US 8805418

I'll search for the specific patent number and any 2026 CAFC docket activity.

Let me run more targeted searches on the patent and on 2026 CAFC activity.

Search Report — US Patent No. 8,805,418 (interpreted literally as "8805418")

Search coverage / limits: I ran searches against Google Patents, FreePatentsOnline, USPTO-derived mirrors (uspto.report, Justia), Unified Patents litigation data (as reflected on the Google Patents page), and general web queries aimed at 2026 CAFC dockets. I did not find any Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) 2026 docket entry naming 8,805,418. I also hit a tool step limit before I could exhaustively query PACER/CAFC. Treat the litigation portion below as incomplete.

Important non-conflation note: One search returned a 2026 ex parte reexamination decision (Control No. 90/015,984) for U.S. Patent No. 8,810,458 — a different patent (Examiner Woo Choi, Art Unit 3990). Per your strict rule, I did not treat that as relating to 8,805,418.

1. Bibliographic data (as stated on the Google Patents page, corroborated by FreePatentsOnline)

Assignment chain noted on the page: United Video Properties, Inc. → (mergers) UV Corp. → TV Guide, Inc. → Rovi Guides, Inc. → Adeia Guides Inc. The page also lists security-interest/release records involving Morgan Stanley Senior Funding, HPS Investment Partners, and Bank of America, N.A.

2. Abstract (verbatim)

"Methods and systems for performing actions based on location-based rules are provided. In particular, these methods and systems may store an entertainment profile of a user, wherein the entertainment profile identifies entertainment media characteristics of the user. It may then be determined that the user entered a predetermined range of a location. In response to this, a location-based rule that corresponds to the location and that defines an action to be taken may be automatically identified. Based on the location-based rule, the location, and the entertainment profile of the user, the action may be performed."

3. Plain-language overview of the disclosure

The patent is a media-guidance ("interactive program guide") family member. Its core is a geo-fence / location-rule engine that triggers media-related actions on a user's devices:

• A mobile user equipment device (MUED) reports its location (GPS circuitry, LBS circuitry, triangulation, hybrid positioning, or via social-network check-ins / calendar data).
• The location is sent (e.g., XML payload with MUED ID, user ID, latitude, longitude) to a rules server, which queries stored rules and Geo-Fence definitions (XML structures in FIGS. 9/14/16).
• If a rule's conditions are met, the rules server issues instructions to the MUED and/or the home user equipment device (HUED) to perform an action.
• Conditions are matched not just to location but to an entertainment media profile (program favorites, preferred artists, genre preferences, viewing history), plus optional time parameters.
• Worked examples: (a) an AMC movie-theatre geo-fence offering 15% off two tickets to a Harry Potter fan within a half-mile 30 minutes before showtime; (b) an offer to add the "Rambo Trilogy" to a VOD queue when the MUED exits a theatre geo-fence around the time "The Expendables" ends (optionally only after remaining inside the fence a predetermined time, e.g., 20 minutes); (c) a confirmation message pushed to the home TV's guidance application. FIGS. 10–12 show these mobile and home screens; FIG. 13 is the rule-configuration UI; FIG. 15 is the MUED/rules-server process flow (steps 1506–1526).
• Geo-fences can be defined by address + distance (circle/square radius or diagonal), drawn freehand on a map (FIG. 8, cross-hair/drawing method), and can be active only at certain dates/hours/weeks.

Uncertainty flag: The authoritative text I was given contains the abstract, summary, figures list, and detailed description, but the claim set itself was not included (and the Google Patents description snippet ends mid-sentence). I therefore cannot quote or verify the exact independent claim language. Based on the Summary-of-the-Invention section — which in this family mirrors claim scope — the independent claims most plausibly run to (i) a method, (ii) a system, and (iii) a non-transitory computer-readable medium (the spec expressly contemplates "any suitable computer readable media … transitory or non-transitory"), each reciting:

1. Store an entertainment profile of a user that identifies the user's entertainment media characteristics;
2. Determine that the user entered a predetermined range of a location;
3. Automatically identify, in response, a location-based rule corresponding to that location and defining an action; and
4. Perform the action based on the rule, the location, and the entertainment profile.

Dependent-feature candidates surfaced in the summary/description include: profile received from the user's home entertainment device; characteristics defining a media preference; GPS-based entry determination; the rule defining a region of locations; an action triggered on leaving the location and related to the location left; rule definition by address + distance; a time parameter in the rule; and performing the action by displaying a media-asset option on the mobile device or by communicating with the home entertainment device.

4. Litigation / docket status

• Google Patents' Unified Patents litigation block for this family lists three U.S. district court filings in the Northern District of California: cases 5:26-cv-02811, 3:26-cv-02811, and 3:25-cv-11048, plus a "first worldwide family litigation" link (Darts-ip family 48655055). The "26-cv" numbering is consistent with 2026 filings, but the page did not identify the parties, asserted claims, or whether 8,805,418 itself is asserted.
• No CAFC 2026 appeal for 8,805,418 appeared in any result I retrieved. Related Adeia/Rovi appellate and trial activity I did surface concerns other patents — e.g., Adeia Guides Inc. v. Videotron Ltd., 2025 FC 1725 (Canadian Federal Court; Canadian Patents 2,967,187 / 2,775,674 / 2,553,922 / 2,635,571) and Rovi/Comcast ITC and IPR matters on the '585, '528, '801, '871, '696, and '556 patents — none of which is 8,805,418.
• One result (Docket Alarm, IPR2021-00779, Snap Inc. exhibit) lists "8805418" inside a long string of patent/publication numbers; that is a citation list, not evidence of a proceeding on this patent.

5. Explicit uncertainty

1. Claim text is unverified — I could not retrieve the literal independent claims, so the "claim overview" above is an inference from the specification's Summary section and should be confirmed against the issued patent copy or USPTO PatentCenter.
2. The 2026 N.D. Cal. case numbers come from a third-party aggregator (Unified Patents) via Google Patents, with no confirmation of parties, status, or whether this patent is asserted; I did not independently verify them on PACER.
3. No CAFC 2026 docket for 8,805,418 was found — absence of a result is not proof of absence, particularly given I could not complete all planned queries.
4. The bibliographic data shown (inventor Michael R. Nichols; filing 2011-12-23; grant 2014-08-12; assignee chain to Adeia Guides Inc.) is consistent across Google Patents and FreePatentsOnline and matches the authoritative text supplied to me.

I'll research litigation involving US 8805418 using the sources you specified.

Let me search the specific case numbers and related enforcement campaigns.

Litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 8,805,418

Bottom line: U.S. 8,805,418 (Nichols, "Methods and systems for performing actions based on location-based rules," assigned to United Video Properties → Rovi Guides → Adeia Guides Inc.) is flagged as having family litigation, and I located one confirmed U.S. case plus two additional 2026 docket entries tied to the patent's family. I could not confirm any judgment or outcome for any of them.

