US 8893009

I'll run targeted searches for this exact patent number and its litigation/docket record.

Initial results are strong. Now let me verify the patent's own independent claims and check for any Federal Circuit/appeal activity.

US 8,893,009 B2 — Verification Summary

Scope note: I searched for the exact string "8893009" / "8,893,009" (no variants). Consistent hits came from Google Patents, the USPTO PDF of the printed patent, FreePatentsOnline, uspto.report, Justia and litigation-tracking sources. A search explicitly targeting Federal Circuit / CAFC 2026 dockets returned no results naming US 8,893,009, so I cannot confirm any 2026 appellate proceeding for this patent. Treat the docket portion of this answer as negative finding, not proof of absence.

1. Bibliographic data (from the printed patent's front page)

Google/Patents front-page record: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US8893009B2](/patent/US8893009B2) — printed patent PDF: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/02/da/58/304c58422ef5c2/US8893009.pdf

Family position (important for claim interpretation): '009 is a continuation-in-part that claims priority from a 2009-01-28 family, and it is itself the parent of later members of the same family — e.g., US 9,392,462 ("Mobile end-user device with agent limiting wireless data communication for specified background applications based on a stored policy"), described as a division of application 13/309,556, and US 10,716,006 B2, which carries the identical title and is a continuation of 14/541,493 (US 9,392,462). So the '009 disclosure is shared across a large open family (sources describe "more than 280 issued US patents," ~50 asserted to date).

2. Abstract (verbatim, as printed on US 8,893,009)

"Network service provisioning is described. Network service provisioning to a device includes a mechanism for ensuring that network services are available based upon one or more of appropriate traffic control, billing, and notification policies. Ensuring that the policies are properly enforced on a device is a focus of this paper. The enforcement policies can be on the device or in the network."

3. Independent claims — plain-language overview

⚠️ Explicit uncertainty flag: I was not able to retrieve the verbatim, numbered claim set of US 8,893,009 in this session (the Google Patents page returned only the description/figures listing, not the claims text; FreePatentsOnline returned citations, not claims). I therefore will not invent claim language. What follows is drawn from sibling and continuation patents that bear the identical title and share the '009 specification, which is the most reliable proxy available:

• US 9,973,930 B2, End user device that secures an association of application to service policy with an application certificate check — claim 1 (quoted by litigation tracker RPX):

  1. A wireless end-user device comprising: one or more wireless modems to communicate Internet data with at least a first wireless access network; a non-transitory memory to store service policy data comprising first application credential information associated with a first device application, and first device agent instructions associated with that credential information; and one or more device agents configured to (a) receive the credential information and at least a portion of the device agent instructions from a network element, (b) communicate with a network element to perform an application credential check for the first device application, and (c) when the credential check indicates a correct correspondence between the application and its credential information, apply the device agent instructions to an attempted or actual use of the wireless access network by that application.

  Plain language: the phone stores a per-app credential plus per-app policy instructions pushed from the carrier/network; before honoring the policy, the device verifies that the app it is dealing with really matches the credential. Only on a match does it enforce the policy (allow/restrict/measure/track) on that app's network use.

• US 2022/0014512 A1 (application 16/927,387, a later continuation claiming priority back through '009) — claim 1, same title:

  1. An end user device with one or more modems and one or more device agents that store a first application program and a first access network service policy associated with it, the policy comprising information about a first application credential and device agent instructions governing at least an aspect of attempted or actual access-network communication; and that, in any order, (i) implement the device agent instructions to govern that communication and (ii) use the credential information to perform a first application configuration check, and if the check does not pass, take an action.

  Plain language: same idea, framed permissively as to ordering — enforce the policy instructions and run the credential/configuration check, and if the check fails, do something (e.g., block, restrict, notify, remediate). This "if the check fails, take an action" branch is the security hook that gives the patent its "secures an association" title.

• Related disclosure in the same security sub-family, US 9,491,199 ("Security, fraud detection, and fraud mitigation in device-assisted services systems"), shows how the credential idea is used operationally: agents detect an attempted installation of update software purporting to replace an app, obtain an update-software credential and the application credential, allow installation only if the two credentials match, and then arrange a setting on the app that assists in applying the wireless-access policy.

Bottom line on the claims: the independent claim(s) of '009 are apparatus claims (an "end user device") directed to binding a stored per-application access-network service policy to the particular application it belongs to via a credential check performed with a network element, with enforcement (govern/apply/restrict the app's attempted or actual wireless data communication) conditioned on the credential correspondence. I can state this with reasonable confidence given the title, abstract, specification body (which is heavily directed to verifiable device-assisted services, application credential identification to the ASPI system, device/app "spoofing" and SP tampering problems) and the identical-title continuations — but the exact claim wording, claim count, and any dependent-claim scope for '009 itself should be confirmed against the printed patent's claim column, which I could not load here.

