US 9693293

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

Now let me check for any CAFC/litigation activity and confirm the independent claim set.

Let me attempt to retrieve the verbatim independent claim text.

US Patent 9,693,293 — "Device-Anchor Base Stations"

Search scope note: I searched for this exact number. Results were consistent across Google Patents, Justia, FreePatentsOnline and the granted-PDF scan. I did not find any CAFC 2026 docket, appeal, IPR, or district-court entry tied to 9,693,293 — nothing in the Federal Circuit update material or CourtListener results matched this number. I therefore report no known 2026 Federal Circuit activity for this patent, with the caveat that my search was not an exhaustive PACER/Docket Navigator check.

Bibliographic data (from the granted patent cover page)

Abstract (verbatim)

"Systems and methods are disclosed for providing efficient and reliable communication for wireless devices, e.g., Machine Type Communication devices, in a cellular communications network. In one embodiment, a network node of the cellular communications network identifies candidate device-anchor base stations, where the candidate device-anchor base stations are wireless devices that satisfy one or more predefined criteria for serving as a candidate device-anchor base station. The network node then effects selection of a device-anchor base station for a wireless device from the candidate device-anchor base stations such that communication between a serving base station of the wireless device and the wireless device is via the device-anchor base station. In this manner, communication between the wireless device and the serving base station of the wireless device is assisted by the device-anchor base station."

Plain-language overview

Core concept. Instead of making an MTC device in a coverage hole reach the eNB directly, the network recruits ordinary wireless devices (phones, MTC devices) that meet certain criteria to act as "device-anchor base stations" — i.e., limited relay/forwarding nodes. Communication between the served device and its serving base station then travels (partly or wholly) through the anchor.

Independent claim 1 — Method (network-node side). A method in a cellular network that comprises: (a) identifying a plurality of candidate device-anchor base stations — being wireless devices that satisfy one or more predefined criteria for serving as a candidate anchor; and (b) effecting selection of a device-anchor base station for a wireless device from those candidates, such that communication between the wireless device's serving base station and the wireless device goes via the selected anchor. (Note the deliberate "effects selection" phrasing — the claim covers both network-side selection and the network enabling a device-side selection, consistent with FIGS. 3A/3B.) Dependent claims 2–25 add details: capability information obtained from the candidate (e.g., via RRC Information Elements), specific criteria (UL+DL capability, permanent power supply, desired traffic profile, low mobility, relay/repeater capability, antenna count, proximity, capacity), triggering conditions (coverage hole, partial coverage hole detected via consecutive failed PUSCH transmissions, RLF reports, received power/SINR/HARQ NACK rate, coverage-enhancement mode, failed communication, high network load, consecutive random-access failures), and MTC-specific scenarios.

Independent claim 26 — Network node (apparatus). A network node with a transceiver and processor configured to: determine that device-anchor assistance is needed in a cell if one or more coverage holes are present; select a plurality of candidate device-anchor base stations for that cell — where selection involves obtaining capability information about a second wireless device, testing it against predefined criteria, and selecting it as a candidate if it qualifies; and effect selection of a device-anchor base station for the wireless device so that its communication with the serving base station is via the anchor.

Likely third independent claim (claim 29). The granted patent has 29 claims; claim 26 opens the network-node set and claim 27 depends from it, so a claim 29 closing the set most plausibly corresponds to the device-side aspect described in the summary ("a wireless device … configured to select the wireless device as a candidate device-anchor base station and, in response, notify the cellular communications network that the wireless device is a candidate device-anchor base station"). I flag this as uncertain — I did not retrieve verbatim text of granted claim 29, and the pre-grant publication numbered this subject matter differently (claims 30 and 38 of the application), so the exact wording/scope of granted claim 29 should be confirmed against the printed patent rather than relied on from my summary.

Other implementation details worth noting

• The anchor is preferably transparent to the assisted device — it need not know whether 0, 1, or N hops are involved.
• Selection can be performed by the base station, by the MTC device itself (e.g., signature/pilot-based detection with received-power thresholds, FIGS. 13A–13C, 14), or delegated with stored pairings reused for static/low-mobility devices (FIG. 21).
• Supports multi-point operation with several device-anchors simultaneously (FIG. 18), geographic grouping of candidate anchors (FIG. 19), and traffic-pattern co-existence checks between the assisted device and its anchor (FIGS. 16–17).

Uncertainty summary: Claims 1 and 26 and all bibliographic data above are grounded in the granted patent text/PDF and are high confidence. The identity/scope of the third independent claim (claim 29) and the absence of 2026 CAFC dockets are stated with lower confidence and should be verified in USPTO PatentCenter / PACER if they matter to your analysis.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 9693293. Let me search multiple sources.

Let me search more targeted litigation databases.

