTAB filing listing Big Will as a "high-volume plaintiff"; '951 linkage unconfirmed.

C. Administrative / PTAB-adjacent activity

• Unified Patents Patroll crowdsourced prior-art contest — titled "Big Will Enterprise – US 8,737,951 (Interactive Personal Surveillance and Security System)," $2,000 prize, running Jan 4 – Mar 31, 2022. (Note: the contest body text contains an apparent internal inconsistency, stating Unified was seeking prior art on "at least Claim 1 of US 8,559,914"; I report the identifier as given rather than correcting it.) Winner announced June 27, 2022. This indicates third-party validity pressure on the portfolio but is not litigation.
• I found no PTAB IPR/PGR, ITC Section 337 action, or Federal Circuit appeal specifically docketed against U.S. 8,737,951.

D. Overall picture and caveats

• All identified enforcement is by a single plaintiff, Big Will Enterprises, Inc., in Texas district courts (primarily W.D. Tex., Austin/Waco divisions, with N.D. Tex., E.D. Tex., and S.D. Tex. appearances), most recently before Judges Robert Pitman and Alan D. Albright.
• Typical outcome: early, pre-answer voluntary dismissal — with prejudice in several cases (Overhaul, Earnix, Matrix, and the Osram/Autozone motion) and without prejudice in others (Montblanc, Solera). No case on record reached a merits judgment, jury verdict, or damages award on the '951 patent.
• Sources used: Google Patents litigation record for US 8,737,951 (patents.google.com/patent/US8737951); Unified Patents litigation portal (portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist?patents=8737951) and Patroll contest page; Patexia; CourtListener; Justia Dockets; UniCourt; and PatSnap litigation summaries citing PACER dockets.
• Reliability limits: Case numbers, courts, and filing dates above are drawn from those sources. For the cases in Section B, and for the current status of the newest 2025–2026 filings (Kia, Knight-Swift, Loomis, Geometris, Enterprise Holdings), I could not confirm the live docket status. Because the source record aggregates family-wide litigation, treat Section B identifiers as leads requiring PACER confirmation, not confirmed assertions of the '951 patent.

If you need, I can attempt to verify the remaining case numbers and defendants one at a time against PACER/Unified Patents.

PTAB AIA-Trial Landscape — US 8,737,951 B2 ("Interactive Personal Surveillance and Security (IPSS) Systems and Methods")

Canonical source used: the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block in this prompt (USPTO Open Data Portal ingest). It returns zero AIA trial proceedings. I independently searched for IPR/PGR/CBM activity tied to the '951 patent and to Patent Owner Big Will Enterprises, Inc. and found none — so nothing has been suppressed by ingest lag. The searches did surface adjacent activity (a Unified Patents prior-art bounty and a large district-court campaign), which I address in the strategic sections because it materially changes how a defendant should read the empty docket.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0 — no IPRs, no PGRs, no CBMs; therefore 0 active, 0 with claims invalidated, 0 with claims sustained, 0 settled, and 0 institution denials.

Bottom line for a defendant: the '951 patent has never been tested at the PTAB, so there is no claim-level kill shot to point to and no § 315(e)(2) estoppel on the books. This is not the same as "hardened." It is an untested patent: the claims stand exactly as issued and as reexamined by the examiner, and every invalidity ground — art the examiner never saw, plus art the examiner did see — remains fully available to you in district court and in a first-filed IPR. The absence of PTAB activity here is better read as a timing and economics story than as a validity story (see below): the current assertion wave is recent, and the patent's 2029-01-16 expiry shortens the runway for a multi-year IPR fight.

Proceedings

None. There are no PTAB AIA-trial proceeding numbers to report for US 8,737,951. Consistent with the instruction not to invent proceeding numbers, I am not listing placeholder entries.

(No proceeding on file) — null v. Big Will Enterprises, Inc.

• Type: N/A (no Inter Partes Review / Post-Grant Review / Covered Business Method filed)
• Filed: N/A
• Status: N/A — no petition has ever been instituted or denied against this patent per the USPTO ODP structured data.
• Judge panel: N/A
• Petition grounds: N/A
• Institution decision: N/A
• Final Written Decision: N/A — no claim of the '951 patent has been canceled, confirmed, or construed by the Board. Do not represent otherwise in a client memo or an invalidity contention.
• Settlement / termination: N/A
• Appeal: No PTAB-to-Federal Circuit appeal exists because no FWD exists. I found no Federal Circuit opinion addressing the validity of the '951 patent.
• Defensive value: An IPR is available and unconstrained by § 315(a)/(b) estoppel — nothing has been "raised or reasonably could have been raised" by a prior petitioner. But your § 315(b) one-year clock starts on service of a complaint asserting the patent, so the window is administrative, not legal.

Strategic summary

Claim status: wholly untested at the PTAB. No claims are canceled, none are confirmed, none are "sustained" by any Board decision. The patent as asserted today is the patent as issued (granted 2014-05-27 off Appl. No. 14/049,527, filed 2013-10-09, claiming priority to 2008-01-16), with an anticipated expiration of 2029-01-16 and a current USPTO status of Active – Reinstated. Ownership chain: individual inventors Martin Kelly Jones and Scott Andrew Horstemeyer → IoT Human Messaging LLC (2016) → Big Will Enterprises, Inc. (2020, 2024 corrective). Because the Board has never construed these claims, the "surviving claims" question can only be answered claim-by-claim from the face of the patent — and, critically, any invalidity argument you make will be a first impression at the PTAB, which cuts both ways: no adverse estoppel, but also no road map.

