US 9367832

I'll search for authoritative information on this specific patent number, including any litigation or CAFC activity.

Let me check for any litigation, PTAB, or post-grant proceedings specifically involving this patent.

Let me do one more targeted check for any post-grant proceedings or litigation involving this patent.

US Patent 9,367,832 — Analyst Summary

Sourcing note: I queried the web (Google Patents, Justia Patents, PTAB/PTACTS document repositories, CourtListener, and general litigation coverage). I do not have direct authenticated access to USPTO PatentCenter/Public PAIR or the CAFC docket system in this session, so the bibliographic data below is drawn from the authoritative full patent text you provided plus Google Patents and Justia. I found no CAFC 2026 docket activity and no PTAB proceeding for this number. That is a negative finding from the searches I ran, not a certification that none exists.

Bibliographic Data

Assignment chain (per Google Patents reassignment records): Yahoo! Inc. (original) → Yahoo Holdings, Inc. (2017-06-23) → Oath Inc. (2018-02-02) → Verizon Media Inc. (2020-10-26) → Verizon Patent and Licensing Inc. (2021-08-19). Justia's "Patent History" page still lists YAHOO! INC. as assignee, reflecting the original grant — Google Patents reflects the later transfers. See https://patents.google.com/patent/US9367832/en and https://patents.justia.com/patent/9367832.

Abstract (verbatim, condensed)

The abstract describes a direct client application whose user interface lets a user organize image data into albums and select albums for synchronization with one or more server interfaces providing image manipulation/sharing features. The system includes an intermediary system to assist synchronization of selected albums with handheld (filtered) devices, and a notification server providing scalable notification of album updates made at server interfaces.

Field / Classifications

• Field: integrating data access across functionally and geographically diverse devices; simplifying sharing, copying, and manipulating image data such as photographs.
• US Class 707/10; Int'l: G06F 15/16; G06Q 10/10; G06F 17/30; G06Q 10/06; G06Q 50/00.
• Cited-by (examiner/third party, per Google Patents): US20110202531A1 (Mark Zuckerberg, "Tagging Digital Media") and US20140330896A1 (Apple Inc., "Asynchronous Data Manipulation").

Plain-Language Overview of the Independent Claims

Important observation: the issued claims are substantially narrower than the abstract and summary of the invention. The abstract describes a broad album-synchronization architecture; the granted claims add specific limitations around (a) an invitation to share, (b) update "granularity" compared against user-selected trigger criteria, and (c) notification mechanics (UDP datagram, thumbnails, retry, resolution/redaction). The "granularity of the update" / tag-trigger language in particular is the kind of limitation that often appears late in a long prosecution (this application took roughly ten years from filing to grant).

Claim 1 – System (server-side, processor + storage medium storing program logic):

1. Receive, from a first client device, album data for an album of images designated for synchronization with multiple devices, where the album data includes image data.
2. Receive, from a second client device, a request to review the album — where that request comprises an invitation to share the album that the first client device transmitted to the second device (i.e., the invited-party sharing scenario of FIG. 9).
3. In response, permit the second client device to review the album data.
4. Receive, from the first client device, an update to the album, the update comprising image data and tag data.
5. Determine a granularity of the update and whether that granularity meets user-selected trigger criteria for notifying the second device — where the granularity indicates the update contains tag data, and the criteria indicate a notification should be sent in response to an update to a tag associated with an image of the album.
6. If the criteria are met, send a notification of the album update to the second device.
7. Permit the second client device to retrieve the update.

Claim 3 – Method: the same seven steps of claim 1, recast as a method performed using a computing device.

Claim 12 – Non-transitory computer-readable storage medium encoded with executable instructions for a server: again the same seven-step logic of claim 1 / claim 3.

Notable dependents:

• Claim 2 / Claims 4–5: notification is a UDP datagram; the datagram does not contain image data (the lightweight-notification scalability point emphasized in the spec).
• Claim 6: if the update is not retrieved within a threshold period, re-notify the second device.
• Claim 7: notification comprises a thumbnail of the image data.
• Claim 8: the mirror-image trigger — granularity indicates image data and criteria call for notification on an image update.
• Claim 9: trigger criteria include a notification time; notify when current time equals that time (batched/hourly-daily update concept).
• Claim 10: update received at a first resolution, delivered to the second device at a lower second resolution.
• Claim 11: update received without redactions, delivered to the second device with redactions.

Litigation / Docket Check

• No CAFC 2026 docket activity for 9,367,832 was found in my searches. I specifically checked for Federal Circuit and PTAB references to this number and found none.
• No PTAB (IPR/CBM/PGR) proceeding for 9,367,832 was found. The PTAB/PTACTS documents returned in my searches concerned unrelated patents (e.g., U.S. 10,091,266; U.S. 8,189,671-type matters).
• Searches for Verizon/Oath/Yahoo patent litigation returned cases involving different patents — e.g., Droplets, Inc. (U.S. 6,687,745) and Express Mobile, Inc. v. Oath Holdings, Inc. (N.D. Cal. 3:20-cv-08321), Arendi S.A.R.L. v. LG/Oath/Google — none of which identified 9,367,832 as an asserted patent.

I cannot confirm from authoritative sources that 9,367,832 has ever been asserted in litigation or challenged post-grant; my searches indicate it has not been, but I would treat that as provisional.

Uncertainty Flags

1. Assignee discrepancy: Google Patents lists Verizon Patent and Licensing Inc. as current assignee; Justia lists Yahoo! Inc. I report both rather than reconciling them, per the rule against auto-correction. My searches did not surface an official USPTO assignment record for the final Verizon transfer, so the chain above is as represented by Google Patents.
2. Valuation figures such as the ~$30,072,000 "approximate value" shown on patentleaderboard.com are third-party algorithmic estimates and are not authoritative; I would not rely on them.
3. Claim-vs-abstract mismatch: the issued independent claims are materially narrower than the abstract/summary, so any infringement or scope analysis should be run on the granted claim language (claims 1, 3, 12) rather than the abstract.

I'll research litigation involving US Patent 9367832. Let me run several targeted searches.

Let me search more targeted litigation databases.

Let me check the Unified Patents litigation portal and other docket sources directly.

Findings: Litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 9,367,832

Bottom line: I found no evidence of any litigation — district court, Federal Circuit, or PTAB — involving U.S. Patent No. 9,367,832 ("Synchronizing image data among applications and devices"). No hit in any of my searches matched that exact patent number as a patent-in-suit, an IPR/CBM subject, or an appeal.

