US 9697264

I'll research US patent 9697264 across the USPTO and CAFC dockets. Let me run several searches.

Let me dig into the specific claims of 9697264 and the CAFC litigation docket.

US Patent 9,697,264 — Analyst Summary

Confidence note up front: The authoritative full text supplied for US9697264B2 (Google Patents) is truncated after the description — it does not include the granted claims or the abstract field. Where I rely on secondary sources for the claims, I flag it explicitly. I also hit my tool-step limit before fully exhausting CAFC 2026 docket searches, so my CAFC/2026 conclusions are qualified.

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1. Bibliographic data (from the authoritative Google Patents record)

Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US9697264](/patent/US9697264)/en

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2. Abstract

"The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for selecting database items from a database, where the database items are indexed by a list of item identifiers. The item identifiers may be in the form of text. An initial display is generated which includes one or more parts of the item identifiers. Selection of the one or more parts may be made and results in the generation of a display of a further one or more parts for selection. The further one or more parts may be selected in order to add to the selected one or more parts to build a larger part or whole of an item identifier. Selection from a large list of item identifiers may be carried out in a relatively short time period."

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3. Independent claims — plain-language overview

Caveat: The granted claims are not in the supplied authoritative text. The claim set below is taken from the pre-grant publication US20100153881A1, which Justia cross-references to grant number 9697264. Issued claims frequently differ from published application claims, so treat this as the best available proxy, not a verbatim rendering of the granted claims.

In the published set, claim 1 is the sole independent claim (claims 2–26 all depend from it):

Claim 1 — Method of selecting items from a collection of items

• The collection is indexed by a list of item identifiers (e.g., text strings/words).
• Generate an initial display showing one or more parts of those item identifiers for selection.
• Enable selection of those part(s).
• In response to that selection, generate a further display of one or more additional parts of the item identifiers.
• Enable selection of those further parts, so they add to/concatinate with the already-selected parts to build a larger part or the whole of an item identifier.

Plainly: this is the core "partial word completion" invention — instead of typing characters one at a time, the user picks progressively longer segments (string/word sections) from menus, and each pick narrows/extends the item identifier until the target item resolves.

Apparatus/other aspects disclosed in the specification (which may map to further independent claims in the 2002-priority family): an apparatus counterpart (display + input + generating means + addition means), plus method and apparatus variants where the displayed identifier parts are chosen "in accordance with predetermined criteria." (These four "aspects" appear in the supplied text's summary, but I cannot confirm their claim numbers in the granted 9697264.)

Representative dependent claims (published set): iterating selection until the identifier is complete; prioritization scheme for the initial display; alphanumeric/text-string/word identifiers; words from at least one language; songs; contacts; graphical depictions; menu selections; mobile telephone; PDA; joystick (incl. five-way); touch screen; programmable keys; local vs. remote storage; dynamic prioritization based on prior selection frequency; and quantified performance claims (e.g., ~50% less time, ~60% fewer clicks, ~80% fewer errors, and various ranges).

Source for claims: https://patents.justia.com/patent/20100153881

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4. Litigation / PTAB (from the Google Patents record)

• PTAB: IPR2020-00736 — filed; status "Not Instituted – Merits." Petitioner listed by Google Patents as Unified Patents. (Note: I could not confirm from the record that this IPR specifically targets 9697264 vs. a family member; Google Patents lists it under this patent's "family has litigation.")
• District court: US case filed in the Southern District of New York — docket 1:19-cv-04297.
• Federal Circuit: US case filed, appeal No. 21-1638.

Secondary confirmation: Kannuu Pty Ltd. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., appeal to the Federal Circuit (Newman, Prost, Chen) from the S.D.N.Y., addressing a forum-selection clause in an NDA and whether IPR proceedings were prohibited — see JD Supra reporting. A separate 2025 SDNY development (Judge Edgardo Ramos, July 29, 2025) granted Kannuu leave to amend to assert two newly-issued patents, reflecting ongoing Kannuu enforcement activity.

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5. On the 2026 CAFC docket request — explicit uncertainty

I was unable to confirm any 2026 Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit docket activity specifically tied to US9697264. My targeted searches for "Kannuu / Samsung / 2026 / Federal Circuit / 9697264" did not return an authoritative 2026 docket for this patent before I exhausted my search steps. The only Federal Circuit appeal the record ties to this patent is 21-1638, which predates 2026. I cannot state with high confidence that there is or is not a 2026 CAFC docket entry for 9697264 — that would require a direct check of the CAFC/CM-ECF docket, which I could not complete.

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6. Important disambiguation (per your "do not auto-correct / do not return similar numbers" instruction)

Search results repeatedly surface related but distinct patents in the same Kannuu/Dinn portfolio. These are NOT US9697264 and should not be conflated:

• US9836489 (app. 15/232,511; priority 2005-08-12) — same title, different family (2005 priority vs. 9697264's 2002 priority).
• US8676852 / US8375058 / US8996579 / US9436354 / US8140560 — the 2005-priority family (PCT/AU2006/001151).
• US20100010963A1 — pre-grant pub of the 2005 family.
• US20180260424A1 / US20200341999A1 / US11573939 — later continuations in the 2005 family.

By contrast, US9697264B2 / US20100153881A1 (application 12/448,601, priority 2002-08-20) is the 2002-priority line (national phase of PCT/AU2007/002010). The textual similarity of titles across these families is why search results mix them — the numbers above are the literal, correct identifiers.

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Bottom line

US9697264 (Kannuu Pty Ltd; inventor Kevin W. Dinn; filed 2007-12-28; granted 2017-07-04; now expired) claims a "partial word completion" method/system for building up a database item's text identifier by selecting progressively longer displayed segments, rather than typing characters. It has associated litigation history (SDNY 1:19-cv-04297; CAFC 21-1638; IPR2020-00736 not instituted). I could not verify any 2026 Federal Circuit docket activity for this specific number, and the granted claim language is not present in the supplied authoritative text — both points are stated as uncertainties rather than asserted facts.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 9697264. Let me search multiple sources.