Estoppel landscape: none exists, and that is the defendant's best structural asset. Because no IPR was ever instituted, 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) bars no one. Every prior-art combination — including references cited during prosecution and, more importantly, references that were never before the examiner — is fair game in the district court and in a fresh IPR. The corollary caution: if you are the first petitioner and you lose, you will be the one wearing § 315(e)(2) estoppel for the rest of the case. That asymmetry (no estoppel now, hard estoppel later) is worth pricing before you file.

Pattern signals. (1) Defensive-aggregator interest exists but never converted to a filing. Unified Patents ran a Patroll bounty on the '951 patent — "Big Will Enterprise – US 8,737,951," $2,000 prize, open 2022-01-04 to 2022-03-31, with AI-assisted claim charting — and its contest page notes the patent had been asserted against Montblanc and Unaliwear (Patroll contest page). A bounty is not a proceeding, but it is a strong signal that a well-funded aggregator evaluated the '951 patent, commissioned prior art, and declined to file (no IPR followed within the roughly four years since). That could reflect weak art, cost/prize economics, or a decision to focus on sibling patents. (2) Real, repeated PTAB activity on the family, just not this patent — I have no verified Board proceeding on the '951 itself. (3) The patent owner is a serial, aggressive assertor with a large co-pending campaign across Texas venues, including recent filings at W.D. Tex. — e.g., Big Will Enterprises Inc. v. Rivian Automotive (1:25-cv-00486, filed 2025-01-28), v. Loomis Armored US (1:25-cv-01063, filed 2025-07-07), v. Frotcom International (1:25-cv-01929, filed 2025-11-25), and v. Enterprise Holdings (1:26-cv-00652, filed 2026-03-18). The Google Patents family docket for the '951 lists roughly two dozen Texas suits spanning 2020–2026, and many resolved by Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) self-effectuating dismissal with prejudice before any responsive pleading or IPR petition — e.g., v. Matrix Telematics (1:24-cv-00871) and v. Overhaul (6:23-cv-00774). No defendant in the campaign has taken this patent to the Board. That is the single most important fact for your defense strategy.

Recommended next steps

• Do not tell a court or client that the '951 has "survived IPRs." It hasn't been through any. The accurate statement is: no AIA trial proceeding has ever been filed against US 8,737,951; the claims are untested at the PTAB and carry no § 315(e)(2) estoppel.
• Compute your § 315(b) clock immediately. If you have been served with a complaint asserting the '951 (Big Will's campaign is active in W.D. Tex. and elsewhere as of 2026), you have one year from service to file an IPR. There is no PTAB proceeding to join, so this would be a first-instance petition.
• Mine the free prior-art work product. Unified Patents published the winning Patroll prior art (see their insights post) and lists AI-assisted candidate art for this patent (Traindex, Patentcloud, Ambercite, Limestone). That's a pre-vetted starting set — but because it is public, assume opposing counsel has seen it too.
• Weigh IPR economics against a 2029-01-16 expiry. A first IPR instituted in, say, 2026–2027 would run to an FWD in 2027–2028, leaving little post-decision life. That cost/benefit may explain why no defendant has filed. A district-court § 102/§ 103 defense with § 101 (Alice) and § 112 theories layered in may be the better-funded path; note that at least one court has already engaged a § 101 analysis on a patent it referred to as a "'795" patent in Big Will-adjacent litigation (Kansas, No. 5:16-cv-04132) — I could not verify that this is US 8,737,951 and you should confirm the patent number before relying on it.
• Re-check the docket rather than relying on this snapshot. Confirm the empty PTAB list yourself against the Board's systems — PTAB E2E and the PTAB decisions/ODP endpoints — and check CourtListener for any Big Will Federal Circuit appeal of a district-court judgment. If a petition is filed after today (2026-10-01), it will not appear in this ODP ingest.

Confidence note: I am highly confident there is no AIA trial proceeding on the '951 patent, based on both the structured ODP block and independent web searching. I am not asserting the existence of any IPR, PGR, CBM, FWD, or Federal Circuit appeal — none was found, and I have deliberately listed none rather than fabricate proceeding numbers.

I'll research the assignment chain for US 8737951 using available sources.

Let me dig deeper into the assignment records and litigation history.

Let me look for the specific reel/frame records and the earlier Eclipse IP / inventor assignments.

I researched the assignment chain using Google Patents legal events (the authoritative text provided), Unified Patents PATROLL records, CourtListener/PACER dockets, and INPADOC data. Important caveat up front: I could not directly query the USPTO Assignment Center's reel/frame index in this session — the only reel/frame number that surfaces anywhere in the available record for this patent is 039178/0241 (referenced in the Google Patents legal-events text as the prior recording corrected on 2016-08-30). I have not fabricated reel/frame numbers for the other links; where a reel/frame was not retrievable I say so explicitly.

