US 9025556

I'll search for authoritative information on US patent 9025556, including any 2026 CAFC docket activity.

Let me search specifically for any 2026 CAFC docket or litigation activity involving this patent.

Let me check CourtListener and USPTO specifically for this patent's litigation/PTAB history.

US Patent 9,025,556 — Summary

Important scope note: My searching covered Google Patents/FreePatentsOnline (full text), and general web search for litigation and Federal Circuit activity. I found no 2026 CAFC docket, appeal, IPR, or district-court litigation tied to this patent. I also encountered look‑alike identifiers that are not this patent and should not be conflated: GB9025556 / GB2237241 ("Contact lens cast moulding and packaging") and ISBN 978-90-9025556-9 (a book on European orchids). Those are unrelated to US 9,025,556.

Bibliographic data

Abstract (as published)

"A method in a wireless terminal transceiver includes receiving a sequence of frames from a first base station, wherein each frame in the sequence contains a first set of time-frequency resources which may be used for scheduling data and a second set of time-frequency resources not used for scheduling data. The transceiver also receives a message from the first base station identifying a third set of time-frequency resources that is a subset of the first set of time-frequency resources, and estimates the channel state based on the transmission received in the third set of time-frequency resources."

(Note a small internal inconsistency in the source text: the abstract describes the second set as "not used for scheduling data," whereas granted claim 1 defines the second set as "different from the first set … wherein the first set … and the second set … do not overlap in time." I am reporting both literally rather than reconciling them.)

Claims

There are 15 claims and only one independent claim (claim 1). All others depend, directly or indirectly, on claim 1.

Independent claim 1 — plain-language overview. A method performed in a wireless terminal transceiver of an OFDMA system, with three steps:

1. Receive frames from a first (serving) base station. Each frame contains two non-overlapping-in-time resource groups: a first set used for scheduling data, and a second set separate from it.
2. Receive a message from that same first base station identifying a third set of time-frequency resources, which is a subset of the first (data-scheduling) set. In other words, the network tells the device which specific slice of the data region to look at.
3. Estimate channel state based on the transmission received in that third set — i.e., measurements are restricted to the network-signaled slice rather than the whole band.

The practical thrust is "measure only where the network tells you to," which supports the specification's interference-mitigation techniques (e.g., excluding HeNB-occupied bandwidth when computing RSRQ/RS-SINR, constant-load measurement regions).

Dependent claims (how they narrow claim 1):

• 2–3: Also receive frames from a second base station that coincide with the third resource set; channel estimation then includes measuring that second base station's transmissions.
• 4: Channel state estimation comprises estimating RSRP of the second base station.
• 5: Channel estimation is based on a reference signal of the second base station.
• 6: Measure interference on the third set and determine an SIR metric from the channel estimate and interference.
• 7–8: The SIR metric is RSRQ (7) or RS-SINR (8).
• 9–10: The SIR metric is a CQI (9), specifically the highest MCS meeting a block-error-rate threshold (10).
• 11–12: The SIR metric is a hypothetical physical control channel block error rate (11), specifically DCI format 1C (12).
• 13: Reselect to a cell on another carrier frequency or a different RAT if the SIR metric falls below a threshold.
• 14: The time-frequency resources are symbol durations, time slots, subframes, or frames.
• 15: The message identifying the third resource set is received in response to transmitting a measurement report indicating a second base station's presence.

Uncertainty / caveats

• The above is drawn from the Google Patents full text and a FreePatentsOnline record, which agree on the key bibliographic facts. I did not independently retrieve the USPTO PatentCenter/Assignment record or the EP/CN/KR family documents in this session, so the assignment chain and family details are as reflected in the Google Patents "Info" panel.
• On the specific request about 2026 CAFC dockets: I found no Federal Circuit docket, opinion, or 2026 filing referencing US 9,025,556 or application 13/949,306. I cannot rule out activity that is not indexed in the sources reachable here; absence of search results is not affirmative proof of no litigation. If you need a conclusive check, the authoritative sources would be the CAFC docket search (cafc.uscourts.gov) and PACER/CourtListener docket queries on the patent number and assignee.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 9025556 across patent litigation sources.

Let me search more targeted litigation databases.

Let me check a few more specialized litigation sources directly.

Litigation Search Results — US Patent 9,025,556

Bottom line

I found no evidence of any litigation (district court, ITC, PTAB, CAFC, or UPC) involving U.S. Patent No. 9,025,556. Based on the searches run, the patent does not appear in any known patent-infringement action.

I want to be explicit about the confidence level here: my searches were not exhaustive (I hit a tool-step limit before querying Docket Alarm, Justia's patent docket, or the Unified Patents caselist directly), so I cannot rule out litigation with 100% certainty. But nothing in the results — including the patent's own Google Patents page, its family/assignment history, and general litigation-database hits — indicates the '556 patent has ever been asserted.

What the search did surface (and why none of it is suit against '556)

To be clear about matching, per the instruction not to auto-correct identifiers, here are the near-miss items I encountered — none of these involve US 9,025,556:

The one Chinese-language result mentioning "专利官司" (patent lawsuit) concerned Snap-on/Orange Electronics litigation involving Autel (道通科技) — unrelated to this patent.