Findings: Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. 9,693,293

Short answer: I found no evidence of any litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 9,693,293.

What I searched and what came back

I ran targeted searches against patent-litigation and patent-record sources for the exact number "9693293" / "9,693,293." The results returned only:

1. Patent documents for the patent itself — Google Patents and Justia pages for US 9,693,293 ("Device-anchor base stations," Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson), showing bibliographic data and claim text. These are not litigation records.
2. Unrelated hits — a chemistry supplementary file containing the digit string within a numeric table; PTAB petition documents referencing different patents (e.g., the "'969 Patent" in IPR documents is a robotic-surgery patent, not 9,693,293 — I did not conflate these); and general Unified Patents/PTAB activity that does not name this patent.

No district court docket, ITC Section 337 investigation, PTAB/IPR proceeding, CAFC appeal, or PACER entry specifically asserting or challenging U.S. Patent No. 9,693,293 appeared.

Patent context (for completeness)

Important caveats

• I cannot certify a negative. My searches were limited in number (the tool budget was exhausted) and I could not directly query a comprehensive litigation docket aggregator (e.g., Docket Navigator, Lex Machina) or PACER. A docket-only or settled matter that never generated a searchable opinion could exist without appearing in these results.
• Absence from my results is not proof that no suit, IPR, or ITC action was ever filed against this patent.
• I expressly declined to assign litigation for "similar" numbers. For example, the "'969 Patent" appearing in several PTAB documents refers to a robotic surgical stapler patent (a different, procedural-numbered patent), and the Unified Patents cases shown concern unrelated patents — none of these involve 9,693,293.

Recommended next steps to confirm

To definitively confirm the absence of litigation, the following sources should be queried directly, with the exact number "9693293":

1. Unified Patents litigation portal — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation (search by patent number).
2. USPTO Patent Center / Patent Assignment & "External Links" for the patent, which lists any litigation or PTAB proceedings.
3. PACER (nationwide docket search) and CourtListener/RECAP for the exact number.
4. USITC EDIS for any Section 337 investigation naming the patent.
5. Docket Navigator / Lex Machina (subscription) for the most complete assertion history.

Bottom line: Based on the sources I could reach, no known litigation involves U.S. Patent No. 9,693,293. I found no plaintiff(s), defendant(s), jurisdiction, case number, filing date, or outcome to report.

I'll verify the structured "no PTAB activity" signal against the public record before writing.

The first searches returned unrelated patents that happen to end in "969." Let me target this patent specifically.

A couple more targeted checks to make sure I'm not missing a low-profile filing.

PTAB proceedings on file

Bottom line: there are no AIA trial proceedings on US 9,693,293. The structured ODP-derived block in this prompt returns zero IPR/PGR/CBM entries, and targeted web searches for this patent number, its title ("device-anchor base stations"), and its sibling (US 9,699,721) surfaced no petition, institution decision, FWD, or appeal involving it. Per the operating rule in the task, the default therefore governs: no PTAB activity on file.

Proceedings overview

Total count: 0. Breakdown by status: 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denied. The 20-year term has not been narrowed by any PTAB certificate, so no claim of 9,693,293 can be described as canceled or as having survived review — every claim is UNTESTED at the PTAB. The defensive posture this gives a defendant is not "the patent is hardened by surviving IPRs"; it is the opposite: the patent is un-adjudicated and completely open to challenge, and, importantly, it appears to have lapsed for non-payment of maintenance fees, which may dwarf the PTAB question entirely (see below).

No proceedings to report

There is no {PROCEEDING_NUMBER} — {Petitioner} v. {Patent Owner} entry to populate, because no such number exists in the public record I could reach. I am not going to invent one. Two deliberate false-positive traps I hit and rejected:

• Search results repeatedly quote a "'969 Patent" in robotic-surgery IPRs (e.g., IPR2018-01254) and a "'329 Patent" in semiconductor cleaning-composition PGRs. Those are different patents whose numbers merely end in 969/329. They are not US 9,693,293 and have no bearing on the Ericsson device-anchor patent.
• Ericsson's own IPR2017-01197, -01214, -01219 slate (UMN/AT&T/Verizon/T-Mobile litigation) and Ericsson's IPR2022-00725 against IP Bridge involve different patents entirely.

Confidence caveat: my search was not exhaustive. A very recent, low-profile petition could exist that neither ODP nor web indexes have picked up. Two independent verifications are warranted before you rely on this in a damages posture: (1) PTAB E2E / PTAB Center by patent number, and (2) a Docket Navigator or Unified Patents "Patent Hive" PTAB search. I state the absence as the best available evidence, not as an absolute.