Inventors

Unusual pattern worth flagging: Horstemeyer is simultaneously a named inventor and the prosecuting attorney/agent of record for this family. The PCT publication WO2004/107123 lists "HORSTEMEYER, Scott, A." in both the inventor and agent fields for the same firm. Related family members name a third inventor, Maria Khomenko (Pefferlaw, Ontario, Canada), e.g. US 9,799,063 and US 2016/0162043 — but Khomenko is not a named inventor on US 8,737,951 itself. The inventorship overlaps an in-house-style patent firm, which is common in attorney-founded patent-holding families and is one reason the portfolio travelled as a bundle.

Original assignee

None — the issued patent names no corporate assignee. Google Patents records the original assignee field for US 8,737,951 as "Individual," and the patent's own front-page/ADS data shows title resting with the two individual inventors at issuance (2014-05-27). The 2013-08-26 INPADOC assignment event REEL/FRAME:031082/0090 (Horstemeyer → Jones) and the related Eclipse IP, LLC recordings (031082/0182, 031082/0349) belong to the sibling notification-systems family (US 8,564,459 / US 8,559,914 line), not to the '951 patent, and I could not confirm any Eclipse IP, LLC recording against US 8,737,951 itself — so I am not asserting that link.

Because there was never an operating-company assignee, there was also no product associated with the '951 claims at the original-assignee stage. Big Will Enterprises' own complaint (S.D. Tex. 4:25-cv-03961, ¶ on BWE background) describes BWE as "a global leader and innovator" in sensor technology developed "since 2007," but BWE is a British Columbia, Canada company whose only observable activity in the record is patent assertion — no product, no revenue stream, no manufacturing footprint is documented anywhere.

Assignment timeline

All dates below are recording dates as published in Google Patents legal events (execution dates were not retrievable from the sources available to me). Do not read these as verified reel/frame citations except where noted.

• Executed date not retrievable / recorded 2016-07-18 — Reel not retrieved (no reel/frame published in the available record)

  • Conveyance: Assignment (Assignment of Assignors' Interest)
  • Assignor: Scott A. Horstemeyer and M. Kelly Jones (individuals)
  • Assignee: IOT Human Messaging, LLC (Boynton Beach, FL per correlative patent records)
  • Correspondent: Not published in the sources available to me. Note for follow-up: prosecution correspondence for this family runs through Thomas | Horstemeyer, LLP, attn. Scott A. Horstemeyer (Customer No. 24504) — the same attorney who is a named inventor. I could not confirm he is the assignment correspondent of record; that field must be pulled from Assignment Center directly.
  • Context: transfer out of individual inventor hands into a holding LLC — the first commercialization/licensing vehicle in the chain.

• Executed date not retrievable / recorded 2016-08-30 — Reel 039178/0241 (the prior, superseded recording; confirmed from the Google Patents corrective-assignment text)

  • Conveyance: Correction (Corrective Assignment to correct application number 61/694,981)
  • Assignor: Scott A. Horstemeyer and M. Kelly Jones
  • Assignee: IOT Human Messaging, LLC
  • Correspondent: Not published. (Corrective recordings in a family are almost always filed by the same correspondent as the original; verify in Assignment Center.)
  • Context: administrative correction — fixes a mis-cited provisional serial in the July 2016 recording. Recurrence of the same assignor/assignee pairing within ~6 weeks.

• Executed date not retrievable / recorded 2020-01-18 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment (Assignment of Assignors' Interest)
  • Assignor: IOT Human Messaging, LLC
  • Assignee: Big Will Enterprises, Inc.
  • Correspondent: Not published — verify in Assignment Center.
  • Context: transfer to asserter / patent-holding vehicle. This is the operative link that preceded litigation by ~6 months.

• Executed date not retrievable / recorded 2024-09-16 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment (recorded against IOT Human Messaging, LLC as assignor)
  • Assignor: IOT Human Messaging, LLC
  • Assignee: Big Will Enterprises, Inc.
  • Correspondent: Not published — verify in Assignment Center.
  • Context: confirmatory/clean-up recording — a second IOT→BWE instrument four years after the first, consistent with perfecting the standing record during an active assertion campaign (suits were pending in W.D. Tex. throughout 2023–2024).

No bankruptcy, merger, change-of-name, security-agreement, license, or release conveyances appear in the record.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 8737951
    2008 : Priority date Jan 16
    2013 : CIP application filed Oct 9
    2014 : Patent issued May 27
         : Title held by two individual inventors
    2016 : Assigned to IOT Human Messaging LLC
         : Corrective assignment recorded six weeks later
    2020 : Assigned to Big Will Enterprises Inc
         : First infringement suits filed
    2023 : Assertion campaign in West Texas
    2024 : Confirmatory assignment recorded
         : More suits filed
    2025 : Suits continue in South Texas

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — present (moderate). The patent moves from individual inventors → IOT Human Messaging, LLC (rec. 2016-07-18) → Big Will Enterprises, Inc. (rec. 2020-01-18). IOT Human Messaging, LLC shows no product, no revenue, and no commercial footprint; Unified Patents lists it as the "Parent Company" of the sibling patent US 2016/0162043 A1, i.e., it exists as a holding vehicle. Caveat on the strict definition: the transferor was not an operating company — it was the inventors themselves — so this is a "non-practicing origination → holding LLC" pattern rather than an operating-company-to-shell spin-out.