What the patent actually is (for identification purposes)

Per the Google Patents record (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US9367832](/patent/US9367832)/en):

Note the long gap between filing (2006) and grant (2016) — consistent with a lengthy prosecution. Also note this is a Yahoo-origin patent that has passed through the Oath/Verizon corporate chain, so any assertion would most likely be by a Verizon entity or an entity to which the patent was later transferred. I could not confirm either.

Litigation search results

District court / CAFC / PACER: No matching case found. My searches for the patent number returned unrelated cases involving other patents (e.g., Signify v. Menard, 3:22-cv-00706 (W.D. Wis.); Regents of the Univ. of Minnesota v. mobile carriers (D. Minn.); Adaptix v. Alcatel-Lucent/Verizon, 6:15-cv-604 (E.D. Tex.); Minerva Industries v. RIM/Cricket; various Verizon-defendant patent cases) — none of which assert 9,367,832. These are false positives generated by generic keyword overlap and should not be attributed to this patent.

PTAB: No IPR, PGR, or CBM petition or institution decision referencing 9,367,832 surfaced.

Unified Patents litigation portal / RPX Insight / Justia dockets: I attempted to query the Unified Patents caselist (portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist) and Justia dockets, but the search tool returned no usable results for this specific number before I reached my query limit.

Important caveats

1. This is a negative finding, not a certification of non-litigation. I could not complete exhaustive queries against the Unified Patents litigation portal, PACER, RPX Insight, or Docket Navigator. A definitive clearance search on those paid/primary sources is required before relying on this.
2. Search noise risk. "9367832" is a sufficiently generic numeric string that results frequently return the '832 patent in unrelated cases (e.g., Halliburton v. M-I, 6:05-cv-155, which involves a different '832 patent directed to drilling fluids) or other patents ending in the same digits. None of those are US 9,367,832.
3. Possibility of unlisted/quiet litigation. A patent held within Verizon's portfolio could have been asserted in a case that is not well-indexed by public web search (e.g., a sealed or recently filed complaint, or a case settled before indexing).

Recommended next steps for a definitive answer

• Run the exact number 9,367,832 (and 9367832) in Docket Navigator, Lex Machina, or RPX Insight, filtered to "patent-in-suit."
• Check Unified Patents' litigation portal and its patent page (unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-9367832) for an "asserted in litigation" flag.
• Search USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) and USPTO Patent Assignment Search for both PTAB proceedings and any post-2016 assignments that would signal a transfer to an assertion entity.
• Query PACER for Verizon Patent and Licensing Inc. as plaintiff, and for the patent number in complaint text.

If you'd like, I can attempt the additional targeted searches (Docket Navigator/Unified Patents patent page/PTAB) once tool access resets, or draft a formal clearance-search memo framing this as a preliminary negative result subject to confirmation.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file for US 9,367,832: 0. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block — sourced from the USPTO Open Data Portal, which is the canonical list for this analysis — reports no AIA trial proceedings (no IPR, no PGR, no CBM) as of the most recent ODP ingest. My web verification (searches of PTAB filings, litigation-tracker aggregations, and USPTO PTAB document repositories) surfaced no proceeding naming U.S. Patent No. 9,367,832 or application Ser. No. 11/325,830. Defensive bottom line: this is an untested patent, not a hardened one. It has never been before the Board, so there is no FWD to cite, no claim-cancellation to leverage, and — critically for a defendant — no § 315(e)(2) estoppel binding anyone. Every invalidity ground is still on the table for the first petitioner willing to take it.

Because the count is zero, the per-proceeding template below is necessarily empty. I have recorded the verification trail and the reasons the absence matters instead of inventing proceeding numbers.

No proceedings — verification trail

• Type: N/A — no IPR / PGR / CBM petition has been filed against this patent.
• Filed: N/A.
• Status: N/A (no proceeding exists). The patent itself remains Active, with an adjusted expiration of 2032-04-03 (per Google Patents' legal-status data for US 9,367,832 B2; note the 2,281-day PTA term adjustment relative to the 2006-01-04 filing).
• Judge panel: N/A — no panel has been assigned.
• Petition grounds: N/A.
• Institution decision: N/A.
• Final Written Decision: N/A. No claim of US 9,367,832 has ever been canceled or confirmed by the Board. Claims 1–12 all stand as issued (see below).
• Settlement / termination: N/A.
• Appeal: N/A — there is no FWD to appeal, hence no CAFC docket to report.
• Defensive value: The absence cuts both ways. There is no cancellation to exploit, but also no adverse Board precedent, no claim construction order from the Board, and no estoppel. A defendant retains the full statutory menu: IPR (available for any claim, pre- or post-AIA), ex parte reexamination (any time), and — if a fresh, sequestered proceeding is ever possible — nothing currently pending.

Categories that cannot be used: PGR is unavailable because US 11/325,830 was filed 2006-01-04, well before the first-inventor-to-file provisions took effect on 2013-03-16 (PGR is limited to first-inventor-to-file patents). CBM review is doubly unavailable: the program sunset on 2020-09-16, and the claims here are directed to media/album synchronization, not to "a financial product or service" under AIA § 18(d)(1).

What the record actually shows about the patent (groundwork for a first petitioner)

Since there is no PTAB record, the useful defensive analysis is what a first petitioner would be attacking. From the granted claims:

• Claim 1 (system) and claim 3 (method) and claim 12 (non-transitory CRM) are the independents; claims 2, 4–11 depend.
• The granted independent claims carry notably narrow, prosecution-era limitations absent from the original 2007 publication US 2007/0156434 A1: the "request comprises an invitation to share the album transmitted to the second client device by the first client device" element, plus "determining a granularity of the update" and "determining whether the granularity of the update meets user-selected trigger criteria." Those "granularity" limitations track only a brief, prose-level passage in the spec ("a determination or some other setting may be made as to what granularity updates should trigger an update notification… updates may be combined into hourly or daily update notifications"), with no formal definition, no algorithm, and no structure. That is a textually grounded § 112(a)/(b) theory (written description / indefiniteness of "granularity of the update" and how "user-selected trigger criteria" are compared to it) that no tribunal has yet been asked to consider.
• Claim 2 / claims 4–5 claim the UDP-datagram notification with "does not contain image data," differentiating over the TCP/session-based notification art discussed in the spec.
• Claim 7 claims a notification comprising a thumbnail of the image data; claims 10 and 11 claim resolution down-conversion and redaction at the receiving device (the intermediary "filtering" function). These are the sort of dependent claims a petitioner would group into a fallback ground.

⚠️ Flagged as my own analysis, not a Board finding. Nothing above is a PTAB or court holding; it is a first-pass read of the intrinsic record for a defendant deciding whether to petition.

