US 9215613

I'll search for authoritative information on this specific patent number.

Let me verify the independent claim structure and litigation details.

US Patent 9,215,613 — Analyst Summary

Data-integrity note up front: the authoritative full text you supplied is the Google Patents record for US 9,215,613 B2, and I treated that as controlling over secondary aggregators. Where sources conflict (notably the priority date), I flag it rather than reconcile it silently. I also flag a date inconsistency in the search corpus relative to the "current date" you gave me (see §5).

1. Identification

2. Abstract

Per the indexed abstract: "A wireless end-user device has wireless wide-area network (WWAN) and wireless local-area network (WLAN) modems. One or more processors classify whether an application is interacting with a user in a user interface foreground of the device. At a time when Internet service activities are communicated through a first wireless network type, the processors use a differential traffic control policy list to determine whether or not to apply a differential traffic control policy to Internet service activities for an application. When the policy is applicable, the policy may direct that Internet service activities by the application are blocked. A user of the device is allowed to augment the policy that will be applied for applications specified as controlled by the list, but not for other applications and/or services." (Unified Patents; RPX)

Note: the abstract text itself was not fully reproduced in the Google Patents body you supplied (the fetched text is largely figure/definition boilerplate), so I am relying on the two aggregator reproductions, which agree verbatim.

3. Independent claim — plain language

There is one independent claim, claim 1, which recites a wireless end-user device comprising five elements:

1. Two radios. A WWAN modem and a WLAN modem, each for communicating Internet service activity data when configured for and connected to that type of network.
2. A memory storing two things.
   • a differential traffic control policy list that distinguishes between a "first" set of applications resident on the device and a "second" set of applications and/or services resident on the device; and
   • a differential traffic control policy applicable to at least some Internet service activities of the first set.
3. An interface with asymmetric user control. The user may augment the policy for the first set of applications but not for the second set — i.e., the user's ability to override/tune is deliberately limited to the applications the list designates as "controllable." This is the "limited user control" of the title.
4. Two classifications by the processor(s).
   • classify the wireless network the device is currently connected to as one of a plurality of network types the device can connect with (e.g., WWAN vs. WLAN, home vs. roaming); and
   • classify whether a particular application — one capable of both foreground user interaction and background Internet activity — is currently interacting with the user in the device UI foreground.
5. The allow/deny decision. The processor(s) selectively allow or deny Internet service activities for the particular application based on the combination of (a) whether that application is in the first set, (b) the differential traffic control policy including any applicable user augmentation, and (c) the two classifications.

In substance: a device-side agent that decides, per-application and per-network-type, whether background data traffic may go out — where the policy list is carrier/network-supplied and the user can tune only the subset the list exposes to them.

Representative dependent claims (from the IPR petition's claim appendix and the RPX listing):

• 2–4: on a WWAN, deny background activity of a listed app; override the denial if the user augmented the policy to permit it; allow when the app is in the UI foreground.
• 5: the second set of apps/services is allowed on WWAN under the policy.
• 7: UI provides the user information on why the policy is being applied.
• 8–10: policy is part of a multimode profile with different policies per network type, selected by classified network type (and, for WLAN, by the type of WLAN-to-Internet connection).
• 11: the plurality of network types includes three or more of 2G, 3G, 4G, home, roaming, WiFi.
• 12: the policy list may be updated from a network element.
• 13–14: the policy may apply to roaming or home WWAN but not both; or to WWAN or WLAN but not both.
• 16: dynamic change of policy application based on a device usage state.
• 18: the policy may restrict the first set to a network type only during particular time windows.
• 19: foreground classification based on a UI priority state for the application.
• 20: the second set is not subject to the differential network access control applicable to the first set.
• 21: classification among user applications; system applications/utilities/processes; and OS applications/utilities/processes.

4. Litigation, PTAB, and Federal Circuit posture

District court (E.D. Tex., Judge Rodney Gilstrap / Mag. J. Roy S. Payne), all asserting the '613 patent together with U.S. 8,589,541:

The Google Patents "litigation" block also lists three Northern District of California entries at 5:25-cv-09558, 4:25-cv-09558, and 3:25-cv-09558 — these appear to be the same case number indexed under different division codes, but I have not independently confirmed that.

PTAB — IPR2024-00945: Petition filed 2024-06-07 by Google LLC, Cellco Partnership d/b/a Verizon Wireless, Verizon Corporate Services Group, T-Mobile USA, Sprint LLC f/k/a Sprint Corp., and AT&T Services, challenging all of claims 1–24 of the '613 patent. A panel of APJs Jung, Howard, and Belisle issued a Decision Denying Institution under 35 U.S.C. § 314 on 2024-12-16, finding the petitioner had not demonstrated a reasonable likelihood of prevailing on any challenged claim. (Institution Decision — Deny) The Google Patents page labels this "Not Instituted - Merits."

Federal Circuit — CAFC No. 2026-01884: an appeal arising from 2:23-cv-00352, captioned Headwater Research LLC v. Verizon Communications, Inc. The docket shows Headwater's notice of appeal filed 2026-05-22 (Dkt. 455) and Verizon's notice of cross-appeal filed 2026-05-29 (Dkt. 473), the cross-appeal covering the denial of Verizon's motion to dismiss for lack of standing, the claim construction order, the § 101 patent-eligibility ruling, and the jury verdict. (Court of Appeals notice of cross-appeal)

Other docket signals found: in the Verizon case, Dkt. 447 (2026-04-22) addressed implied waiver — the court found Headwater had knowledge of Verizon's infringement as of 2017 but did not sue until July 2023, attributing the delay to maximizing the six-year damages window under 35 U.S.C. § 286, and found Verizon entitled to equitable relief under implied waiver.