2. Known asserter in the chain — present. Big Will Enterprises, Inc. is expressly identified by Unified Patents as "an NPE" in its PATROLL contest announcement for this patent (https://patroll.unifiedpatents.com/contests/yAP6aF3KydudfeDmd and https://www.unifiedpatents.com/insights/2022/1/10/4000-for-big-will-enterprise-prior-art). BWE is not on the classic Acacia/Marathon/IV list, but a Unified Patents NPE designation plus a documented multi-defendant campaign is a stronger, more current signal. Its assertion targets — Montblanc, Unaliwear, Kronoz, Alinsco, Matrix Telematics, Geometris, Enterprise Holdings — are all product companies, none competitors of any business BWE operates.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear. I could not retrieve the correspondent-of-record field for any recording, so I cannot make a recurrence finding. The one lead that should be checked directly in Assignment Center: prosecution for this family is run by Thomas | Horstemeyer, LLP (Scott A. Horstemeyer, Reg. No. 34,183, Customer No. 24504), and Horstemeyer is himself an inventor. If the same correspondent appears on both the 2016 and 2020/2024 recordals, that would convert this to present — but per the instructions, a single or unverified appearance is not a finding, so I am calling it unclear rather than inferring.

4. Cascading transfers — unclear / weakly present. The chain is two substantive hops (inventors → IOT Human Messaging, 2016; IOT Human Messaging → BWE, 2020) plus two administrative recordals (corrective 2016-08-30; confirmatory 2024-09-16). The substantive hops are ~42 months apart, outside the <24-month cascade window. What is compressed: two IOT↔BWE instruments in 2016 six weeks apart, and a second IOT→BWE instrument in 2024 while suits were live. Weak, not a clean cascade.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — present (strong). BWE took the assignment recorded 2020-01-18. Its **first asserted suit on the '951 patent, Big Will Enterprises, Inc. v. Montblanc North America, LLC, No. 6:20-cv-00354 (W.D. Tex.)**, was docketed in mid-2020 (defendant's responsive deadline was originally 2020-08-17/09-16, consistent with a June–July 2020 filing — roughly 5–6 months after the assignment). The chain was arranged so the new owner held clean title before the first shot.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. No Chapter 7/11, no trustee sale, no Article 363 order appears anywhere in the record. The transferors were individuals and a holding LLC, not distressed operating companies.

7. Privateering — not present. No operating company is documented as having transferred this patent to BWE to assert against its own competitors; the transferor was the inventors' own holding vehicle.

8. Defensive aggregator — not present (inverse confirmed). The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. On the contrary, Unified Patents is running offensive prior-art crowdsourcing against BWE (PATROLL contests on US 8,737,951, US 8,559,914, US 8,452,273, US 9,049,558) — the clearest possible evidence that the patent is being asserted rather than neutralized.

Verdict

NPE — high confidence.

Two strong signals drive this. First, Big Will Enterprises, Inc. — the current assignee per the 2020-01-18 and 2024-09-16 recordings — is expressly designated an NPE by Unified Patents and has waged a sustained, multi-defendant assertion campaign on the '951 patent and its siblings against Montblanc, Unaliwear, Kronoz, Alinsco, Matrix Telematics, Geometris, and Enterprise Holdings, while shipping no product of its own (per the BWE v. Geometris complaint, S.D. Tex. 4:25-cv-03961). Second, the 2020-01-18 transfer from IOT Human Messaging, LLC to BWE preceded the first '951 infringement suit (6:20-cv-00354, W.D. Tex.) by roughly six months, the classic pre-litigation clean-standing transfer. The only publicly confirmed reel/frame in the chain is 039178/0241 (the 2016 corrective assignment); the remaining reel/frame numbers and all correspondents of record still need to be pulled from the USPTO Assignment Center — I did not invent them.

Verification links:

• USPTO Assignment Center (search patent 8,737,951): https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/
• Legacy Assignment Search: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html
• Google Patents legal events: https://patents.google.com/patent/US8737951/en
• Unified Patents PATROLL contest (NPE designation): https://patroll.unifiedpatents.com/contests/yAP6aF3KydudfeDmd
• Litigation list for the patent: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist?patents=8737951&sort=-filed_date

Recommended next step for a prosecution analyst: pull the correspondent field for reels covering the 2016-07-18, 2020-01-18, and 2024-09-16 recordings. If the same attorney/firm appears across the IOT Human Messaging and Big Will Enterprises recordals, signal #3 flips to present and the chain looks like a single coordinated monetization program rather than a genuine change of ownership.

I'll research US patent 8737951 and its cited prior art. Let me search authoritative sources.

Let me retrieve the complete "References Cited" (patent citations) for US8737951 from the official sources.

Let me pull the specific cited references from the patent's front page via targeted searches.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 8,737,951 B2

Important caveat up front

You asked me to pull the complete, official "References Cited" list from the USPTO. In this session I was not able to retrieve the full, verbatim front-page citation list for US 8,737,951 (the Google Patents page returned to me was truncated before the citation tables, and the Justia "Referenced Cited" table was only partially captured). What follows splits cleanly into (A) what I could confirm, and (B) a preliminary anticipation assessment that should be re-verified against the certified copy of the patent before being relied on. I have flagged every place where I am inferring rather than confirming.

I did not auto-correct the patent number. US 8,737,951 B2 is treated literally, and I confirmed it is the "Interactive personal surveillance and security (IPSS) systems and methods" patent.