Patent context (for the record)

• Patent: US 9,025,556 B2 — "Interference mitigation in heterogeneous wireless communication networks"
• Inventors: Sandeep H. Krishnamurthy, Michael E. Buckley, Murali Narasimha
• Current assignee: Google Technology Holdings LLC (originally Motorola Mobility)
• App. No.: 13/949,306 (continuation of 12/938,022, filed Nov. 2, 2010; priority to provisional 61/258,968, Nov. 6, 2009)
• Granted: May 5, 2015; anticipated expiration: Nov. 2, 2030
• Family: US 8,520,617 (parent, "Expired – Fee Related"); US 14/218,023 (continuation, "Abandoned"); plus EP/CN/KR/BR/WO counterparts (EP2497299A2, CN102598792A, KR101429836B1, WO2011057037A2).
• Forward citations noted: Qualcomm (US 10,243,929; US 11,088,769) and Google LLC (US 2022/0264552) — these are citations to the patent, not assertions of it.

The patent's Google Patents page lists no "Litigation" events, and the assignment record shows only corporate reassignments (Motorola Mobility → Google Technology Holdings), not enforcement.

Recommendation / caveat

If you need a definitive negative clearance, the following sources should be checked directly (which I was unable to reach before hitting my search limit):

1. Unified Patents litigation caselist — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation
2. Docket Alarm and Justia Dockets (patent search by patent number)
3. PACER for any case where "9,025,556" appears in the complaint
4. USPTO PTAB (IPR/PGR/CBM) and USPTO Assignment records
5. CAFC docket search

Given the patent's ownership by Google Technology Holdings (a large operating company with a defense-oriented portfolio rather than an NPE monetization model) and its 2015 issuance, the absence of any assertion is plausible and consistent with what I found. I state this as an observation, not a verified fact.

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

Let me run additional targeted searches to check for any AIA trial activity or litigation involving this patent.

Let me do a final verification search specifically for any PTAB trial numbers tied to this patent family.

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings on file. The USPTO Open Data Portal returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceedings for US 9,025,556 as of the most recent ingest, and my independent web searches (Google Patents/PTAB E2E-adjacent sources, PTAB petitions collections, Federal Circuit and CourtListener materials) surfaced no AIA trial petition, institution decision, final written decision, or appeal naming this patent or its family members. I found no proceeding numbers to report, and per your instruction I am not inventing any. Net defensive posture: the patent is completely untested at the PTAB — all 15 claims (1–15) remain live and unchallenged, so there is no claim-level invalidation to lean on and no estoppel reservoir to exploit. Defense must be built from scratch.

Caveat on confidence: "no proceedings" is a negative finding. ODP ingestion lags, and PTAB E2E is the authoritative check that a human should run on docket numbers before relying on this as a clearance-grade conclusion. But nothing in the searchable record contradicts the structured data.

For each proceeding

None. There are no {PROCEEDING_NUMBER} — {Petitioner} v. {Patent Owner} entries to populate. No filed IPR/PGR/CBM, no institution decision (granted or denied), no FWD, no settlement-driven termination under § 317, and no Federal Circuit appeal of any PTAB decision on this patent.

An important framing point for the defendant reading this: the absence of PTAB activity is not the same as a finding of validity. It means nobody has yet spent the money. Patents asserted in high-volume campaigns attract IPRs almost mechanically; this one has not, which is consistent with it not having been asserted (see below).

Strategic summary

Claim status. Nothing is canceled, nothing is confirmed through IPR, everything is untested. Claims 1–15 are all live:

• Independent claim 1 — directed to receiving frames from a first base station (with a first set of time-frequency resources used for scheduling data and a second, non-overlapping-in-time set not used for scheduling), receiving a message identifying a third set of resources that is a subset of the first set, and estimating channel state from transmissions in the third set.
• Dependent claims 2–3 — extend to a second base station whose frames "coincide with" the third set of resources, and channel-state estimation by measuring the second base station's frames.
• Claims 4–5 — RSRP / reference-signal-based channel estimation.
• Claims 6–12 — the SIR-metric family (RSRQ, RS-SINR, CQI, hypothetical PDCCH block error rate, DCI format 1C).
• Claim 13 — inter-frequency / inter-RAT reselection when the SIR metric falls below a threshold (the classic hetero-network interference-mitigation hook).
• Claims 14–15 — resource granularity (symbol/slot/subframe/frame) and the trigger condition (message received in response to a measurement report indicating a second base station).

Because no claim has ever been construed by the Board, there is no PTAB claim construction to borrow or to distinguish, and no prosecution-to-PTAB consistency record to exploit. Claim 1's "first set ... and the second set ... do not overlap in time" limitation is the kind of negative/relational limitation that tends to draw a fight over the scope of "used for scheduling data," but that fight has never been had.

Estoppel landscape. § 315(e)(2) estoppel requires a prior IPR petitioner (or RPI/privy). There is no petitioner, therefore no estoppel attaches to anyone. Every prior-art ground — § 102 anticipation, § 103 obviousness, § 112 written description/enablement under HTC v. In re framing, and § 101 eligibility — remains fully available to a current defendant, in both the district court and (subject to the § 315(b) one-year bar from service of an infringement complaint) in a new IPR. That cuts both ways: a defendant retains maximum freedom, but also has no prior petitioner's work product to free-ride on, and no FWD to point to for collateral estoppel.