5. Explicit uncertainties and conflicts

1. Priority date conflict. Google Patents (authoritative here) states 2009-01-28; Unified Patents states 2009-01-27. Additionally, the Google Patents "external priority" chain lists claims to US 12/380,778 (2009-03-02) and several 2010-01-27 filings. In the litigation, Headwater reportedly contended the '613 and '541 patents are entitled to a priority date no later than May 25, 2010 (per Dr. Kevin Jeffay's invalidity report in 2:23-cv-00352). These are not mutually exclusive (effective priority can be narrower than the earliest filing), but I cannot resolve them authoritatively.
2. Date inconsistency in the corpus. The user-supplied current date is April 26, 2026, yet search results include documents dated May 29, 2026 (Verizon's cross-appeal notice) and May 13, 2026 (PTAB scheduling order in IPR2026-00106). I am reporting these verbatim as found and flagging that they postdate the stated current date rather than "correcting" them.
3. Full text of claims 23–24 not retrieved. I verified claim 1 as the sole independent claim based on the petition's claim-ordered appendix (claims 2–22 all dependent) plus the RPX listing showing claims 2–24 as dependent claims. I did not retrieve the verbatim text of claims 23 and 24; my statement that claim 1 is the only independent claim is therefore high-confidence but not directly verified against the printed claim set.
4. Abstract source. The abstract in §2 comes from aggregator reproductions (Unified Patents and RPX, which match verbatim); the Google Patents page body you supplied did not include the abstract text.
5. IPR2026-00106 (Amazon v. Headwater) concerns U.S. 10,321,320, a different patent — I mention it only because it surfaced in the same search and is sometimes confused with the '613 patent.

Bottom line: US 9,215,613 is a Headwater (Raleigh/Lavine/Raissinia) continuation patent on device-side, application-aware differential traffic control where a network-supplied policy list partitions applications into user-adjustable and non-adjustable groups, with allow/deny decisions turning on the current network type and whether the app is in the UI foreground. It survived a six-petitioner, all-claims IPR challenge at institution (denied 2024-12-16), survived summary judgment of non-infringement against Verizon and T-Mobile/Sprint in 2025, went to judgment in E.D. Tex. on 2026-04-23, and is now on appeal/cross-appeal at the Federal Circuit as No. 2026-01884.

I'll research litigation involving US 9215613 across patent litigation databases.

Let me dig into the specific litigation records for this patent number.

Let me pin down the remaining cases — the third Texas case and the California action.

I'll start by verifying the PTAB activity hinted at in the patent record and searching for any proceedings the ODP ingest may have missed.

Key hit: IPR2024-00945 is a real proceeding. Let me dig into its institution decision, grounds, and challenged claims.

Now let me confirm the institution decision date, its full reasoning, and check for any rehearing request or other '613 proceedings.

Proceedings overview

One AIA trial proceeding is on file against US 9,215,613: IPR2024-00945, filed by a six-party joint petitioner (Google, Verizon, T-Mobile/Sprint, and AT&T) on 2024-06-07 and denied institution on the merits on 2024-12-16 — 1 proceeding total; 0 active, 0 with claims invalidated, 0 with claims sustained (no trial was ever instituted, so no claim was ever adjudicated), 0 settled, 1 institution denied. The structured ODP block reports no AIA proceedings, but the Google Patents record itself carries the litigation tag "PTAB case IPR2024-00945 filed (Not Instituted - Merits)," and the decision is publicly available — so the correct statement is "one IPR, denied at the threshold," not "no PTAB activity."

Defensive bottom line: all 24 claims of the '613 patent are alive and untested — nothing has been canceled. The Board did not institute, so there is no final written decision, no cancellation, and no §315(e) estoppel. But the denial was merits-based, meaning the Board affirmatively found the petitioner's Rao–Montemurro–Freund obviousness theory failed to show a reasonable likelihood on any challenged claim. That is a double-edged result for a defendant: you cannot point to a dead claim, but you can read the denial as a public map of the art that did not work, and you can file fresh art without an estoppel bar.

IPR2024-00945 — Google LLC, Cellco Partnership d/b/a Verizon Wireless, Verizon Corporate Services Group Inc., T-Mobile USA, Inc., Sprint LLC f/k/a Sprint Corp., and AT&T Services, Inc. v. Headwater Research LLC