1. DIRECTV, LLC v. Adeia Inc. et al. — CONFIRMED (details verified)

• Plaintiff: DIRECTV, LLC
• Defendants: Adeia Inc.; Adeia Guides Inc.; Adeia Media Holdings LLC; Adeia Media Solutions Inc.; Adeia Technologies Inc.
• Jurisdiction: U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California
• Case No.: 3:25-cv-11048 (Nature of Suit 830 – Patent; Cause 28:2201 Declaratory Judgment)
• Filing date: December 29, 2025
• Posture/claims: Declaratory-judgment action by DIRECTV seeking non-infringement and invalidity of ten patents relating to interactive television and program-guide technologies. DIRECTV alleges Adeia demanded "substantial new royalties" for its portfolio in connection with DIRECTV's streaming and multi-channel services. Counsel: O'Melveny & Myers and Rothwell, Figg, Ernst & Manbeck.
• Outcome/status: Open/pending as of the latest data I retrieved; no final disposition found.
• Source links: https://www.law.com/radar/card/pm-62129892-directv-llc-v-adeia-inc ; https://cdn.pacermonitor.com/public/case/62129892/DIRECTV,_LLC_v_Adeia_Inc_et_al ; https://ai-lab.exparte.com/case/dct/cand/3:25-cv-11048/directv-llc-v-adeia-inc
• Caveat: The Google Patents litigation record you supplied associates this case number with the '418 patent's family. The published complaint summary I retrieved identifies ten patents-in-suit by name (e.g., 8,156,528; 8,601,526; 10,506,010; 10,110,961) but does not expressly list 8,805,418 among them. So the '418's inclusion rests on the Google Patents family-level litigation tag, not on a complaint citation I personally verified.

2. N.D. Cal. cases 5:26-cv-02811 and 3:26-cv-02811 — LISTED (unverified)

• Source: Google Patents family-litigation data for US 8,805,418 (see the "Family has litigation" section), which lists:
  • US case filed in California Northern District Court — case 5:26-cv-02811
  • US case filed in California Northern District Court — case 3:26-cv-02811
• What I know: Both are 2026 filings in the N.D. Cal. (the "5:" and "3:" prefixes correspond to different divisions—San Jose and San Francisco respectively).
• What I could NOT verify: Plaintiff, defendant, exact filing date, and outcome. My searches for these two numbers returned no party-level data before I exhausted my search steps. I will not invent parties for them. The near-identical numbers suggest they may be a single dispute docketed in two divisions, but that is speculation and I am not asserting it.
• Source links: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/California%20Northern%20District%20Court/case/5%3A26-cv-02811 ; https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/California%20Northern%20District%20Court/case/3%3A26-cv-02811

3. Darts-ip "first worldwide family litigation" reference — LISTED (unverified)

The Google Patents record also flags a first worldwide family litigation via Darts-ip (family 48655055). This indicates at least one foreign-family proceeding exists, but the record does not identify the patents, parties, or forum. Note that Adeia/Rovi's well-documented Canadian IPG campaigns (Rovi Guides, Inc. v. Vidéotron and Rovi Guides, Inc. v. TELUS, both FCA decisions in 2024) concern Canadian counterpart patents — I found no basis to conclude U.S. 8,805,418 itself is asserted there.

• Source link: https://patents.darts-ip.com/?family=48655055

Summary table

Important limitations

• I found no ITC Section 337 action, no PTAB IPR/PGR specifically challenging 8,805,418, and no CAFC appeal specifically naming 8,805,418.
• I did not find any judgment, settlement, or final outcome for the cases above.
• The security-interest and assignment events in the patent's chain of title (Morgan Stanley, HPS Investment Partners, Bank of America, the 2024 name change to Adeia Guides Inc.) are not litigation and I have excluded them.

If you need firm verification of the two 2026 docket numbers, the two authoritative next steps would be a PACER pull for 5:26-cv-02811 and 3:26-cv-02811 in the N.D. Cal., and a Unified Patents portal search at the exact case URLs above (the portal pages are the origin of the Google Patents litigation tags). I can walk through those if you want to pursue them.

I'll verify the structured data with targeted searches before drafting.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file for US 8,805,418: 0. The USPTO Open Data Portal (ODP) structured block supplied in the prompt returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceedings, and my independent web checks surfaced none. The breakdown is therefore: active 0 / claims invalidated 0 / claims sustained 0 / settled 0 / institution denied 0 — the patent has never been through the PTAB at all. That is neither a "hardened patent" story nor a "claims are canceled" story; it means all 20 claims stand untested by the Board, the patent is presumptively valid under § 282 with no FWD-level invalidity record to cite, and any defense must be built from scratch — but likewise there is zero petitioner-side estoppel against this patent's claims.

I flag this as the single most important correction to the framing of some prior Rovi/UV portfolio litigation: the heavily-IPR'd Rovi patents (the "Ellis Mobile" family — US 8,006,263, 8,046,801, 9,369,741, 7,200,855, 7,779,445, etc.) are different patents, not US 8,805,418. See, e.g., the Comcast/Rovi PTAB record at IPR2017-00951 docket and IPR2020-00787 docket — patents '263, '801 and '855, respectively. None of those proceedings names the '418 patent.

No proceedings to report — verification trail

Because the required output is one block per proceeding, and there are none, here is what I checked and what I found, so a defendant can rely on the negative:

• ODP structured data (canonical): "no AIA trial proceedings for this patent." This is the controlling answer.
• Google Patents family record (US8805418B2): the "Family has litigation" section lists only district court activity, not PTAB — N.D. Cal. cases 3:25-cv-11048, 5:26-cv-02811, 3:26-cv-02811 (per the Unified Patents litigation-data links on that page). Note a data anomaly: 5:26-cv-02811 and 3:26-cv-02811 carry the identical 02811 sequence number in the Google Patents feed; I am not auto-correcting that, but treat the duplicate as a feed artifact to verify on PACER before relying on either number.
• Litigation context (not a PTAB proceeding): case 3:25-cv-11048 is DIRECTV, LLC v. Adeia Inc. et al., a declaratory-judgment action filed 2025-12-29 in N.D. Cal. by DIRECTV against Adeia Guides Inc. and Adeia affiliates. See Law.com Radar card and PacerMonitor docket. Per Adeia's own disclosures, the NDCA DJ action sought declaratory non-infringement of seven Adeia Media patents and invalidity of three others (Adeia 10-K/10-Q litigation notes, investors.adeia.com). I could not confirm that US 8,805,418 is one of the patents named in that complaint — the complaint analysis I reviewed discusses '528, '526, '010 and '961 patents. The family link to the '418 comes from Google Patents' aggregated litigation field, which is not claim-level verification.
• Unified Patents: appears here only as a data source (the "Unified Patents Litigation Data" license string on the Google Patents page). I found no evidence that Unified Patents has filed an IPR against the '418, so do not assume a defensive aggregator is carrying the invalidity load for you.

Strategic summary

Claim status: all claims UNTESTED; none canceled, none sustained. US 8,805,418 issued 2014-08-12 from application 13/336,678 filed 2011-12-23 with a priority date of 2011-12-23; anticipated expiration 2031-12-23. There is no FWD, no institution decision, and no certificate canceling any claim. Claims 1–20 (including whatever independent claims you are accused of infringing) are untouched by any PTAB record. Consequences: (a) you cannot argue collateral estoppel or "the Board already killed this claim"; (b) conversely, the patent owner cannot point to any Board validation of its claims, and pre-issuance/reexam history aside, the claims have never been tested by an adverse expert record.

Estoppel landscape: a clean field in both directions. § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches only to a petitioner (and its real parties in interest/privies) that obtained a final written decision in an instituted IPR. Because no IPR was ever instituted on the '418, no party is estopped as to the '418's claims, and no ground is foreclosed to a new petitioner. Two caveats: (1) estoppel is patent-specific — an accused infringer who was a petitioner/RPI/privy in the Comcast or Snap IPRs on related patents is not thereby barred from raising art against the '418, but any art it did rely on in those proceedings is worth assuming will be argued as a § 325(d)/General Plastic discretionary-denial hook by the patent owner; (2) § 311(b) limits you to § 102/§ 103 grounds on patents and printed publications — no § 112 in an IPR (Samsung v. Prisua, 948 F.3d 1342 (Fed. Cir. 2020)), and no public-use/system art.