4. Litigation / PTAB / CAFC status

• Asserted-patent campaigns (district court): Headwater Research LLC has asserted a large set of this family's patents against carriers (AT&T Mobility; Deutsche Telekom/Sprint/T-Mobile; Verizon Wireless/Cellco), device makers (Samsung, Google/Alphabet, Amazon, Lenovo) and most recently Apple (W.D. Tex. 7:25-cv-00318) and DISH/Sling (D. Colo., filed Aug. 28–29, 2025). Verizon and AT&T matters were filed in E.D. Tex. in 2023 (e.g., 2:23-cv-00352, 2:23-cv-00397/-00398, 2:23-cv-00379). Reported outcomes include a non-infringement verdict for Samsung and a $278.8M verdict for Headwater against Samsung; a Verizon trial was underway before Judge Gilstrap in late August 2025.
• PTAB: IPRs exist against family members (e.g., Samsung v. Headwater, IPR2023-01336, involving US 9,143,976 and US 9,973,930), with Headwater filing Patent Owner responses citing Nautilus, Williamson, IPXL and In re Hubbell. I did not find an IPR petition specifically naming 8,893,009.
• CAFC 2026: No result. I could not locate any 2026 Federal Circuit docket entry, appeal, or opinion for US 8,893,009. I am flagging this as not found, not as confirmed none — appeals from the 2025–2026 district court trials and IPR final written decisions could exist but be under-sealed, un-indexed, or indexed under a different family member.

5. Things I will not assert

• I have not verified the '009 claim set verbatim (see §3) — do not quote claim language above as if it were the '009 text.
• The "priority date 2009-01-28" and "anticipated expiration 2028-06-05" are database assumptions (Google explicitly labels them as such), not legal conclusions; the CIP/division lineage in this family makes the effective priority date of any given claim a genuine issue (and one that the co-pending §112/obviousness-type-double-patenting attacks in the PTAB papers target).
• No CAFC 2026 activity was found; that is a search result, not a warranty.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 8893009 across patent litigation sources.

Let me search more specifically for the patent number in litigation databases.

I'll verify the structured data against public sources before finalizing.

Let me dig specifically into whether any petition names the '009 patent.

PTAB / AIA Trial Proceedings — US 8,893,009

Canonical source: The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO Open Data Portal) returns zero AIA trial proceedings for US 8,893,009. I independently searched PTAB E2E / PTACTS petition documents, Docket Alarm's PTAB index, and the Headwater litigation/IPR record. No petition naming U.S. Pat. No. 8,893,009 exists in any source I could locate. Nothing below should be read as a proceeding on this patent.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trials on US 8,893,009: 0 — no IPRs, no PGRs, no CBMs filed, instituted, settled, or decided (breakdown by status is therefore 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained through trial / 0 settled / 0 institution denials). The bottom-line defensive posture is unusual and cuts in the patent owner's favor: the '009 patent has never been tested at the PTAB, so all claims remain live and unchallenged, no statutory estoppel (§ 315(e)(2)) has attached to any petitioner, and a defendant cannot point to a canceled claim or an FWD to short-circuit a demand. Because the patent was filed pre-AIA but granted 2014-11-18, the PGR window (9 months from grant) closed in 2015 and the CBM program sunset for new petitions on 2020-09-16, so IPR under §§ 102/103 on patents and printed publications is the only remaining AIA vehicle — and it is fully open to a first-moving defendant, subject to the § 315(b) one-year bar.

Per-proceeding detail

None. There is no proceeding to report. I decline to generate placeholder sections with proceeding numbers, because any number I supplied would be fabricated, and the instruction is explicit that proceeding numbers must not be invented.

Corroborating negative evidence

Caveat (stated plainly): I could not exhaustively review every docket in the Headwater campaign, and I did not have live PTAB E2E search access. The ODP block is authoritative on the PTAB question, and my searches are consistent with it. But "no IPR found" is a finding, not a proof of absence; confirm via a PTAB E2E party search for "Headwater" and a patent-number search for 8893009 immediately before relying on it.

What the family record does show (context — not this patent)

This matters because it defines the tactical terrain a defendant inherits. Every item below concerns a different Headwater patent. Confirmed items, with claim-level precision only where the source states it:

Pattern signal from Samsung's briefing: after institution, Headwater has repeatedly dropped the corresponding patent from the district court case and settled the instituted IPR — Samsung describes this as having resolved "more than half a dozen patents." That is a documented institution-triggered drop-and-settle reflex, and it is the single most actionable datum for a defendant weighing an IPR on the '009.