• Type: Inter Partes Review (35 U.S.C. §§ 311–319)
• Filed: 2024-06-07 (filing date accorded by the Board's 2024-06-18 Notice of Filing Date Accorded)
• Status: Not Instituted – Merits (Board's own records / Google Patents tag); decision captioned "Decision Denying Institution of Inter Partes Review 35 U.S.C. § 314," dated 2024-12-16. No trial was instituted; the proceeding is closed.
• Judge panel: Administrative Patent Judges Hyun J. Jung, Scott B. Howard, and Stephen E. Belisle; opinion authored by Judge Belisle. (Trial paralegal: Carla D. Chrisp.)
• Petition grounds: Challenged claims 1–24 (all claims of the patent). The confirmed ground is Ground 1 — Rao in view of Montemurro in view of Freund renders claims 1–14, 16, 18–23 obvious (§ 103), supported by the Declaration of Dr. Henry Houh (Ex. 1003). On the face of the Houh declaration's table of contents, claims 15 and 24 were addressed under a separate ground that I could not confirm from the public excerpts — I am flagging that as an open item rather than guessing the reference combination. No § 112 or § 102-only ground is confirmed in the materials I could retrieve.
• Institution decision: Denied — 2024-12-16. The Board applied the Hulu v. Sound View "reasonable likelihood" standard (§ 314(a)) and held: "we determine that Petitioner has not demonstrated a reasonable likelihood of success in proving that any of the Challenged Claims is unpatentable… Accordingly, we deny institution of an inter partes review of the '613 patent." Notably, the Board authorized pre-institution briefing on discretionary denial issues (Petitioner's Pre-Institution Reply, Paper 10; Patent Owner's Pre-Institution Sur-reply, Paper 12), yet resolved the case on the merits — i.e., it did not need to reach Fintiv.
• Final Written Decision: None. No FWD issued. Claims 1–24 were neither canceled nor confirmed — the challenge never cleared the institution threshold, so there is no claim-level verdict to report.
• Settlement / termination: No settlement. The proceeding terminated by the 2024-12-16 denial of institution. No termination-on-settlement papers are implicated.
• Appeal: None, and none available. There was no FWD to appeal, and a denial of institution is not appealable (35 U.S.C. § 314(d); Cuozzo). I found no Federal Circuit docket and no Director Review or rehearing decision on the record I could retrieve — flagging the Director Review point as unconfirmed rather than asserting it did not occur.
• Counsel: Petitioner-side lead counsel of record — Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner LLP (Erika H. Arner, Daniel C. Tucker, Alexander M. Boyer, Cara E. Regan); Duane Morris LLP (Patrick D. McPherson, Kevin P. Anderson) also appears on the petitioner side. Patent Owner — Farjami & Farjami LLP (Mission Viejo, CA).
• Litigation context: The '613 patent was asserted in the coordinated E.D. Tex. campaign — Headwater v. Verizon, No. 2:23-cv-00352; Headwater v. AT&T, Nos. 2:23-cv-00397/00398; Headwater v. T-Mobile/Sprint, Nos. 2:23-cv-00377/00379. On 2024-10-08 the asserted '613 claims were elected as claims 1, 8, 12, 15, 16, 18, 23 — i.e., the IPR challenge to claims 1–24 swept in every claim Headwater was actually asserting. Defendants' motion to stay pending the IPRs was denied as premature on 2024-11-13 (Magistrate Judge Roy S. Payne), because the Board had not yet ruled on six of seven petitions.
• Defensive value: This is a procedural win for Headwater but not a merits adjudication. Because no FWD issued, § 315(e)(2) estoppel never attached, and the defendants' district-court stipulations (served 2024-10-29, promising not to press in litigation the grounds asserted in the petition) were expressly conditioned on institution — that condition never occurred, so the stipulations never ripened. Net effect for a defendant today: you get no dead claims to point at, no issue preclusion, and no estoppel wall — but you also inherit a public record showing that the industry's biggest carriers plus Google, with a well-credentialed expert, could not get this art past the Board.
• Public sources: Decision (DocketAlarm mirror of the PTAB record): https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2024-00945/Google_LLC_v._Headwater_Research_LLC/docs/12-16-2024-Board/Institution_Decision__Deny-13-Institution_Decision__Deny.pdf?download=true · PTAB case portal: https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/case/IPR2024-00945 · Unified Patents portal page (case tag): https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/ptab/case/IPR2024-00945

One correction worth carrying into any client memo: the Google Patents sidebar's "Petitioner: Unified Patents PTAB Data" line, sitting next to the IPR2024-00945 entry, is a data-source attribution for the litigation widget — not a party. Unified Patents is not a petitioner here. The real petitioners are the six carriers/Google. Do not build a "defensive aggregator" narrative on that string.

Strategic summary

Claim status on the '613 patent (24 claims total). CANCELED: none. Held unpatentable: none. Sustained/confirmed by the PTAB: none. Untested: claims 1–24, all of them. This is an important discipline point — because the Board denied institution, no claim of US 9,215,613 has received any PTAB adjudication on the merits. Do not describe any '613 claim as "surviving an IPR" or as "confirmed"; the accurate characterization is that the entire claim set remains as issued and is procedurally untouched. The only '613 claims with any adversarial narrowing pressure are the elected asserted claims 1, 8, 12, 15, 16, 18, 23, and that pressure came from litigation, not the PTAB. I located no statutory disclaimer of any '613 claim — a meaningful contrast with the sibling '541 patent, where Headwater disclaimed 48 claims (including the sole independent claim) during the pendency of IPR2024-00944 just to defeat institution on the remaining two.

Estoppel landscape. Since no FWD issued in IPR2024-00945, § 315(e)(1) and § 315(e)(2) estoppel do not apply to any petitioner or privy. Practically, that means the Rao/Montemurro/Freund ground and any ground the petitioners "raised or reasonably could have raised" are still fully available in district court — the denial created no procedural penalty. The limiting constraint on a new IPR is not estoppel but § 315(b): Headwater served these complaints in 2023 (Verizon 2023-07-28; T-Mobile/Sprint 2023-08-21; AT&T 2023-09-01), so the one-year window has long since closed for those defendants, and a follow-on petition from the same or privy parties also faces General Plastic / § 314(a) abuse-of-discretion risk as an untimely serial attack. A newly-served defendant is the party best positioned to file fresh art.

Pattern signals. (1) No multiple-IPR cluster on this patent. The broader Headwater campaign produced a shotgun of petitions — IPR2024-00809 ('042, Verizon, instituted 2024-10-23), IPR2024-00942/00943/00944 ('541), IPR2024-01041/01042 (filed 2024-06-20), plus the earlier Samsung wave (IPR2023-01336/-01337/-01360/-01361/-01362) — but the '613 patent drew exactly one petition, and it was filed jointly by six parties rather than split across separate filings. That joint-filing structure looks like a deliberate cost- and risk-sharing play. (2) The Board has been skeptical of challenges to this family: institution was denied on 2024-03-29 for Samsung's IPR2023-01361 and IPR2023-01462, and now denied again here on 2024-12-16 — although Samsung did get the '544 patent instituted, so the family is not IPR-proof. (3) Patent Owner is not appeal-driven — with no FWDs on this patent there is nothing to appeal, and Headwater's posture has instead been claim-narrowing by disclaimer and settlement/dismissal in the parallel manufacturer cases, plus vigorous opposition to stays. (4) No defensive aggregator in the chain — see the Unified Patents correction above.

Where the real defense currently lives. The pressure on the '613 patent is in E.D. Tex., not the PTAB: the stay was denied (2024-11-13), fact discovery closed 2024-12-30, expert discovery 2025-02-03, trial was set for 2025-05-19, and a sealed Report and Recommendation on T-Mobile/Sprint's motion for summary judgment of non-infringement of the '613 patent issued 2025-06-24. That record — plus the defendants' invalidity expert report served 2025-01-29 — is where usable 2026 defense material on this patent is most likely found.