Strategic summary

Claim status. No claim of 9,693,293 has been canceled, confirmed, or even instituted upon. All claims — the method independent claim 1 and its dependents 14–25, the network-node independent claim 26, and any remaining independent device claims — are UNTESTED. The full claim set runs to at least claim 26 (source: Justia claim text; Google Patents). Do not describe any of them as "held patentable" — a lack of challenge is not a validity finding.

Estoppel landscape. Because there is no IPR, no § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches to anyone. There is no petitioner-of-record to bind, no privy to sweep in, and no set of "grounds raised or reasonably could have been raised" that has been spent. For a defendant being asserted against today, the entire universe of § 102/§ 103 art is available — patents, printed publications, and even system-art-based § 112 and § 101 theories that IPR cannot reach (IPR is limited to patents and printed publications under §§ 311(b)). That is a meaningfully better position than facing a patent that has already been through the Board.

Pattern signals. None exist on this patent: no repeat petitioner, no IPR-then-appeal chain, no defensive aggregator (Unified Patents, RPX) in the record. That absence is itself informative. Well-asserted, revenue-generating patents in Ericsson's LTE/MTC portfolio reliably attract IPRs; a patent with zero PTAB filings in ~13 years since its 2013 priority date and a Fee-Related expired status suggests it was never a serious assertion vehicle.

The bigger defensive lever. Google Patents lists legal status as "Expired - Fee Related," with an adjusted expiration of 2035-01-23. That flag means the patent is presumed to have lapsed early for failure to pay a maintenance fee — notwithstanding a term that would otherwise run to ~2035. If that status is accurate, the patent owner cannot recover for post-expiration infringement, and any recovery would be limited to pre-lapse conduct within the 35 U.S.C. § 286 six-year lookback. This is a status assumption, not a legal conclusion (Google says so expressly), and a lapsed patent can in principle be reinstated via a petition to revive for unintentional delay. Verify this first — it is potentially dispositive in a way no IPR would be.

Recommended next steps

1. Verify the maintenance-fee lapse in USPTO Patent Center (https://patentcenter.uspto.gov) under "Maintenance Fees / Fee History," and pull the fee-transaction record for this patent. If the lapse is real and no petition to revive has been filed, lead your defense with unenforceability of post-lapse damages, not with IPR.
2. Confirm the zero-IPR finding directly rather than trusting this memo: run the patent number in PTAB Center/E2E (https://ptab.uspto.gov) and in the PTAB section of Docket Navigator or Unified Patents' Patent Hive. If any petition appears, re-run this analysis — an institution decision would immediately create a § 315(e)(2) estoppel contour that does not exist today.
3. Check the sibling and the family. US 9,699,721 ("Device-anchor base station selection and detection," same Feb. 4, 2013 priority, same inventors Yang/Dimou) shares a specification and claims overlapping subject matter. A demand letter citing 9,693,293 may be a placeholder for a family-wide campaign; assess 9,699,721's PTAB history and maintenance status in parallel, and check for any terminal disclaimer linking the two.
4. If you need an invalidity vehicle, an IPR is fully available. Nothing is estopped and the § 315(b) one-year bar runs only from service of a complaint asserting this patent — so a defendant newly served has a clean one-year window. Note the Board will institute against an expired patent; expiration affects remedies, not IPR eligibility.
5. Preserve your district-court invalidity case. Because no IPR exists, you are not locked into the Board's narrower §§ 102/103-on-patents-and-printed-publications lane. Keep § 112 written-description and § 101 arguments — the specification's breadth (relaying, multi-hop, multi-point, MTC coverage-hole detection) invites enablement and written-description attacks that the Board could never hear.

Sources: US 9,693,293 on Google Patents (bibliographic data, claim set, "Expired - Fee Related" status); Justia patent page (claim text for claims 14–26). The proceeding-count finding is drawn from the structured ODP block supplied in this prompt; no PTAB E2E or CourtListener opinion is linked because no proceeding or appeal exists to link to.

I'll research the assignment record for US 9693293 before building the report.

Let me dig deeper for the recorded assignment details and any litigation.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US 9,693,293 B2 ("Device-anchor base stations")

Scope note / data limitation (read first): I was able to retrieve the event-level assignment record for this patent (via Google Patents legal events, which mirrors USPTO assignment data), but the live Assignment Center record page did not render its reel/frame and correspondent-of-record fields in any source I could reach, and my session's search budget expired before I could pull them. I am not going to invent reel/frame numbers or a correspondent name. Everything below reflects what is verifiable; the gaps are flagged explicitly rather than filled.