Strategic summary

Claim status of US 9,367,832. All twelve claims are UNTESTED. None is canceled; none is confirmed. There is no IPR narrowing, no certificate of correction to account for, no reexamination certificate, and no Board claim construction to bind anyone. Any demand letter asserting claims 1–12 is asserting claims whose validity has never been adjudicated in an AIA trial. Equally, a defendant cannot tell a court "claims 1–5 have been canceled" — because they have not been.

Estoppel landscape. Because no petition has ever been filed and instituted, § 315(e)(2) estoppel is a blank slate. No petitioner, real party in interest, or privy is barred from raising any prior-art ground, and there is no "reasonably could have raised" shadow hanging over any reference. The only timing constraint that matters is the § 315(b) one-year bar: if you have been served with a complaint alleging infringement of the '832 patent, your IPR petition window closes one year from service. Given a 2006 filing date and a large cited-art-of-record list from prosecution (including the PCT search report mailed 2008-01-23 for PCT/US2006/048839), the § 102/§ 103 runway is long — the spec itself concedes the prior art context of album-based photo organization (Yahoo! Photos-style album association vs. Flickr-style tagging), synchronization of albums across devices, and thin-client content "filtering" through an intermediary.

Pattern signals. No petitioner has filed anything against this patent — not once, let alone repeatedly. There is no defensive aggregator (e.g., Unified Patents) in the chain that I could identify for this patent; nothing in the record ties it to an RPX/Unified-funded challenge. The patent's current owner is Verizon Patent and Licensing Inc. (via Yahoo! Inc. → Yahoo Holdings → Oath → Verizon Media → Verizon Patent and Licensing, per the recorded assignment chain of 2016-03-10 through 2021-08-19), and I found no publicly reported district court assertion of US 9,367,832 in the sources searched. That is a meaningful negative: a pure portfolio asset in a large carrier's war chest, not a litigated troll patent, is exactly the profile of a patent that has never attracted an IPR simply because it has never been asserted.

Caveat on that last point: absence of search hits is not proof of absence of litigation. A confidential or low-profile assertion would not appear in the aggregators I searched. Verify against the patent's litigation docket before relying on it.

Recommended next steps

1. Do not cite an FWD — there isn't one. Any statement to a court or adversary that claims of the '832 patent were invalidated at the PTAB would be false. There is no USPTO PTAB E2E that will help you here; the E2E portal will return nothing for this patent number. Confirm the null result independently via USPTO PTAB E2E and USPTO Patent Center before relying on it in a filing.
2. Check your § 315(b) clock immediately. If you have been served with a complaint on the '832 patent, diary the one-year bar and begin prior-art scouting now; nothing has been spent by anyone else on this patent, so the first-mover advantage on art and claim construction is fully available.
3. Focus the invalidity theory on the granted "granularity" limitations (claims 1, 3, 12) and on the album-synchronization/UDP-notification core. The "granularity of the update" / "user-selected trigger criteria" language has thin written-description support in the spec's single notification-granularity passage — a § 112(a) and § 112(b) angle worth scoping alongside § 103 art on album-sync-and-notify systems.
4. Consider parallel vehicles. With no AIA proceedings pending, an ex parte reexamination request (or, if you can find a qualifying error, a reissue challenge) can proceed in parallel with litigation without triggering the estoppel and § 315(b) constraints of an IPR — though ex parte reexam cannot address § 112 and is examiner-driven.
5. Re-run the ODP/PTAB query periodically. The absence of PTAB activity is a snapshot. If a co-defendant or an aggregator files first, the calculus changes: institution would open the SAS/all-claims review of claims 1–12, and a settlement-then-FWD sequence by another party could generate estoppel you didn't sign up for but still have to litigate around.

Constraint acknowledgment: I did not identify any proceeding number for this patent and have not supplied one. The only PTAB documents my searches returned (petitions citing Kloba, Multer, Hoyle, Loughran, Fong; the '1205 and '1892 FWDs; the '358/'442 patent family) concern different patents and are not treated here as proceedings against US 9,367,832.

I'll research the assignment chain for US 9367832, starting with the authoritative sources.

Let me search for more specific assignment record data and litigation/inventory history.

Let me try to pin down specific reel/frame numbers and correspondents for this patent.

US 9,367,832 — "Synchronizing image data among applications and devices"

Pat. No. US 9,367,832 B2 · App. No. 11/325,830 · Filed 2006‑01‑04 · Issued 2016‑06‑14 · ~12 claims · PCT/US2006/048839 · WO2007081529A2

Sourcing note (read first): I could confirm the sequence, parties, and recording dates of the post-issuance chain from Google Patents legal events and from parallel USPTO records covering the same corporate transactions, but I could not retrieve the patent-side reel/frame numbers for US 11/325,830 through the sources available to me (the Assignment Center's per-patent abstract is JS-rendered and did not surface in search). Where I cite a reel/frame below it is drawn from the analogous trademark assignment records for the identical Yahoo → Yahoo Holdings → Oath corporate transactions (these transactions were recorded jointly and share execution dates), and I flag them as such. Do not treat those reel/frames as verified for this patent without pulling the Assignment Center abstract directly. No assignment content below is invented.

Inventors

All five names appear together as assignors on the 2016‑03‑10 nunc pro tunc assignment to Yahoo! Inc. (Google Patents legal event, "Assigned to YAHOO! INC," assignors listed as BOERRIES, MARTIN, SCHULZ, SINGH, SRINIVASAN).

Unusual pattern — flag: the inventors' own assignment was recorded nunc pro tunc in March 2016, roughly ten years after the 2006 filing date and three months before issuance. A ten-year gap between filing and recording of the inventor→company assignment is atypical and is the one genuinely odd link in this file. It is consistent with a housekeeping/correction recording ahead of grant (the grant issued 2016‑06‑14), not with a fire-sale precursor — there is no evidence the inventors departed Yahoo! within 12 months of filing, and I found no such evidence. I cannot determine departure dates from the record.

Original assignee

• Yahoo! Inc. (Sunnyvale, CA; Delaware corporation), named on the issued patent via the nunc pro tunc inventor assignment recorded 2016‑03‑10.
• Primary line of business: internet media/search/communications; the patent's "direct client application," album library UI, Yahoo! Photos and FlickR server-interface examples are all Yahoo! products, so Yahoo! plausibly shipped software embodying aspects of the claims (desktop photo client + album sync to handheld devices). The specification names FlickR and Yahoo! Photos as the server interfaces.
• Current status: acquired / dissolved. Yahoo!'s operating business was sold to Verizon Communications via a Stock Purchase Agreement (announced Jul 2016, closed 2017‑06‑13 for ~$4.48B). The residual Yahoo! Inc. was renamed Altaba, Inc. and later liquidated. The operating assets (and the patents) passed through Yahoo Holdings, Inc. → Oath → Verizon Media and now sit inside Verizon.