Pathway availability: IPR only — and the clock is the whole game. The '418 is a pre-AIA patent (filed 2011-12-23, before the 2013-03-16 AIA first-inventor-to-file date), so PGR is unavailable. CBM is unavailable both because the program sunset for petitions filed after 2020-09-16 and because the claims are not directed to a financial-product/service technology. That leaves IPR under § 311 as the sole Board vehicle, subject to the § 315(b) one-year bar from service of a complaint alleging infringement of the '418 — which is why the N.D. Cal. activity matters even though it is not PTAB activity.

Pattern signals. The '418 is the first member of a three-patent continuation family with the same specification: US 9,125,169 (continuation of 13/336,678, filed 2014-06-26, issued 2015-09-01) and US 9,967,708 (filed 2015-07-22). All three share the Nichols specification and the same Adeia/Rovi chain of title (United Video Properties → UV Corp. → TV Guide, Inc. → Rovi Guides, Inc. → Adeia Guides Inc., change of name recorded 2024-10-02). Practical implication: IPR art you develop against the '418 will very likely be reusable against '169 and '708, and vice versa — budget for a family-wide challenge, not a single-patent one. No petitioner has filed multiple IPRs against the '418 because no petitioner has filed any. The patent owner has no PTAB appeal history on this patent because there is nothing to appeal.

Recommended next steps

1. Do not represent to a court or to opposing counsel that US 8,805,418 has been invalidated in IPR. It has not. Any "claims 1–5 have been canceled" theory would be a fabrication; the only invalidity record you can point to is whatever exists in district court or ITC litigation, which is not an AIA trial outcome.
2. Calendar the § 315(b) bar immediately. If you have been served with a complaint (or a DJ-counterclaim response) alleging infringement of the '418, you have one year from service to file an IPR. There is no active proceeding in which to intervene or join, so this is a fresh-petition decision, not a joinder decision.
3. Mine the sibling-patent IPR record for art, not for outcomes. The Comcast-v.-Rovi PTAB dockets are the richest public expert-and-art repository for this specification family. Publicly indexed filings include IPR2017-00950/00951/00952 ('263 patent, Dr. Michael Shamos declarations), the IPR2019-00224–00229 series, IPR2020-00787 ('855), and the Fintiv-denial trio IPR2020-00800/-00801/-00802 ('445). Reuse their prior-art combinations and obviousness rationales where the '418 claims overlap in substance — but re-paper them against the '418's actual claim language.
4. Anticipate Fintiv/§ 314(a) and § 325(d) fights. If the N.D. Cal. DIRECTV-vs.-Adeia matters reach a trial date near your petition's projected FWD deadline, expect a discretionary-denial argument, and if you or your privies used similar art in the sibling IPRs, expect a § 325(d) "same or substantially the same art" argument. Address both affirmatively in the petition.
5. Verify the litigation posture on PACER before acting. Confirm (i) whether the '418 is actually asserted or DJ'd-over in 3:25-cv-11048, 3:26-cv-02811, and 5:26-cv-02811, and (ii) the correct docket numbers, given the duplicated "02811" sequence in the Google Patents feed. If the '418 is not in any live case, the § 315(b) clock has not started and your IPR timing is unconstrained.
6. Re-run the ODP check at filing time. The ODP answer is "no proceedings as of the most recent ingest." A petition on a 2011-family patent that Adeia is actively monetizing is exactly the scenario where a first IPR can appear between now and your deadline.

Confidence and gaps: I am highly confident in the negative finding of no PTAB proceedings on the '418 (ODP canonical + independent web checks). I could not verify from search results that the '418 is among the patents-in-suit or DJ patents in the Adeia/DIRECTV disputes, and I did not retrieve the actual N.D. Cal. complaints or any Adeia litigation note naming the '418 — treat the litigation-family linkage as unconfirmed. One incidental hit — IPR2021-00779, Snap Inc., Exhibit 1012 — lists "8805418" inside a long string of patent numbers in an exhibit table. That is a reference listing in a third party's IPR exhibit, not a challenge to the '418, and I would not cite it as evidence of any proceeding.

I'll research the assignment record before drafting. Let me pull what I can from the record and cross-references.

Let me dig for the specific assignment reel/frame details and correspondent of record.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US 8,805,418 B2

Patent: Methods and systems for performing actions based on location-based rules
App. 13/336,678 · filed 2011-12-23 · issued 2014-08-12 · anticipated expiration 2031-12-23

⚠️ Data limitation up front (please read before relying on this for docketing).
The sources I can reach — Google Patents legal events, USPTO PatentCenter/ODP mirrors, PACER summaries, SEC filings, and third-party aggregators (FreePatentsOnline, USPTO.report, Plainsite, Craft, Darts-IP) — expose the event dates, conveyance types, and assignor/assignee legal names for this patent, but not the USPTO reel/frame numbers or the recorded correspondent of record. I did not retrieve reel/frame values, and I will not invent them. Every reel/frame field below is marked [not retrieved — verify]. Likewise, no US-recorded correspondent (filing attorney/agent) was surfaced. The only correspondent-style name I found is a UK address-for-service entry (Haley Guiliano International LLP), which is not the US assignment correspondent and is reported here only as a cross-reference, not a finding. To complete the reel/frame and correspondent columns you must open the Assignment Center record directly: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html (search 8805418) and https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/.

Inventors

Unusual-pattern check: No evidence of the classic precursor to a portfolio fire-sale (all inventors departing the original assignee within 12 months of filing, followed by a quick transfer). The single inventor assigned to the operating-company assignee on a normal schedule, and the patent remained inside the corporate family for its entire life. No departure-driven sale pattern present.

Original assignee

United Video Properties, Inc. (Delaware), named as assignee on the issued patent.

• Primary line of business: developer of interactive television program-guide / media-guidance technology (the entity family behind TV Guide listings data, IPG/EPG software, and Rovi/TiVo guide products). It is an operating technology company at the time of filing, not a licensing shell.
• Did it ship product embodying the claims? The claimed subject matter is a geo-fenced, location-plus-entertainment-profile method for triggering actions on a mobile device and coordinating with a home device. This is a software/platform claim, not a discrete consumer SKU; it maps to the family's media-guidance platform rather than to a standalone product. On the record available I cannot point to a specific commercial product sold under the ʼ418 claims — flagging this explicitly rather than asserting one.
• Current status: The original assignee no longer exists as a separate owner. It was merged away in the 2015 internal reorganization (United Video Properties → UV Corp → TV Guide, Inc. → Rovi Guides, Inc.), and Rovi Guides was renamed Adeia Guides Inc. under a Delaware certificate of amendment filed 2022-08-15. The ultimate parent, Adeia Inc. (NASDAQ: ADEA), is a publicly traded IP-licensing and R&D company (formerly Xperi Holding Corp.). Operating/active as a licensing company; not dissolved, not in bankruptcy.

Assignment timeline

The USPTO Assignment Center does contain records for this patent (Google Patents surfaces a full legal-events chain). Below is every recorded event, in order. Dates are the event dates as published in the legal-events record (Google Patents does not separate execution vs. recording date in this feed); where the record gives only one date it is shown once. Reel/frame and correspondent were not retrievable from my sources.

• 2011-12-27 (executed) / recorded 2011-12-27 — Reel [not retrieved — verify]

  • Conveyance: Assignment (Assignment of Assignors' Interest)
  • Assignor: Nichols, Michael R. (inventor)
  • Assignee: United Video Properties, Inc.
  • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
  • Context: Routine inventor-to-employer assignment of rights at filing; not a sale.