Pattern signals. No repeat-petitioner pattern, because there is no petitioner at all. No evidence of an aggressive PTAB-appeal posture by the patent owner — there is nothing to appeal. No defensive aggregator (e.g., Unified Patents, RPX) appears anywhere in the chain for this patent; the only assignments on record are the routine intra-Google chain: Motorola Mobility, Inc. → Motorola Mobility LLC (2014-11-07 conversion) → Google Technology Holdings LLC (2014-11-30), which is the current assignee. The family itself is unremarkable for PTAB purposes: the parent US 8,520,617 is expired-fee related, and the continuation US 2015/0029995A1 was abandoned; foreign siblings include EP 2497299 A2, KR 101429836 B1, CN 102598792 A, BR 112012010655 A2, and WO 2011057037 A2.

Litigation context (thin). I found no infringement action in which this patent was asserted, and no PTAB petition naming it. Treat that as a flag to verify against a paid docket database, not as a settled fact — my search coverage of litigation dockets for this patent number was not exhaustive.

Recommended next steps

• If you are a defendant facing assertion of US 9,025,556: there is no FWD to link to and no invalidated claim to quote — nothing has been canceled. Do not represent to a court or to opposing counsel that any claim is dead. Your clearance path runs through the district court, not collateral estoppel.
• File-window check for your own IPR: the § 315(b) one-year clock runs from service of the complaint. Because no other party has petitioned, you would be the first petitioner — no General Plastic / Fintw follow-on-petitioner risk on this patent. Validate the art search against the pre-filing landscape: the specification itself identifies the key prior-art context as 3GPP TR 25.967 (Home Node B RF Requirements, FDD, Release 9), 3GPP contribution R1-083195 (macro-cell subframe blanking), R2-092416 (IFRI bit), R4-091895 and R4-091896 (RSRQ-based reselection; RSRQ/IFRI performance), plus TS 36.214 and TS 36.331 for the RSRQ/RSRP measurement definitions. Those are printed publications and are prime § 102/§ 103 fodder — the patent owner's own background section characterizes much of this as known.
• Because nothing is on file, the 1-year statutory FWD clock does not exist yet — there are no trial-stage milestones (no institution decision deadline, no oral hearing date, no § 318(a) deadline) to track. Any such dates would arise only if a petition is filed and instituted.
• Verify negatives at the source before relying on them: run the patent number and its family members (US 8,520,617; US 2015/0029995A1) through USPTO PTAB E2E / PatentCenter and a litigation database, and re-check ODP later — ingestion lag is the principal risk to the "no proceedings" conclusion above.

Sources consulted: the structured ODP block in this prompt; US9025556B2 on Google Patents; the granted patent PDF; FreePatentsOnline US9025556. No PTAB or Federal Circuit opinion exists for this patent to link to.

I'll research the assignment record for US 9,025,556 through multiple sources.

Let me look for the specific assignment records, reel/frame numbers, and correspondents.

Assignment Reconstruction — US 9,025,556 B2

Research limitation (read first)

I was unable to complete a live query of the USPTO Assignment Center / Patent Assignment Search for this patent number — my tool access for this session returned results from indexed mirrors rather than the Assignment Center itself. I therefore could not independently confirm the reel/frame numbers or the correspondent-of-record names, which are the two data points this task most depends on. Everything below is grounded in the assignment events as exposed by the Google Patents "Legal Events" panel and corroborated by Justia / FreePatentsOnline bibliographic data. Where a data point is missing, I say so rather than invent it.

A live check against the Assignment Center by patent number (and by application 13/949,306) is required to fill in reel/frame and correspondent. Entry point: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/. The Google Patents legal-events panel I relied on is at https://patents.google.com/patent/[US9025556B2](/patent/US9025556B2)/en#legalEvents.

Inventors

All three residences are consistent with Motorola Mobility engineering sites (Illinois: Libertyville / Grayslake / Lake Zurich area; California: Sunnyvale / Mountain View area). The inventors are listed as assignors on the first recorded assignment (Google Patents legal event "Assigned to MOTOROLA MOBILITY, INC.," assignors KRISHNAMURTHY, SANDEEP H.; NARASIMHA, MURALI; BUCKLEY, MICHAEL E.), which confirms the employer relationship.

Unusual-pattern check: I found no evidence that any of the three inventors departed within 12 months of filing, and no evidence of a coordinated inventor exodus preceding a portfolio sale. All three appear as inventors on other Motorola/Google-family filings in the same period, which is consistent with continued employment rather than departure. I cannot affirmatively rule out departures — I simply did not find records supporting one. Note that "departure" here would be largely moot: the patents were employee-assigned and the ownership trail ran through corporate M&A, not inventor-driven transfers.

Original assignee

Two different answers depending on which moment you ask about, and the distinction matters for this task:

• Entity named on the issued patent (issued 2015-05-05): Google Technology Holdings LLC (Mountain View, CA). This is the assignee printed on the face of US 9,025,556 and reported by Justia and FreePatentsOnline.
• Entity that filed the application (2010-11-02) and to which the inventors assigned: Motorola Mobility, Inc., later converted to Motorola Mobility LLC.

Primary line of business / product status: Google Technology Holdings LLC is a wholly-owned patent-holding subsidiary of Google (Alphabet Inc.). It is a holding entity — it does not itself ship products — but it is the captive IP arm of a large operating company, not a licensing-only asserter. Its parent (Google/Alphabet) indisputably ships products that practice LTE/OFDMA interference-mitigation techniques of the type claimed (Pixel handsets, Android baseband stacks, network infrastructure). The original applicant, Motorola Mobility, was a handset/networking OEM; its device business was acquired by Google in 2012 and subsequently sold to Lenovo in 2014, while Google retained the patent portfolio (moved into Google Technology Holdings LLC).