1. Confirmed bibliographic data (US 8,737,951 B2)

Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US8737951/en ; https://patents.justia.com/patent/8737951

Claim 1 (the independent claim most relevant to novelty)

1. A wireless communications device (WCD), comprising: one or more memories that store computer program code; and one or more processors that execute the computer program code, the computer program code comprising: instructions to enter a first mode of operation involving a first investigation process with one or more sensors, the first investigation process capturing first data with the one or more sensors; instructions to determine whether or not the first data is indicative of an activity relating to a user need for assistance, an accident, or a crime; and instructions to, when the first data may involve criminal activity, enter into a second mode of operation involving a second investigation process that is different than the first investigation process and that involves the one or more sensors and/or one or more other sensors in order to capture second data that is further indicative of the activity.

Claim 1's essence: a two-stage ("first investigation process" → "second investigation process") adaptive sensor-surveillance escalation triggered by a determination that sensed data indicates need-for-assistance/accident/crime.

2. Cited references I could confirm

The only two cited U.S. patent documents I was able to confirm from the patent's "Referenced Cited" table are:

Reference 1 — US 2005/0075116 A1 (Laird et al.)

• Full citation: U.S. Patent Application Publication 2005/0075116 A1, "Laird et al."
• Publication date: April 7, 2005
• Filing/priority: pre-2005 (specific filing date not confirmed in this session)
• Brief description: ⚠️ Not confirmed. The snippet captured the citation but not the subject matter. I will not guess at its disclosure.
• Potentially anticipates: To be determined — requires element-by-element comparison, which I could not perform without the reference text.

Reference 2 — US 2009/0181640 A1 (Jones)

• Full citation: U.S. Patent Application Publication 2009/0181640 A1, "Interactive personal surveillance and security (IPSS) system," Martin Kelly Jones (the named inventor here)
• Publication date: July 16, 2009
• Filing: US 12/354,927, filed January 16, 2008 (the priority application of the '951 patent)
• Brief description: This is the inventor's own earlier IPSS application, disclosing mobile-device-based personal surveillance: activating surveillance by button or audible command, aiming a camera, sending audio/images/video to a remote server, key-phrase/voice-volume "listening mode," notifying others if a deactivation code is not entered, OCR/ANPR/face-matching, and location-triggered mode changes. This is the specification that the '951 patent continues-in-part (CIP). Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20090181640
• Potentially anticipates: This is the strongest candidate for § 102(a)/102(e) art against claim 1, because it is the same family/disclosure. However, it is a family member (the priority application), not third-party art. Its effect depends on whether any claim element in the '951 patent rests on new matter added in the CIP. Where claim 1's "first mode / first investigation process → second mode / second investigation process" escalation is also disclosed in US 12/354,927, claim 1 is anticipated by the parent (a § 102(a) or § 102(e) reference as to the CIP's later-claimed subject matter). Where it is not disclosed in the parent, the parent is not anticipatory but may still be § 102(e) art for the shared portions. The examiner's use of it as a cited reference is consistent with a family/priority citation rather than third-party rejection.

Family/related references (not necessarily "prior art" but relevant)

The '951 patent sits in a large family, all sharing the same specification lineage:
US 8,559,914 B2 (US 12/354,927, pub. US 2009/0181640) · US 9,049,558 B2 · US 9,141,974 B2 · US 8,977,230 B2 · US 10,521,846 B2 · US 9,799,063 B2 · US 2015/0220906 A1 · US 2016/0174044 A1 · US 2016/0162043 A1.

Also cited internally by the '951 patent specification (incorporated by reference):

• U.S. Pat. No. 7,872,574 — the correlation-based "detection engine" used to identify human body physical activity (HBPA) from sensor signatures (SES/FIG. 27). This is expressly incorporated and underlies claim elements 3, 8–9.

3. Preliminary anticipation assessment (35 U.S.C. § 102)

Because I could not obtain the complete citation list, I present this as a preliminary, verification-required mapping:

Statutory notes:

• The '951 patent has a claimed priority date of 2008-01-16. Under pre-AIA § 102 (the applicable regime for this 2008 priority chain), third-party art must predate the invention or be more than one year before the effective filing date; a reference published after Jan 16, 2008 is generally not § 102(a) art but could be § 102(e) art if its application was filed before the '951 priority date.
• US 2009/0181640 A1 (the parent) is by the same inventor — a § 102(e)/§ 102(a) analysis applies, and the CIP relationship controls whether the parent anticipates.
• Do not treat the above as legal conclusions. Anticipation requires that a single reference disclose every element and limitation of the claim as arranged; my mapping is an analytical starting point, not a completed § 102 chart.

4. What I could not confirm (and recommend verifying)

1. The complete official "References Cited" list (front-page U.S. patent documents, foreign patent documents, and NPL) — retrieve from the USPTO PatentCenter/Public PAIR "References Cited" or the certified PDF at https://patents.google.com/patent/US8737951/en.
2. The disclosure content of US 2005/0075116 A1 (Laird et al.) — needed before any § 102 statement can be made.
3. The winning prior art from the Unified Patents "Patroll" contest for US 8,737,951 (prize $2,000, ended ~2022-06-27). Unified published results at https://www.unifiedpatents.com/insights/2022/6/27/2000-awarded-for-big-will-enterprises-951-prior-art — this would give the strongest third-party invalidity leads. Note the contest rules state prior art already cited during prosecution would not be considered, implying the cited references above were known but the winning art was uncited third-party art.
4. The Limestone/Traindex/Patentcloud semantic prior-art leads (e.g., the Limestone report listed EP1360847 / US7206548 / US8396453 etc.), which appear to be automated similarity leads rather than prosecution citations and must be independently validated.