Assignment timeline

All dates below are recording dates as shown in Google Patents legal events; execution dates are given where separately confirmed. Reel/frame marked (TM analog) are from the trademark records for the same corporate transactions and are not verified against the patent record.

• 2006‑01‑04 (executed) / recorded 2016‑03‑10 — Reel/Frame not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment (nunc pro tunc)
  • Assignor: Joseph J. Martin; Venkatachary Srinivasan; Jerald J. Singh; Marco Boerries; Torsten Schulz
  • Assignee: Yahoo! Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved.
  • Context: original inventor→company assignment, recorded late (correction/housekeeping ahead of grant).

• 2017‑06‑13 (executed) / recorded 2017‑06‑23 — Reel 6086/0569 (TM analog; 11 pp.)

  • Conveyance: Assignment — assigns the entire interest (internal reorg, Yahoo! Inc. → spun-out holding entity ahead of Verizon stock purchase)
  • Assignor: Yahoo! Inc. (now Altaba, Inc.)
  • Assignee: Yahoo Holdings, Inc., 701 First Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA 94089
  • Correspondent: 701 First Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA 94089 (in-house; no outside firm recorded on the TM record).
  • Context: internal reorganization — the operating business (and its patents) carved into Yahoo Holdings for the Verizon sale.

• recorded 2018‑01‑26 / 2018‑02‑02 — Reel 6258/0855 (TM analog, recorded 2018‑01‑26)

  • Conveyance: Assignment — assigns the entire interest
  • Assignor: Yahoo Holdings, Inc.
  • Assignee: Oath Inc., 22000 AOL Way, Dulles, VA 20166
  • Correspondent: Craig Horak, 55 Second Street, 21st Fl., San Francisco, CA 94105 (this is the one named correspondent I could recover; it appears on the Yahoo Holdings→Oath recording. A single appearance is not an NPE signal — Yahoo/Oath in-house or Yahoo's transactional counsel is not a known asserter-side filer.)
  • Context: internal reorg / brand consolidation — Yahoo Holdings folded into Oath (Verizon's AOL+Yahoo unit).

• recorded 2020‑10‑26 — Reel/Frame not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignor's interest
  • Assignor: Oath Inc.
  • Assignee: Verizon Media Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved.
  • Context: change of name / internal rebrand (Oath → Verizon Media); recorded as an interest assignment.

• recorded 2021‑08‑19 — Reel/Frame not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignor's interest
  • Assignor: Verizon Media Inc.
  • Assignee: Verizon Patent and Licensing Inc. (current assignee of record)
  • Correspondent: not retrieved.
  • Context: intra-group transfer of record title into Verizon Communications' standard patent-holding subsidiary.

Adjusted expiration of record: 2032‑04‑03 (per Google Patents legal status). Current assignee per Google Patents: Verizon Patent and Licensing Inc.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 9367832
    2006 : Filed by Yahoo Inc
    2016 : Patent issued
         : Inventors assign to Yahoo nunc pro tunc
    2017 : Yahoo to Yahoo Holdings
    2018 : Yahoo Holdings to Oath Inc
    2020 : Oath to Verizon Media
    2021 : Verizon Media to Verizon Patents

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. Every transferee is a Verizon-group operating subsidiary or holding entity of the same corporate parent, not a licensing-only shell. Note the surname "Licensing" on Verizon Patent and Licensing Inc. — but that entity is a wholly-owned Verizon Communications subsidiary that holds the parent's patents; it is not a single-purpose Delaware/Texas LLC at a registered-agent address, and no product-less assertion is evidenced. The stated address on the Yahoo→Holdings link (701 First Avenue, Sunnyvale) is an operating HQ, not a registered-agent service.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. None of the assignees (Yahoo!, Yahoo Holdings, Oath, Verizon Media, Verizon Patent and Licensing) appears on the Acacia / Marathon / IV / IPNav / Wi‑LAN / Conversant / Vringo / Pendrell / Round Rock / MPHJ / Spangenberg lists, and none surfaced in Unified Patents or RPX asserter data in my searches. I also found no infringement litigation asserting US 9,367,832 (litigation returned in searches involved other Verizon patents, e.g., the General Access/Raze 7,230,931 and 9,426,794 matter and Headwater patents — unrelated to this number).

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear. I recovered only one correspondent, Craig Horak, on the Yahoo Holdings→Oath recording (Reel 6258/0855 TM analog). I cannot confirm recurrence across the patent-side links because the patent reel/frame entries and their correspondents were not retrievable. One appearance is not a finding; without the remaining four entries verified, this signal is unresolved.

4. Cascading transfers — present only in the literal sense, not as an NPE pattern. Four recorded transfers in ~4 years (2017, 2018, 2020, 2021), but all are intra-group reorganizations/name changes within a single corporate parent (Yahoo → Verizon/Mosaic), not chained third-party LLCs sharing a correspondent address or common principals. Treating this as an NPE cascade would be a naming/inference error.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. No infringement suit naming this patent was found, so there is no transfer dated within 6 months of a first suit to anchor this signal.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. Yahoo!'s transfer was a negotiated stock purchase ($4.48B, closed 2017‑06‑13), not a Chapter 7/11 sale. The residual entity (Altaba, Inc.) later liquidated/wound down, but that is a post-sale securities liquidation, not a patent fire-sale in proceedings. Not Kodak/Nortel/Polaroid-shaped.

7. Privateering — not present. No evidence Verizon transferred rights to a third-party NPE to assert against competitors. If anything, the reverse appears: Verizon is the defendant in unrelated NPE suits (e.g., General Access Solutions' $847M verdict; Headwater).

8. Defensive aggregator — not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified, or OIN. (Separately, the Droplets v. Yahoo record notes Droplets "already received compensation from RPX" — that concerns Droplets' own patents, not US 9,367,832, and should not be attributed to this chain.)

Verdict

Operating-company assertion — with an explicit caveat.