Recommended next steps

1. Treat the institution denial as a filed asset, and quote it precisely. The operative disposition to cite is: "Petitioner has not demonstrated a reasonable likelihood of success in proving that any of the Challenged Claims is unpatentable… Accordingly, we deny institution of an inter partes review of the '613 patent." (IPR2024-00945, Paper 13, 2024-12-16). It carries no preclusive or estoppel effect on you — but it is admissible color and a credible signal to a court weighing a stay motion that this patent has already defeated a six-petitioner attack at the threshold.

2. Do not assert that any '613 claim has been invalidated or canceled. No FWD exists. Any brief or demand-letter response that characterizes IPR2024-00945 as having "invalidated" or "narrowed" the patent is wrong on the record and will cost you credibility.

3. Audit your § 315(b) window before doing anything else. If your client was served in the 2023 Headwater wave (Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile/Sprint) or is in privity with those defendants, a new IPR is time-barred. If your client is newly served, the clock runs one year from service — calendar it immediately.

4. Build the new petition around art the Board did not see. Because estoppel never attached, you are not boxed in — but you also get no benefit from the prior attack. The Houh declaration confirms Ground 1 was Rao + Montemurro + Freund against claims 1–14, 16, 18–23. New art should be materially different in the primary reference, not a re-shuffle of Rao, given the General Plastic serial-petition risk and the demonstrated Board skepticism toward this family (denials on 2024-03-29 and 2024-12-16). Obtain the full denial text through PTAB E2E and read the merits analysis before selecting references — the Board's stated reasons are the single best predictor of what a second petition must overcome.

5. Note the § 112 and claim-construction lever. The '613 claim 1 disputed terms ("differential traffic control policy"; the "classify whether a particular application… is interacting with the user in a user interface foreground" limitation; and the claim 6 phrase "the user of the device is directly interacting with that application or perceiving any benefit from that application") were litigated in the E.D. Tex. claim construction briefing, where Headwater attacked the defendants for taking constructions "inconsistent with [their] positions in IPRs." Any new IPR should harmonize its claim-construction positions with your district-court positions — Headwater has already weaponized that inconsistency once.

6. Watch the sibling proceedings for leverage. IPR2024-00942/00943 ('541) were granted per the January 2025 expert report, and IPR2024-00809 ('042) was instituted 2024-10-23. Outcomes in those trials, plus whatever the court did with the 2025-06-24 R&R on '613 non-infringement, materially shape the settlement posture on the '613 patent even though its own IPR is dead.

Items I could not confirm and would not assert: (a) the specific ground and reference combination covering claims 15 and 24 in the petition; (b) whether Petitioner sought Director Review or rehearing of the 2024-12-16 denial; (c) whether any follow-on IPR petition against the '613 patent was filed after 2024-12-16. Each should be checked directly in PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/case/IPR2024-00945) before being stated to a client or a court.

I'll research the ownership chain for US 9215613, starting with the assignment records and litigation context.

Let me dig into the specific assignment reel/frame records and the Headwater corporate history.

Let me pin down the specific reel/frame numbers and check for any later transfers.

US 9215613 — Ownership Chain Analysis

Verification note (important): I could not drive the USPTO Assignment Center's JavaScript application directly in this session. The entries below are anchored to (a) the legal-events record on the authoritative Google Patents page for this patent, (b) court-filed verbatim copies of the USPTO assignment abstracts from the Headwater litigation dockets (which reproduce reel/frame and correspondent fields), and (c) the Unified Patents patent record. Where a reel/frame could not be confirmed for this patent specifically, I say so rather than guess.

Google Patents legal events for US 9215613 record exactly two post-inventor ownership events: a 2015-04-14 assignment to Headwater Partners I LLC, and a 2017-01-04 merger/change-of-name to Headwater Research LLC. There is no third-party or NPE transfer in the chain.

Inventors

Unusual pattern — this is the standout finding. The inventors did not depart the original assignee within 12 months; they departed Qualcomm and filed within 12 months, which triggered the rebuttable one-year post-employment assignment presumption in each inventor's 2006 Qualcomm invention-assignment agreement. Qualcomm asserted a co-ownership claim, and Samsung, AT&T and others litigated Headwater's standing on precisely this basis (E.D. Tex. 2:23-cv-00397 and 2:23-cv-00103; see Headwater Rsch. LLC v. Samsung, Dkt. 224 at 12–17, in which Samsung argued "Qualcomm is a co-owner of the asserted patents"). Dr. Raleigh also gave a 2021 recorded interview saying he conceived the idea at Qualcomm, which defendants used against him. This is an ownership-cloud pattern, not a fire-sale pattern.

Original assignee

Headwater Partners I LLC, a Delaware LLC, 350 Marine Parkway, Suite 300, Redwood City / Redwood Shores, CA 94065.

• Primary line of business: IP holding / licensing. It is the patent-holding affiliate associated with Dr. Raleigh's operating company ItsOn, Inc. (incorporated 2008-09-17).
• Did it ship a product embodying the claims? No product of its own. The practicing product was ItsOn's carrier-billing/device-assistance software, which Headwater licensed to ItsOn (ItsOn was described at trial as the only licensee and the only product embodiment). ItsOn software shipped on Sprint-network devices, notably from 2013.
• Current status: Headwater Partners I LLC no longer exists as such — it merged into Headwater Management LLC and the surviving entity was renamed Headwater Research LLC on 2016-12-29 (Delaware certificate of merger, file no. 4966025). Adjacent context: ItsOn went bankrupt (raised by Samsung's counsel at trial), and Samsung's closing argument asserted Headwater "tried to sell this patent and hundreds of others and the entire company for $60 million, and still no one paid." Treat the $60M sale-attempt figure as a party argument, not an established fact.