I've found significant litigation. Let me dig deeper into case specifics and outcomes.

Let me verify the current status and check for any additional defendants or cases.

Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. 9,697,264 ("the '264 patent")

Summary

Yes — there is known litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 9,697,264, all of it stemming from a single dispute between Kannuu Pty Ltd. (Australian patent owner) and Samsung. The '264 patent was asserted in one district court action and was the subject of a separate (non-instituted) IPR. It was ultimately invalidated by ex parte reexamination, and all of its claims were cancelled.

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1. District Court — Kannuu Pty Ltd. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. et al.

Patents asserted. The original complaint asserted four patents: U.S. 8,370,393 ('393), 8,676,852 ('852), 9,436,354 ('354), and 9,697,264 ('264). A First Amended Complaint (Oct. 1, 2019) added U.S. 8,996,579 ('579). The accused products were Samsung Smart TVs (4/5/6/7/8/9-Series) and Blu-ray DVD players.

Procedural history / outcome.

• Jan. 19, 2021 — The court denied Kannuu's motion for a preliminary injunction (which sought to force Samsung to dismiss its IPRs based on the NDA's forum-selection clause), denied Kannuu leave to supplement its complaint, and granted Samsung's motion to stay the case pending the IPRs. (Kannuu Pty Ltd. v. Samsung Elecs. Co., No. 19 Civ. 4297 (ER), 2021 WL 195163 (S.D.N.Y. Jan. 19, 2021).)
• Jan. 26, 2022 — Stay extended pending USPTO reexamination proceedings.
• Aug. 14, 2024 — Stay lifted; briefing scheduled on Kannuu's motion to amend (to add a related '252 patent) and Samsung's anticipated motion to dismiss for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction (since the asserted '264 and other claims had been cancelled).
• Sept. 4, 2024 — Kannuu filed a motion for leave to amend the First Amended Complaint.

Status. By the last records available to me, the case was still active in late 2024 on the motion to amend / motion to dismiss, but the '264 patent's claims had already been cancelled, mooting any claim based on it. I do not have a confirmed final disposition (e.g., a dismissal order) as of today's date — treat the terminal status of the district case as uncertain from my sources.

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2. Federal Circuit Appeal — Kannuu Pty Ltd. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., No. 21-1638

Issue. Whether the NDA's forum-selection clause barred Samsung from petitioning for IPR of the Kannuu patents — a question of first impression.

Outcome. The Federal Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of the preliminary injunction, holding the forum-selection clause in the NDA (as opposed to a patent license) did not encompass the IPR proceedings. Judge Newman dissented. Kannuu's request for panel/en banc rehearing was made; I have not confirmed a disposition of that rehearing request.

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3. PTAB — Samsung Electronics America, Inc. v. Kannuu Pty Ltd., IPR2020-00736 (the '264 patent)

Samsung filed five related IPR petitions on March 17/27, 2020: IPR2020-00736 ('264), -00737 ('354), -00738 ('393), -00739 ('579), and -00740 ('852). Institution was denied for the '264, '852, and '579 patents; instituted only for the '354 and '393 patents. (Consistent with the Google Patents listing for US 9,697,264, which records IPR2020-00736 as "filed (Not Instituted – Merits)".)

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4. Ex Parte Reexamination of the '264 patent (post-grant, USPTO)

Although not "litigation" in the district-court sense, this proceeding disposed of the patent:

• May 28, 2021 — Samsung filed ex parte reexamination (EPR) requests against the '852, '579, and '264 patents.
• July 2, 2021 — USPTO ordered EPR of the '264 patent.
• Sept. 2, 2022 — USPTO issued a final rejection of the '264 patent's claims.
• Sept. 19, 2023 — Following Kannuu's ex parte appeals, the PTAB affirmed the invalidity of the '852, '579, and '264 patents.
• May 31, 2024 — USPTO issued the reexamination certificate cancelling all claims of the '264 patent.

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Notes on Sources and Confidence

• The above is grounded in the S.D.N.Y. First Amended Complaint, the district court's Jan. 19, 2021 Opinion and Order (Dkt. 93), the Federal Circuit opinion (21-1638, Oct. 7, 2021), PTAB filings/transcripts for IPR2020-00736/-00737, and the Google Patents record for US 9,697,264 (which itself lists the NY S.D.N.Y. case, CAFC case 21-1638, and PTAB matter IPR2020-00736).
• No other defendants (beyond the Samsung entities) appear in the litigation record for the '264 patent. The Google Patents page lists only the S.D.N.Y. case and the 21-1638 Federal Circuit appeal.
• I could not retrieve a 2025–2026 update confirming the final disposition of the district court action after the September 2024 motion practice. If you need that terminal status (e.g., an order granting Samsung's motion to dismiss or Kannuu's motion to amend), a current PACER/docket pull for 1:19-cv-04297-ER would be required; I'm flagging this rather than asserting an outcome I cannot verify.

I'll start by verifying what PTAB activity exists for this patent, since the Google Patents record itself mentions IPR2020-00736.

Let me dig into the specific proceedings and confirm which patent each one targets.

Key finding: IPR2020-00736 (the '264 patent) was denied institution. Let me confirm the details and check whether the '264 claims were later invalidated in ex parte reexamination.

Data-quality caveat (read first)

The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block reports no AIA trial proceedings for US 9,697,264. That is incomplete. Independent verification shows one AIA trial proceeding was filed against this patent — IPR2020-00736 — and it was denied institution on 2020-09-22 (the Google Patents litigation/PTAB block on the patent page itself records: "PTAB case IPR2020-00736 filed (Not Instituted – Merits)", and the Board's own Final Written Decision in the companion IPR2020-00738 confirms: "The '264 patent was challenged in IPR2020-00736, and we denied institution in that proceeding. IPR2020-00736, Paper 23."). Because -736 never instituted, ODP ingest may not surface it as a "trial." The denial is nonetheless a real, citable PTAB event.