Justification: the full recorded chain (inventors → Yahoo! Inc. nunc pro tunc 2016‑03‑10; Yahoo! Inc. → Yahoo Holdings, Inc. 2017‑06‑23; → Oath Inc. recorded 2018‑01/02; → Verizon Media Inc. 2020‑10‑26; → Verizon Patent and Licensing Inc. 2021‑08‑19) is an unbroken operating-company corporate lineage carried out as part of the publicly confirmed $4.48B Yahoo/Verizon stock purchase and subsequent intra-group rebrandings — zero NPE signals are present, and the current assignee is Verizon's wholly-owned patent subsidiary, not a shell or a known asserter. Caveat: the "assertion" half of that label is unverified — I found no infringement suit asserting this specific patent, so the classification reflects operating-company ownership rather than documented assertion against competitors. If strict "ships a product and is suing" is required for that verdict, the honest residual classification is "no NPE signal — operating-company portfolio holding," which does not map cleanly onto the four other options (defensive aggregator and insufficient-data both misfit).

Verify directly at the USPTO Assignment Center (search "9367832" or application 11/325,830):

• https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/
• https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html

Open items to close the record: (a) pull the patent-side reel/frame for all five links; (b) recover the recorded correspondents on the 2017‑06‑23, 2020‑10‑26, and 2021‑08‑19 links to test signal #3 properly; (c) confirm whether the 2020 Oath→Verizon Media and 2021 Verizon Media→Verizon Patent and Licensing recordings are true assignments or change-of-name corrections.

I'll research US Patent 9,367,832's cited prior art. First, let me note a structural gap: the authoritative patent text provided does not include the "Citations" (backward prior-art) section — it only shows "Cited By" and "Families Citing this family" (forward citations). Let me search for the actual examiner/patent citations.

The patent's own "Cited By" section is forward-citation data, and the authoritative text omits the examiner's backward-citation list. Let me search the PCT search report for WO2007081529A2 (the international counterpart) and the second incorporated-by-reference application, which are the best proxies for the cited prior art.

I've hit the tool-call limit for this session, so I'll report what I was able to establish — including a material data gap that controls the answer — rather than fabricate a citation list.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 9,367,832 B2 ("Synchronizing image data among applications and devices")

⚠️ Threshold finding (read first): the authoritative record omits the examiner's cited prior art

The full patent text supplied to me (from https://patents.google.com/patent/US9367832/en) contains only the forward-citation tables:

• "Cited By (2)" — documents that cite the '832 patent, and
• "Families Citing this family (50)" — the forward-citing family.

It does not contain the "Citations" / "References Cited" (backward) section — i.e., the examiner-cited and applicant-cited prior-art references. Every USPTO/EPO "Documents Considered to be Relevant" list I retrieved during live searching either returned no usable Box C contents for this family or returned false-positive ISRs belonging to other applications (details below).

Consequence: I can honestly enumerate the forward citations and the incorporated-by-reference documents, but I cannot produce a defensible § 102 anticipation mapping for the examiner-cited prior art, because that list is not present in my authoritative source and my live searches did not surface it before I reached the tool limit. I will not invent references or assign § 102 rejections to documents I cannot verify.

1. Controlling law: this is a pre-AIA patent

US 9,367,832 has a filing and priority date of 2006-01-04 (confirmed in the record). Because it was filed before March 16, 2013, the pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102 framework governs. Anticipation analysis therefore turns on:

For anticipation, a single reference must disclose every element of the claim; § 102(e) references are also subject to the pre-AIA § 102(e)(1)–(2) and common-ownership caveats (relevant here, because the closest siblings share Yahoo! ownership).

2. References actually identifiable from the authoritative text

2(a) The two incorporated-by-reference applications — NOT § 102 prior art

The specification expressly incorporates two co-pending Yahoo! applications:

Why these cannot be the § 102 references:

1. They are incorporated by reference into the '832 specification — legally they are treated as part of the '832 disclosure, not as prior art against it.
2. They are sibling applications sharing Yahoo! ownership and overlapping inventors (Boerries, Srinivasan), so they would be subject to the common-ownership exception for any § 103 combination and are poor § 102 anticipatory references at best.
   (Note: US 7,623,515's own "Patent History" lists Yahoo!-family OAs on a series of 11/182,xxx applications — consistent with a large, contemporaneous Yahoo! filing family, not a third-party prior-art citation.)

2(b) The record's forward citations — NOT § 102 prior art

The tables present in the text are forward citations. By definition these postdate the '832 patent and therefore cannot anticipate it under § 102 (though a forward citation can occasionally have an earlier priority date, which would be an unusual and case-specific posture):

Caution: Shutterfly ('399, priority 2000) and Sharpcast (WO '019, priority 2004) have earlier priority dates but appear here as documents citing the '832 family. I would not treat a forward-citation listing as proof that either was the examiner's relied-upon § 102 reference. If a full-text § 102 review is desired, Sharpcast WO 2006/053019 A2 and (for the tagging limitations of claims 1/3/12) Facebook's "Tagging Digital Media" family are the most technically on-point candidates to check first — but only after confirming their dates qualify and that they are actually cited.

3. False positives I encountered (do not attribute to '832)

An ISR fragment surfaced listing EP 1164801 A1 (Matsushita, 2001-12-19), US 6,317,191 B1 (James et al., 2001-11-13), and US 5,877,842 A (Gibbens/Rubay, 1999-03-02) as "A" documents relevant to claims 1–39. However, the accompanying KIPO search terms were "digital dailies, storage, audio, image, synchronization," which points to a film/media-production application, not the photo-album synchronization of '832. I treat this as a probable false positive and have not relied on it. Likewise, the litigation search returned unrelated '832 patents (e.g., Halliburton drilling fluids) — already flagged in the earlier section.

4. Why I cannot complete the § 102 claim mapping (and how to fix it)

The task requests, per reference: full citation, dates, description, and the claim(s) each potentially anticipates. I can supply that only from the examiner/applicant "References Cited" list, which is absent from the authoritative text I was given. My live attempts — Google Patents "Citations," the WO 2007/081529 A3 international search report (Box C), and Justia/RPX copies — were either truncated to the forward-citation tables or returned unrelated documents before the tool limit was reached.

To close this gap definitively, retrieve:

1. USPTO Patent Center / Patent Public Search → US 9,367,832 → "References Cited" tab (examiner + applicant citations, with examiner's form/claim numbers). This is the single authoritative source for the requested list.
2. WO 2007/081529 A3 (the ISR publication itself; PCT/US2006/048839) → Box C "Documents Considered to be Relevant."
3. File wrapper (Patent Center) → examiner's Notice of Allowance / reasons for allowance and any prior 102/103 rejections, to see which references were actually applied and to which claims.
4. Espacenet Global Dossier for the same family, for the EPO/other-office search reports.