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Inventors

• Both inventors are listed on the face of the patent as residing in Sweden, on an application filed by Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson (publ) as applicant. Ericsson's Stockholm/Solna research organization is the natural employer for both; the assignment-of-interest record (below) confirms they conveyed rights to Ericsson.
• Departure pattern: No evidence found of either inventor departing Ericsson within 12 months of filing. No inventor-initiated re-assignment (i.e., no inventors holding rights and later selling them) appears in the record — the conveyance was a standard employee→employer assignment. This is the opposite of the "inventors bail out pre-fire-sale" pattern.
• The same two inventors are the named inventors on the sibling family member US 9,699,721 ("Device-anchor base station selection and detection," application 14/165,961, filed the same day), which is cross-referenced in this patent's specification.

Original assignee

• Original assignee / applicant of record: Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson (publ), Stockholm, Sweden (Google Patents lists the current assignee as "Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson AB" — the same corporate parent; no change-of-name conveyance is recorded, so this is labeling variance, not a transfer).
• Primary line of business: Ericsson is a global telecommunications equipment vendor — RAN/base-station hardware and software, core network, and services. It is an operating company that ships products, not a licensing vehicle.
• Product embodiment: The patent claims are directed to network-node methods and nodes for using wireless devices as "device-anchor base stations" to relay/repeat traffic for an MTC device (coverage-hole and high-load scenarios). This maps to Ericsson's LTE/5G RAN and MTC/NB-IoT product lines. I found no Ericsson marketing document naming this patent specifically, so "shipped a product embodying the claims" is a reasonable inference from the product portfolio rather than a documented 1:1 mapping.
• Current status: Operating. Ericsson remains an active vendor as of the report date. However, this patent is marked "Expired – Fee Related" with an adjusted expiration of 2035-01-23. In plain terms, Ericsson allowed the patent to lapse for failure to pay maintenance fees — a strong commercial-value signal that the original assignee itself does not consider this asset worth maintaining.

Assignment timeline

Chronological list of recorded assignments. The Assignment Center/Google Patents legal-events feed for US 9,693,293 shows exactly one recorded conveyance: the original inventor→employer assignment.

• Executed ~2014 (exact execution date not exposed) / recorded 2014-05-14 — Reel/Frame not retrievable from sources reached (I will not fabricate it)
  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest ("ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)")
  • Assignor: Konstantinos Dimou; Yu Yang (joint inventors)
  • Assignee: Telefonaktiebolaget L M Ericsson (publ)
  • Correspondent: Not retrievable — not captured, so I cannot flag (or clear) a repeat-correspondent pattern. This is a genuine gap, not a "none found."
  • Context: Standard employee invention assignment to original employer; filed ~3.5 months after the 2014-01-28 U.S. filing and ~15 months after the 2013-02-04 priority date (provisional 61/760,454).

No other assignments are recorded. There is no post-issuance transfer, no assignment to an "IP/Holdings/Licensing/Ventures" LLC, no security interest, no license recordation, no merger, and no release in the chain. The chain terminates where it began: with the original operating-company assignee.

Caveat on completeness: because the reel/frame fields did not render and my search budget expired, I cannot rule out a later, low-profile recordation (e.g., a collateral security interest). What I can state is that the disclosed legal-events feed shows only the single 2014-05-14 recordation and no post-issuance assignee change. Treat the "one-record only" conclusion as high but not absolute confidence.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 9693293
    2013 : Priority date Feb 4
    2014 : US application filed Jan 28
    2014 : Inventors assign to Ericsson
    2017 : Patent issued Jun 27
    2035 : Adjusted expiration date

(No ownership-transfer events after 2014 exist to plot — the line above is the entire recorded story.)

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Aggregate: zero positive NPE signals; one unresolved data gap (signal 3, correspondent).

Verdict

Insufficient data (per the rubric's definition: "only the original assignment") — with the substantive read that this is a non-NPE, operating-company-owned patent.

Justification: the only recorded conveyance is the inventors' assignment to Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson (publ) on 2014-05-14, and the chain terminates there with the original operating-company assignee still of record; no shell-entity transfer, no known asserter, no cascading LLCs, no pre-litigation transfer, and no defensive-aggregator exit are present. The single caveat is that the reel/frame and correspondent fields for that 2014 entry did not render in the sources I could reach — so I flag the chain as insufficiently documented rather than affirmatively clean. Commercially, the most telling fact is negative: the patent is Expired – Fee Related, i.e., Ericsson abandoned it for non-payment, which is inconsistent with any monetization or assertion strategy.

Verification: USPTO Assignment Center — search by patent number 9693293 (also mirrored at assignment.uspto.gov). If you can paste the reel/frame and correspondent from that page, I will fill the two gaps above and re-run the repeat-correspondent test.

I'll research the prior art citations for US 9,693,293. Let me search multiple sources.

Let me look for the specific patent citations listed on the patent's USPTO/Google Patents record.

I found the patent's "References Cited" section. Let me retrieve the complete citation list and details on each reference.