If you can supply the certified copy of the '951 patent's front page (or the USPTO file wrapper), I can complete the element-by-element § 102 chart for each cited reference with full citations, dates, and claim mappings.

I'll research the prior art cited against this patent before building the § 103 analysis.

Let me pull the specific prior-art references cited on the patent's page.

Let me look for the actual cited-references list on the patent's page.

Obviousness Analysis — US 8,737,951 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Analyst note on sources. My instructions say to use the "Prior Art section" of the patent's Google Patents page. The page as fetched contains the patent's own front-matter art categories ("Prior art keywords: wcd, user, data, ipss, program code") and the specification's citations, but the rendered "Cited By / Citations / Similar Documents" tables did not come through in the fetched text. I therefore reconstructed the relevant prior-art set from: (i) art cited or incorporated by reference inside the '951 specification itself, (ii) the publicly posted Limestone validity report for US-8737951-B2 (ranked art leads), and (iii) references surfaced from the related Big Will / IOT Human Messaging litigations and the Unified Patents PATROLL contest for this exact patent. I flag the confidence level for each reference. I could not retrieve verbatim granted claim text, so the analysis is pitched at the independent‑claim-family level (families A–M from the prior summary), not claim-by-claim. Treat the mapping claims→families as provisional.

1. The threshold issue that drives the whole § 103 analysis: the effective filing date

This is a continuation-in-part (CIP). Google Patents records:

• Priority date (stated): 2008-01-16
• Priority claimed from US 12/354,927 (→ US 8,559,914), 2009-01-16
• "This application is a CIP of application no. PCT/US13/56753, filed Aug. 27, 2013"
• The '951 application itself was filed 2013-10-09

For a CIP, each claim gets the earlier (pre‑2008/2009) date only if the subject matter recited is supported under § 112 by the parent (PowerOasis v. T-Mobile, Anascape v. Nintendo). The '951 specification expressly adds new matter — the whole mobile-thing motion activity (MTMA)/human body physical activity (HBPA) disclosure and the sensor-correlation engine imported from PCT/US13/56753 and U.S. Pat. No. 7,872,574. Consequently:

Practical consequence: the HBPA/motion-based mode-selection family (C) and any claim tying mode changes to the 2013-added sensor-correlation engine are the weakest — a 2013 effective date opens them to a decade of "smartphone contextual sensing" publications. The server-side "sensed data → compare → message" families (B, E) and the media-retrieval family (F) are also at high risk because they read on ordinary client-server architectures. I recommend a claim-by-claim priority analysis as the first step of any invalidity workup.

Also flag: if a claim is not entitled to pre‑2013 priority, the AIA § 102/103 regime applies to that claim, which changes the prior-art categories (no § 102(e); "otherwise available to the public" before the effective filing date instead).

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

A POSITA as of the relevant date would have a bachelor's degree in electrical/computer engineering or computer science and 2–4 years' experience in mobile/wireless application development, cellular telephony, or remote monitoring systems, or equivalent. This person would be familiar with: GPS/assisted-GPS location, accelerometers/gyroscopes in handsets, MMS/packet data upload from handsets, client-server "cloud" storage, and TRS/computer-vision image matching. This is a predictable-arts fact pattern — the innovation is essentially combining known handset I/O + known wireless upload + known server-side comparison. That strongly favors obviousness under KSR.

3. Prior-art reference set (from the page's art and related sources)

What the page's "Similar Documents" query tells us: Google's own similarity link for this patent is generated with before=filing:20080116, i.e., the natural art set is pre‑January 2008 — consistent with treating 2008-01-16 as the operative date for the broadest, safest analysis, and 2013 as the operative date for the CIP-only claims.

4. Claim-family-by-claim-family § 103 analysis

Family B & E — "receive sensed data at the RLS → compare with reference data → message the WCD" (server-side activity/crime detection)

Primary: Saylor. Secondary: Gay '609 + Sprint '548 (or Chow '557).

• Saylor discloses the exact two-step core: detect an alarm situation by comparing images ("a change in images (indicating motion), an alarm may be signaled"), then a central server alerts the user and identified entities, using user-personalized databases for the alert logic.
• Gay '609 supplies the mobile-handset leg: capture audio/image/GPS and transmit to a remote monitoring/analysis location.
• Chow '557 / Sprint '548 supply the return leg: server sends a command/SMS to the handset, which executes it.

Motivation (KSR categories 1, 3, 4, 6): Combining a handset capture/upload front end with a server-side compare-and-notify back end is the routine division of labor in client-server design; a POSITA seeking to offload computationally heavy image comparison from a 2008 handset to a server would do precisely this. Market forces (limited handset CPU/battery; desire for tamper-proof offsite storage — a concern the '951 specification itself articulates) supply the design incentive. Predictable result: the server returns a match/no-match or crime/no-crime message.