One attribution trap worth flagging: the "Petitioner: 'Unified Patents PTAB Data'" label on the Google Patents page is a data-source license credit (Unified Patents' CC-BY PTAB dataset), not the identity of the petitioner. Unified Patents is not in this chain. The petitioner was Samsung.

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Proceedings overview

One AIA trial proceeding has been filed against US 9,697,264 — IPR2020-00736 (Samsung v. Kannuu), institution DENIED on the merits — yielding a breakdown of 0 claims invalidated by PTAB trial / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 1 institution denial, but the patent's entire claim set was canceled in a parallel ex parte reexamination (certificate 2024-05-31), so the '264 is a dead letter: any demand letter citing it is baseless.

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Ex parte reexamination of US 9,697,264 (requester: Samsung) — NOT an AIA trial, but outcome-determinative

(Placed first because this is the proceeding that killed the patent.)

• Type: Ex parte reexamination (35 U.S.C. §§ 301–307) — not an IPR/PGR/CBM. It is included because it disposed of every claim of the '264 and is the only reason a defendant's analysis changes.
• Filed / ordered: EPR requests filed 2021-05-28; USPTO ordered reexamination of the '264 on 2021-07-02. (Control number not verified from the sources reviewed.)
• Status: All claims canceled. The USPTO's reexamination certificate canceling all claims of the '264 issued 2024-05-31. (Companion '852 and '579 certificates issued 2024-05-24 and 2024-06-03.) Certificate text as recorded in the S.D.N.Y. record: "the USPTO issued its reexamination certificates canceling all claims of the '852, '579, and '264 patents."
• Prosecution history: Examiner's final rejection of the '264 claims 2022-09-02; Kannuu appealed; the PTAB affirmed the invalidity of the '264 on 2023-09-19.
• Claim-level outcome: Every claim canceled. No claim was held patentable. The certificate did not preserve any dependent claim — so there is no surviving claim scope to design around, and there is no narrowing amendment of the type that might have left narrower claims alive.
• Appeal of the reexam affirmance: I could not verify whether Kannuu took the 2023-09-19 PTAB affirmance up to the Federal Circuit. Flagged as unknown rather than assumed.
• Parallel status note: Google Patents' legal-status field for the '264 reads "Expired – Fee Related," adjusted expiration 2030-01-26 — i.e., the record also reflects a maintenance-fee lapse.
• Defensive value: Decisive for a defendant. There is no enforceable claim in the '264. A demand letter asserting the '264 is not a close call — the right response is a short letter citing the 2024-05-31 reexamination certificate and, if suit is nonetheless filed, a Rule 11 / § 285 posture.

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IPR2020-00736 — [Samsung Electronics America, Inc.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Samsung%20Electronics%20America%2C%20Inc.) v. Kannuu Pty Ltd

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2020-03-17 (one of five petitions Samsung filed that day against all five Kannuu asserted patents: '393, '852, '354, '264, '579)
• Status: Denied institution — merits (Google Patents: "Not Instituted – Merits"). Board decision Paper 23, 2020-09-22. Institution denials are not appealable (§ 314(d); In re Procter & Gamble, 749 F.3d 1376 (Fed. Cir. 2014)), and no Final Written Decision ever issued.
• Judge panel: Per the 2020-07-10 joint conference-call record in the five related Samsung–Kannuu IPRs, the panel was APJs Minn Chung (lead), Kristin L. Droesch, and Jessica C. Kaiser. I did not independently verify the signature block of the -736 Paper 23 itself; the same three judges handled the consolidated -736/-737/-738/-739/-740 family.
• Petition grounds: Samsung challenged all claims of the '264, asserting invalidity under § 102 (anticipation) and § 103 (obviousness). Across the five-petition campaign Samsung ran eleven grounds on four prior-art references not considered during prosecution — Perlman (US 2002/0113825 A1), Pu (US 7,152,213), Krohn (US 6,593,913), and Dostie (US 2004/0021691 A1). Those four references are documented in the sibling -737 petition/-738 FWD; I could not verify from public sources the exact ground-to-claim mapping used specifically in -736, so treat that mapping as unconfirmed.
• Institution decision: Denied 2020-09-22 on the merits — the Board found Samsung failed to show a reasonable likelihood of prevailing on unpatentability as to any challenged claim (the Federal Circuit's description of the three denials: "The Board denied institution for three patents (on the merits of failing to show unpatentability)"). Importantly, the denial was not based on Kannuu's arguments.
• Final Written Decision: None. No claim-level validity holding on the '264 was ever issued by the PTAB in an AIA trial. (This matters: the denial is not a validity win for Kannuu.)
• Collateral FSC fight (Kannuu's discretionary-denial theory): Kannuu argued the NDA's New York forum-selection clause barred Samsung from filing. The Board rejected contractual estoppel as a defense ("contractual estoppel is not a defense to inter partes review"), and Kannuu sought rehearing plus Precedential Opinion Panel review (request filed 2020-10-07) — denied. Kannuu then moved in S.D.N.Y. for a preliminary injunction compelling Samsung to dismiss the IPRs; denied 2021-01-19; affirmed on appeal, Kannuu Pty Ltd. v. Samsung Elecs. Co., No. 2021-1638 (Fed. Cir. Oct. 7, 2021) (Chen, J., majority; Newman, J., dissenting) — CAFC opinion PDF. That appeal concerned the instituted '354/'393 IPRs; the '264 was already out on the merits. Kannuu filed a rehearing/en banc petition in November 2021; I did not verify its disposition. (Note: the appeal is not an appeal of any '264 decision — there was none to appeal.)
• Settlement / termination: No settlement recorded; -736 simply terminated at denial. No IPR certificate exists for the '264 because no trial occurred.
• Appeal: None. See § 314(d) above.
• Defensive value: Modest but real. -736 is not a validity determination and confers no issue-preclusion benefit on Kannuu — the Board never reached the merits of the printed claims on a full record, and Kannuu's FSC-loss shows the Board will not let a confidentiality agreement shut down IPR. But because the same four references were also pressed in ex parte reexamination and the examiner rejected every claim, -736 is better understood as the first stage of a two-track attack that ultimately succeeded through reexam.