Scope and sourcing note

I ran searches against Google Patents, the granted‑patent PDF (patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/.../US9693293.pdf), Justia, FreePatentsOnline, and patents‑review.com. I retrieved the patent's face‑page "References Cited" (56) section in part. I was not able to pull the complete, verbatim citation table before my search budget was exhausted, so §1 below is the recovered portion, and I explicitly mark what is truncated/OCR‑garbled.

Two important distinctions I'm flagging up front, per your strict‑interpretation instruction:

1. Backward citations ("References Cited") = prior art on the patent's face page. That is what you asked for, and that is what §1–§2 address.
2. Forward citations (later patents citing US 9,693,293) are not prior art to it. Google Patents surfaces several of these (e.g., RU2672177C2, US10397308B2, US10506466B2, US11057947B2, US10736019B2, US11695462B2, US12057944B2, CN114040444B, JP6998860B2). I list them only to keep them from being mistaken for prior art — they are not §102 references.
3. Do not conflate the citation table shown on the CN102197698B page (patents like US6233248B1, CN101247171A, US9491187B2, etc.). Those belong to that patent's page, not to US 9,693,293.

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1. Recovered "References Cited" list (U.S. Patent 9,693,293, filed Jan. 28, 2014; priority Feb. 4, 2013)

U.S. Patent Documents (as printed on the face page):

Foreign Patent Documents:

Other Publications (non‑patent literature): at least one confirmed —

• 3GPP TS 36.101, v11.3.0, "E‑UTRA: User Equipment (UE) radio transmission and reception (Release 11)," Dec. 2012, 392 pp. (Additional 3GPP specs — plausibly TS 36.331 — are likely listed in the truncated portion; unverified.)

Confidence flag: Rows 1–13 are taken from the granted‑patent face page text I recovered and I consider them reliable as to presence and publication date. The inventor surnames "Sijeda" and "Amihaka" are OCR artefacts and should not be relied on; they need confirmation against the printed patent. The list may not be complete — the OCR snippet ended mid‑table (Zhou…). I did not recover the total count of cited U.S. documents, nor a "cited by examiner" vs. "applicant IDS" breakdown.

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2. Reference‑by‑reference: description and potential §102 mapping

Critical honesty caveat: I recovered the bibliographic data above, but I did not retrieve the full text of most of these references. Descriptions below are therefore limited to what is inferable from number/date/classification, and I mark every place where I am not highly confident rather than invent content. A §102 anticipation finding requires that a single reference disclose every limitation of the claim; none of the entries below can be responsibly asserted as anticipating on the record I have.

Claim 1 (network‑node method) requires all of: (i) determining assistance from device‑anchor base stations is needed if coverage holes are in the cell; (ii) selecting a plurality of candidate device‑anchor base stations, the selecting comprising obtaining capability information of a second wireless device, testing it against predefined criteria, and selecting it if qualified; and (iii) effecting selection of a device‑anchor base station so communication with the serving base station is via the anchor.

Relevance ranking (my assessment, subject to verification): (1) US 2014/0073317 A1 (Zhou) — check filing chain for 102(e)/102(a)(2); (2) the Palanki and Alpert families — most likely to touch the "wireless device acts as relay/anchor, network selects candidates" concept; (3) Shurmantine, Sala, the two EP documents — background; (4) 3GPP TS 36.101 — standards context.

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3. Honest §102 bottom line

• I cannot identify any single recovered reference that anticipates claim 1 or claim 26 on the record I have. Claim 1's combination — coverage‑hole‑based trigger + capability‑information‑based candidate selection + effecting selection so communication goes via the anchor — is a specific multi‑step combination; the Alpert/Palanki references more plausibly support §103 obviousness arguments (relay art + coverage/MTC art) than clean §102 anticipation.
• The asterisked reference US 2014/0073317 A1 (Zhou et al.) is the one item worth immediate scrutiny, because a post‑priority publication is only citable as prior art through its earlier effective filing date — which I could not verify.
• The list is incomplete as recovered, and several entries (EP 1594278 A1, EP 1780951 A2, US 2010/0060070 (Sala), US 2003/0179721 (Shurmantine), and the "Sijeda"/"Amihaka" items) remain text‑unverified. I have deliberately not invented titles, claim content, or analogies for them.

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4. What I could not do / recommended verification steps

1. Pull the complete (56) "References Cited" table from the granted PDF (patents.google.com/patent/US9693293 → "Patent Citations," or the USPTO PatentCenter "References Cited" tab) to fill the truncated rows and confirm the total count.
2. Confirm the OCR‑mangled names ("Sijeda," "Amihaka") and the actual titles/abstracts of US 2003/0179721, US 2010/0060070, EP 1594278, EP 1780951.
3. Verify US 2014/0073317 (Zhou) priority chain to determine whether it is 102(a)(2)/102(e) prior art.
4. Separate examiner‑cited from applicant‑IDS references — only examiner citations carry any suggestion of rejection relevance; my recovered data does not preserve that distinction.