Note: if claims recite only "compare sensed data with reference data; communicate a message," they may be anticipated (not merely obvious) by Saylor alone once the "WCD" is understood as a mobile device.

Family D — WCD-side criminal activity detection (sense → send → receive indication)

Primary: Gay '609 / Gay '974. Secondary: Motorola '453; AT&T '602.

Gay '974 expressly transmits captured imagery plus GPS and hardware identifiers to a remote receiver/server that performs "analysis." Receiving the analysis result back at the phone is the ordinary return path of any query/response protocol (Chow '557). Motivation: use of known technique (remote image analysis) to improve a similar device (camera phone) in the same way (KSR cat. 3). Obvious.

Families G (listen mode) & H (alarm command)

Primary: Motorola '453. Secondary: Gay '609; Sprint '548/Chow '557; Sprint '904.

• Motorola '453 is a near-dispositive teaching. It claims surreptitiously triggering the collection of audio and/or video from a wireless device — i.e., a remote server commanding the handset to activate its microphone/camera and stream data back, without the user. That is claim family G (server-side) almost verbatim, and the WCD-side counterpart (receive command → activate mic → transmit audio) is its mirror image.
• Saylor shows detection of a triggering condition preceding the alarm; combining Saylor's detection with '453's remote-actuation yields "detect possible crime → command the WCD to record/enter listen mode → stream audio."
• Alarm command (H): Saylor already discloses alerting by voice and text; Sprint/Chow show server→device command signaling. Commanding the handset to raise an alarm is a mere automation of Saylor's notification, with predictable benefit.

Motivation: Motorola '453 frames surreptitious remote capture as desirable precisely for the lost/stolen-device and covert-surveillance scenario; a POSITA addressing personal safety would find the same motivation (covert capture is more useful to a user under duress than overt capture). KSR cats. 1, 3, 4, 6. Reasonable expectation of success is essentially certain because '453 already achieved it.

Family A — two-stage investigation (first mode → determine → second, different mode)

Primary: Saylor (detect-and-escalate). Secondary: Motorola '453 + Gay '609 + Sprint '904.

The "second mode captures different/further data" limitation is met by escalation hierarchies that pervade the alarm industry: Saylor's personalized alarm services already specify user-defined notification order and escalation; GEOS '499 modifies responses based on incoming data; the '951 specification itself describes proprietary "Level 3 → Level 4 → Level 5" escalation, confirming the concept was conventional. One of ordinary skill would implement "if motion is detected (level 1 capture), escalate to audio/video recording and notification (level 2)" with no more than ordinary creativity (KSR).

Family C — HBPA determination → mode selection from a set of modes (highest-risk family)

Primary: US 7,872,574 (self-admitted incorporation). Secondary: Gay '609 / GEOS '499. Plus any pre-2013 activity-recognition publication.

This family is the most vulnerable twice over:

1. Self-admission. The '951 specification states the HBPA/motion detection engine is "described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,872,574, which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety." Applicant thereby concedes that the recognition mechanism (correlate sensed movement data to reference signatures; identify the activity) is not the invention. What remains — "select a surveillance mode based on the recognized activity" — is a routine programming step: if (activity == running) mode = X; if (activity == driving) mode = Y. That is the classic KSR "general-purpose computer performing a known function with a trivial program change" situation.
2. 2013 effective-date exposure. Any claim that relies on the CIP-added MTMA/HBPA matter is very likely limited to an August/October 2013 effective filing date, making 2008–2013 activity-recognition art available (Google's own similarity link for the family runs the search before=filing:20080116 — a narrower window than the claims may actually require).

Motivation: Design incentive to reduce false alarms by conditioning surveillance intensity on what the user is doing (walking at night in a crime area versus sitting at a desk) is compelling on the patent's own face (its specification states exactly this rationale). KSR cat. 4 & 6.

Family I — TOS + risk level → surveillance action activating an I/O device

Primary: Saylor (user-defined alarm services / user-selected actions). Secondary: GEOS '499 (location-derived risk response modification); Chow '557 (server command to device to perform an action).

Selecting from a finite set of pre-defined surveillance types and finite set of risk levels, then actuating an I/O device, is squarely "choosing from a finite number of identified, predictable solutions" (KSR; In re Kubin). No unexpected result is claimed.

Family F — location/time-indexed media database (RLS stores audio/video/image files with reference location (and time) → receives sensed location → retrieves and returns file)

Primary: GEOS '499 / location-based content services art. Secondary: Gay '974 (geo-tagged uploads).

Determining location ("determining a user activity; and selecting an assistance providing entity based at least in part upon the user activity and the location information") and returning location-relevant media is the canonical geotagging + database-lookup operation — a general-purpose database function applied to a known field. Under Alice/Mayo step two this is also § 101-suspect, but for § 103 purposes it is plainly an obvious application of geospatial indexing (see Google's own similar-document search window; geotagged photo services predate 2008). Optional references to charging fees / paying uploaders are business-method economics, not technical contribution.

Family J — mode-switching variants (four variants, incl. code-entry prompt)

Primary: Motorola '453 + Sprint '904/'548 (server instructs device to change state). Secondary: Saylor; Chow '557.

Every J variant reduces to server→device state-change command (Sprint '548: "network-based remote control … of wireless communication devices"; Chow '557: server generates an SMS "command" the device executes). The code-entry confirmation variant maps onto Saylor's / the alarm industry's long-standing passcode-disarm paradigm (and the '951 specification itself admits the passcode-disarm to be a known technique). Obvious.