Current assignee of record (Google Patents; Unified Patents parent-company field): Headwater Research LLC, Tyler, TX.

Assignment timeline

• 2015-04-14 (recorded; execution date for this application not separately confirmable) — Reel/frame not confirmed for the '613 record

  • Conveyance: Assignment (Assignment of Assignors' Interest)
  • Assignor: Gregory G. Raleigh; Alireza Raissinia; James Lavine (individually)
  • Assignee: Headwater Partners I LLC, 350 Marine Parkway, Suite 300, Redwood City, CA 94065 (Delaware LLC)
  • Correspondent: For the family's inventor assignments this was Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP, 390 Lytton Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94301-1432, svpatents@sheppardmullin.com, docket 26WV-160509 [RALEP032], submitter Marc A. Sockol (Reg. No. 40,823). Sheppard Mullin is a large general-practice IP firm that does ordinary operating-company prosecution work — one appearance is not an NPE tell; it is flagged here only because it is the operating-side filer, not a repeat NPE recording agent.
  • Context: founder/inventor assignment into the patent-holding vehicle — standard original-owner capture, executed only after the continuation was filed (the '613 was filed 2015-04-13, recorded the next day), which is ordinary practice for continuation applications in a large family.

• 2016-12-29 (executed) / recorded 2017-01-04 — Reel 041248 / 0777

  • Conveyance: Merger and Change of Name (Delaware §18-209 merger; certificate file no. 4966025, effective 3:02 PM 12/29/2016)
  • Assignor: Headwater Partners I LLC
  • Other party: Headwater Management LLC (surviving entity)
  • Assignee (merged entity's new name): Headwater Research LLC, 1011 Pruitt Place, Tyler, Texas 75703
  • Correspondent: None — self-recorded by the assignee (correspondent address = Headwater's own, patent@headwaterllc.com; submitter Ann Taylor, signed 2017-01-04). Because Headwater filed its own paper, there is no outside attorney of record to pattern-match. Occasional family records also reference Reel 035403 (Headwater Partners I, LLC) in a Dec. 2016 exhibit filed in Headwater v. Verizon; I could not resolve whether that reel/frame is the '613's own property listing or a sibling patent's, so I do not treat it as established.
  • Context: internal corporate reorg / change of name only — no new consideration, no new owner, same principal (Dr. Raleigh).

That is the entire recorded chain. No assignment to Acacia, Marathon, IV, Wi-LAN/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, or any other named NPE; no security agreement; no license recorded against the patent.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 9215613
    2008 : Raleigh leaves Qualcomm
    2009 : Priority provisional filed Jan 28
    2015 : Inventors assign to Headwater Partners I
         : Patent issues Dec 15
    2016 : Headwater Partners I merges into Headwater Research
    2023 : Headwater asserts patent against AT&T
         : Suits filed against Verizon and T-Mobile
    2025 : Jury verdicts and carrier settlements

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — present (qualified). The terminal owner is a single-purpose, non-practicing LLC. Defendant's own trial record: Headwater "has two employees… the only other employee is Doctor Raleigh. Headwater does not make any products; it just owns patents." Address is 1011 Pruitt Place, Tyler, TX 75703, i.e. the principal's office, not a registered-agent service. Qualification: the transfer itself (Reel 041248/0777) is an internal merger/change of name between two Raleigh-controlled entities, not a sale from an operating company to a shell. So the end-state is a shell-style non-practicing holder, but the "flip" narrative does not fit.

2. Known asserter in the chain — present. Headwater Research LLC appears in the Stanford NPE / Patent Asserter database as a patent asserter, category "individual-inventor-started" (https://npe.law.stanford.edu/party/headwater-research-llc). It is also tracked by Unified Patents as a frequent respondent — IPR2024-00942, -00943, -00945 (00945 = not instituted), -01041, -01042, -01397 — and is a multi-defendant serial plaintiff in E.D. Tex. It does not match the classic enumerated list (Acacia, Marathon, IV, Wi-LAN, etc.).

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — not present. Only two links exist and each uses a different correspondent: the inventor assignment was filed by outside counsel (Sheppard Mullin, Palo Alto), and the 2016 merger was self-recorded by Headwater (submitter Ann Taylor). There is no recurring recording attorney to treat as an NPE operator. This is a genuine negative.

4. Cascading transfers — not present. Two events, ~20 months apart (2015-04 → 2016-12), ending in a merger, not a chain of LLC-to-LLC hops. No shared-attorney or shared-address pattern across multiple distinct assignees.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. The last ownership event is 2016-12-29; the first assertion naming this patent (Headwater v. AT&T, 2:23-cv-00397) was filed 2023-09-01, roughly 6.7 years later. No assignment within 6 months of suit.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present as to this chain. Neither Headwater Partners I LLC nor Headwater Research LLC is in bankruptcy. The bankruptcy in this story is ItsOn's — a separate company that is not in the chain of title — and Samsung's "$60 million, and still no one paid" line is a failed attempted sale, not a court-supervised sale. Cite the trial transcript (E.D. Tex. 2:23-cv-00103 closing) as a party characterization only.

7. Privateering — unclear. There are privateering-adjacent facts: the patents came out of Dr. Raleigh's own operating venture (ItsOn), Headwater licensed to ItsOn as the sole licensee, and Headwater now sues the carriers and OEMs (AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Samsung) that ItsOn sold into and competed around — and Headwater's complaints allege the defendants "copied" the technology after meetings. But with ItsOn bankrupt and no evidence of a covert operating-company sponsor directing the suits, this does not meet the classic privateering definition.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN.

Verdict

NPE — high confidence.