Once that list is in hand, the § 102 mapping for claims 1, 3, and 12 (the independent claims) and dependents 2, 4–11 can be performed: for each reference, confirm (a) it qualifies under pre-AIA § 102(a)/(b)/(e), and (b) it discloses every limitation — notably the specific limitations distinguishing this patent, namely the granularity-of-update / user-selected trigger-criteria logic (claims 1, 3, 8, 9, 12), the invitation-to-share review step, the UDP datagram without image data notification (claims 2, 4, 5), the re-notification after a threshold period (claim 6), the thumbnail notification (claim 7), and the resolution-reduction/redaction limitations (claims 10, 11).

Bottom line

• No verifiable § 102 prior-art citation list exists in the authoritative record I was given — only forward citations and two sibling applications incorporated by reference (which are not § 102 art).
• I deliberately did not fabricate references or assign anticipatory effect to the forward citations.
• The two incorporated-by-reference Yahoo! applications (US 11/182,288 → US 7,623,515 B2; and US 11/182,614) are the only party-identified documents I can name with confidence, and they are not prior art against '832.
• A complete § 102 analysis requires pulling the "References Cited" list from USPTO Patent Center / the WO 2007/081529 A3 ISR Box C, which is the recommended next step.

If you can reset tool access or paste the USPTO "References Cited" list, I will complete the reference-by-reference § 102 mapping (citation, dates, description, and anticipated claim(s)).

I'll try to close the prior-art gap the earlier section flagged, then run the obviousness analysis.

Good — I found verifiable dates for the key third-party reference. Let me pin down a few more before analyzing.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 9,367,832 B2

35 U.S.C. § 103 (pre-AIA) · App. 11/325,830 · Filed 2006-01-04 · Granted 2016-06-14

Build-on note. This analysis uses the reference inventory developed in the Prior-Art section of this page and does not repeat it. That section identified a threshold gap (no "References Cited" list in the authoritative record) and identified the only verifiable documents. I closed part of that gap with additional searching before hitting the tool limit; the results materially change one conclusion in the Prior-Art section (see §2.1 CORRECTION below). Items I could not verify are flagged [UNVERIFIED] and are not load-bearing.

1. The dispositive structural insight (read this first)

Three consequences fall out of the qualification dates, and they shape every ground below:

1. The only reference with a verified pre-2006 filing date that maps cleanly onto the claimed architecture is Sharpcast's PCT publication WO 2006/053019 A2. It is third-party art, so no common-ownership disqualification applies. Everything else on the record is either (a) post-dated, (b) foreign-language/unverified, (c) a forward citation, or (d) statutorily disqualified.

2. The most technically aligned art for the "notification logic" element — Yahoo's own 11/182,xxx "content router" family — is unusable for a § 103 combination. Both applications the '832 spec incorporates by reference (US App. 11/182,288 → US 7,623,515 B2; and US App. 11/182,614) are part of the '832 disclosure and cannot be prior art against it. Their non-incorporated siblings in the same filing family (e.g., US 7,631,045 B2, App. 11/182,313, filed 2005-07-14, "Content router asynchronous exchange," inventors Boerries/Meyer/Srinivasan; and US 7,849,199 B2, App. 11/182,264) are facially § 102(e) art — but they were commonly owned by Yahoo! Inc. with the '832 subject matter, which triggers the pre-AIA § 103(c) safe harbor: subject matter qualifying only under § 102(e)/(f)/(g) and commonly owned at the time of invention "shall not preclude patentability under this section." A petitioner therefore cannot build a § 103 combination out of the Yahoo notification architecture. That is a genuine, under-appreciated limitation on this attack.
   (Verification: US 7,631,045 front page confirms App. 11/182,313, filed Jul. 14, 2005, Yahoo! Inc., and shows the sibling publications US 2007/0014300 A1 [Breuer et al.] and US 2007/0014303 A1 [Schulz et al.] — http://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/0a/d2/4c/cd7dcf0f06f3fd/US7631045.pdf; US 7,623,515 front page — https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/f7/d6/3b/abf9b55e096619/US20070014300A1.pdf)

3. The crux "granularity / user-selected trigger criteria" element has no verified reference in the record. I identified the class of art that fills it (§7) but I will not invent a document number for it. This is the single weakest link in the § 103 case and the place a petitioner must invest.

2. Reference qualification table (new information — § 102 basis and § 103(c) status)

2.1 ⚠️ CORRECTION to the Prior-Art section

The Prior-Art section listed US 2011/0202531 A1 (→ US 7,945,653), priority 2005-12-14, as a candidate § 102 reference for the tagging limitations. Search results contradict that reading, and the search results control:

• US 7,945,653 B2 was filed 2006-10-11 ("(22) Filed: Oct. 11, 2006") — https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/d5/3d/ae/b9beebb82456c9/[US10296536](/patent/US10296536).pdf (child case, confirming "(63) Continuation of application No. 11/580,210, filed on Oct. 11, 2006, now Pat. No. 7,945,653"); also https://patents.google.com/patent/[US7945653B2](/patent/US7945653B2).
• The 2005-12-14 date is not a priority date for the tagging disclosure. It is the filing date of Provisional 60/750,844, "Systems and Methods for Social Mapping", which US 7,945,653 merely incorporates by reference (along with 60/753,810, 2005-12-23). Different subject matter, different document. Citing the provisional's date for the tagging disclosure would be an error.

Effect: Facebook's "Tagging Digital Media" is not § 102 prior art against the '832 patent at all. It appears on the '832 record only as a forward citation. Any obviousness ground built on it fails at the threshold on date. Do not use it. (This is exactly the "forward citation ≠ prior art" trap the Prior-Art section flagged, now confirmed with dates.)

Second refinement: the Prior-Art section correctly flagged the ISR fragment listing EP 1 164 801 A1 / US 6,317,191 B1 / US 5,877,842 A as a probable false positive (KIPO search terms "digital dailies, storage, audio, image, synchronization" → film-production workflow). I did not find anything to rehabilitate it. Treat as excluded.

3. Legal framework

Governing law. Filed 2006-01-04 → pre-AIA § 103(a), as construed in Graham v. John Deere, 383 U.S. 1 (1966), and KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007). Pre-AIA § 103(c) applies to the § 102(e) disqualification in §1(2) above.

The four Graham factors:

1. Scope and content of the prior art — server-side shared-album stores with synchronization engines (Sharpcast); lightweight datagram notification protocols (RFC 768; the general network-programming literature); content-based event filtering/subscription (the candidate pub/sub references, §6); device-capability content adaptation/transcoding (admits itself in the '832 spec and is ubiquitous in the WAP/mobile-browser art of 1998–2005).
2. Differences — tabulated in §5. The only differences with substance are the granularity/trigger-criteria step and the mechanical notification variants (UDP, thumbnail, retry, down-resolution, redaction).
3. PHOSITA level — a person with a bachelor's in CS/EE and 2–4 years of experience in networked media applications, file synchronization, or client-server photo services, or equivalent; familiar with HTTP/TCP/UDP sockets, content-type dispatch, and mobile content adaptation. The '832 claims recite generic "logic"/"program logic" with no hardware recitation, so the level of skill is not elevated by any specialized engineering (§ 112 supports ordinary skill, not a high one). [Minimum-competence-level opinion; not an evidentiary finding.]
4. Secondary considerations — none adjudicated; see §9.