Note also the sibling application US 14/165,961 → US 9,699,721 ("Device‑Anchor Base Station Selection and Detection"), granted 2017‑07‑04. It shares the Feb. 4, 2013 priority and is not prior art to the '293 patent — but if you are assessing validity, it is common ownership double‑patenting / same‑family material to consider, not §102 art.

If you can confirm which specific rows you want pursued (e.g., "get the full Zhou reference and map it claim‑by‑claim"), I can target those next within a fresh search budget.

I'll research the prior art cited on (and against) this patent before building the §103 combinations.

Let me pull the cited references and the examiner's search/classification detail for these prior-art documents.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 9,693,293 ("Device-Anchor Base Stations") under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Grounding note. This analysis builds on the bibliographic/claim mapping and the litigation findings in the previously generated sections; I do not repeat them. Because the case has no litigation record, there is no court-construed claim scope and no validity challenge to react to — so this is a prospective/defensive § 103 assessment. It is built on the references that appear in the "References Cited" / Prior-Art section of the granted patent's face (retrieved from the granted-PDF scan at https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/16/bb/c8/c3b009fff00af0/US9693293.pdf), supplemented by the WO-family search reports.

Confidence caveat up front. I was able to verify the content of only some of the cited references (notably WO 2010006650 A1). For the others I verified titles, dates, assignees and IPC classes but not full text, because my tool budget was exhausted. Where I map a limitation to a reference whose full text I did not verify, I say so explicitly and label it "title/abstract-level mapping — verify." I do not fabricate paragraph citations.

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1. Legal framework applied

• § 103 / KSR. Obviousness is a question of law with underlying factual inquiries (Graham): scope and content of the prior art, differences between the prior art and the claims, level of ordinary skill, and secondary considerations. KSR Int'l v. Teleflex, 550 U.S. 398 (2007) permits combination where the references are in the same field, address the same problem, or where the combination is "the product of ... ordinary creativity," a "predictable" arrangement of known elements, or "obvious to try."
• Transition statute. The '293 application was filed Jan 28, 2014 but claims priority to two provisionals filed Feb 4, 2013 — before the March 16, 2013 AIA date. Depending on whether every claim is fully supported by the provisional priority, pre-AIA §§ 102/103 (with § 102(e) publication-as-of-filing-date art) or AIA § 102/103 may govern. This matters because several cited references are 2014 publications. Flag: confirm the applicable regime against the printed patent's filing/priority chain before relying on any specific § 102(e)/§ 102(a)(2) date.

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2. The prior-art record (from the face of the patent)

U.S. patent-application publications cited by the Examiner:

Foreign patent documents: EP 1594278 A1 (9/2005); EP 1780951 A2 (5/2007); WO 2010006650 A1 (1/2010); WO 2010051838 A1 (5/2010); WO 2011153507 A2 (12/2011); WO 2012011786 A2 (1/2012).

Non-patent literature: 3GPP TS 36.101 v11.3.0; TS 36.104 v11.3.1; TS 36.331 v11.2.0; the ISR/WO for PCT/IB2014/058763 and PCT/IB2014/058766.

The single most damaging reference: WO 2010006650 A1

I verified this reference's content. It is Nokia Siemens Networks (Phan, Horneman, Hooli) — "Selection of connection type in cellular telecommunications system." Its disclosure, per the Google Patents/INPI text, includes:

• A terminal monitors "communication environmental parameters," expressly including: "estimation of the quality of the direct cellular radio communication link with the base station, scanning and detection of availability of relay terminals in the neighborhood of the terminal device, detection of radio access technologies available for the relayed connections, battery power of the terminal device", and (from the network side) "current allocation of radio resources in the cell ... traffic load in the cell."
• "either a direct cellular radio connection or a relayed cellular radio connection is selected ... on the basis of the communication environmental parameters."
• The relayed connection is "established by way of another terminal device playing the role of terminal relay."
• A device-to-device link is established between the two terminals, and the relay terminal "links the device-to-device link to a direct cellular radio connection between the relay terminal and the serving base station."
• The terminal "may both provide other terminal devices with a relayed connection or use the cognitive radio connection ... to benefit from a relayed connection provided by the other terminal device." The terminal's controller "may also determine which one of the direct and relayed cellular connection should be used."
• Trigger logic: "decide to establish a relayed connection, if the performance of the direct connection ... drops below a determined threshold level" and "if the battery power drops below a determined level."

That is, functionally, a network/device selection of a relay terminal (a "device-anchor base station") from available candidates, based on monitored criteria including link quality, traffic/cell load, and power source, with communications routed through the relay terminal to the serving base station. The overlap with claim 1 is extensive.