Strategic summary

Claim status on the '009. Every claim is UNTESTED — there are no canceled claims and no sustained-through-trial claims, because no AIA trial has ever been instituted. There is no FWD to quote and no certificate under § 318(b) canceling anything. If a demand letter cites claims 1-5 or any other claim of the '009, you cannot answer "that claim is dead." The pre-AIA/IPR-only posture means the only way to kill a claim of this patent at the Office is an IPR grounded in patents or printed publications under §§ 102/103; § 112, § 101, prior public use, and on-sale art are district-court-only theories for this patent (the PGR window closed in 2015).

Estoppel landscape. § 315(e)(2) estoppel is patent-specific. IPRs on sibling patents (e.g., the '541, '042, '613, '733, '543) do not estop anyone as to the '009, and the Board's invalidity findings on those siblings do not cancel anything here. The practical consequence: your prior-art runway on the '009 is unrestricted. Nothing has been "raised or reasonably could have been raised" at the PTAB against this patent, so no ground is off the table. The one hard limit is § 315(b): if you or a privy were served with a complaint alleging infringement of the '009 more than one year ago, you are time-barred from filing. Check the service date first — that is a gating item, not a detail.

Timing and family leverage. The '009 shares the 2009-01-28 priority family and, based on the sibling IPRs, the same specification and much of the same art (Rao, Montemurro, Freund, Araujo, Fadell, Singh, Wright combinations appear repeatedly across the Headwater IPRs). Sibling IPRs that were instituted on that art are strong templates and give you citations to the Board's own claim constructions and prior-art findings — persuasive in your IPR petition's § 314(a) merits showing and useful as § 282 prior-art evidence even if you never file. Note also that Google's IPR2026-00203 petition cites IPR2024-00341, Paper 28 (FWD) and the PTAB's memo on consideration of prior findings of fact — i.e., petitioners are actively mining Headwater's own IPR record in follow-on challenges. There is no defensive aggregator (no Unified Patents filing) visible in the chain; the petitioners are the carriers and OEMs themselves.

Recommended next steps

1. Confirm the negative on the day you rely on it. Run a PTAB E2E party search for "Headwater Research" / "Headwater Partners" and a patent-number search for 8893009. The ODP block is authoritative as of ingest; a recently filed petition may not be indexed yet.
2. Calendar the § 315(b) date now. Pull the complaint and proof of service for the '009. If service was more than one year ago, the IPR door is closed and your § 102/103 case must be built in district court; if service was recent (or the patent is asserted in a 2025-filed action such as the W.D. Tex./E.D. Tex. campaign cases filed 2025-08-27), you likely have a live window.
3. Build the petition off the sibling record. Harvest the instituted art combinations and the Board's constructions from the '541, '613, '544, '042, and '733 IPRs. Because the '009 is in the same family with a common specification, the Board is unlikely to accept any argument by Headwater that contradicts positions it took (or forfeited) in those proceedings.
4. If institution is granted, expect the drop-and-settle pattern. Headwater's documented behavior after institution is to drop the patent from the parallel litigation and settle the IPR, with settlement terms typically confidential (filed under § 317(b) business-confidential treatment) and estoppel not attaching to a terminated petitioner under § 317(a). Whatever you negotiate, get the litigation covenant as part of it — the IPR termination alone buys you nothing in the district court case.
5. Do not overlook non-PTAB defenses. In the E.D. Tex. Verizon action, the court found Verizon entitled to equitable relief on an implied-waiver theory premised on Headwater's 2017 investigation and delay to 2023 (verdict on equitable defenses; see the reported decision via CCH — I could not independently verify the exact issuance date). Delay-based estoppel/waiver is a live, non-IPR line of attack across this campaign and is unaffected by the absence of PTAB activity on the '009.
6. Treat the family-wide jury outcomes as context, not law of the case. Reported results include a January 2025 Samsung no-infringement verdict in one action and a subsequent $279M Samsung infringement verdict, plus a reported ~$175M Verizon settlement. These are different patents and different cases; none of them adjudicates the '009. Do not let any of them substitute for claim-level analysis of the '009's asserted claims.

No appeal to the Federal Circuit, no FWD, and no settlement exists for this patent because no proceeding exists. Nothing in this memo should be represented to a court as a PTAB determination concerning US 8,893,009.

I'll research the assignment record for US 8893009, starting with the authoritative legal events already in the patent text and then cross-referencing assignment databases and NPE directories.

Let me dig deeper into the specific assignment records (reel/frame, correspondent) and this patent's litigation history.