• 2014-07-24 (executed) / recorded 2014-07-24 — Reel [not retrieved — verify]

  • Conveyance: Security Agreement (Patent Security Agreement)
  • Assignor: Aptiv Digital, Inc.; Gemstar Development Corporation; Index Systems Inc.; Rovi Guides, Inc.; Rovi Solutions Corporation; Rovi Technologies Corporation; Sonic Solutions LLC; Starsight Telecast, Inc.; United Video Properties, Inc.; VeVeo, Inc. (grantors)
  • Assignee: Morgan Stanley Senior Funding, Inc., as Collateral Agent
  • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
  • Context: Securitization — blanket lien over the UVP/Rovi patent family securing corporate debt; not a change of beneficial ownership.

• 2015-01-20 — Reel [not retrieved — verify]

  • Conveyance: Merger
  • Assignor: United Video Properties, Inc.
  • Assignee: UV Corp. (surviving entity in the merger)
  • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
  • Context: Internal corporate reorganization (first leg).

• 2015-01-20 — Reel [not retrieved — verify]

  • Conveyance: Merger
  • Assignor: UV Corp.
  • Assignee: TV Guide, Inc. (surviving entity)
  • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
  • Context: Internal corporate reorganization (second leg).

• 2015-01-20 — Reel [not retrieved — verify]

  • Conveyance: Merger
  • Assignor: TV Guide, Inc.
  • Assignee: Rovi Guides, Inc. (surviving entity)
  • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
  • Context: Internal corporate reorganization (third leg) — also publicly noticed on the AU/UK registers, where "The name of the patentee has been altered to Rovi Guides, Inc."

• 2019-11-22 — Reel [not retrieved — verify]

  • Conveyance: Security Interest
  • Assignor: Rovi Guides, Inc.; Rovi Solutions Corporation; Rovi Technologies Corporation; TiVo Solutions, Inc.; VeVeo, Inc. (grantors)
  • Assignee: HPS Investment Partners, LLC, as Collateral Agent
  • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
  • Context: Securitization — new collateral-agent lien in the TiVo/Xperi-era refinancing.

• 2019-11-25 — Reel [not retrieved — verify]

  • Conveyance: Security Agreement (Patent Security Agreement)
  • Assignor: Rovi Guides, Inc.; Rovi Solutions Corporation; Rovi Technologies Corporation; TiVo Solutions, Inc.; VeVeo, Inc. (grantors)
  • Assignee: Morgan Stanley Senior Funding, Inc., as Collateral Agent
  • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
  • Context: Securitization — parallel collateral-agent lien.

• 2019-11-25 — Reel [not retrieved — verify]

  • Conveyance: Release (Release of Security Interest in Patent Rights)
  • Assignor: Morgan Stanley Senior Funding, Inc., as Collateral Agent
  • Assignee: Rovi Guides, Inc.; Rovi Technologies Corporation; Aptiv Digital Inc.; Gemstar Development Corporation; United Video Properties, Inc.; Sonic Solutions LLC; Starsight Telecast, Inc.; Index Systems Inc.; VeVeo, Inc.; Rovi Solutions Corporation
  • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
  • Context: Securitization — release of the earlier (2014) Morgan Stanley lien as part of the refinancing.

• 2020-06-01 — Reel [not retrieved — verify]

  • Conveyance: Security Interest
  • Assignor: DTS, Inc.; iBiquity Digital Corporation; Invensas Bonding Technologies, Inc.; Invensas Corporation; Phorus, Inc.; Rovi Guides, Inc.; Rovi Solutions Corporation; Rovi Technologies Corporation; Tessera Advanced Technologies, Inc.; Tessera, Inc.; TiVo Solutions Inc.; VeVeo, Inc. (grantors)
  • Assignee: Bank of America, N.A. (collateral agent)
  • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
  • Context: Securitization — broad cross-entity lien across the merged Xperi/TiVo/Tessera asset group.

• 2020-06-05 — Reel [not retrieved — verify]

  • Conveyance: Release (Release of Security Interest)
  • Assignor: Morgan Stanley Senior Funding, Inc.
  • Assignee: Rovi Technologies Corporation; Rovi Solutions Corporation; VeVeo, Inc.; Rovi Guides, Inc.; TiVo Solutions, Inc.
  • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
  • Context: Securitization — release of the 2019 Morgan Stanley lien.

• 2020-06-05 — Reel [not retrieved — verify]

  • Conveyance: Release (Release of Security Interest)
  • Assignor: HPS Investment Partners, LLC
  • Assignee: Rovi Technologies Corporation; TiVo Solutions, Inc.; Rovi Solutions Corporation; Rovi Guides, Inc.; VeVeo, Inc.
  • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
  • Context: Securitization — release of the 2019 HPS lien.

• 2024-10-02 — Reel [not retrieved — verify]

  • Conveyance: Change of Name (no transfer of ownership)
  • Assignor: Rovi Guides, Inc.
  • Assignee: Adeia Guides Inc.
  • Correspondent: [not retrieved]. (Cross-reference only, not a US correspondent finding: the UK register shows Haley Guiliano International LLP as the address for service associated with the Rovi Guides → Adeia Guides name change filed on GB2544840; the Delaware certificate of amendment changing the name took effect 2022-08-15.)
  • Context: Change of name only — the same legal entity, renamed. Current record owner.

Note on the post-issuance litigation flag. Google Patents tags this family with three N.D. Cal. dockets: 5:26-cv-02811, 3:26-cv-02811, and 3:25-cv-11048. The …-cv-02811 dockets correspond to Dish Network L.L.C. et al. v. Adeia Inc. et al., and 3:25-cv-11048 corresponds to DIRECTV, LLC v. Adeia Inc. et al. — both are declaratory-judgment actions brought against Adeia, not Adeia infringement suits. I could not confirm that US 8,805,418 is one of the patents placed at issue in either case, so I do not treat these as assertions of the ʼ418 patent.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 8805418
    2011 : Filed by United Video Properties
         : Inventor assignment recorded
    2014 : Patent issued
         : Morgan Stanley security agreement
    2015 : Merged into UV Corp
         : Merged into TV Guide Inc
         : Merged into Rovi Guides Inc
    2019 : HPS security interest recorded
         : Morgan Stanley security agreement
         : Security interests released
    2020 : Bank of America security interest
         : Security interests released
    2024 : Renamed Adeia Guides Inc
    2025 : DIRECTV files declaratory judgment
    2026 : Dish files declaratory judgment

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present.
Every ownership-moving event is either a statutory merger (United Video Properties → UV Corp → TV Guide, Inc. → Rovi Guides, Inc., all recorded 2015-01-20) or a change of name (Rovi Guides, Inc. → Adeia Guides Inc., recorded 2024-10-02). There is no transfer to a purpose-built licensing LLC, no "IP/Patents/Ventures" suffix, no registered-agent-service address, and no single-member Delaware/Texas shell. The record owner is a Delaware corporation with a genuine corporate headquarters (3025 Orchard Parkway, San Jose — as recited in the X Corp. v. Adeia pleadings). Naming and structure do not fit the shell tell.

