Invalidity dossier
US 9094445
Protecting networks from cyber attacks and overloading
Current assignee: Centripetal Networks LLC
Added 9/24/2026, 12:05:10 AM
Active provider: DeepSeek · deepseek-flash
Patent summary
Title, assignee, inventors, filing/issue dates, abstract, and a plain-language overview of the claims.
Patent Overview — US 9,094,445 B2
Title: Protecting networks from cyber attacks and overloading
Patent Number / Application: US 9,094,445 B2; Application US 13/838,471 (published as US 2014/0283030 A1)
Inventors: Sean Moore, Steven Rogers, John Daniel Scoggins, Sr.
Assignee: Centripetal Networks, LLC (originally Centripetal Networks LLC)
Key Dates: Priority/filing date 2013-03-15; granted/publication date 2015-07-28; adjusted expiration 2033-08-21 (status listed Active). The record also shows related priority filings (EP 2974215B1, CA 2902206C, WO 2014143673A1, AU 2014228257B2).
Purpose: According to the supplied text, the disclosure relates to ensuring availability of the Internet and certain Internet applications to specified organizations and personnel ("users") during overload conditions, and to restoring availability to progressively larger sets of users until normal availability is restored to all legitimate users. Overloading is described as occurring when traffic volume exceeds effective transmission capacity, or when application servers cannot handle delivered service-request volume—whether from malicious attacks or heavy legitimate use. Discussed attack types include Denial-of-Service (DoS) and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), including network-flooding and "application-level" DoS (e.g., HTTP GET floods against a web server), and botnet-driven attacks controlled by a command-and-control agent.
Plain-Language Scope (from supplied text): The excerpt frames the problem space—ISP/Autonomous System topology, peering points, IP addresses and ports identifying endpoints and application instances—and mentions "packet filtering devices" and rule/filtering classifications. The listed classifications include traffic monitoring, anomaly detection, filtering policies, filtering by address/protocol/port, rule management, countermeasures against malicious traffic, denial of service, and congestion identification. Notably, the excerpt truncates before describing the packet-grouping and filtering operations implied by the "Prior art keywords" (packets, packet, group, data, network) and before presenting any claims.
What the excerpt does NOT establish: No claim language, detailed embodiments, or specific prior-art references are provided. Classifications and definitions appear as metadata, not as scope determinations. No legal conclusions as to validity, enforceability, or claim coverage can be drawn.
Generated 10/1/2026, 9:32:05 PM
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Litigation summary
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Proceedings on file (0)
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PTAB challenges
AIA trial proceedings at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board — IPR, PGR, and CBM. Petitioners, judge panels, claim-level invalidation outcomes from Final Written Decisions, and Federal Circuit appeals. The single most important defensive datapoint after litigation history.
Assignment history
Inventors, original assignee, and the chain of ownership recorded with the USPTO — including the correspondent attorney who recorded each assignment, since shell-LLC chains often share one repeat-player attorney even when the entity names look unrelated. Surfaces NPE / patent-troll patterns: shell-entity transfers, known asserters in the chain, repeat correspondent fingerprints, pre-litigation assignments, and bankruptcy fire-sales.
Prior art
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Obviousness
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Extensions
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Derivative works
Defensive disclosure: derivative variations of each claim designed to render future incremental improvements obvious or non-novel.