US 8893009 — Assignment & Ownership Analysis

Patent: US 8,893,009 B2 — "End user device that secures an association of application to service policy with an application certificate check"
App. No.: 13/309,556 — filed 2011-12-01 — issued 2014-11-18
Priority: 2009-01-28 (provisional 61/206,354)
Current assignee (Google Patents): Headwater Research LLC · Original assignee: Headwater Partners I LLC

Sourcing caveat (read first). The authoritative patent text supplied to me is the Google Patents legal-events record, which lists conveyance type, assignor, and assignee but does not expose reel/frame numbers and does not expose the correspondent of record. My live searches did not return the USPTO Assignment Center record (reel/frame + correspondent) for this patent. I therefore cannot report reel/frame entries or a recording correspondent, and I have not fabricated them. Every assignment below is grounded in the legal-events record; the reel/frame fields are flagged as not retrieved. Verify directly at the Assignment Center (search patent number 8893009): https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html and https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/.

Inventors

Unusual patterns:

• Qualcomm chain-of-title cloud (the key flag). Raleigh filed the Headwater family within one year of leaving Qualcomm, triggering a rebuttable presumption under his Qualcomm employment agreement that Qualcomm owns the inventions. Defendants (Samsung) have pleaded this as a standing defect in multiple suits, asserting Qualcomm is an owner/co-owner of the asserted patents. This is a live cloud over the title of this family, though Raleigh has prevailed on standing at least once. This is a title-risk observation, not an assignment record.
• No inventor-departure fire-sale pattern. All three inventors were inside the assignee at filing; there is no evidence of inventors leaving the original assignee within 12 months that would precede a portfolio sale.
• The operating vehicle was ItsOn Inc. (2008), which licensed the Headwater IP; Headwater itself was the IP-holding/development entity. ItsOn later went out of business (per litigation record), which is relevant context but not an assignment.

Original assignee

Headwater Partners I LLC — Redwood Shores / Redwood City, CA (address varies by record).

• Primary line of business: development of mobile operating-system and cloud technology for device-assisted services (network offload, service policy, billing/usage control). The entity recorded itself as an IP-holding/licensing vehicle whose operating licensee was ItsOn Inc.
• Did it ship a product embodying the claims? Not directly. Headwater itself did not sell products; the technology was commercialized by ItsOn Inc., which "licensed Headwater's intellectual property and implemented Headwater's technology into software and services" (ItsOn deployed on Sprint/T-Mobile-family devices, c. 2013–2017, with a patent-marking notice). Headwater's own litigation briefing concedes Headwater "does not manufacture and sell products that practice the asserted patents."
• Current status: Not operating as an independent entity; it merged / changed its name into Headwater Research LLC (recorded 2017-01-04). ItsOn (the operating licensee) is out of business per the litigation record.

Assignment timeline

Only three recorded assignment-class events appear on the patent's legal-events record. Reel/frame numbers could not be retrieved from the sources available to me, and the correspondent of record is therefore unknown — do not treat its absence as "no correspondent."

• 2012-02-10 (recorded 2012-02-10) — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest
  • Assignor: Raleigh, Gregory G.
  • Assignee: Headwater Partners I, LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrieved (Assignment Center field not accessible in my sources)
  • Context: Founder-inventor assignment of rights into the original holding company, recorded ~2 months after the 2011-12-01 filing.

• 2012-04-24 (recorded 2012-04-24) — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest
  • Assignor: Raleigh, Gregory G.; Green, Jeffrey; Lavine, James
  • Assignee: Headwater Partners I, LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: Confirmatory/complete inventor assignment (all three named inventors) to the same original assignee — intra-entity perfection, not an arm's-length transfer.

• 2017-01-04 (recorded 2017-01-04) — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Merger and Change of Name
  • Assignor: Headwater Management LLC and Headwater Partners I LLC
  • Assignee: Headwater Research LLC (Tyler, TX)
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: Internal corporate reorganization / change of name only — the original assignee family restructuring into the current owner, not a sale to an unrelated party.

• 2022-08-30 — publication event only (US 2012/0221955 A1), not an assignment.

• 2014-11-18 — patent granted; no separate assignment recorded.

Related (prosecution, not assignment) data point: the patent's attorney of record is James E. Harris (also reported as Headwater's General Counsel / acting CEO / patent prosecution counsel of record on related Headwater patents). This is prosecution counsel, not a recorded assignment correspondent, and is not used as a signal below.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 8893009
    2008 : Raleigh forms Headwater and ItsOn
    2009 : Earliest priority date
    2011 : Application filed by Headwater Partners I LLC
    2012 : Inventors assign to Headwater Partners I LLC
    2014 : Patent issues
    2017 : Merger and change of name to Headwater Research LLC
    2022 : Headwater begins asserting the family
    2023 : Suits against carriers begin

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — partly present (weak-to-moderate). The patent did not move from an operating assignee to an unrelated licensing LLC; it moved within the same family via a 2017-01-04 Merger and Change of Name to Headwater Research LLC. However, the end-state owner is a licensing-only holdco: it registered with the Texas Secretary of State as engaged in "Patent Licensing," has its address at 110 North College Avenue, Suite 1116, Tyler, TX, makes no products, and — on a defendant's pleading — is staffed by two people (Raleigh and Jennifer Smith) and controlled by a separate parent entity. Caution: the "no products / shell" characterizations beyond the change-of-name are party allegations in Samsung's answer, not judicial findings; the documentary fact is the merger/name change.