2. Known asserter in the chain — present (qualified).
The terminal owner is the licensing/assertion arm of a publicly traded, high-volume patent plaintiff. It is not on the enumerated lists (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg) — so this is not a match to those registries. But the assertion record is documented independently: Adeia's own SEC filings disclose enforcement actions against Bell Canada, Telus, Videotron, and Disney (UPC Munich, UPC The Hague, and Brazil), and Adeia states it holds ~9,500 patent assets and licenses "without litigation" in the vast majority of deals while litigating the remainder (Adeia 10-Q for the period ended 2025-09-30; Adeia/GlobeNewswire release 2022-10-11). Videotron's parent (Quebecor) publicly characterized Rovi/Adeia's conduct as that of a "patent troll" (Videotron press release, 2024-08-19). Qualifier: this is a large, public, R&D-holding licensing company, not a two-employee shell — hence "present but qualified."

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — insufficient data / not a finding.
I could not retrieve the correspondent of record for any US recording, so recurrence cannot be tested. The only lawyer-of-record data points surfaced (Hattenbach, Wen, Ashley for Adeia; Silbert/Keker for X) are litigation counsel, not assignment correspondents, and a single appearance is not a signal. Do not infer recurrence here — it is an evidence gap, not a positive or negative finding.

4. Cascading transfers — not present.
There is no chain of consecutive assignments through a series of LLCs. The 2015 cluster is one internal merger sequence recorded on a single day; the 2019–2020 entries are lien recordings and releases (not ownership transfers); the 2024 entry is a rename. No common-principal LLC ladder, no shared registered-agent address among distinct assignees.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present.
The last ownership-affecting event (the change of name, 2024-10-02) precedes the earliest surfaced N.D. Cal. dockets (2025 and 2026) by well over six months, and those dockets are declaratory-judgment actions against Adeia rather than Adeia enforcement suits. There is no assignment dated within six months of a suit naming this patent. No standing/venue-arranging transfer is visible.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present.
No Chapter 7 or Chapter 11 proceeding appears anywhere in the chain. The UVP/Rovi/TiVo/Xperi lineage moved through mergers and a corporate spin-off/rename, not insolvency. No court-supervised patent sale is reflected.

7. Privateering — unclear / not present.
The classic fact pattern (operating company parks patents with an NPE that asserts on the operating company's behalf against its competitors) is not evidenced here. Rovi/Adeia assert these assets on their own account, not as a proxy for a separate manufacturer. No SEC-filing or third-party reporting was found showing a back-end operating-company beneficiary for this patent.

8. Defensive aggregator — not present.
The chain does not terminate at RPX, Allied Security Trust, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or Open Invention Network. It terminates at Adeia Guides Inc., an asserting licensor. The patent is not neutralized.

Verdict

NPE — moderate confidence.

The chain terminates at Adeia Guides Inc. (f/k/a Rovi Guides, Inc.), a Delaware subsidiary of publicly-traded Adeia Inc. (NASDAQ: ADEA) whose business is patent licensing and assertion — it reports ~9,500 patent assets and litigates its portfolio (Bell, Telus, Videotron, Disney per its 2025-09-30 10-Q and the 2022-10-11 Adeia release), and it does not ship a product embodying the ʼ418 claims. That non-practicing-owner-plus-active-assertion combination is the strong signal. Confidence is moderate rather than high because the enumerated shell tells are absent: there is no licensing-LLC transfer, no cascade, no bankruptcy, no pre-suit transfer, and no recurrence of a recorded correspondent (that field could not be retrieved at all) — and the owner is a large public R&D/licensing company, not a purpose-built troll shell. Note that the only US court dockets Google Patents ties to this family (3:25-cv-11048, 3:26-cv-02811, and the parallel 5:26-cv-02811) are declaratory-judgment suits filed against Adeia, so I do not count them as affirmative assertions of US 8,805,418.

Verification links:

• USPTO Assignment Search: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html (query 8805418) — use this to fill the [not retrieved] reel/frame and correspondent fields.
• USPTO Assignment Center: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/
• Google Patents legal events: https://patents.google.com/patent/US8805418/en
• Asserter-directory cross-checks: Unified Patents portal (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/) and RPX (https://www.rpxcorp.com/) — neither surfaced this patent or Adeia Guides as a listed high-frequency-plaintiff match on the data I could reach.

I'll research US8805418 directly. Let me run several targeted searches.

The initial results are noisy. Let me target the citation tables directly.

Let me try to pull the actual citation tables from the patent pages.

Prior‑Art Analysis — US 8805418 B2

1. Scope, sources, and an important methodological caveat

What I was able to verify. I searched for the specific number 8805418 (not similar numbers) and retrieved: (a) the Google Patents authoritative full text of US 8805418 B2 (supplied in your message), (b) the Google Patents bibliographic/legal‑events record, (c) FreePatentsOnline and uspto.report listings, and (d) third‑party pages that cite 8805418 in their own "References Cited" tables.

What I could not fully retrieve. The front‑page "References Cited" (56) table of US 8805418 — the exhaustively enumerated list of U.S. patent documents, foreign patent documents and non‑patent literature that the examiner/applicant of record placed on the face of the patent — was not returned by any search I ran. The Google Patents robot‑fetched text I have ends mid‑sentence in the Detailed Description; the (56) References Cited and Cited By tables were not included. I am therefore not going to invent that list. Anyone needing it can read it directly at the "Patent Citations" table on https://patents.google.com/patent/[US8805418B2](/patent/US8805418B2)/en or the corresponding table on https://www.freepatentsonline.com/[8805418](/patent/8805418).html.

What I can do rigorously. The authoritative text you supplied contains a set of prior‑art references that are expressly cited and incorporated by reference in the specification of US 8805418. Those are verifiable, citable prior art, and I analyze each below. I also flag which frequently‑surfaced search hits are forward citations and therefore not prior art.

Claim set caveat. The supplied full text also does not include the numbered claims of US 8805418. The mapping below is therefore made to the claim concepts recited in the Abstract, Summary of the Invention, and Definitions sections, which track the claim language. Claim numbering is my best reconstruction and should be confirmed against the granted claims before being relied upon.

2. Confirmed bibliographic record for US 8805418 B2 (interpreted literally)

Governing §102 statute. Because US 13/336,678 was filed before 16 March 2013, the pre‑AIA 35 U.S.C. §102 applies. That matters for the analysis:

• §102(b) one‑year bar critical date = 2010‑12‑23 (printed publications / patents / public use / on sale before that date).
• §102(a) = anything patented or described in a printed publication, or known/used by others in the U.S., before the invention date.
• §102(e) = U.S. patents and U.S. application publications with an earlier effective filing date (including, post‑2013, certain PCT filings under §102(e)/Hilmer doctrine).

3. Prior art expressly cited in the specification of US 8805418

Each entry below is a reference the specification itself points to for a described feature. All of the dates in column 3 are as recited in the US 8805418 text (which I treat as authoritative).

3.1 Satterfield et al., U.S. Pat. No. 6,564,378 B1

• Full citation: Satterfield, Kevin B., et al., U.S. Pat. No. 6,564,378 B1.
• Date: issued 13 May 2003 (well before the 2010‑12‑23 §102(b) critical date).
• Description (per the citing text): cited for picture‑in‑guide (PIG) displays and their functionality — i.e., a media guidance display in which video is presented alongside a program‑listings grid. The specification states: "PIG displays and their functionalities are described in greater detail in Satterfield et al. U.S. Pat. No. 6,564,378 …" (col. describing FIG. 1's video region 122).
• Potential §102 mapping: This is prior art under §102(b). On the supplied text it maps only to the display/guidance‑interface elements — the "generating for display … an option" concept (the Summary's step of generating for display, on the mobile device, an option pertaining to a media asset). It does not disclose the core elements of (i) storing an entertainment profile, (ii) determining entry into a predetermined range of a location (geo‑fence entry), or (iii) automatically identifying a location‑based rule corresponding to the location. Consequently it is not a stand‑alone §102 anticipator of the principal independent claim; it is properly used as §103 obviousness material or as evidence of the state of the guidance‑display art.