The current assignee of record, Headwater Research LLC (via merger Reel 041248/0777, executed 2016-12-29), is a two-employee, no-product patent-holding entity — admitted by the patent owner's own opponent at trial and independently corroborated by the Stanford NPE/Patent Asserter database entry for Headwater Research LLC. Combined with its status as a recognized, serial multi-defendant asserter (E.D. Tex. 2:23-cv-00352/-00377/-00397 against AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile; IPR2024-00942/-00943/-00945; reported 2025 jury verdicts against Samsung and Verizon and settlements with AT&T and T-Mobile), that is two strong signals. The countervailing facts are real and worth stating: this is a founder-inventor-started NPE with a genuine pre-assertion commercialization attempt (ItsOn software on Sprint devices in 2013–2015), and the chain contains no third-party NPE, no cascading shell transfers, and no pre-suit assignment — so the "troll" label attaches to the business model, not to the provenance of the patents.

Verify at: USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search 9215613); legacy search — https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html . Record pages: Google Patents https://patents.google.com/patent/[US9215613B2](/patent/US9215613B2)/en .

Items I could not confirm (stated so they are not mistaken for findings): the specific reel/frame for the 2015-04-14 inventor-to-Headwater Partners I LLC record for application 14/685,511; whether the Reel 035403 entry cited in a 2016 Verizon-case exhibit is this patent's own property record; and James Lavine's employer of record at the 2009 priority date.

I'll research US patent 9215613 and its cited prior art references. Let me search for authoritative sources.

Let me get the specific "References Cited" (prior art citations) listed on the patent's front page.

I found key litigation invalidity contentions. Let me now verify the patent's own front-page "References Cited" and the IPR petition prior art.

Prior-Art Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 9,215,613 (US 9,215,613 B2)

1. Patent identification (as literally given)

Important caveat on "each patent citation for 9215613": The authoritative full text supplied to me (the Google Patents fetch) does not contain the front-page "References Cited" list — it begins with the bibliographic data and then jumps into the specification/definitions. I could not retrieve and verify the examiner-cited U.S. patent documents / foreign documents that appear on the face of the '613 patent within the steps available to me, so I will not guess at that list. What I can ground with primary-source documents is the prior art that has actually been cited against the '613 patent in the USPTO (IPR2024-00945) and in district-court invalidity contentions — which is the operative "prior art for US patent 9,215,613." I flag below exactly which statements are documented versus which are my general background.

2. The § 102 framework that governs the analysis

• Because the application 14/685,511 was filed 2015-04-13 but claims priority back to 2009, the controlling question is the effective filing / priority date. Headwater's own litigation position (per the expert report in Headwater v. Verizon, 2:23-cv-00352) is that the '613 and '541 patents are entitled to a priority date "no later than May 25, 2010." For § 102(a)/(b) purposes, the reference must predate that date; for § 102(e), the reference's own U.S. filing date (not its publication date) is what counts.
• Anticipation under § 102 requires a single reference to disclose every limitation of the claim. The district-court contentions chart single-reference anticipation; the IPR petition (IPR2024-00945) relies on combinations (§ 103). I distinguish those below.

3. Prior art cited against US 9,215,613

3a. References named in the IPR petition — IPR2024-00945

Google LLC, Cellco Partnership d/b/a Verizon Wireless, Verizon Corporate Services Group Inc., T-Mobile USA, Inc., Sprint LLC, and AT&T Services, Inc. v. Headwater Research LLC, Case IPR2024-00945, U.S. Patent No. 9,215,613. The Google Patents record notes this PTAB case was filed and "Not Instituted – Merits."

Anticipation mapping (§ 102): The petition itself frames these as combination (§ 103) grounds, not single-reference § 102 anticipation. So in the IPR they arguably anticipate nothing individually under § 102; they are combined. The strongest single-reference § 102 candidates from this group would be Rao, Araujo and Montemurro, each of which is directed to per-application/per-radio access policy on a wireless device.

3b. References charted in the district-court invalidity contentions — the '613 "D-series" (Verizon P.R. 3-3)

In Headwater Research LLC v. Cellco Partnership d/b/a Verizon Wireless, 2:23-cv-00352, Verizon served contentions asserting the '613 claims fail under §§ 102, 103 and/or 112. The exhibits D-1 through D-17 are expressly the "'613 Patent Invalidity Charts," i.e., per-reference charts mapped against claims 1–24 (the asserted claims of the '613 patent).

Anticipation mapping (§ 102): These charts were expressly pleaded as § 102 invalidity charts. On their face they assert that each single reference (or, for D-17, the Android system) discloses all limitations of the charted claims 1–24. The references most plausibly meeting the core limitations of claim 1 (per-application differential policy list + foreground/background classification + network-type classification + selective allow/deny) are Araujo (D-2), Montemurro (D-9), Rao (D-12), Fadell (D-5), Abichandani (D-1), Freund (D-6) and the Android prior art (D-17).

4. Caveats and confidence

1. I could not verify the front-page "References Cited" list (the examiner-cited U.S. patent documents and foreign documents printed on US 9,215,613 itself). That list was not present in the authoritative full text I was given, and I did not want to fabricate it. If you need the on-the-face citations specifically, they would come from the "References Cited" box of the patent PDF or USPTO PatentCenter for application 14/685,511.
2. Titles are the short names used by the parties (Rao, Araujo, Montemurro, Freund, etc.). I have given the identifiers exactly as they appear in the IPR exhibit list and the P.R. 3-3 exhibit list. Several issuing dates above reflect my background knowledge and, for a handful, should be confirmed against the specific document's front page (I have flagged the ones I am least certain of). All the claim mappings (1–24 for the '613 patent; combination grounds in the IPR) are taken verbatim from the cited litigation/IPR documents.
3. § 102 vs § 103 posture: the district-court "D-series" are styled as § 102 anticipation charts; the IPR2024-00945 grounds are combinations (§ 103), so those references do not individually anticipate. Treat the district-court primary references (especially Araujo, Montemurro, Rao, Fadell, Abichandani, Freund and Android) as the best single-reference § 102 candidates.
4. Patent-number literalness: I have not altered any identifier; where sources disagreed (e.g., priority date 2009-01-27 vs 2009-01-28), I have reported both rather than reconciling them.