2. Known asserter in the chain — present. Headwater Research LLC is a high-frequency patent plaintiff, surfaced by the Stanford NPE Litigation Database (listed as "Individual-inventor-started") and tracked by RPX, with suits against Samsung, Apple, Amazon, Google, Motorola, AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile/Sprint, Comcast, Charter, Dish, and Walmart. It does not appear on the classic enumerated lists (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Round Rock, etc.), so this is a high-volume litigating NPE of the "inventor-started" type, not a classic acquired-portfolio aggregator.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — insufficient data. I could not retrieve the assignment correspondent of record for any of the three events (Assignment Center fields not exposed in my sources). Therefore I cannot confirm or deny a recurring recording attorney. This signal is not assessed — a gap, not a finding.

4. Cascading transfers — not present. There is only one post-filing ownership change (the 2017-01-04 merger/name change). No chained LLC-to-LLC assignments within 24 months, and no multiple assignees sharing an address/correspondent.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. The last ownership event is 2017-01-04; Headwater's family-wide campaign began with the October 2022 Samsung suit — a gap of ~5.7 years, well outside any 6-month window. I also found no complaint specifically naming US 8,893,009 in the sources reviewed; the family is asserted mainly through siblings/continuations (e.g., the identically titled '930 patent in the Charter and Comcast suits). So no assignment was arranged to precede a suit on this patent.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present (with a nuance). There is no recorded bankruptcy sale of the patent. The operating licensee (ItsOn Inc.) went out of business, but the patent remained with the Headwater family throughout; no Chapter 7/11 sale of the asset appears.

7. Privateering — unclear. Structurally this resembles privateering (an inventor-founded operating arm, ItsOn, licensed the IP; the holds a patent-holding entity then asserts against carriers/OEMs that once engaged ItsOn). But the "operating company hands patents to an NPE to sue its competitors" pattern is not cleanly established here, because Headwater and ItsOn were co-founded by the same inventor rather than a large operating company spinning off to an NPE. No SEC 10-K/8-K disclosure of a privateering arrangement was located.

8. Defensive aggregator — not present. The chain terminates at Headwater Research LLC, an active plaintiff — not at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. The patent is not neutralized.

Verdict

NPE — high confidence.

Two strong signals support this. (1) The current owner, Headwater Research LLC, is a non-practicing licensing-only entity — it concedes in its own briefing that it "does not manufacture and sell products that practice the asserted patents," and it registered with Texas as a "Patent Licensing" business at a Tyler, TX office. (2) It is a high-frequency patent plaintiff surfaced by the Stanford NPE Litigation Database and RPX, asserting a ~280-patent family across dozens of suits against major OEMs and carriers. The ownership chain itself (2012-02-10 and 2012-04-24 inventor assignments to Headwater Partners I LLC; 2017-01-04 merger/change of name to Headwater Research LLC) is intra-family and shows no cascading shell transfers, no pre-litigation transfer, and no bankruptcy sale — so this is an inventor-started, original-owner NPE, not a classic acquired-portfolio shell chain. Important caveats: reel/frame numbers and the correspondent of record were not retrievable from my sources, and the "shell/no-products" characterization rests on a defendant's pleading, not a court finding — verify the primary record at the Assignment Center before relying on these fields. Two latent risks not visible on the assignment record but material to title: the Qualcomm employment-agreement ownership presumption (standing litigation) and the defunct operating licensee ItsOn.

Verify: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html (search 8893009) · https://patents.google.com/patent/US8893009/en

I'll research US patent 8893009 and its cited prior art references. Let me run several searches.

Let me dig into the specific cited references and examiner citations for this patent.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 8,893,009 B2

Scope note / limitation up front: I was able to retrieve the authoritative full text of US 8,893,009 B2 and its bibliographic data, and a large listing of patent documents associated with the patent on FreePatentsOnline. However, I was not able to retrieve the actual USPTO PTO-892 "References Cited" (examiner-cited prior art) list from the face of US 8,893,009 B2 within this session — the searches returned family citations, forward citations, and unrelated search reports instead. Because the operating rules forbid fabricating references, I have (a) reported only references I actually retrieved, (b) clearly labeled their provenance, and (c) not invented examiner-cited art. Where I could not verify something, I say so.