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Strategic summary

Claim status. Every claim of US 9,697,264 is CANCELED, via ex parte reexamination certificate dated 2024-05-31, following examiner final rejection 2022-09-02 and PTAB affirmance 2023-09-19. Nothing is SUSTAINED, and nothing remains untested — the reexam reached all claims. The only AIA-trial-level PTAB event, IPR2020-00736, was denied institution (2020-09-22) and produced no claim-level holding. Separately, the patent's recorded legal status is "Expired – Fee Related" with an adjusted expiration of 2030-01-26.

Estoppel landscape. Because no IPR on the '264 ever reached a Final Written Decision, § 315(e)(2) estoppel never attached — as to this patent there is no petitioner estoppel, no privity estoppel, and nothing for a defendant to inherit or be trapped by. The relevant constraint on a defendant here is the mirror image: the '264 cannot be asserted at all, so the § 315(e)(2) analysis is academic. For anyone facing Kannuu on the successor patents, note that Samsung has now moved to IPR against at least one of them (below), and § 315(e)(2) will begin to bite in that proceeding after any FWD.

Pattern signals. Samsung ran a coordinated, two-track campaign: five IPRs filed 2020-03-17 on all five asserted patents; three denied institution ('264, '579, '852) and two instituted ('354, '393). Rather than appealing the three denials (not appealable), Samsung filed ex parte reexamination requests on the three denied patents on 2021-05-28 — and won all three, canceling every claim of the '264, '579 and '852. The two instituted IPRs likewise ended in full invalidation (IPR certificates canceling all claims of the '354 and '393 issued 2024-02-09). Net result: all five Kannuu patents asserted in S.D.N.Y. No. 1:19-cv-04297 (ER) were wiped out by 2024. Kannuu's response was to seek leave to swap in newly-issued patents; Judge Ramos granted leave on 2025-07-29, and Samsung promptly petitioned against one of them — IPR2026-00071, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. v. Kannuu Pty. Ltd., filed 2025-10-20, challenging US 11,573,939 (Docket Alarm shows status "Trial Instituted," institution granted 2026-04-01 — treat that docket entry as provisional/unverified; it is sourced from a Docket Alarm sandbox page). IPR2026-00071 is not a proceeding on the '264 and I have not verified whether 11,573,939 claims lineage to the '264. No defensive aggregator (e.g., Unified Patents) is in the chain — the "Unified Patents" text on the Google Patents page is a dataset credit only. Kannuu litigated the PTAB access question aggressively all the way to a Federal Circuit panel and an en banc petition in the forum-selection-clause case (21-1638).

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Recommended next steps

1. If a demand letter or complaint cites US 9,697,264 — stop there. All claims were canceled. The reexamination certificate issued 2024-05-31 canceled all claims of the '264 (S.D.N.Y. record: "canceling all claims of the '852, '579, and '264 patents"). Pull the certificate from USPTO Patent Center and attach it. There is no claim 1, no dependent claim, and no narrowed substitute claim to assert.
2. Do not over-read IPR2020-00736's denial. -736 was a merits denial of institution on 2020-09-22 (Paper 23), it is non-appealable under § 314(d), and it produced no FWD and no estoppel. Do not treat it as evidence that the '264 claims were ever adjudicated valid — they were not; they were instead canceled in reexamination. Confirming document: the Board's IPR2020-00738 FWD, which states "The '264 patent was challenged in IPR2020-00736, and we denied institution in that proceeding. IPR2020-00736, Paper 23" — copy; search PTAB decisions at USPTO PTAB Decisions search.
3. If you are being asserted against a Kannuu successor patent (e.g., US 11,573,939, now in IPR2026-00071), the '264 history is a roadmap, not a shield: (a) expect Samsung to press the same four-reference family (Perlman, Pu, Krohn, Dostie) plus reexam-grade art; (b) check the IPR2026-00071 docket on PTAB E2E (ptab.uspto.gov) for the institution decision, oral hearing date, and the statutory § 316(a)(11) one-year FWD deadline running from the institution date; (c) note that a Final Written Decision in IPR2026-00071 will trigger § 315(e)(2) estoppel for Samsung and its privies — but not for you, if you are a separate defendant, unless you are in privity.
4. Verify before relying. I could not confirm from public sources: (i) the ex parte reexamination control number for the '264; (ii) whether Kannuu appealed the 2023-09-19 PTAB reexam affirmance to the Federal Circuit; (iii) the exact ground-to-claim mapping in the -736 petition; (iv) the disposition of Kannuu's November 2021 en banc/rehearing petition in No. 2021-1638; and (v) the accuracy of the IPR2026-00071 institution entry. Pull the primary documents from PTAB E2E and Patent Center before filing anything that depends on them.

I'll research the assignment record for US 9697264 before writing up. Let me pull the available sources.

Let me dig into the litigation and any later transfers.

Let me check for any later transfers, the company's status, and NPE-database entries.

Ownership & Assignment Reconstruction — US 9,697,264 B2

Scope note / sourcing caveat. I was able to reach Google Patents' legal-events mirror of the USPTO assignment data, the PTAB and district-court record, and the Federal Circuit opinions. I was not able to open the Assignment Center record itself in this session, so I do not have the reel/frame for the one recorded assignment, nor the recorded correspondent. I have flagged every place that matters below rather than guessing. Reel/frame numbers are not fabricated anywhere in this report.

Patent under review: US 9,697,264 B2, Process and apparatus for selecting an item from a database, application US 12/448,601 (371 national stage; PCT international filing date 2007-12-28), priority 2002-08-20, granted 2017-07-04. Google Patents records legal status as "Expired – Fee Related, expires 2030-01-26" (an assumption per the site's own disclaimer, i.e. an apparent maintenance-fee lapse rather than a sale).