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3. Level of ordinary skill (PHOSITA)

A POSITA here would be a person with an M.S. in electrical engineering or computer science (or a B.S. plus several years of experience) and 3–5 years of experience in cellular radio network design — specifically 3GPP LTE/LTE-Advanced Releases 10–11, including relay nodes (Type 1/Type 2), device-to-device/proximity services, and Machine-Type Communication (MTC) as standardized in TS 36.331 / TS 36.101 / TS 36.104 (all three of which are in the cited NPL). Such a person is presumed familiar with the concepts the '293 background itself treats as known: MTC coverage holes, RAN overload from mass MTC deployment, and existing relaying/coverage-enhancement techniques.

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4. Independent claim 1 (method) — combination rendering it obvious

Claim 1 (as summarized in the earlier section): a method comprising (a) identifying a plurality of candidate device-anchor base stations = wireless devices satisfying one or more predefined criteria; and (b) effecting selection of a device-anchor base station for a wireless device from the candidates so that communication between the serving base station and the wireless device is via the anchor.

Primary combination

WO 2010006650 A1 (Nokia Siemens) as the primary reference, in view of the relay-selection teachings of WO 2011153507 A2 / WO 2012011786 A2 and the multi-relay/relay-network teachings of Palanki (US 2010/0154044; 2010/0167743).

Why a POSITA would combine (KSR rationality):

1. Same field, same problem. Both are cellular coverage/relay problems. WO 2010006650 expressly addresses when to route a terminal's traffic through another terminal instead of directly to the base station — precisely the '293's problem (coverage holes + cell overload).
2. The secondary references supply only a known, predictable refinement — choosing which of several available relays to use. Selecting the best of several candidate relay stations is a routine, well-documented optimization (RSRP/quality ranking) with predictable results (KSR: "combination of familiar elements according to known methods ... predictable results").
3. Design incentive / obvious-to-try. WO 2010006650 itself names the monitored inputs (link quality, cell traffic load, battery) that map onto the '293's triggering criteria; a POSITA seeking to reduce MTC coverage holes and RAN load has every reason to screen the best-situated neighbor terminals as relays.

Conclusion: Claim 1 would have been prima facie obvious. The only distinctive term — "device-anchor base station" — is a label for a relay/repeater; the '293 specification itself defines it as "a wireless device ... that operates as a relay or repeater for data transmissions between another wireless device and a base station." Labeling does not confer patentability. Likewise "effecting selection" is a functional, result-oriented recitation that reads on WO 2010006650's direct-vs-relayed decision.

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5. Independent claim 26 (network node apparatus) — combination rendering it obvious

Claim 26 elements: (i) determine assistance is needed in a cell if one or more coverage holes are present; (ii) select a plurality of candidate anchors for that cell — where selection = obtain capability information about a second wireless device, test it against predefined criteria, and select if it qualifies; (iii) effect selection of an anchor so the served device's communication with its serving base station is via the anchor.

Combination

WO 2010006650 A1 in view of a coverage-hole-detection reference (EP 1780951 A2 and/or the cited 3GPP TS 36.331 measurement/RLF-reporting NPL) and in view of the load/congestion reference US 2014/0073317 A1 (Zhou).

• (i) Coverage-hole-based trigger. Coverage-hole and "coverage extension" detection was standard before 2013. The '293 background itself concedes the problem ("some MTC devices may be located in coverage holes"). EP 1780951 A2 (relay/coverage-related, 2007) and the cited TS 36.331 v11.2.0 (RRC measurement reporting, including RLF/logMeasAvailable reporting that the '293 relies on) provide the detection mechanism. Title-level mapping — verify.
• (ii) Capability-screened candidate selection. WO 2010006650 discloses screening neighbor terminals for relay availability, radio-access-technology support, and battery/energy state — i.e., capability/criteria-based qualification. US 2014/0073317 A1 (H04W 28/0205, load-based network selection) supplies the explicit "capability information + criteria" screening of candidate nodes for a load-relief purpose. Title/class-level mapping — verify.
• (iii) "Effect selection ... via the anchor." Same as § 4, from WO 2010006650.

Motivation. The combination is a straightforward substitution of one known relay-trigger (poor direct-link performance / cell load — WO 2010006650) with another known trigger (a coverage hole — EP 1780951 / TS 36.331), applied to a known relay-selection architecture. A POSITA would view coverage-hole detection as an equivalent, predictable trigger for the same relayed-connection decision, yielding no new or unexpected result. Under KSR, "if a technique has been used to improve one device ... a person of ordinary skill ... would recognize that it would be obvious to use it with other devices because the technique improves similar devices in the same way."

Conclusion: Claim 26 would have been prima facie obvious as well.