1. Verified bibliographic record (US 8,893,009 B2)

Sourced from the authoritative full text supplied to me and Google Patents (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8893009/en):

2. Contradictions / flags (required by the operating rules)

1. Date contradiction. The system message states "Today's date is 2026-09-30," while the task header states "Current Date: April 26, 2026." These cannot both be correct. I have not silently reconciled them; the § 102 date arithmetic below depends only on the patent's own dates (Jan. 28, 2009 priority; Dec. 1, 2011 filing), so this discrepancy does not change the analysis.
2. Priority-date discrepancy across sources. Google Patents lists the prior-art date as 2009-01-28, whereas Unified Patents and several family listings show 2009-01-27 for a number of Headwater family members, and the patent's own specification incorporates applications filed 2009-03-02. The one-day/eight-week spread matters only at the margins of the § 102 window and should be resolved against the priority documents.
3. The previously generated "litigation summary" section is effectively empty (it contains only an intent statement and no findings). I have therefore not treated it as establishing any litigation fact, and I flag that the litigation section was not actually completed.
4. Provenance warning about the FreePatentsOnline list. The long reference list that came back in my searches (US 8,601,125; US 8,589,541; US 8,572,117; etc.) is dated 2013, i.e., after this patent's Dec. 1, 2011 filing and after its Jan. 28, 2009 priority. References dated 2013 cannot be § 102 prior art against US 8,893,009; they are almost certainly a "Referenced By" / forward-citation list rather than the examiner-cited (PTO-892) references. I therefore do not present that list as anticipating prior art. This is a substantive finding, not a technicality.

3. Categories of "patent citations" that exist for US 8,893,009

There are three legally distinct categories, and conflating them is the most common analytic error here:

4. Verified citation set: incorporated-by-reference applications

These are recited in the specification of US 2012/0221955 A1 (the pre-grant publication of US 8,893,009) per FreePatentsOnline. All were filed Mar. 2, 2009, i.e., after the Jan. 28, 2009 priority date and by the same inventive entity — they are therefore NOT § 102 prior art against US 8,893,009. I list them because they are the citations a searcher will actually find attached to this patent, and because they matter for double-patenting and priority, not anticipation.

§ 102 conclusion for this set: none of these can anticipate or render obvious any claim of US 8,893,009, because each was filed after the Jan. 28, 2009 priority date and by the same inventors/applicant. Their citation value is (i) priority/support under § 112 and (ii) obviousness-type double patenting between family members.

5. § 102 analysis of the references I could retrieve, and why the date screen eliminates most of them

Applicable law: US 8,893,009 was filed Dec. 1, 2011, before the March 16, 2013 AIA effective date, so pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102 applies. For a reference to anticipate under § 102(a)/(b)/(e), it must be a printed publication, patent, or patent application publication dated before the effective filing/priority date (or, for § 102(e), before the filing date). With a Jan. 28, 2009 priority date, the practical anticipation window closes in early 2009, with § 102(b)'s one-year grace opening back to Jan. 28, 2008.

Applying that screen to the references my searches actually surfaced:

Finding: Every item I retrieved is dated 2013 and therefore fails the § 102 date test outright. None of them can anticipate any claim of US 8,893,009. This is consistent with these being forward citations to the patent rather than references cited against it. Accordingly, I make no claim-to-reference § 102 mapping for them, because any such mapping would be legally meaningless.

6. What a correct § 102 mapping requires, and why I am not supplying mappings I cannot ground

To answer "which claim(s) does each reference potentially anticipate," three inputs are needed, and I have only one of them:

1. ✅ The reference and its date — partially have (see above).
2. ❌ The literal claim set of US 8,893,009 — I do not have it. Note a trap: the claim sets returned in my searches belong to other family members, not to this patent —
   • Claim 1 quoted from the RPX page is from US 9,973,930 B2 (a separate continuation claiming priority to Jan. 28, 2009), not US 8,893,009.
   • The claims quoted from Justia/US 2015/0143456 A1 are from that later continuation, not this patent.
     Using either as if it were US 8,893,009's claim set would violate the "do not auto-correct identifiers" rule and would produce a wrong § 102 mapping.
3. ❌ The examiner-applied art (PTO-892) — not retrieved.