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Inventors

Unusual patterns observed / not observed:

• Only one inventor — no inventor-team attrition pattern to analyze. There is no evidence of inventors departing within 12 months of filing (only one inventor, and he assigned to his own company rather than to a third party).
• The application was filed as a national-stage entry roughly five years after its 2002 priority date and took ~15 years from priority to grant. Long-pendency, single-inventor, single-small-entity portfolios of this shape are typical of a bootstrap technology company, not of a portfolio assembled for resale.
• No evidence of any inventor assignment to anyone other than Kannuu Pty Ltd.

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Original assignee

Kannuu Pty Ltd (recorded as "KANNUU PTY. LTD."), Australia — named on the face of the patent and still the assignee of record.

• Primary business (as evidenced by the record): predictive / "partial word completion" text and item search-and-navigation technology for devices with limited input — mobile handsets, Smart TVs, Blu-ray players, set-top boxes. Kannuu's own materials characterize the invention as a UI-text-entry and list-selection system for exactly those platforms.
• Did it ship a product embodying the claims? Unclear / apparently no. The strongest evidence of a physical embodiment is the SDNY record: Kannuu built and operated "demonstration platforms" that it let Samsung evaluate under the April 5, 2012 mutual NDA, and Samsung engineers praised "the performance and the speed of Kannuu's auto-complete and instant search solutions." That is a proof-of-concept, not a shipping product. Kannuu's Federal Circuit briefing describes it as a small company with limited employees and resources. I found no evidence of a commercial product embodying the '264 claims being sold by Kannuu at any relevant time; the company's route to market appears to have been licensing/OEM, which never closed.
• Current status: active and asserting. Kannuu is the plaintiff in Kannuu Pty Ltd. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. et al., No. 1:19-cv-04297-ER (S.D.N.Y.), and as of 2025-07-29 was granted leave to amend its complaint to assert two newly-issued patents after the USPTO invalidated the original five. Not acquired, not shown to be in bankruptcy, not dissolved on any record I could reach.

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Assignment timeline

There is one recorded assignment in the chain. There are no post-issuance assignments. The patent has never left the original innovator's company.

Execution date not exposed in the retrieved record / recorded 2010-02-22 — Reel/frame: not captured (the USPTO entry is recorded as "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)," and the Assignment Center document image was not retrievable in this session; I am not going to invent a reel/frame)

• Conveyance: Assignment
• Assignor: Dinn, Kevin W.
• Assignee: Kannuu Pty. Ltd.
• Correspondent: Not captured — could not be read from the assignment document in this session. Because this is a pre-issuance, single-link chain, there is by definition no recurrence to flag even if the correspondent is later retrieved. (For completeness: the firm of record for Kannuu in the litigation — a different and non-equivalent role — is a two-firm team, Hudnell Law Group P.C. (Lewis Hudnell, Mountain View, CA) and Progress LLP (Perry M. Goldberg, Los Angeles, CA; Ted Sichelman). These are litigation counsel, not assignment correspondents, and should not be entered in the chain as such.)
• Context: Original inventor-to-employer assignment; internal, routine, made during prosecution and long before any assertion.

Post-2010 events that are not assignments (listed so the chain is not misread):

• 2017-06-06 — priority claim to US 15/615,478 (a continuing application; a family event, not a transfer).
• 2017-07-04 — grant of the '264 patent to Kannuu Pty Ltd.
• No record of any assignment to an IP-holding LLC, aggregator, or third-party plaintiff at any point.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 9697264
    2002 : Priority date
    2007 : PCT international filing
    2010 : Assignment to Kannuu recorded
    2017 : Patent 9697264 issues
    2019 : Kannuu sues Samsung in SDNY
    2020 : Samsung IPRs filed
         : IPR of 264 denied institution
    2021 : Ex parte reexam of 264 ordered
         : Federal Circuit affirms denial of injunction
    2024 : All five asserted patents invalidated
    2025 : Leave granted to assert two new patents

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. No transfer of any kind after the 2010-02-22 inventor-to-company assignment (Google Patents legal events, entry dated 2010-02-22). There is no "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" entity anywhere in the chain, no single-purpose LLC, and no registered-agent address in the chain — because there is no second link.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. Kannuu Pty Ltd does not match any entity on the referenced rosters (Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg entities). Do not be misled by the Google Patents page: the "PTAB case IPR2020-00736" and "US case filed in New York Southern District Court" entries carry the label "Unified Patents PTAB Data" / "Unified Patents Litigation Data" — that is a data-source attribution, not an indication that Unified Patents filed the petition or acquired the patent. The petitioner of record in IPR2020-00736 is [Samsung Electronics America, Inc.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Samsung%20Electronics%20America%2C%20Inc.) (see Joint Record of Proceedings, Dec. 8, 2020, listing IPR2020-00736–00740).

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — not present (not assessable as recurrence). With a single recorded assignment there is no repetition to detect. The recorded correspondent was not retrievable this session. The only "repeat player" visible in this story is on the assertion side, not the assignment side: Hudnell Law Group P.C. and Progress LLP appear jointly as Kannuu's counsel in both the PTAB and the Federal Circuit appeal (21-1638). That two-firm, small-patent-owner structure is characteristic of contingency-fee patent enforcement, but it is litigation counsel — a single appearance in a single chain, which per your own standard is not a finding.

4. Cascading transfers — not present. Zero transfers in the 24 months before or after issuance. The last transfer of record predates issuance by seven years.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. The only assignment (recorded 2010-02-22) predates the first infringement complaint (2019-05-10, SDNY 1:19-cv-04297) by roughly nine years. There is no assignment within six months of suit, and thus no venue/standing-engineering transfer.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. No Chapter 7/11 record surfaced, and Kannuu continued operating as a litigant through 2025 (leave to amend granted 2025-07-29). A fire-sale is affirmatively inconsistent with the observed facts — the patent was never conveyed to a buyer.