Key KSR rationales I rely on (identified expressly, as required): (A) combination of prior-art elements according to known methods yields a predictable result; (B) simple substitution of one known element for another (UDP for TCP notification); (C) use of a known technique to improve similar devices in the same way (content-based notification filtering applied to album-update events); (D) application of a known technique to a known device ready for improvement (album sync + notification carried to mobile "filtered" devices); (E) design incentive / market pressure (the '832 Background admits the multi-device photo problem verbatim); (F) "obvious to try" where a finite number of identified, predictable solutions exist (notification parameterization).

4. Ground 1 — Primary: Sharpcast in view of admitted knowledge and a content-filtering reference

References: WO 2006/053019 A2 (≡ US 2006/0101064 A1) as the primary; the '832 specification's own admissions as evidence of the art; the § 6 filtering reference for the crux element; RFC 768 for the protocol limitations; the mobile-adaptation art for claims 10–11.

Why Sharpcast is the right primary. Its abstract and specification disclose, in terms that map element-for-element onto the independent claims:

• Server platform + datastore maintaining full resolution copies of the files shared between a plurality of sharing clients → the "album data … comprising image data … designated for synchronization with multiple devices" element and the server-side storage element. (WO 2006/053019 A3 abstract, https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/94/7a/bc/5fe2b6a9cac7cb/WO2006053019A3.pdf)
• A synchronization engine … configured to send real-time updates to a plurality of sharing clients when at least one of the sharing clients updates or changes one of said files → both the "receiving … an update to the album" element and the "sending a notification … of the update" element, and the notification architecture generally.
• "When a user shares a photo album with others, the user may choose to grant the recipients permission to update metadata relating to the photos in the album (e.g., location and people or objects in the pictures). In the present embodiment, these changes will be propagated to all recipients of the album" → the invitation-to-share element, the review element, and — critically — the tag-data update element ("people … in the pictures" is tagging). (https://uspto.report/patent/app/20060101064 ¶[0046])
• "A synchronization engine is provided that allows users to synchronize metadata on files … collaborative tagging of files by different users may be enabled … The updating and synchronizing of metadata allows all users to benefit from more detailed metadata that may be provided by one user, which is then cascaded or pushed to picture files resident on other computers of other users that share the file" → the entire tag-propagation concept, and the "permitting the second client device to retrieve the update" element. (US 2006/0101064 A1 ¶[0009])
• Synchronization to PIM and Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) clients → the "multiple devices" including "filtered devices." (US 2006/0101064 A1 ¶[0051])

Gap to bridge (the crux): Sharpcast's engine pushes all changes in real time. It does not disclose (a) computing a "granularity of the update" or (b) comparing it against user-selected trigger criteria such that a user can, e.g., opt in to tag-change notifications. This is the only substantive difference. It is bridged by Ground 1's secondary references and by the admissions in §6.

5. Element-by-element chart — claim 1 / claim 3 / claim 12 (same limitations, three statutory classes)

Dependents:

6. Ground 2 — Bridging the "granularity / trigger criteria" element

This is the whole case. Three independent bridges, in descending order of strength:

(a) Applicant's own admission (strongest available, and costless). The '832 specification's only support for the crux element is this passage:

"a determination or some other setting may be made as to what granularity updates should trigger an update notification. For example, where server interface 110 a supports tagging of pictures by any user sharing an album, users synchronizing that album on client applications may configure their applications (and responsively server interface 110 a) to not notify on addition of tags. … users may select a granularity of notification that suits their needs."

Read against the Background and Summary — which describe the problem as making multi-device sharing "more user-friendly" without "excessive additional complications" — this is an express admission that (i) notification granularity is a setting, (ii) it is user-selected, and (iii) tag updates are a selectable category. The passage is a concession of prior-art/ordinary-skill knowledge, not a teaching of a novel mechanism. KSR rationale (A)/(C): implementing a disclosed, admitted configuration parameter is not invention.

(b) Content-based subscription / event-filtering art (pre-2006). The claimed step is, functionally, matching an event attribute (update type) against a subscriber-supplied filter. That is the core of content-based publish/subscribe: SIENA (Carzaniga, Rosenblum & Wolf, Design and Evaluation of a Wide-Area Event Notification Service, ACM Trans. Computer Systems 19(3), Aug. 2001) — a filter language matched against event attributes; and Eugster, Felber, Guerraoui & Kermarrec, The Many Faces of Publish/Subscribe, ACM Computing Surveys 35(2), June 2003. Both are § 102(b)-eligible printed publications. [UNVERIFIED in this session — I could not retrieve them via search before hitting the tool limit; I am relying on longstanding knowledge of these canonical references. Verify the precise passages before relying on them in a petition.] Also candidate: the wider "notification preferences" art (email filter rules; RSS/Atom feed readers with per-item-type notification toggles, 2002–2005) — anything that teaches a user toggling which kinds of updates in a subscribed collection generate an alert.

(c) KSR "obvious to try." Even absent a specific reference, the field had a finite, identified, predictable set of options for the nuisance of over-notification in a shared album: notify on everything, notify on nothing, or notify on a user-selected subset of update types. When Sharpcast's engine pushes every change, and users share large albums, filtering notifications by change type is a predictable engineering response with predictable benefits. KSR, 550 U.S. at 421.

7. Motivation to combine — articulated

For each ground, the motivation is drawn from the references themselves, the nature of the problem, and the artisan's knowledge (the three permissible sources):

Teaching away? I found none. The closest candidates: (i) UDP's unreliability might be said to teach away from UDP notifications — but that is answered internally by claim 6's retry and by the '832 spec's own express endorsement of UDP as the better choice; and (ii) Sharpcast's "real-time" push arguably teaches against batching/withholding notifications — but not against user-configurable notification scope, and claim 9's "notification time" is an added limitation on a system that already notifies. Neither rises to a teaching-away that would defeat the combination.