Recommendation to obtain the missing inputs (authoritative sources only):

• USPTO PatentCenter / Global Dossier for application 13/309,556 — "References Cited" tab and the Image File Wrapper (IFW) for Form PTO-892 and any IDS/SB-08.
• The patent face itself (the "(56) References Cited" block) at https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/02/da/58/304c58422ef5c2/US8893009.pdf (the PDF link surfaced in my search but I was unable to parse its column-1 reference block before reaching the tool-call limit).
• The file histories of the parent applications (12/380,773; 12/694,445; 12/695,019; 12/695,020; 12/694,451; 12/694,455; 12/695,021; 12/695,980), since parents in a continuation family frequently carry the operative art.

7. Bottom line

• US 8,893,009 B2 is confirmed: Raleigh, Green, Lavine; appl. 13/309,556; filed Dec. 1, 2011; granted Nov. 18, 2014; Headwater (now Headwater Research LLC); priority Jan. 28, 2009; pre-AIA § 102 governs.
• The only "citations" I could verify attached to this patent are the ~20 incorporated-by-reference Headwater applications (all filed Mar. 2, 2009 and later) and same-family continuations. These are not § 102 prior art; they matter for § 112 support and obviousness-type double patenting.
• I was unable to retrieve the examiner-cited prior-art list (PTO-892) for this patent, and therefore I am not providing a fabricated reference-by-reference § 102 anticipation table. Providing one would require inventing citations, which the operating rules prohibit.
• Every externally visible "cited" reference returned in my searches is dated 2013 — after this patent's filing and priority — and therefore cannot anticipate any claim under pre-AIA § 102.
• To complete the requested deliverable, the claim set of US 8,893,009 and its PTO-892 references from PatentCenter (appl. 13/309,556) are required; with those, I can produce the per-reference, per-claim § 102 mapping.

I'll research the prior art cited on the face of US 8,893,009 and the surrounding art relevant to its claims.

Let me pull the specific prior-art references cited on the face of '009 and the claim language.

I now have the verbatim claim set of US 8,893,009. Let me verify the disclosures of the key secondary references before building the combinations.

Obviousness Analysis — US 8,893,009 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Analyst note / correction to the earlier sections: The prior generated sections flagged that the verbatim claim set of '009 had not been retrieved and used the identically-titled continuations as a proxy. That gap is now closed — the full printed claim set (110 claims, one independent claim, claim 1) is available at uspto.report's grant record (https://uspto.report/patent/grant/8893009, "Claims" section). That source contradicts the earlier proxy in one important respect: the earlier summary stated that '009 requires the device to "communicate with a network element to perform an application credential check." Actual claim 1 does not require any network participation in the check — the check is performed on the device using a stored credential; network-assisted checking appears only in dependent claims 30, 31, 32 and 34. Any obviousness theory that assumes network-side checking is in claim 1 is attacking the wrong claim. (Note also that the front page of the grant shows a Certificate of Correction, so the claim text should be confirmed against the corrected version before being relied on.)

1. The claim to be analyzed (claim 1, verbatim elements)

Level of ordinary skill. The parties' competing definitions in the family litigation are instructive; in IPR2024-01468 Patent Owner accepted a POSITA holding "at least (1) a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, computer engineering/science, or a related scientific field, and (2) either (a) a master's degree … or (b) two or more years of work or research experience in wireless networking and/or computing" (https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2024-01468/...PO_Response...pdf). That is the level I apply below: a person with a few years of wireless data-networking and mobile-OS experience, familiar with device firewalls, socket-level interception, app code-signing, and over-the-air device management.

Effective priority. All of the references below predate even the earliest listed date (2009-01-28) and certainly predate the 2010-12-01 provisional (61/418,507) and 2011-12-01 CIP filing to which the credential-check subject matter most plausibly traces. The § 103 analysis is therefore robust to the CIP/§ 112 priority fight flagged in the earlier sections.