7. Privateering — unclear, leaning not present. The direction is inverted from the classic pattern: an operating company did not transfer patents to an NPE to attack competitors. Instead the innovator itself (Kannuu) is the plaintiff, suing a former NDA counterparty (Samsung) after licensing talks failed in 2013. Whether Samsung is a "competitor" rather than a would-be licensee is contested and not resolvable from the chain.

8. Defensive aggregator — not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN; there is no purchase and no assignment at all. Note the functional neutralizing event nonetheless occurred through the PTO, not the market: Samsung's petitions and ex parte reexamination requests led the USPTO to invalidate all five asserted patents by 2024 (Fed. Cir. affirmed IPR results for the '354 and '393 patents on 2023-10-11, No. 2022-1526; ex parte reexamination of the '264 patent was ordered 2021-07-02).

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Verdict

Insufficient data (only the original assignment).

Justification. The entire recorded ownership chain consists of a single entry — the inventor-to-company assignment to Kannuu Pty. Ltd. recorded 2010-02-22 (reel/frame not retrievable this session; Google Patents legal events, same date) — and the patent has remained with the original innovator ever since, including through the 2019 filing of 1:19-cv-04297 and the 2025-07-29 grant of leave to assert new patents. Every transfer-dependent troll signal (shell-entity transfer, cascading LLCs, pre-litigation transfer, fire-sale, privateering, defensive aggregation) is affirmatively absent, and Kannuu does not appear on any referenced NPE roster; the NPE-adjacent facts that do exist — a non-manufacturing small owner, failed licensing, contingency-style boutique counsel, and a deep-pocket defendant — describe Kannuu's assertion posture, not its ownership chain, and are not sufficient to classify the chain as NPE under your evidentiary standard.

Adjacent observation (not part of the verdict): if you define "NPE" purely as non-practicing patent enforcer rather than as the shell-transfer pattern, Kannuu is an arguable candidate — it appears never to have sold a product embodying the '264 claims, licensed rather than manufactured, and enforced the patent with Hudnell Law Group and Progress LLP. Resolving that would require product-sales evidence for Kannuu that I could not obtain. I am not converting it into a finding here.

Verification links:

• USPTO Assignment Center, search by patent number or application 12/448,601: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (indexed mirror: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html)
• Google Patents legal events for this patent: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US9697264B2](/patent/US9697264B2)/en
• District court docket / opinions: Kannuu Pty Ltd. v. Samsung Elecs. Co., No. 1:19-cv-04297-ER (S.D.N.Y.); Fed. Cir. No. 21-1638, 15 F.4th 1101 (Oct. 7, 2021).

I'll research US patent 9697264 and its cited prior art. Let me start with several searches.

Let me search for the specific prior art citations listed on US9697264 and the IPR proceedings.

Let me try to access the specific citation list for US9697264 and the IPR details.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 9,697,264 B2

Important caveat up front: I was unable to retrieve the complete "References Cited" list for US 9,697,264 itself within my search budget — Google Patents and Justia return the specification text but not the full citation table in the snippets. What follows therefore uses (a) the verified bibliographic record for the '264 patent from Google Patents, (b) the citation list I retrieved from the sibling patent in the same family, US 8,996,579 B2 (identical title, inventor, and assignee, and a continuation in the same Dinn/Kannuu specification family), and (c) the litigation/PTAB record. I flag each item's confidence level and do not fabricate reference contents. Patent numbers and dates are reproduced literally as found.

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1. Patent under analysis (verified)

Related applications listed in the '264 family description: U.S. Provisional 60/878,083 (2007-01-03), 60/905,295 (2007-03-07), PCT/AU2006/001151 (2006-08-11), AU 2005904378 (2005-08-12), U.S. 10/495,585 (2002-08-20), PCT/AU02/01114 (2002-08-20), and AU PS-1072 (2002-03-13).

Litigation/administrative history of record (relevant to prior art):

• PTAB IPR2020-00736 ([[Samsung Electronics America](/litigations/by-defendant/Samsung%20Electronics%20America), Inc.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Samsung%20Electronics%20America%2C%20Inc.) v. Kannuu Pty. Ltd.) — institution DENIED, Paper 23, 2020-09-22.
• Companion IPRs: IPR2020-00737 ('354 patent) and IPR2020-00738 ('393 patent) were instituted; IPR2020-00739 ('579) and IPR2020-00740 ('852) were denied.
• Ex parte reexamination 90/014,759 of the '264 patent, requested 2021-05-28, supported by a Declaration of Clifton Forlines, Ph.D.
• CAFC Case No. 21-1638 (appeal of the SDNY preliminary-injunction denial).
• Per Samsung's appellate brief, the IPRs attacked the patents "under 35 U.S.C. §§ 102 and 103, on eleven different grounds based on combinations of four different prior art references not considered during prosecution."

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2. References of record (examiner citations)

The following U.S. patent documents appear in the "References Cited" table of the sibling US 8,996,579 B2 PDF (Kannuu/Dinn, same specification). These are a strong proxy for the '264 citation list but must be verified against the '264 front page — I could not confirm that every entry is identical between the two family members. Dates/numbers are transcribed literally.

2a. U.S. Patent Documents

(The retrieved snippet truncated the list after 6,792,287; additional U.S. entries likely follow.)

2b. Foreign Patent Documents / Other

Search-result conflict (per your rule): Earlier search hits rendered these two numbers as "CN 1199302" and "DE 3123596" (and one garbled variant, "CN DE 1199302... 3123596"). I am reporting them exactly as retrieved and not auto-correcting them.

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3. §102 anticipation analysis

3a. The claim set to be assessed

For the '264 patent, the representative independent claim (as published for the same application, US 2010/0153881 A1) reads:

Claim 1. A method of selecting items from a collection of items, said collection of items being indexed by a list of item identifiers, the method comprising: generating an initial display including one or more parts of said item identifiers for selection; enabling selection of said one or more parts; generating a display of a further one or more parts of said item identifiers for selection in response to selection of said one or more parts, and enabling selection of said further one or more parts in order to add to said selected one or more parts to build a larger part or whole of said item identifier.