Family K — cooperating WCDs / proximity

Primary: Gagic (pub. 2007-07-26). Secondary: Sprint '904 (location services) + Gay '609.

Gagic discloses forming an ad-hoc group of communication devices by location/vicinity criteria and broadcasting an event notification to proximally located devices — the "cooperating WCDs" concept in map/emergency form. Combining Gagic's proximity-grouping with the '951's notion of notifying nearby devices is a simple substitution (KSR cat. 2) with a reasonable expectation of success; the only difference is the payload (surveillance alert vs. group call). Note the '951's variant reciting first and second WCDs' sensed data + GPS to determine proximity and detect an event in the shared environment — Gagic's location-criteria group formation plus AT&T '602's encounter-logging (multi-device sensed-data fusion) covers this.

Family L — request-for-user-input (failure to respond = criminal activity)

Primary: Saylor; secondary: the alarm-industry "no-response escalation" paradigm the '951 specification itself recites.

The '951 specification describes the exact prior practice it is claiming: "a request to enter a code or an alarm will activate (or activate within a preset time frame)" and "if a deactivation code is not entered, or call/message the user back." Applicant's own specification characterizes this as known ("Also note that…"), which is a § 103 admission that a POSITA would implement the no-response→alarm rule.

Family M — assistance entity selection (RLS determines need → contacts appropriate entity; variant: based on user activity + location)

Primary: Saylor ("contact individuals and/or entities 1611–162N identified by the user … in an order determined by the user"). Secondary: GEOS '499 (location-specific risk response); Sprint '904.

Saylor's personalized, user-ordered contact database is the whole of the "select appropriate assistance entity" concept. Adding "select based on the user's activity plus location" is the natural extension of GEOS '499's location-modified responses. KSR cat. 4.

5. The overarching § 103 theory — why a POSITA would combine

The '951 patent's independent claims are best characterized as the application of known client-server and mobile-sensing technologies to the known field of personal alarms, not as a new machine or a new physical result. The KSR rationales apply cumulatively:

1. Known elements in a known arrangement → predictable results. Handset capture (Gay), server comparison (Saylor), server-to-device command (Sprint/Chow), remote covert actuation (Motorola), location indexing (GEOS). Every brick is independently old.
2. Design incentive / market forces. The specification's own narrative — defeating on-device deletion by criminals, offloading processing, escalating on risk — articulates motivations that a POSITA would independently have. KSR teaches these are permissible rationales.
3. Finite, predictable solution space. Fixed sets of "modes" and "risk levels," and binary match/no-match outcomes, are the definition of a predictable solution space (KSR, In re Kubin).
4. Applicant admissions. Two are textually strong: (a) the HBPA detection engine is imported wholesale from US 7,872,574; (b) the specification repeatedly labels code-entry disarm, no-response escalation, and screen disguises as things "the IPSS system can" do or "also" do — corollary, conventional practice.

The strongest single-reference attacks (secondary/reference overlap):

• Motorola '453 alone or with Saylor — families G, H, J.
• Gay '609 alone or with Chow '557 — families B, D, E.
• Gagic — family K.

6. Secondary considerations (objective indicia)

I found no evidence of non-obviousness indicia — no unexpected results, no licensing-nexus, no praise, no industry skepticism. The patent is held by a non-practicing entity (Big Will Enterprises, Inc.) and has been asserted in a long string of Texas suits (Montblanc, Unaliwear, Kronoz, Alinsco, Kia, Solera, Loomis, Geometris, Enterprise Holdings, and the 2025–26 filings listed on the Google Patents litigation panel). Unified Patents ran a PATROLL prior-art contest specifically on this patent in 2022 and awarded $2,000 to winner Vibhor Dimri for a submission on US 8,737,951. I could not retrieve the identity or content of the winning reference; that submission should be the first thing obtained in any invalidity engagement, since it is a government-/litigation-adjacent cache of ready-made § 103 art.

7. Caveats, and what must be verified before this can be relied on

• Not verified: verbatim granted claims. Everything above is at the claim-family level as paraphrased in prior work. Do not treat the family→claims mapping as exact.
• Not verified: the patent's actual, full "Patent Citations" table from the Google Patents page — the table did not render in my fetch. The reference set I used is superset-adjacent: some citations came from the patent's own specification, the Limestone validity report, and PTAB petitions on other Big Will patents (Saylor, Gagic, Chow). Saylor's and Gagic's bibliographic numbers are unconfirmed and I have deliberately not assigned fabricated citation numbers.
• Not asserted as verified: US 7,787,859, US 6,337,634, US 2004/0171372 — I could not tie these to this patent's citation list.
• Unresolved legal issue that controls outcomes: the CIP priority allocation. Resolve it first.
• Unsearched resources named on the page but not retrievable by me: the Amplified, Traindex, InQuartik, IPscreener, Ambercite, and Techson/Limestone full reports, and the PATROLL claim chart template — all listed on the Google Patents/PATROLL page for this patent but behind interfaces I could not open in this session.
• A separate § 101 flag (out of scope here): several families (B, E, F, I, L, M) recite "compare data / communicate result" and "select from predetermined sets," which are Alice step-two risks independent of § 103.