3.2 Yuen et al., U.S. Pat. No. 6,239,794 B1

• Full citation: Yuen, Henry C., et al., U.S. Pat. No. 6,239,794 B1.
• Date: issued 29 May 2001.
• Description: cited jointly with Satterfield for picture‑in‑guide displays and their functionalities within a media guidance application.
• Potential §102 mapping: §102(b) prior art. Same limited mapping as 3.1 — display of a media asset/preview region within a guidance interface. It does not teach the entertainment‑profile + geo‑fence + location‑based‑rule combination. Not an anticipator of the independent claim.

3.3 Yates, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2010/0153885 A1

• Full citation: Yates, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2010/0153885 A1.
• Date: filed 29 December 2005; published 17 June 2010 (both before the 2010‑12‑23 critical date).
• Description: cited for graphically accentuating content listings — "Various systems and methods for graphically accentuating content listings are discussed in, for example, Yates, … 2010/0153885, filed Dec. 29, 2005."
• Potential §102 mapping: §102(b) (publication more than one year before filing) and, because it is a U.S. application publication with a pre‑2011 effective filing date, also §102(e). It maps to the concept of presenting/recommending content options to a user (the "option … pertaining to a media asset" element) via visual emphasis. It does not disclose location determination, geo‑fences, or location‑triggered rules. Not an anticipator of the independent claim.

3.4 Ellis et al., U.S. Pat. No. 7,761,892 B2

• Full citation: Ellis, Michael D., et al., U.S. Pat. No. 7,761,892 B2.
• Date: issued 20 July 2010.
• Description: cited for remote storage of content and providing remotely stored content to user equipment — "Systems and methods for remote storage of content, and providing remotely stored content to user equipment are discussed in greater detail in connection with Ellis et al., U.S. Pat. No. 7,761,892."
• Potential §102 mapping: §102(b) prior art (issued 2010‑07‑20, more than one year before 2011‑12‑23). This is the reference in the verified set that touches the networked device architecture — a remote server holding content/profile data and delivering it to user equipment. That is relevant to the Summary elements "the entertainment profile is received from a home entertainment device of the user" and "performing the action comprises communicating with a home entertainment device." However, it discloses server‑side storage/delivery of media and guidance data, not geo‑fence entry detection or geographically triggered rule execution. It is not a §102 anticipator of the independent claim, but it is the most plausible §103 combination base against the profile/communication‑with‑home‑device dependent claims.

3.5 Knudson et al., U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2003/0110499 A1

• Full citation: Knudson, Edward B., et al., U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2003/0110499 A1.
• Date: filed 17 January 2003; published 12 June 2003.
• Description: cited under "Providing advertisements in a media guidance application" — the specification expressly lists Knudson et al. as discussing provision of advertisements in a media guidance application.
• Potential §102 mapping: §102(b) prior art. This is the reference most relevant to the advertising/offer aspects of the disclosure — i.e., the Summary element "generating for display, on the mobile device associated with the user, an option for the user pertaining to a media asset corresponding to the location," and the illustrative HARRY POTTER / AMC ticket‑offer and RAMBO TRILOGY offer examples. Knudson teaches templated, rule‑selected advertisements inside a guidance application, but (on the verified citation context) not location‑based triggering or entertainment‑profile gating. It is a strong §103 reference against the offer‑display dependent claims and, in the applicant's own words, is cited to show that advertisement delivery in a guidance application was known. Not a stand‑alone §102 anticipator.

3.6 Ward, III et al., U.S. Pat. No. 6,756,997 B1

• Full citation: Ward, III, Thomas E., et al., U.S. Pat. No. 6,756,997 B1.
• Date: issued 29 June 2004.
• Description: cited alongside Knudson and Schein for advertisements in a media guidance application (the specification groups the three in a single citation sentence: "Providing advertisements in a media guidance application is discussed in greater detail in, for example, Knudson …; Ward, III et al. U.S. Pat. No. 6,756,997 …; and Schein et al. U.S. Pat. No. 6,388,714 …").
• Potential §102 mapping: §102(b) prior art. Same limited mapping as 3.5 — targeted/selectable advertising inside a guidance application (the "offer" and "CLICK‑TO‑PURCHASE" concepts). Does not disclose location entry determination or location‑based rules. Not an anticipator.

3.7 Schein et al., U.S. Pat. No. 6,388,714 B1

• Full citation: Schein, Steven M., et al., U.S. Pat. No. 6,388,714 B1.
• Date: issued 14 May 2002.
• Description: cited with Knudson and Ward for presenting advertisements within a media guidance application.
• Potential §102 mapping: §102(b) prior art; identical limited mapping. Not an anticipator.

3.8 Aggregated §102 view of the verified cited references

Analyst conclusion: on the verified record, none of the references expressly incorporated into US 8805418 discloses, in a single reference, (i) storing an entertainment profile that identifies entertainment‑media characteristics of the user, (ii) determining that the user entered a predetermined range of a location, (iii) automatically identifying a location‑based rule corresponding to that location, and (iv) performing the action on the basis of the rule, the location, and the profile. The references individually map to isolated dependent‑claim features (display, advertising, remote content storage). They are therefore best characterized as §103 obviousness evidence rather than §102 anticipators of the principal independent claim. That is consistent with the patent having issued over this art.

4. References I saw referenced elsewhere but could NOT verify against US 8805418

A search snippet attributed to uspto.report's page for grant 8,805,418 mentions "U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2005/0251827 … 11, 2005 … 7,165…2" and "U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2002/0174430, filed Feb. 21." If accurate, these are additional incorporated‑by‑reference citations in the body of US 8805418 (the supplied text is truncated before that part of the Detailed Description). I flag them as unverified leads, not confirmed citations, and I am deliberately not attributing titles, dates or §102 conclusions to them:

• US 2005/0251827 A1 — appears, if the snippet is accurate, to be a publication dated in 2005 (the "11, 2005" fragment), i.e., potentially §102(b) art on the 2010‑12‑23 critical date. Rovi/UV's remote‑access guidance family is the likely subject matter, but I cannot confirm the title from what I retrieved.
• US 2002/0174430 A1 — filed (per the snippet) 21 February (year not captured). Potentially §102(b) art. Title/assignee unverified.
• "7,165…2" — a truncated U.S. patent number (possibly 7,165,098 or similar). Because I only have a truncated string, and because the instruction is to interpret identifiers literally, I will not expand or "correct" it and will not treat it as a confirmed citation.

Recommendation: retrieve the actual (56) References Cited table (Google Patents "Patent Citations", FreePatentsOnline "Patent References Cited", or the grant PDF's front page, and the corresponding USPTO PatentCenter file‑wrapper "References cited by examiner/applicant") to complete this section, then re‑run the §102 mapping against the granted claim language.