Current status: Operating (as a subsidiary of a going-concern parent). No bankruptcy, dissolution, or liquidation of the assignee.

Assignment timeline

The chronological chain, as exposed by the Google Patents "Legal Events" data. Execution dates were not shown in the sources I could reach — the dates below are the recording/event dates as reported. Reel/frame numbers and correspondent names could not be retrieved and remain blank pending an Assignment Center query.

2014-11-06 — recorded 2014-11-06 — Reel not retrieved

• Conveyance: Assignment ("Assignment of Assignors' Interest")
• Assignor: Krishnamurthy, Sandeep H.; Narasimha, Murali; Buckley, Michael E. (the named inventors)
• Assignee: Motorola Mobility, Inc.
• Correspondent: not retrieved — cannot confirm recurrence
• Context: Original employee invention assignment; recorded belatedly (the application was filed 2010-11-02), i.e. a documentation cleanup of the base ownership link.

2014-11-07 — recorded 2014-11-07 — Reel not retrieved

• Conveyance: Certificate of Conversion (change of entity form only)
• Assignor: Motorola Mobility, Inc.
• Assignee: Motorola Mobility LLC
• Correspondent: not retrieved
• Context: Internal corporate reorganization — conversion of the corporate form from "Inc." to "LLC." No change in beneficial ownership.

2014-11-30 — recorded 2014-11-30 — Reel not retrieved

• Conveyance: Assignment ("Assignment of Assignor's Interest")
• Assignor: Motorola Mobility LLC
• Assignee: Google Technology Holdings LLC
• Correspondent: not retrieved
• Context: Intra-corporate transfer into Google's captive patent-holding subsidiary — a corporate IP-reorganization step, contemporaneous with Google's October 2014 sale of the Motorola Mobility device business to Lenovo while retaining the patents. Not a third-party or fire-sale transfer.

No post-2014 assignment to any third party is recorded. The ownership chain terminates inside the Alphabet corporate family. There is no assignment to Acacia, Marathon, IV, Wi-LAN/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, or any other entity on a public NPE list, and no assignment to a defensive aggregator.

For completeness on the family: the parent patent US 8,520,617 (app. 12/938,022, filed 2010-11-02) and the later continuation 14/218,023 (pub. US 2015/0029995 A1, filed 2014-03-18, listed abandoned) run through the same Motorola → Google chain. US 9,025,556 is itself a continuation of 12/938,022.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 9025556
    2009 : Provisional 61/258968 filed
    2010 : Non provisional 12/938022 filed
    2013 : Continuation 13/949306 filed
    2014 : Inventors assign to Motorola Mobility
         : Reorganized as Motorola Mobility LLC
         : Assigned to Google Technology Holdings
    2015 : Patent US9025556 issues

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT. The only "holding" entity in the chain is Google Technology Holdings LLC, but it is the captive IP subsidiary of an operating parent (Alphabet), not a licensing-only shell. There is no evidence of a "IP / Patents / Licensing / Ventures"-style single-purpose NPE, no registered-agent-service address, and no single-member Delaware/Texas LLC taking title. The 2014-11-30 transfer (Motorola Mobility LLC → Google Technology Holdings LLC) is an intra-group reorganization, not a transfer-to-asserter.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT. Neither Motorola Mobility, Inc./LLC nor Google Technology Holdings LLC appears on the comparison lists named (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Conversant/Mosaid, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg entities). No RPX/Unified high-frequency-plaintiff match surfaced.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNKNOWN. This is the signal I most wanted to test and could not: the correspondents of record for the three 2014 recordings were not retrievable in this session. I flag it as unresolved, not as a finding. Note the structural point: because all three recordings were made within a 24-day window in November 2014 by a single corporate family, they were very likely filed by the same in-house or outside counsel — but intra-group housekeeping producing a common correspondent is not the NPE tell. The tell would be a repeat correspondent spanning unrelated assignees, which does not exist here. Resolve via Assignment Center before drawing any conclusion.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT (as an NPE indicator). Three assignments were recorded within 24 days (2014-11-06, -07, -30), which superficially matches the "<24 months through chained LLCs" pattern. But the chain is (i) inventor → employer, (ii) form conversion of the same company, and (iii) transfer to the same ultimate corporate parent (Alphabet). The assignees share common principals by construction. This is a single corporate family cleaning up title, not a cascade through nominally unrelated shells.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT. No infringement suit naming US 9,025,556 was found, so there is no pre-suit transfer to time against. (Consistent with the prior section's finding of no litigation/CAFC activity.)

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. Motorola did undergo a 2011 split (Motorola Solutions / Motorola Mobility) and a 2012 Google acquisition followed by the 2014 Lenovo sale of the device business, but none of these was a Chapter 7/11 liquidation sale of patents of the Kodak/Nortel/Polaroid type. The patents moved by corporate transaction, and Google retained them rather than selling them into an asserter.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT. No evidence that the operating company transferred the patent to an NPE to assert on its behalf against competitors. The patent rests inside Google's own holding subsidiary, which is the opposite of privateering.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. The patent has not been "neutralized" by a defensive aggregation.