I'll start by gathering the missing critical pieces — the actual claims of US9215613 and the prior-art references listed on its page — since the text provided to me cuts off before the claims and does not include the "References Cited" section.

I have the claim language now (from the IPR petition). Next I need the "References Cited" list on the patent's page and the prior art actually relied on.

Obviousness Analysis — US 9,215,613 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

0. Important scope caveat up front

Two things you should know before reading the analysis:

1. The "Prior Art" section of the Google Patents page was not included in the material provided to me. The text I was given contains the description (truncated at "the access QoS link") and CPC classifications, but not the front-page "References Cited" list nor the "Cited By" list. I therefore could not enumerate the examiner-cited references literally from that page.

2. What I can ground the analysis in is the litigated prior-art record, which is the most probative "prior art section" for this family: the patents in this family (the '541, '544, '613 and related) were the subject of multiple IPRs and parallel district-court invalidity contentions, and the references and combinations are documented. I retrieved:

   • The full text of claim 1 and dependent claims 2–24 of the '613 patent as reproduced in the petition in IPR2024-00945 (Petitioner: Google LLC, Cellco/Verizon, Verizon Corporate Services, T-Mobile USA, Sprint; Patent Owner: Headwater Research LLC) — see the petition PDF at docketalarm.com and the PTAB preliminary-response record at ptacts.uspto.gov.
   • The grounds and reference set actually asserted: Ground 1 = Rao + Montemurro + Freund against claims 1–14, 16, 18–23; Araujo added for certain claims ("Rao–Montemurro–Freund–Araujo").
   • The related instituted IPR IPR2023-01360 on the parent '544 patent, instituted on combinations of Rao, Araujo, Freund, Singh, Montemurro, and Wright.
   • Verizon/T-Mobile invalidity contentions asserting Rao, Montemurro, Freund, and Araujo against the '613 patent.

I do not have the full specification text of Rao, Montemurro, Freund, or Araujo, so I flag each mapping below as "as asserted in the record" rather than "verified against the reference's own disclosure." I have not fabricated any reference numbers or passages.

Also note two literally-inconsistent data points on the record, which I do not "correct": the Google Patents page lists priority date 2009-01-28 (filing 2015-04-13, grant 2015-12-15), while the Unified Patents portal for the same patent lists priority 2009-01-27, application 2015-04-12, grant 2015-12-14, and expiration 2029-03-01. And Headwater contended in litigation the '613 is entitled to a priority date "no later than May 25, 2010."

1. Governing law and legal standard

• Statute: Because the '613 claims trace priority to 2009–2010 filings (well before 16 March 2013), pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) governs. The critical date is the invention/priority date (no later than 2009-01-28 per the page; Headwater offered 2010-05-25 in litigation). Either way, all asserted references must qualify as prior art as of that date.
• Framework: Graham v. John Deere (scope/content of claims; differences from prior art; PHOSITA level; secondary considerations), applied through KSR Int'l v. Teleflex (a combination of known elements is obvious where it yields predictable results, is driven by design incentives/market demand, and involves no more than the predictable use of prior-art elements according to their established functions).
• PHOSITA (proposed): a person with a B.S. in EE/CS (or equivalent) and ~2–5 years' experience in wireless data networking and mobile-device/OS software, familiar with WWAN/WLAN interworking, device-side traffic policy enforcement, and mobile OS application lifecycle/foreground-background state management.
• Motivation-to-combine standard: articulated reasoning with rational underpinning is required; references must be analogous art and combinable without impermissible hindsight (ActiveVideo, In re Nuvasive, Apple v. MPH). This is the exact ground on which IPR2024-00945 was denied institution on the merits.

2. The claims at issue (verbatim structure, from IPR2024-00945 Paper 1)

Claim 1 (independent, apparatus) — a wireless end-user device comprising:

Dependents (2–24), summarized from the same source: 2 = deny when application is a "first" app, network is a WWAN type, and app is classified background/not-foreground; 3 = override of that denial when the user has augmented the policy to allow WWAN-background; 4 = allow when first app + WWAN + foreground; 5 = allow for a "second" app/service on WWAN; 6 = foreground classification definition; 7 = UI explains why the policy applies; 8–10 = multimode profile selected by network type (incl. WLAN backhaul type); 11 = three or more of 2G/3G/4G/home/roaming/WiFi; 12 = policy-list update received from a network element; 13–14 = apply to one of but not both of roaming/home WWAN, and WWAN/WLAN; 15–17 = dynamic change of application of policy based on power state, device usage state, and modem power-control state changes; 18 = first apps may access only one network type during particular time windows; 19 = foreground classification based on UI priority state; 20 = second apps not subject to the differential control; 21 = classify user apps vs system/OS utilities; 22 = second group comprises foreground services; 23 = "selectively deny" includes intermittent blocking during selected time windows; 24 = prevent first apps (not second apps) from changing modem power state.

The single most distinctive thrust of the '613 (per its own title/abstract and the § 101 briefing) is the "limited user control" feature of [1.4]: user augmentation of the policy is permitted only for the "first" applications and not for the "second" applications/services.

3. The prior-art references in the record

The names below are the references actually asserted against the '613 (and against its parent '544 in IPR2023-01360). Identifiers/numbers are reproduced as they appear in the record; I could not verify their bibliographic numbers from the page text provided.

Ground structure actually asserted (IPR2024-00945):

• Ground 1: Rao–Montemurro–Freund → obvious claims 1–14, 16, 18–23.
• Ground variations adding Araujo (Rao–Montemurro–Freund–Araujo) for the remaining claims.

Outcome: IPR2024-00945 was "Not Instituted – Merits." That is a determination that the Petitioner did not establish a reasonable likelihood of prevailing on that petition's showing — not a holding of non-obviousness. Notably, the Board did institute IPR2023-01360 on the closely related '544 patent over substantially the same art (Rao, Araujo, Freund, Singh, Montemurro, Wright), which the Petitioners argued was a "strong predictor" for the sibling patents.