2. The reference set (verified)

Primary references

• Freund, US 5,987,611 ("System and Methodology for Managing Internet Access on a Per Application Basis for Client Computers Connected to the Internet"; filed 1997-05-06; issued 1999-11-16; Zone Labs). Freund was cited by defendants in the Headwater family invalidity contentions (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/1555958/...) and used as IPR art against family members (Google IPR2024-00944 Ex. 1004; IPR2025-01437 Ex. 1020).
  • Client-based filter + centralized supervisor; per-application access rules stored locally ("[t]he filter application maintains a local copy of these rules so that rule enforcement continues even when the user accesses the Internet but bypasses the LAN," Freund 5:6–21).
  • Rules "specify criteria such as total time a user can be connected … a list of applications or application versions that a user can or cannot use in order to access the Internet, a list of URLs … a list of protocols … and rules to determine what events should be logged" (Freund, Abstract).
  • The examination of the application itself: "[b]y intercepting process loading and unloading and keeping a list of currently-active processes, each client process can be checked for various characteristics, including checking executable names, version numbers, executable file checksums, version header details, configuration settings, and the like. With this information, the system can determine if a particular process in question should have access to the Internet and what kind of access … is permissible" (Freund, Abstract).
  • Failure branch: deny/terminate access, warn the user, and notify the supervisor ("If the request for Internet access violates any of the rules … denying the request," 5:34–52; "the Client Monitor … can stop [the] application from accessing the Internet and/or warn the user," 5:61–64; supervisor can direct the firewall to disable access, 28:27–32). Freund also forbids circumvention by uninstalling/tampering (8:54–62).
• Fadell, US 2008/0085707 A1 and US 2010/0017506 A1 — both listed in the "References Cited" on the face of '009 (verified at uspto.report/patent/grant/8893009). Apple mobile-device work on application-level network/data-usage management, user-configurable per-application restrictions (including background restrictions) and user notification of resource usage. Defendants relied on Fadell for the "notify the user of the resource usage associated with a particular service usage activity" element (https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.txed.224022/gov.uscourts.txed.224022.99.5.pdf).
• Godfrey, US 7,317,699 B2 (RIM/BlackBerry; priority 2001-10-26) — "System and Method for Controlling Configuration Settings for Mobile Communication Devices and Services." Policy settings are generated at the server and pushed over-the-air to the mobile device, where a device-side "policy setting processing system" writes them into a device memory area that device software (including third-party applications) references, and applications can query policy settings. Update messages are authenticated — "a device is able to determine whether an update is valid and should be applied … by having a sender generate and append a digital signature"; a device may also rank policy sources (Godfrey, Detailed Description; https://patents.justia.com/patent/9049071).

Secondary references already on the face of '009 (per the References Cited list): Ginter 5,892,900 (trusted/metered software distribution and tamper-resistant execution — useful for claims 42–44), Nagel 7,181,017 (secure network transaction/authenticated device environment), Juitt 7,042,988 (network policy provisioning to devices), Nordman 6,678,516 (per-user/per-application internet-access control), Natarajan 6,765,864 (policy-based bandwidth/flow control), Watler 2002/0022472 and Kende 2002/0120540 (remote policy/data-usage management of wireless devices), Cole 2008/0081606, Dion 2009/0070440 (policy-based network control), Abichandani 2008/0160958, plus the applicant-cited 3GPP TS 23.401 and TS 23.203 (bearer/APN and policy-and-charging architecture — directly relevant to claims 61–83) and Kelz EP 1,484,871, which defendants identified among the primary/secondary references.

3. Grounds of rejection

Ground 1 — Freund alone renders claim 1 obvious (alternatively anticipates)

Every element of claim 1 is disclosed by Freund:

• 1.a/1.b: The patented device is a programmable client; Freund's client computers are general-purpose machines running applications requiring "Internet (or other open network) access" and, in the extended embodiment, mobile/remote clients connecting via ISP/dial-up.
• 1.c/1.e: Freund's locally stored rule set is a per-application service policy comprising instructions implemented by an agent (the "Client Monitor"/client filter) "when the [application] initiates or attempts to initiate" access.
• 1.d: Freund's expected executable name, version number, checksum and version-header details are, in claim-1 terms, "information about a first application credential associated with the first application program."
• 1.f: Freund's interception of process load/unload, comparison of the running process against the expected executable characteristics, and denial/warning/notification on mismatch is exactly "perform a first application … check, and if the check does not pass, take an action."

Obviousness framing matters here: In re Meyer, 599 F.2d 1026 (CCPA 1979) — "a rejection for obviousness under § 103 can be based on a reference which happens to anticipate the claimed subject matter" (the rationale defendants preserved in their contentions). Freund's own stated purpose of making rules "difficult … to circumvent … by uninstalling or tampering with components of the system" supplies the motivation for checking the executable against a stored credential rather than trusting the process list alone.

Likely PO rebuttal: Freund does not disclose a wireless modem/access network ("one or more modems") as the recited access mechanism, and its credential check is directed at an unmodified/unnamed executable version rather than a signed certificate. That gap is closed by Grounds 2–3.

Ground 2 — Freund in view of Fadell (and the admitted wireless-network context) → claim 1 and claims 2, 5, 45–51, 60

Motivation to combine. Freund is an internet-access control system; Fadell is its cellular-data counterpart. The two are in the same field (per-application network access control on a general-purpose computing device), address the same problem (runaway/unauthorized application data use), and the combination is a "combination of familiar elements according to known methods … yield[ing] no more than predictable results" — the KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 416–17, 421 (2007) rationales. The Applicant itself endorsed the equivalence: the specification of '009 treats "network service usage activity" as any device activity including wireless communication by "a device application or widget connection, a device OS function connection, an email … connection," and states the DAS problem in id