Verdict

Insufficient data.

The recorded record consists of the original inventor-to-employer assignment (recorded 2014-11-06), an intra-corporate conversion (Motorola Mobility, Inc. → Motorola Mobility LLC, recorded 2014-11-07), and an intra-group transfer into Google's captive holding subsidiary (Motorola Mobility LLC → Google Technology Holdings LLC, recorded 2014-11-30). That is the original-ownership chain plus housekeeping — no third-party, NPE, or defensive-aggregator assignment exists, and no assertion activity was found. Because the record is effectively "the original assignment chain only," and because the reel/frame and correspondent fields could not be independently verified in this session, the honest call is Insufficient data rather than any NPE or operating-company-assertion label. If the chain is taken at face value, it describes a large operating company (Alphabet/Google) retaining a patent in its captive IP holder — not an NPE pattern.

Verification links:

• USPTO Assignment Center: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search by patent 9025556 or application 13/949,306)
• Google Patents legal events: https://patents.google.com/patent/US9025556B2/en#legalEvents

Open items to close on the next live Assignment Center pull: (1) reel/frame for each of the three 2014 recordings; (2) correspondent of record for each, to test signal 3; (3) execution dates to confirm the inventor assignment predates the 2014 recordings and to rule out any intervening unrecorded transfer.

I'll research US 9,025,556's citation record and identify the prior art references. Let me start with targeted searches.

The general searches aren't surfacing the citation list directly. Let me query the Google Patents page and the family/parent patent, which share the same prior-art record.

The FreePatentsOnline page is surfacing the examiner-cited U.S. references. Let me retrieve the complete citation lists (U.S., foreign, and other references).

Prior-Art / Citation Analysis — US 9,025,556 B2

Scope note on sources. In this session I was able to retrieve the patent's own record (Google Patents full text) and the FreePatentsOnline "US Patent References" citation list for 9025556 (https://www.freepatentsonline.com/[9025556](/patent/9025556).html). My tool steps ran out before I could pull the complete citation block (the FPO list was truncated mid-2007, and I did not separately retrieve the "Foreign Patent Documents" and "Other References / Non-Patent Literature" sub-lists, nor the USPTO PatentCenter "References Cited" PDF). So the list below is the examiner/applicant citation list as far as I retrieved it, not a verified complete set. Where I could not confirm an item, I say so rather than fill it in.

I did not auto-correct any identifiers. Note again the unrelated look-alikes that must not be conflated with this record: GB9025556/GB2237241 (contact-lens moulding) and ISBN 978-90-9025556-9 (orchids). Neither is US 9,025,556.

1. Confirmation of the target patent

The pre-grant publication US 2013/0308485 A1 and the parent US 8,520,617 (12/938,022) share this specification and substantially the same prior-art-of-record. Any citation analysis for the '556 is therefore also applicable to those siblings (subject to each sibling's own examiner record).

2. Examiner/applicant-cited U.S. patent documents (retrieved)

These are the "US Patent References" listed on the '556 record. Dates are the publication (or issue) dates as listed. Descriptions are drawn from the reference titles/abstracts as indexed; I have not re-read each reference's full text in this session, so treat the "relevance to claims" column as a preliminary mapping (see §4 caveats).

(The FPO listing continued beyond US 2007/0173276 A1 — the retrieved text was truncated at "200701…". Additional earlier-2007 and pre-2007 U.S. references, if any, were not captured.)

Not retrieved: the "Foreign Patent Documents" sub-list and the "Other References" (non-patent-literature) sub-list — the latter would be the natural home for the 3GPP contributions the specification itself discusses (e.g., R1-083195, R2-092416, R4-091895, R4-091896, 3GPP TR 25.967, TS 36.214, TS 36.331). I cannot confirm which of those were formally cited-of-record versus merely discussed in the description.

3. Forward citations (NOT prior art — for completeness only)

These cite the '556 (or its siblings) and are relevant only as indications of the field, not as §102 art:

• US 10,243,929 B2 — Qualcomm — "Uplink control channel scheduling for jamming resilience"
• US 11,088,769 B2 — Qualcomm — "Radio link monitoring based on multiple reference signals"
• US 2022/0264552 A1 — Google LLC — "Resource allocation across coexisting radio access technologies"

4. 35 U.S.C. § 102 analysis

Important framing. Being listed on the patent is not the same as an anticipation rejection. Anticipation under §102 requires a single reference disclosing every element of a claim arranged as claimed; a citation that only supplies one element is properly an obviousness (§103) or background citation. Nothing in the record I retrieved shows a §102 anticipation rejection against granted claim 1. With that caveat, the most §102-pertinent references and their claim mappings are:

• Claim 1 (measure-and-report on a signaled subset of the data region): the closest citations are US 2010/0029289 A1 (Love et al.), US 2012/0003981 A1 (Krishnamurthy et al.), US 2009/0257390 A1 (Ji et al.), and US 2010/0027484 A1 (Imamura et al.). Each independently addresses resource-selective measurement or HeNB/CSG signaling, but on the retrieved abstracts alone none is confirmed to disclose the full claim-1 combination (frames with a data-scheduling set and a distinct in-time non-overlapping set, plus a network message identifying a subset of the data set as the measurement region). Absent element-by-element reading, these are §103 candidates, not confirmed §102 art.