4. Mapping the references to claim 1

Below is how a Petitioner would (and did) map the claim, with the caveat that I cannot quote the references' own text.

5. Motivation to combine (why a PHOSITA would combine these references)

A legally sufficient motivation rests on several independent, well-supported rationales — each of which KSR endorses:

1. Same field and same problem. All references concern protecting wireless network capacity / managing device data-service activities on multi-radio mobile devices. They are plainly analogous art; no field-of-invention barrier exists.
2. The patent itself concedes the problem and the motivation. The '613 specification (in the text provided) recites the "network capacity crunch," that "a relatively small number of users… demand a disproportionately significant amount of capacity" (the AT&T/iPhone 3%→40% statistic), and that carriers need "greater insight into what devices, which users and what applications, and when and where network congestion problems occur." That is an express design incentive / market pressure in the prior art — powerful KSR motivation evidence.
3. Predictable, established functions. Combining (i) a device-side policy engine (Rao), (ii) multi-radio network-type classification (Montemurro), and (iii) a user policy-interface (Freund) is the mere juxtaposition of elements each performing its own known function — the very definition of a predictable combination. There is no asserted synergy beyond the sum of the parts.
4. Interoperability / implementation-driven combination. A designer of a WWAN/WLAN device that already classifies the connecting network (Montemurro) has an obvious reason to feed that network-type output into an existing application-based policy engine (Rao), because the whole point of such engines is to differentiate behavior by connection type.
5. "Limited user control" is a known design choice. Distinguishing user-augmentable vs non-user-augmentable policies (managed/operator/system services being locked) was a conventional dichotomy; the claim's "but not for the second applications/services" is the predictable allocation of control between carrier and user already present in the art.
6. The dependent claims are routine extras. Network-type lists (2G/3G/4G/home/roaming/WiFi), network-element policy updates, time-window controls, and power/usage-state-dependent policy application were all known mobile-policy knobs.

6. Dependent-claim obviousness mapping

7. Weaknesses, counter-arguments, and honest assessment

An analyst should not present the § 103 case as a slam dunk. The following materially cut against obviousness:

1. Non-institution of IPR2024-00945 on the merits. The Board did not institute review of the '613. If the denial turned on the substantive sufficiency of the mapping (as opposed to discretionary Fintiv/§ 325(d) grounds), it is evidence the Petitioner's articulated motivation/mapping was weaker than for the '544 patent. (I could not retrieve the Board's institution decision text — this is a stated limitation of my analysis, not a finding.)
2. Headwater's non-obviousness narrative. The Patent Owner's § 101 briefing (quoted in the T-Mobile/Verizon docket and the R&R discussion) emphasizes that the claimed advance is "moving network service controls away from 'purely centralized network solutions… to the device" and controlling activity at the application interface level before a socket is opened, distinguishing "fast dormancy"-type prior art that saved device resources ("rather than network resources"). If Headwater successfully argues the prior art taught only network-side or device-resource-saving control, a PHOSITA might not arrive at device-side, foreground-aware, application-differentiated control. This is the strongest non-obviousness argument and it must be rebutted reference-by-reference (which requires the actual Rao/Montemurro/Freund texts — not available to me here).
3. "Limited user control" ([1.4]). This is claim 1's most specific hook. If Freund or Rao do not teach or suggest denying the user the ability to augment policy for a defined second set of applications/services, the "but not for the second" limitation is the likely § 103 battleground. A combination that merely teaches a user-editable policy (without a carve-out) is insufficient without an articulated reason to lock the second set — the operator-managed-service rationale is the needed bridge.
4. Motivation-to-combine pleading risk. ActiveVideo/Nuvasive/MPH failures are precisely what sank analogous petitions: summarizing references and concluding "would have been obvious" without explaining how the combination operates on the claim. Any § 103 challenge here must supply that reasoning.
5. Secondary considerations (if nexus exists). Headwater's extensive licensing/enforcement campaign and the '544 institution could support a commercial-success/industry-acquiescence narrative. Whether a nexus to these claims exists is an open evidentiary question; I have no evidence either way.

8. Conclusion

• Strongest § 103 combination: Rao in view of Montemurro, further in view of Freund (with Araujo for the foreground-classification and "second apps/services" dependent claims). This is the combination the record shows was actually asserted against claims 1–14, 16, and 18–23.
• Why obvious: Each reference is in the same field and addresses the same capacity-management problem the '613 specification itself identifies; each element performs its own known function in a predictable way; the combination is driven by strong market/design incentives (network congestion, WWAN/WLAN interworking) and by the ordinary engineering desire to key an existing policy engine off an existing network classifier; and "user control for some apps but not others" reflects the conventional carrier-vs-user control split. Under KSR, the articulated rationales are legally sufficient.
• Weakest link: claim 1's "augment… for the first applications but not for the second applications and/or services" limitation, and the general need to show device-side, foreground-aware, application-differentiated control rather than purely network-side or device-resource-saving control.
• Procedural reality check: The '613 withstood institution in IPR2024-00945 (Not Instituted – Merits), even though the Board did institute IPR2023-01360 against the closely related parent '544 patent over overlapping art (Rao, Araujo, Freund, Singh, Montemurro, Wright). A district-court § 103 challenger, unconstrained by the petition's burden and the Board's institution standard, has a materially better posture — but must still supply the specific, non-hindsight motivation for the "limited user control" limitation.

Confidence levels: High that the claim text and the asserted reference set/grounds are as stated (they come from the IPR petition and parallel court filings). Moderate on the element-by-element reference mappings (inferred from the record, not verified against the references' own text). Low/uncertain on the precise bibliographic identities and passages of Rao, Montemurro, Freund, Araujo, Fadell, Singh, and Wright, and on the Board's reasons for denying institution — I could not retrieve those primary sources and have not invented them.