8. Anticipated rebuttals and the claim-construction risk

1. "You've cited my own specification against me." Expect this objection. Legally, admissions in the specification are usable evidence of the knowledge and level of ordinary skill in the art, and of the artisan's ready access to the recited techniques — In re Malagari; In re Voss. But the stronger form of the argument is not "the spec admits it" — it is Ground 1's third-party reference plus a verified filtering reference. Lead with Sharpcast, not with the admissions.

2. "Granularity is a term of art you haven't defined." The patentee will likely argue "granularity" means something more than "update type." That argument wins a § 112(b) indefiniteness fight (as the PTAB section already flagged: the spec's single prose passage supplies no definition, structure, or algorithm) but it loses the obviousness fight, because under the broadest reasonable interpretation / Phillips, "granularity of the update" reads on the kind of content the update carries — which is exactly what claims 8 and 9 confirm (claim 8 = image data; claim 1 = tag data; claim 9 = temporal batching). Pin the patentee between the two: either "granularity" has a definite meaning (and then Ground 1 + filtering art covers it) or it does not (and claims 1/3/12 are invalid under § 112(b)). This is the highest-leverage strategic point in the analysis.

3. Claim 1's "request … comprises an invitation to share the album transmitted to the second client device by the first client device." Comprises is open-ended and "transmitted … by the first client device" may describe an act of the first device rather than require the invitation's content within the request. Under the broad reading, Sharpcast's owner-initiated album sharing satisfies it directly — the first device causes the second device to have shared-album access, and the second device's subsequent access request follows. Under a narrow reading (the invitation must be transmitted by the first device to the second device, peer-to-peer), Sharpcast's server-mediated model may not literally meet it, and the petitioner needs an invitation-distribution reference. Test both constructions in the petition; consider pleading in the alternative. This is the second-weakest element after "granularity."

4. Swearing behind Sharpcast. Because Sharpcast is § 102(e)-only art, the applicant could file a Rule 131 declaration seeking to antedate it. The 2004-11-08 provisional priority date largely closes this door: the artisan would have to show completion of the invention before 2004-11-08 (or before 2005-11-08 for the PCT-only date) with corroboration and diligence. The '832 has no earlier priority claim — its only date is 2006-01-04 — so any antedating theory depends entirely on undocumented pre-filing work. This is a strong structural position for a challenger. [Caveat: the Giacomini link from the PCT to provisional 60/626,121 requires the provisional to provide pre-AIA § 112 support for the relied-upon disclosure — verify ¶-by-¶.]

5. § 103(c) is a shield, not a sword — and it cuts both ways. A patentee might argue the Yahoo notification architecture (the actual provenance of "notification logic 120") was not prior art, and therefore the claimed notification element is not obvious over the art as a whole. That argument conflates non-availability with non-obviousness: § 103(c) merely removes certain references from consideration; it says nothing about whether the resulting subject matter would have been obvious over the remaining art. Sharpcast + RFC 768 + content-based filtering remains a complete, third-party-only combination.

9. Secondary considerations / objective indicia

• No objective indicia have been adjudicated. No PTAB proceeding, no FWD, no district court finding (per this page's Litigation and PTAB sections).
• Long pendency (filed 2006-01-04; granted 2016-06-14) is not a secondary consideration. It is, at most, a signal that the claims were narrowed to overcome art — which is confirmed textually: the invitation-to-share, granularity, and user-selected trigger-criteria limitations are absent from the published application US 2007/0156434 A1 and appear in the granted claims. Narrowed claims are more vulnerable on § 112 and differently vulnerable on § 103 (the narrowing limitations must themselves be shown obvious), but there is no presumption of validity-strengthening value in the pendency itself.
• Commercial-success / long-felt-need evidence: none identified. If the patentee later proffers Yahoo!-client commercial success, the nexus requirement will be the battleground — the asserted claims require the invitation + granularity + notification combination, and a general-purpose desktop photo client's success is unlikely to be attributable to those specific limitations (no nexus → no weight, In re GPAC).
• Copying: Sharpcast and the Yahoo content-router family were contemporaneous and independently addressing the same problem — evidence of a known problem and a known solution direction, which supports obviousness (KSR (E)) rather than rebutting it.

10. Bottom line and risk rating

The claims are, in my analysis, vulnerable under § 103 — but the case is not a lay-up, and its strength is concentrated in a single reference.

Decisive strategic point, restated: the patent's own specification contains the concession that notification granularity is a user-selected setting including a do-not-notify-on-tags option. A petitioner should drive the patentee into electing between (i) a broad construction of "granularity" that makes Ground 1 dispositive on § 103, and (ii) a narrow construction that renders claims 1/3/12 invalid under § 112(b). The patentee cannot win both.

11. Next steps to convert this into a filing-grade analysis

1. Pull the '832 "References Cited" list and the WO 2007/081529 A3 ISR Box C from USPTO Patent Center / Patent Public Search and Espacenet Global Dossier — the single authoritative fix for the gap identified in the Prior-Art section. Whether Sharpcast (or a sibling) was already of record changes the § 325(d) / Advanced Bionics calculus for any IPR.
2. Verify the Sharpcast provisional chain (60/626,121, 2004-11-08) ¶-by-¶ against the relied-upon disclosure to lock the earliest § 102(e) date and foreclose a Rule 131 antedating attempt.
3. Source and verify a concrete pre-2006 content-based notification-filtering reference. Candidates to check first: SIENA (Carzaniga/Rosenblum/Wolf, ACM TOCS 19(3), 2001) and Eugster et al., ACM Computing Surveys 35(2), 2003 — plus any email-rule, RSS-per-item-notification, or presence-preference patent pre-2000. This is the single highest-value research task in the matter.
4. Verify US 2006/0101064 A1's actual publication and US filing dates (I have 2006-05-11 and 2005-11-08 from a secondary source) so the § 102(e) date is not attacked on a technicality.
5. Do not cite US 7,945,653, US 2011/0202531, or the Facebook family in any § 103 ground — the Oct. 11, 2006 filing date disqualifies them (see §2.1).
6. Do not build any § 103 ground on the Yahoo 11/182,xxx family (incorporated-by-reference or commonly owned) — § 103(c) will defeat the combination.
7. Run the § 315(b) one-year clock if a complaint has been served. Nothing has been spent on this patent by anyone; the first-mover advantage on art and claim construction is fully intact.

Constraint acknowledgment: I did not complete the searches intended to retrieve the '832 "References Cited" list, the WO 2007/081529 A3 Box C contents, the grant number of App. 11/182,614, or the SIENA/Eugster references — the tool limit was reached first. Nothing above attributes an anticipatory or obviousness-mapping finding to a document I did not actually see, and the two prior-art items that search results contradicted (US 7,945,653's date; the film-production ISR fragment) are corrected or excluded rather than carried forward.