• Claims 4–5 (RSRP / reference signal of a second base station): US 7,940,740 B2 (Krishnamurthy et al.) is the most on-point (identifier-associated reference-signal handling). Potential §102 only if its identifier→PRS mapping is read onto claim 4/5's RSRP/RS-of-second-base-station limitation.

• Claim 6 (interference measurement + SIR metric): US 2009/0227263 A1 (Agrawal et al.) (load indication for interference mitigation) and US 2008/0240030 A1 (Kolding et al.) are the strongest §102/§103 candidates; US 2010/0074209 A1 (Montojo) and US 2008/0025254 A1 (Love) bear on the interference/emission aspect.

• Claims 7–8 (RSRQ / RS-SINR): no cited reference retrieved is specifically directed to RSRQ/RS-SINR as such; these would more likely fall with the claim-6 references under §103.

• Claims 9–10 (CQI / highest-MCS-under-BLER): US 2009/0316842 A1 (Lu et al.) is the direct CQI citation — the primary §102 candidate for claims 9–10.

• Claims 11–12 (hypothetical physical-control-channel BLER; DCI format 1C): US 2009/0262854 A1 (Lee et al.) (downlink control information) and US 2008/0008212 A1 (Wang et al.) (RLF detection / out-of-sync prediction) are the closest. §102 on claim 12 (DCI 1C specifically) is not established by these titles.

• Claim 13 (reselect to another carrier/RAT on low SIR): US 2009/0042601 A1 (Wang et al.) (inter-RAT measurement definitions) is the most pertinent for the different-RAT branch; US 2008/0008212 A1 for the failure-triggered branch.

• Claim 15 (message received in response to a measurement report indicating a second base station): US 2012/0003981 A1 (Krishnamurthy et al.) and US 2009/0257390 A1 (Ji et al.) are the closest (HeNB/CSG measurement-report-driven signaling).

Bottom line on novelty: On the retrieved record there is no single reference established as anticipating claim 1 or any dependent claim under §102. The citation set reads as a §103/background mix (measurement frameworks, CQI/RLF machinery, power/emission control, HeNB/CSG signaling), consistent with an allowance based on the specific combination of a network-signaled subset of the data region for channel-state estimation plus the SIR-metric family of dependent claims.

5. Explicit gaps and caveats (read before relying on this)

1. Incomplete list. I retrieved ~21 U.S. references; the FPO list was truncated and I did not retrieve the foreign-patent or non-patent-literature sub-lists. The most likely omitted items are pre-2007 U.S. publications and 3GPP/standards documents. A complete answer requires the USPTO PatentCenter "References Cited" PDF and the EPO/Google-Patents citation block.
2. No element-by-element verification. The §102/§103 mapping above is inferred from titles/abstracts, not full-text review. Anticipation conclusions cannot be drawn from this alone.
3. No litigation / no 2026 CAFC activity (consistent with the earlier sections): nothing found tying the '556 to any district-court, ITC, PTAB/IPR, CAFC, or UPC proceeding. Treat as absence-of-evidence, not proof of absence.
4. Authoritative next sources: USPTO PatentCenter for 13/949,306; https://patents.google.com/patent/[US9025556B2](/patent/US9025556B2)/en (Patent Citations section); https://www.freepatentsonline.com/9025556.html (full citation block including Foreign and Other References).

I'll gather the prior-art references actually cited on this patent's face and the key 3GPP contributions it relies on, since those are the references a §103 analysis must be built from.

Key discovery: there appear to be same-family Motorola applications (US 2010/0323693, US 2011/0110251, and the issued US 8,611,277) with near-identical disclosure. I need their actual dates and the citations of record on the '556.

Obviousness Analysis — US 9,025,556 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Note on scope and evidence. The patent text supplied is the authoritative source for the disclosure, the claims, and the references the applicant itself identifies as prior art. Where I rely on anything outside that text (dates, equivalent disclosures, publications), I flag it explicitly as verified / not verified. I was cut off mid-research on identifier confirmation, so several bibliographic dates below are labeled as unverified rather than asserted. This matters because the '556 is a pre-AIA patent (effective filing 2010-11-02; priority 2009-11-06), so §§ 102(e) and 103(c) behave very differently than under the AIA.

1. Legal framework and level of ordinary skill

Governing law. Pre-AIA § 103(a). Priority date for art purposes: 2009-11-06 (provisional 61/258,968), consistent with the page's own "Prior art date: 2009-11-06."

§ 103(c) caveat (critical here). Under pre-AIA § 103(c), subject matter that qualifies as prior art only under § 102(e), (f), or (g) and that was commonly owned at the time the invention was made cannot be used for an obviousness rejection. Several of the most on-point references in the citation network are Motorola/Motorola Mobility documents — the same inventive entity and common assignee as the '556 (inventors Krishnamurthy, Buckley, Narasimha; assignee chain Motorola Mobility → Google Technology Holdings). That creates a live disqualification defense which I address in §6.

Level of ordinary skill (POSITA). A person with a B.S. in electrical engineering (or equivalent) and 2–4 years of experience in LTE physical-layer/RRM design, including working familiarity with 3GPP TS 36.211/36.213/36.214/36.331/36.304 and RAN2/RAN4 contributions. This level is supported by the patent's own framing — the inventors treat the relevant techniques (RSRQ/RS-SINR/CQI definitions, DCI format 1C BLER estimation via EESM/MMIB, RRC/SIB signaling) as conventional and known.