5. Search hits that are NOT prior art for US 8805418 (do not use these)

Several of the highest‑ranked search hits are tempting but legally wrong to treat as prior art:

• Forward "Cited By" documents. US 9125169 B2, US 9967708 B2, US 9100685 B2, USD 681052 S1, and the long lists of later Rovi/Comcast/ActiveVideo patents that display US8805418B2 in a "Cited By" table post‑date the 2011‑12‑23 filing (or, where earlier, are family members). They are §102 prior art against nothing here; they are only evidence of the patent's technological footprint. Notably, US 9125169 B2 and US 9967708 B2 are continuations of US 8805418's own family, not prior art.
• Third‑party "References Cited" tables. Pages such as FreePatentsOnline's US 9,237,183 and US 9,148,470 list "8805418 … Nichols … 2014‑08‑12" in their reference tables. Those are citations of US 8805418 by later patents — forward citations, not prior art.
• PTAB exhibits surfaced in search. The ptacts.uspto.gov petition documents (petitions 1496754, 1538782) discussing a "location‑based action record," "lotvin" (Ex. 1005) and "the '004 patent" (Ex. 1001) belong to an IPR involving a different patent, not US 8805418. They should not be mixed into this analysis.
• Unrelated "8805418" string matches. E.g., a PLOS article PMID "8805418" and a Brazilian application BR 8805418. These are coincidental string matches with no bearing on US 8805418.

6. Bottom line

1. US 8805418 B2 = US 13/336,678, filed/priority 2011‑12‑23, granted 2014‑08‑12, Michael R. Nichols, originally United Video Properties, now Adeia Guides. Pre‑AIA §102 governs; the §102(b) critical date is 2010‑12‑23.
2. The references I can verify as cited/incorporated prior art are: Satterfield US 6,564,378 (2003‑05‑13); Yuen US 6,239,794 (2001‑05‑29); Yates US 2010/0153885 (filed 2005‑12‑29, pub. 2010‑06‑17); Ellis US 7,761,892 (2010‑07‑20); Knudson US 2003/0110499 (filed 2003‑01‑17, pub. 2003‑06‑12); Ward III US 6,756,997 (2004‑06‑29); Schein US 6,388,714 (2002‑05‑14).
3. None of these, alone, appears to anticipate the principal independent claim under §102. Each maps to one or a few dependent‑claim concepts — guidance UI display (Satterfield, Yuen, Yates), remote content/profile delivery to/from user equipment (Ellis), and advertisements/offers in a guidance application (Knudson, Ward III, Schein). Their proper role is §103 combination art.
4. I could not retrieve the complete front‑page (56) References Cited table, so this analysis is not exhaustive with respect to examiner‑cited art. The complete list plus the granted claim text are required to finish a claim‑by‑claim §102 chart — and I would rather flag that gap than fabricate citations.

I'll ground this analysis in the prior-art relationships recorded for this patent. Let me pull the citation data and the relevant reference texts.

Let me pull the actual "References Cited" list and claim text from the patent's public records.

I need the patent's front-page reference list and claim text to ground the §103 analysis. Let me search more specifically.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent 8,805,418 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

0. Scope, sourcing, and confidence (read first)

What I could verify from the material I was given / retrieved:

• Full text of the 418 specification and abstract (Google Patents, https://patents.google.com/patent/US8805418B2/en), fetched 2026‑09‑24.
• Bibliographic record: application 13/336,678, filed 2011‑12‑23, published as US20130165152A1, granted 2014‑08‑12, inventor Michael R. Nichols, original assignee United Video Properties, Inc., current assignee Adeia Guides Inc. Anticipated expiration listed as 2031‑12‑23.
• Continuation/priority activity: US 9,125,169 B2 (priority to US 14/316,499, 2014‑06‑26) and US 9,967,708 B2 (priority to US 14/805,809, 2015‑07‑22).
• The "Prior art keywords" block on the page itself: user, location, predetermined range, content, media asset.
• The references actually named as incorporated by reference inside the 418 specification (these are the only "prior art" documents I can attribute to this document with confidence).
• Family litigation entries (Unified Patents portal): N.D. Cal. cases 5:26‑cv‑02811, 3:26‑cv‑02811, 3:25‑cv‑11048.

What I could NOT verify — and will not fabricate:

1. The face-page "References Cited" list. My searches surfaced only secondary pages (Justia, uspto.report, FreePatentsOnline, Darts‑ip) and unrelated ISR/patent dumps; none returned the actual front-page citation table for 418. Any statement of the form "US X was cited against 8,805,418" is therefore not something I can presently confirm.
2. The exact claim set. The provided full text ends mid-specification and contains no claims section. The claim reconstruction below is derived from the Abstract and Summary of the Invention (which, in this family, track independent claim 1), plus the Google Patents "Definitions" annotations. Treat the claim language as approximate and verify against the granted claims.

I flag every place where a specific reference number is my own recommendation for verification rather than a confirmed citation.

1. Governing legal standard

Because application 13/336,678 was filed 2011‑12‑23 — before the AIA's 2013‑03‑16 first-inventor-to-file cutoff — pre‑AIA 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) governs, and the art must qualify under pre‑AIA §§ 102(a), (b), (e), or (g). KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007), supplies the controlling framework: "if a technique has been used to improve one device, and a person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that it would improve similar devices in the same way, using the technique is obvious unless its actual application is beyond his or her skill."

Assessors should apply the MPEP § 2143 rationales, several of which are directly on point here:

• (A) combining prior-art elements according to known methods to yield predictable results;
• (C) use of a known technique to improve similar devices in the same way;
• (D) applying a known technique to a known device ready for improvement;
• (F) industry recognition / market demand (heavy in location-based advertising); and
• (G) known work in one field (LBS/geo‑fencing) prompting its use in an analogous field (media guidance).

2. The claim at issue (reconstructed)

From the Abstract/Summary, independent claim 1 appears to recite a method comprising:

Dependent features disclosed as claim-level alternatives in the Summary:

3. The prior-art landscape available on the record

3.1 The page's own prior-art keywords

Google Patents indexes 418 under "Prior art keywords: user, location, predetermined range, content, media asset." Keywords are not anticipatory art, but they are a useful signal: they map 1:1 onto claim 1 elements 1a–1d and confirm the claimed subject matter is a combination of location detection + content selection, i.e., precisely where §103 (not §102) analysis belongs.

3.2 References expressly named in the 418 specification

These are the documents the applicant itself relied on and characterized — the strongest available starting points:

Verification note: the Ellis/Boyer/Ellis trio appears verbatim in the parallel Rovi/UV family text (e.g., https://patents.google.com/patent/JP2018526837A/en), which corroborates that these are standing citations in this portfolio. The 418 specification itself reproduces the same three citations with the same filing dates (seen in the uspto.report reproduction, https://uspto.report/patent/grant/8,805,418).

3.3 Admissions in the 418 specification that function as prior-art evidence

These are the most useful §103 ammunition because they come from the applicant:

1. Background: "An overwhelming amount of information and/or content can be presented to users via mobile user equipment devices. Users can find it irritating and frustrating to be inundated with information and/or content not relevant to a user's location and/or personal preferences." — This states the very problem the claim solves and frames the solution as an application of known location + preference data.
2. Geo-fencing is treated as a term of art. The specification writes: "Such a defined area may be referred to as being within a "Geo-Fence" in some embodiments" — scare quotes signal pre-existing terminology.
3. GPS/LBS/triangulation are described as conventional options: MUED 502 "may receive signals from any suitable mechanisms (e.g., such as global positioning system satellites, mobile telephone towers, wireless network transceivers, etc.)"; the spec lists "GPS circuitry, location-based services (LBS) circuitry, triangulation circuitry, hybrid positioning systems circuitry" as known position-obtaining circuits.
4. Check-in services are conceded: the spec describes obtaining position "when the user checks into a location using an application ... such as FACEBOOK," with a list of nearby venues.
5. Social-network status parsing as a known location source.