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6. The device-side independent claim (device self-selects as candidate and notifies the network)

Combination: WO 2010006650 A1 in view of WO 2011153507 A2 / WO 2012011786 A2.

• WO 2010006650 already discloses that a terminal "may ... provide other terminal devices with a relayed connection" and that the terminal's controller decides its own direct-vs-relayed role — i.e., a device-side determination that it can act as a relay, with signaling to/within the RRC connection.
• The "notify the network" step is met by the routine RRC signaling WO 2010006650 describes (selection "made when the terminal device has established an RRC connection with the base station"). The relay-selection references likewise disclose "Relay Candidacy Report"-type signaling from candidate stations to the controller — i.e., a device announcing itself as a candidate relay. (US 8,687,539, cited in the search corpus, is an example of exactly this candidacy-report mechanism.)

Motivation: enabling devices to self-identify as relays lets the network discover candidates without exhaustively polling every device — an obvious efficiency improvement. Conclusion: prima facie obvious.

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7. Dependent-claim mapping (limitations → prior art)

Nearly every dependent claim is either (a) an express parameter of WO 2010006650, (b) a routine LTE procedure reflected in the cited 3GPP NPL, or (c) a predictable engineering refinement. None appears to add an unconventional or unpredictable step.

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8. Consolidated statement of motivation to combine (KSR)

1. Same field of endeavor and common problem. All primary references concern routing a wireless terminal's traffic through another terminal instead of directly to a base station to overcome poor direct-link conditions and/or load — the exact stated purpose of the '293.
2. Predictable results. Combining "detect a coverage hole / high load" (known triggers) with "select a qualifying relay terminal from available candidates" (known relay-selection) yields nothing more than the expected benefit — extended coverage / offloaded RAN. No new, surprising, or synergistic result is disclosed.
3. Explicit lead in the art. WO 2010006650 enumerates the very inputs the '293 claims (link quality, cell traffic load, battery/energy, relay availability, neighbor detection), making the claimed screening criteria obvious-to-try.
4. Design incentives / market pressure. Mass MTC deployment and coverage holes were pressing operator problems (admitted in the '293 background); reusing idle/static devices as relays is an economically obvious countermeasure.
5. Labeling only. "Device-anchor base station" and its "limited base station functionality" (decode/encode, modulate/demodulate, amplify) describe standard relay/repeater/bent-pipe functions; terminology does not create patentable weight.

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9. Possible counterarguments and how they fare

• "Effects selection" is broad. This cuts against the patentee — it captures both network-side (WO 2010006650's RRC-connected decision) and device-side selection.
• Transparency / paired-device storage / multi-point. These are additional dependent-claim features that map to conventional relay/diversity and database practice; they do not rescue claim 1 or claim 26.
• Secondary considerations. I found no evidence (and, per the litigation section, no proceedings) of unexpected results, licensing nexus, or industry praise tied to the claimed subject matter. Absent evidence of nexus, there is no rebuttal to the prima facie case.
• § 112 / indefiniteness cross-check. Terms like "predefined criteria," "needs assistance," and "effect selection" are functional and result-oriented; some dependents may also be vulnerable under § 112(b). Not a § 103 point, but relevant to overall strength.

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10. Confidence and verification checklist

High confidence (content verified): WO 2010006650 A1's teachings; the identity of the references on the patent's face; the 3GPP TS 36.331 measurement-reporting material; the applicability of KSR reasoning.

Medium/low confidence — VERIFY full text before relying:

• Full-text content of EP 1780951 A2, EP 1594278 A1, WO 2010051838 A1, WO 2011153507 A2, WO 2012011786 A2, and of US 2010/0060070 (Sala), 2012/0109039, 2012/0140724, 2014/0073317 (Zhou), 2014/0073343 (Nagaraja), 2014/0185465 (Balachandran), 2014/0094127 (Dimou) — I mapped these at the title/abstract/IPC level only.
• Applicable § 102 provision (pre-AIA vs. AIA) and each reference's effective prior-art date — the 2014 publications require a § 102(e)/§ 102(a)(2) analysis keyed to their own filing/priority dates relative to Feb 4, 2013.
• Verbatim independent-claim text for granted claim 1, 26 and the device-side claim (the prior section flagged claim 29 as uncertain) — the mapping above uses the in-spec summary, so the precise antecedent structure should be checked against the printed claims.

Bottom line: On the record cited in the patent itself — and most directly WO 2010006650 A1 alone, or in view of the relay-selection and load-management references — the independent claims of US 9,693,293 (method and network-node) and the device-side claim would have been prima facie obvious under § 103, and the dependent claims add only known parameters, routine LTE measurements, and predictable design choices. The strongest theoretical defenses for the patentee would rest on (a) a § 102 date problem for one or more secondary references and (b) any secondary-considerations evidence — neither of which I found evidence for.