2. The prior-art universe available on the face of this page

The page supplies two distinct prior-art pools: (a) applicant-admitted prior art — the 3GPP specifications and Tdocs the specification expressly discusses as existing ("has been proposed," "currently," "has been noted"); and (b) cited/citing references in the patent's bibliographic panels.

Two observations from the page's "Prior art keywords": time; frequency resources; HeNB; base station; interference. The examiner-indexed inventive concept is essentially "HeNB-aware time-frequency resource restriction for measurement" — i.e., the office already characterized the alleged novelty as a selection among time/frequency resources, which is where the § 103 pressure concentrates.

3. Ground I — Claim 1 over R4-091895 + TS 36.214/36.331 + R1-083195

Claim 1 has only three real elements (as detailed in the previously generated claims section): (a) OFDMA frames from a first BS containing a data-scheduling resource set and a second set that does not overlap in time; (b) a message from the first BS identifying a third set that is a subset of the data-scheduling set; (c) channel-state estimation based on the transmission received in that third set.

(a) is admitted/inherent art. The LTE Rel-8 subframe structure itself splits each subframe into the PDCCH control region (first 1–3 OFDM symbols — used for scheduling grants, i.e., "used for scheduling data") and the PDSCH data region (remaining symbols), which do not overlap in time. The '556's own Background accepts this structure as the starting point (it recites PDSCH/PDCCH, normal/extended cyclic prefix, subframe composition). A POSITA would take this as given; there is no inventive weight in element (a).

(c)-type measurement restriction is admitted art. R4-091895 expressly proposes measuring RSRQ (an SIR-type metric) and triggering reselection on it. TS 36.214 supplies the measurement definition and, critically, is admitted to be silent on whether measurement uses the control region, data region, or both, and silent on narrowband vs. wideband. The '556 states: "currently whether the UE uses data region or control for measuring RSRQ or whether it uses narrow band or wide band is unspecified." That is an admission that the choice of which symbols/RBs to measure on was an open design parameter — exactly the parameter the claim recites.

(b) — the signaling element — is supplied by TS 36.331 + R1-083195. TS 36.331 provides the vehicle (SIB/RRC signaling of measurement configuration, including a measurement bandwidth and subframe-based measurement patterns). R1-083195 supplies the time-domain resource-partitioning motivation — the macro cell already abstracts away some time-frequency resources for the HeNB's benefit, from which it follows naturally for the UE to be told which resources to measure. Combining a known signaling channel (TS 36.331) with a known need to restrict measurement resources (R1-083195, R4-091895) yields element (b).

Motivation to combine (KSR factors):

• Identified problem in the field: HeNB/macro co-channel interference (all six interference scenarios enumerated in the '556; TR 25.967 scenario 3).
• Finite, predictable solutions: the patent itself lists them — (1) per-subband interference estimation, (2) schedule around jammed RBs, (3) hop paging PDSCH across subbands, or signal the RBs/symbols to measure or exclude. Where the art discloses "a finite number of identified, predictable solutions," KSR v. Teleflex holds the combination obvious.
• Design incentive from standardization: active RAN2/RAN4 work on HeNB interference (R2-092416, R4-091895/R4-091896, TR 25.967) creates precisely the "market pressure/design incentive" KSR credits.
• Reasonable expectation of success: restricting RSSI/RSRQ measurement to a signaled subset is a measurement-configuration change within an existing UE capability; no new hardware, and the patent admits the enhancement "can effectively address" the problems.

Ground I conclusion: Claim 1 is likely obvious, with the caveat that Ground I is strongest only if a secondary reference (or the examiner's own art) is shown to teach signaling a subset of the data region specifically — the essence of (b). I did not verify in this session whether TS 36.331 Rel-8 alone teaches a signaled measurement subframe/RB subset, and Rel-8's measurement-gap framework is time-domain only. That is the pivotal evidentiary gap for Ground I.

4. Ground II — Claims 11–12 over the Motorola link-performance-prediction disclosures

Claims 11–12 are the most vulnerable: "SIR metric is a hypothetical physical control channel block error rate," and "the hypothetical physical control channel corresponds to downlink control information format 1C."

The '556 specification itself concedes the technique is conventional:

• "Link quality prediction methods like EESM, MMIB, etc. have been shown to be quite accurate in estimating the block error rate (BLER) of coded packet transmissions in an OFDM link."
• "DCI format 1C transmission quality prediction can be carried in a manner similar to what is currently being done for in-sync detection as part of radio link monitoring in Rel-8."
• "The BLER associated with a hypothetical 1C transmission can be computed from RS-SINR evaluated on a subcarrier or a subband level."

Every one of those statements is a background admission, not an invention. And the citation network contains Motorola documents (US 8,442,021 / US 8,457,112; US 2010/0323693 A1 / US 8,611,277) whose verified text describes: computing DCI format 1C BLER from RS-SINR at subband/subcarrier granularity using EESM/MMIB, folding in SIMO/SFBC/SFBC-FSTD configuration, PDCCH power boost (−6 to +4 dB), aggregation level, and number of control symbols — and triggering reselection evaluation when that metric drops below a threshold. That is claims 11, 12 and much of claim 13.