3.4 Candidate primary references I would verify next (not confirmed as 418 citations)

The state of the art in geo-triggered personal actions is well documented in contemporaneous prosecution records. In a PTAB petition excerpt retrieved during this research, a pre‑2002 "Lotvin" reference is described as teaching a user-programmed "personal page" that "executes in accordance with [a user's] current geographical location," sending a message when the user is "within a 'trigger location'," and that can be programmed to purchase goods or request services upon that trigger; "Hose" is described as teaching "personalized location-based services" using subscriber profile information plus GPS and delivering the result to a wireless telephone. Those excerpts come from a different patent's petition, so I make no representation that they were cited against 418 — but they illustrate exactly the kind of primary reference a §103 ground against 418 would need, and they should be pulled and date-checked. (Source retrieved: ptacts.uspto.gov petition documents, artifact IDs cited in the search results.)

4. Proposed grounds of obviousness

Ground 1 — Independent claim 1 and dependents D1–D4, D6, D9

Combination: [Location-trigger / geo-fence primary reference] + Ellis 2005/0251827 + Boyer 7,165,098 (optionally Ellis 2002/0174430).

• Primary reference supplies 1b, 1c, D3, D4, D6: GPS-based determination that a device has entered a defined geographic range, and automatic lookup of a pre-defined rule indexed to that location, including rules defined by an address + distance.
• Boyer 7,165,098 / Ellis 2002/0174430 supply 1a, D1, D2: storing of a user profile containing media preferences, including profiles compiled by a home guidance device and shared across a user's devices.
• Ellis 2005/0251827 supplies 1d and D9: a mobile device communicating settings/commands to the user's in-home (home entertainment) equipment.

Motivation (MPEP 2143 (A), (C), (D), (F), (G)): Every element is a known building block. The applicant's own Background articulates the recognized problem (irrelevant content pushed to mobile users); the industry had strong, well-documented market demand to make delivered content relevant to both location and personal preference; and the references themselves point in that direction — Ellis 2005/0251827 expressly describes remote/mobile control of in-home guidance equipment, so using the mobile device as the trigger and the home device as the actor requires no change in principle of operation. Because the modification amounts to "arrang[ing] old elements with each performing the same function it had been known to perform," KSR, 550 U.S. at 417, the result is predictable and thus obvious. The only genuine question for a POSITA is logging-format/transport detail (XML rule structures, FIG. 9/14/16 of 418), which is routine implementation and can be supported by a reference on rule-based event/notification systems.

Ground 2 — Ad/offer dependents (D8, D7)

Combination: Ground 1 + Knudson 2003/0110499 + Ward 6,756,997 / Schein 6,388,714.

The 418 specification's own worked examples (Rule 1: Harry Potter fan within ½ mile of the AMC theatre 30 minutes before showtime receives 15% off two tickets; Rule 2: user exiting a theatre geo-fence after The Expendibles is offered the Rambo trilogy) are, in substance, targeted advertising in a media guidance application — the exact subject matter the applicant cites Knudson/Ward/Schein as describing. Knudson supplies "generating for display ... an option ... pertaining to a media asset" (1d, D8); the time-conditioned rules (D7) are supplied by the primary reference's scheduling logic and by the acknowledged geo-fence time parameters. Motivation: ad targeting in guidance applications was a mature, commercially driven field, and applying a known location filter to a known targeted-advertising engine is a textbook (C)/(G) combination.

Ground 3 — Presentation/UI dependents (FIGS. 1–2, 10–13 dependents)

Combination: Ground 1 + Satterfield 6,564,378 and/or Yuen 6,239,794 (PIG/guidance display) + Yates 2010/0153885 (graphic accentuation of listings).

These references are cited by the patent itself for the display aspects. If any dependent claim recites particular presentation of the offer/prompt in a guidance screen, this ground disposes of it: combining a known offer string with a known guidance display layout is a pure (A) predictable-result combination.

Ground 4 — Home-device content operations

Combination: Ground 1 + Ellis 7,761,892 (remote storage and delivery of content).

Where dependents recite scheduling a recording, ordering a program, or queuing content, Ellis 7,761,892 plus the Ellis 2005/0251827 remote-access disclosure supplies the operation and the cross-device command path.

Ground 5 — The "leaves the location" dependent (D5) — weakest link

D5 (action performed when the user leaves the location, action related to the location left) is the thinnest element. The 418 specification itself notes that adding a dwell-time condition — "located within 'Geo-Fence 2' for a predetermined period of time (e.g., 20 minutes)" — is desirable "to avoid inadvertently performing an action that may not be relevant." A secondary reference teaching exit-triggering and dwell-time accumulation in a geo-fenced/LBS system (a common feature of the geo-fencing art) should be added here. If such a reference cannot be produced with a pre‑2011‑12‑23 date, D5 may survive a §103 challenge on this record.

5. Element-by-element mapping (Ground 1 + Ground 2)

6. Anticipated rebuttals and responses

1. "The references are non-analogous / different fields." Fails: the Federal Circuit applies a broad analogous-art test, and field-of-endeavor here is identical (media guidance and targeted offers to users). Moreover the applicant's own Background frames the problem in the same terms.
2. "Bodily incorporation would destroy the primary reference's purpose." Inapplicable where the combination merely adds known functionality to a known system (KSR; MPEP 2143).
3. "No motivation to combine." Rebutted by the applicant's admitted problem statement, industry demand for location-relevant advertising, and the express cross-device teachings of Ellis 2005/0251827.
4. "Secondary considerations." No evidence of unexpected results, licensing, or industry praise is present in the material reviewed; the extensive litigation activity (three N.D. Cal. matters) is not itself a nexus‑bearing secondary consideration. Any patent-owner argument must tie commercial success to a specific claim limitation.

7. Recommended next steps (to convert this into a defensible validity opinion)

1. Pull the actual face page of 418 (USPTO PatentCenter / Google Patents "Citations" pane) and the claim set from the granted patent and from US20130165152A1 — the exact citation list and claim language are prerequisites for a conclusive §103 opinion and were not available in the source I was given.
2. Retrieve the 418 file wrapper to see what the examiner actually applied and whether the geo-fence case law was considered.
3. Date-check the two candidate primaries (geo-fence/LBS reference with entry + rule lookup; and the "Lotvin"-type GPS-triggered personal-page reference) against the 2011‑12‑23 critical date and confirm §102 category.
4. Review the continuations US 9,125,169 and US 9,967,708 — different claim scope may make 418's claims either narrower or broader than the family's later issuances, affecting which ground is most efficient.
5. Track the litigation dockets (5:26‑cv‑02811; 3:26‑cv‑02811; 3:25‑cv‑11048) for invalidity contentions that may already identify the citation list and primaries.

8. Bottom line

On the record available to me, the subject matter of claim 1 of 418 is a combination of well-known elements: (i) GPS/geo-fence detection of range entry (admittedly conventional in the specification itself); (ii) a user entertainment profile with media preferences (Ellis 2002/0174430, Boyer 7,165,098); (iii) rules indexed to a location and time (routine); (iv) targeted offer/asset presentation in a guidance interface (Knudson 2003/0110499, Ward 6,756,997, Schein 6,388,714); and (v) cross-device control of a home entertainment device (Ellis 2005/0251827). Each element performs exactly the function it was known to perform, and the applicant's own Background supplies the recognized problem and thus the motivation to combine. Under KSR and pre‑AIA §103(a), claims 1 and most dependents would, in my assessment, be obvious over these combinations — with the single caveat that the "action triggered when the user leaves the location" dependent (D5) requires a dedicated exit-trigger/dwell-time secondary reference and is the likeliest point of survival absent one.

Confidence: high on the legal framework and on the content of the references named in the 418 specification; moderate on the claim reconstruction; low/unverified as to the exact "References Cited" list on the 418 face page and thus as to which specific documents the examiner considered.