Combination logic. Take either Motorola prediction document as primary (teaches the BLER-based SIR metric and the subband interference estimation), and add the TS 36.331 signaling framework (idle-mode reselection configuration) — the resulting subject matter is the '556's claims 11–13 with no more than the predictable application of a known measurement-configuration scheme to a known quality metric.

But note the § 103(c) issue squarely here: if these references qualify only under § 102(e) and were commonly owned by Motorola at the time of invention, they are disqualified for § 103. If instead they published more than one year before 2010-11-02 (i.e., before 2009-11-02), they qualify under § 102(b) — where § 103(c) provides no exception. The whole Ground II therefore turns on dates I could not verify. Flagged as unresolved.

5. Ground III — Claims 2–10, 13–15 (dependent-claim vulnerability)

Dependent claims largely recite known measurement quantities or known reselection triggers; none adds a structural or algorithmic step that changes the obviousness posture of claim 1.

Take-away: every dependent claim is anchored to either an applicant-admitted known technique or a specific cited reference. There is no "secondary consideration" evident on this page — no unexpected results, no long-felt unmet need that the cited art failed to solve (the art was addressing the same HeNB interference problem), no licensing or praise in evidence. Absent such evidence, dependent claims 2–15 are unlikely to survive if claim 1 falls.

6. Where the patent has real defensive strength

(a) § 103(c) common ownership. The most incisive art (Motorola's research-link-prediction and reselection documents, and the 3GPP Tdocs authored by Motorola engineers) may be disqualified for § 103 purposes as 102(e)-only, commonly owned art. This is likely the reason the '556 issued over its own family's disclosure. If the examiner relied on non-common-owner 3GPP specs/Tdocs (TS 36.214, 36.331, R1-083195) instead, the defense evaporates.

(b) Applicant-admitted prior art was not used in a § 103 combination. The prosecution appears to have treated the 3GPP specifications as background rather than as combinable references. A challenger (IPR petitioner or reexam requester) could pair R4-091895 + TS 36.214 + TS 36.331 + R1-083195 and argue the combination, since none of these four is commonly owned.

(c) The "third set" signaling limitation is the surviving distinction. Ground I's weakness is element (b): I did not verify that any single reference teaches the network signaling a subset of the data region as the measurement target (as opposed to a bandwidth parameter, a gap pattern, or a whole-cell measurement). If that evidence is lacking, claim 1 survives — and because every other claim depends from it, the whole patent survives. This is the crux, and it should be the target of any validity challenge.

(d) Teaching away — weak. The '556 argues RSRQ is a poor paging-reliability metric and that the IFRI approach is deficient (citing R4-091896). But the specification simultaneously says the problems "can be circumvented," "can effectively address," and "can be easily extended." A teaching-away theory requires that the art criticize, discredit, or discourage the claimed combination; a critique of a prior metric followed by an admission that the fix is easy is not teaching away.

(e) Self-collision issue to flag. US 2011/0110251 A1 (same family) discloses the same idle-mode subject matter, and the sibling's claim set recites a Markush group (RSRQ / RS-SINR / CQI) where the '556 recites them in separate dependent claims (7, 8, 9). That is a classic obviousness-type double patenting question, not a § 103 prior-art question, and it is unaffected by the fact that the sibling is not prior art. The page shows the parent (US 8,520,617) as "Expired – Fee Related" and a later continuation (14/218,023) as "Abandoned," so the family is thin.

7. Contradictions and evidence gaps I am flagging explicitly

1. Abstract vs. claim 1 (carried forward from the earlier section). The abstract says the second set is "not used for scheduling data"; granted claim 1 says the two sets "do not overlap in time." These are different metes-and-bounds. For § 103 this matters: the claim requires a time-domain separation, which happens to map cleanly onto the PDCCH/PDSCH split of an LTE subframe — making element (a) easier to find in the art than the abstract's formulation would suggest.
2. Specification citation inconsistency. The '556 attributes "Physical Layer—Measurements" to TS 36.314 v8.6.0, while the RSRQ definition it quotes belongs to TS 36.214. I report the inconsistency rather than correcting it.
3. Dates I could not verify in this session: the filing/publication dates of US 8,442,021, US 8,457,112, US 2010/0323693 (US 8,611,277), and US 2011/0110251. Ground II's § 102(b)-vs.-§ 102(e) analysis and Ground I's § 103(c) analysis both hinge on these. I state them as unresolved rather than assert them.
4. No "Patent Citations" table was present in the supplied page text (only "Cited By (3)" and "Families Citing this family (115)"). The examiner's actual cited references of record were therefore not available to me; my prior-art universe is reconstructed from the specification's own citations and the page's citation network. This is a real limitation on the completeness of any § 103 analysis here.
5. No 2026 CAFC/PTAB/litigation activity was found for this patent (per the earlier sections) — so there is no prosecution-history estoppel or IPR record to mine, and no § 325(d)/§ 315(b) posture to consider.

8. Bottom line

Sources consulted: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US9025556B2](/patent/US9025556B2)/en (authoritative full text, claims, family/citation panels); https://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2013/0308485.html; https://patents.justia.com/patent/20100323693 and https://patents.justia.com/patent/[8611277](/patent/8611277) (sibling Motorola disclosure); https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2011057037A2/ (family WO counterpart). I did not obtain the USPTO PatentCenter record, the examiner's PTO-892, or the CAFC/PACER dockets, and I do not treat anything not cited above as verified.