Dependent-claim landscape (claims 2–26 as published):

• 2 iterate until identifier complete; select the identifier.
• 3 initial-display parts chosen by a prioritization scheme.
• 4–11 identifier character/word/graphical types; word collections; songs; menu; contacts.
• 12–19 device/input means (mobile phone; PDA; joystick; five-way joystick; touch screen; programmable keys; local vs. remote storage).
• 20 dynamic prioritization adjusted by number of prior selections.
• 21–26 quantified performance gains (≈50% less time; ≈60% fewer clicks; ≈80% fewer errors; and ranges).

⚠️ Caveat: the granted '264 claims may have been amended relative to the published application. Verify the exact issued claims against the '264 grant before relying on any §102 mapping below. (Note also that the sibling US 9,836,489 recites a system claim variously describing a "ranking scheme" and up/down/left/right positioning — a reminder that Kannuu's continuation patents carry materially different claim language.)

3b. Single-reference (§102) candidates

For §102, a single reference must disclose every element of the claim, arranged as claimed (no obviousness-style combination). Because the examiner-cited art here is almost entirely pre-2002, and because I could not obtain each reference's disclosure, I can only responsibly mark candidate references rather than assert anticipation.

Honest assessment of §102 on the record I could verify: No examiner citation is shown to anticipate any claim, and the performance-metric claims (21–26, which would be renumbered if claims were amended) are essentially non-anticipatable by a structural reference because they recite measured time/click/error reductions. The strongest §102 exposure is against the broad claim 1, and the record indicates the serious §102/§103 attacks came from art not of record (the IPR2020-00736 references), not from the examiner citations.

3c. The most relevant prior art overall is arguably not the examiner citations

The record strongly suggests the highest-relevance prior art is the four references not considered during prosecution raised in IPR2020-00736:

• Samsung asserted "eleven different grounds based on combinations of four different prior art references not considered during prosecution," under §§ 102 and 103 (Kannuu Appellee Brief, CAFC 21-1638).
• The PTAB nonetheless denied institution (Paper 23, 2020-09-22) — i.e., Samsung failed to show a reasonable likelihood of prevailing on any challenged '264 claim.
• A parallel ex parte reexamination (90/014,759) was requested 2021-05-28 with a Forlines declaration.

I could not verify the identity or bibliographic data of those four references. They should be treated as the priority target for any follow-on §102 analysis, and their citation from the IPR2020-00736 petition and the 90/014,759 reexamination request should be pulled directly from USPTO PTAB/PatentCenter.

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4. Bottom line

1. US 9,697,264 B2 (Dinn / Kannuu; app. 12/448,601; filed 2007-12-28; priority claimed to 2002-08-20; granted 2017-07-04) is the '264 patent at issue in Kannuu v. Samsung.
2. The examiner-cited prior art is a long list of ~30 pre-2002 U.S. patents (Frenkel '939 through Lewis '287, per the sibling US 8,996,579) plus CN 1199302 (Nov 1998) and DE 3123596 (Jun 1981) and the EP Search Report of Dec 1, 2006 for PCT/AU2002/01114.
3. No examiner citation can be responsibly characterized as anticipating claim 1 on the information retrievable here; the references appear to be field/background art. The individually most plausible §102 candidates are US 5,953,541 (Chen), US 6,011,554 (Schroeder), and US 6,223,059 (Bates) — but only if their disclosures are confirmed, which I could not do in this task.
4. The genuinely most relevant prior art appears to be the four references raised in IPR2020-00736 that were not of record during prosecution; those references, not the examiner citations, are where any §102/§103 challenge would be grounded. Their identities remain unverified here.
5. Because the exact granted claim language of the '264 patent may differ from the published application, any §102 mapping must be re-run against the issued claims.

Sources

• US 9,697,264 B2 (Google Patents): https://patents.google.com/patent/US9697264B2
• US 2010/0153881 A1 / application 12/448,601 (claims & description): https://uspto.report/patent/app/20100153881
• US 8,996,579 B2 PDF (family "References Cited"): https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/a3/f1/b5/74107c27b76116/US8996579.pdf
• IPR2020-00736 / -00737 / -00738 order (PTAB): https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2020-00737/... (Pro Hac Vice Order; Paper 23 denial 2020-09-22)
• Kannuu Appellee Brief (four references "not considered during prosecution"): http://patentlyo.com/media/2021/04/Kannuu-Appellee-Brief.pdf
• Reexamination / IPR document list incl. 90/014,759 and Forlines declaration: https://patents.justia.com/patent/[11573939](/patent/11573939)

If you want, I can next pull the exact '264 issued claims and the IPR2020-00736 petition's four prior-art references directly from USPTO PTAB/PatentCenter so the §102 mapping can be finalized against verified claim text.

I'll research the prior art of record for US 9,697,264 before building the §103 analysis.

Let me pull the claims and the specific prior-art citations of record, plus the PTAB proceeding.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 9,697,264 B2 (Kevin W. Dinn / Kannuu Pty Ltd)

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1. Evidence base, and what I could not verify

Anchoring data (as literally shown on the source page, https://patents.google.com/patent/US9697264/en):

Explicit limitations on this analysis (stated rather than papered over):

1. The claim set is not reproduced on the page as fetched. The page text supplied here is the description/summary-of-invention and figure list; it terminates mid-sentence in the address-book example ("…if the user sees the word section or string section that starts, or is a continuation of, the contact they want to select they move"). I could not retrieve verbatim claim language in this session. Section 3 below therefore reconstructs the claims from the summary-of-invention paragraphs, which in this family mirror the claim language almost sentence-for-sentence. Treat Section 3 as a working claim construction hypothesis, not as verified text.
2. The front-page "References Cited" list was not rendered on the page as fetched. I recovered portions of it from secondary reproductions (Justia's "Referenced Cited" for 9,697,264; the printed front pages of sibling U.S. 8,995,579 / 9,436,354). Several of those reproductions are OCR-corrupted, and under the strict rule I have not silently corrected them. Examples of inconsistencies I observed across sources, which must be reconciled against the printed documents before being relied on in a brief:

1. I could not verify, from primary sources, the substantive disclosure of Perlman, Krohn, Pu, Schroeder, Strubbe, Hargrove or Dostie. The mappings I attribute to them come from the publicly posted Samsung v. Kannuu IPR petition directed at sibling U.S. 9,436,354 (IPR2020-00737) and are labelled as such. I am not asserting paragraph-level support I have not read.
2. IPR2020-00736: the page associates this PTAB case with this patent/family and records the outcome as "Not Instituted – Merits." I could not confirm from the docket which single family member IPR2020-00736 targets (the parallel Samsung filings I retrieved are captioned IPR2020-00737 → U.S. 9,436,354 and IPR2020-00738 → U.S. 8,370,393). The outcome label should be treated as the page's assertion and verified on the Board's docket.

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2. Governing law and the threshold issue: the effective filing date

Application 12/448,601 was filed 2007-12-28, i.e. before 2013-03-16. Pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. §§ 102/103 govern.

That makes the effective filing date dispositive of which art is even available:

Practical read: the family's earliest document is a PCT filed under PCT/AU2002/01114 (evidenced by the "European Search Report dated Dec. 1, 2006 for PCT/AU2002/01114" appearing as a non-patent citation on the sibling front pages). A 2002-08-20 priority is therefore genuine for the family. Whether the claims of this particular member are supported by that 2002 disclosure — or only by matter added in the 2005/2007 filings (the specification's "partial word completion," dynamic/static tree engines, multi-dictionary traversal, and QWERTY-positioning features) — is the single most consequential validity question, and it is a written-description question, not a §103 question. Any §103 challenge should be pleaded in the alternative under both assumptions.

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3. Working claim construction (reconstructed from the summary of invention)

Treating the summary paragraphs as proxies for the claims, the presumable independent-claim elements are:

POSITA definition I would propose (to be confirmed against the specification): a software/human-factors engineer with a bachelor's degree in computer science or electrical engineering and 2–4 years' experience designing text-entry, menu-navigation or database-retrieval interfaces for consumer electronics, mobile telephones, or interactive-television devices — a person familiar with both prediction/disambiguation (T9-type) systems and hierarchical menu/EPG navigation.

The key observation for §103 purposes: every element E1–E5 is recited at a level of abstraction that leaves the entire mechanism to the implementer. "Parts of item identifiers," "further parts," "predetermined criteria," and "build a larger part" are functional, result-oriented recitations. There is no recited algorithm (front-coding, trie traversal, priority summation, branch-divergence detection), no recited number of options, no recited ordering rule, and no recited data structure. That breadth is precisely what makes the claim vulnerable to a KSR-type combination of known interface and prediction elements.

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4. The prior art of record, arranged by teaching

Layer 1 — References of record on the front page of the '264 patent (as recovered from secondary reproductions; digit strings as they appear, uncorrected — see §1):

Layer 2 — References asserted in the parallel PTAB challenge. From the publicly posted petition for [Samsung Electronics America, Inc.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Samsung%20Electronics%20America%2C%20Inc.) v. Kannuu Pty Ltd, directed at sibling U.S. 9,436,354 (IPR2020-00737), the asserted grounds and exhibits were:

Other exhibits in the same petition: Schroeder (US 5,797,098), Strubbe (US 5,223,924), Hargrove (US 5,787,417), plus a Forlines declaration. Because the '264 patent shares the same specification as the '354 patent, these grounds are transferable element-for-element to the '264 claims, subject to the priority-date analysis in §2.

Source: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2020-00737/Inter_Partes_Review_of_U.S._Pat._9436354/docs/03-17-2020-Petitioner/Petition-1-Petition_for_Inter_Partes_Review_of_US_Patent_No_9,436,354.pdf

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5. The §103 grounds

All grounds assume the reconstructed elements E1–E11 of §3.

Ground 1 — Krohn in view of Pu (primary ground); optionally + Dostie

Targets: E1–E6, and the application/action and "more" limitations (E7, E10).

• Krohn supplies: a stored, indexed collection of selectable items presented as choice sets on a display, navigated with a directional input mechanism rather than free text entry, with each choice advancing the user to a next choice set (E1, E2, E3, E4).
• Pu supplies: generation of completion/prediction candidates from a partial string against a stored dictionary, and the selection of a continuation that is concatenated to the partial string (E2, E4, E5) and chosen by a ranking/likelihood criterion (E6).
• Dostie supplies the specific user-interface affordance claimed in the narrower claim (per Ground 7's use of Dostie for the single "5"-type claim).
• Result: applying Pu's completion engine as the generator for Krohn's successive menu sets yields, as a matter of ordinary engineering, exactly the claimed loop select a part → display further parts → concatenate → repeat. Nothing in E1–E6 requires more than that.

Motivation (KSR): both references are in the same field (interactive selection on limited-input devices) and address the same recognized problem; a POSITA seeking to shorten long option lists has a design incentive to substitute a prediction-driven candidate generator for a fixed menu hierarchy. The combination is a substitution of one known technique for another with predictable results.

Ground 2 — Perlman alone (anticipated; alternatively §103), and Perlman in view of Pu / King

Targets: E1–E6.

• Perlman was mapped in the parallel petition to all of the core recursive menu-building limitations; where a claim adds a prediction/priority or "more" limitation, Pu or King (5,953,541 / 6,011,554) supplies it.
• Motivation: King expressly frames the problem as ambiguity and latency in entering words on a reduced keypad and solves it with a ranked candidate list plus a cycling key — the same objective the '264 patent states ("less flicking of focus between the controls and screen," "fewer mispresses," "enter several characters with one user input").

Ground 3 — King in view of Schroeder and Hargrove (the pre-2002-compatible ground)

Targets: E1–E7, E9, E10 — and, critically, this ground is built only from art that predates or could antedate 2002-08-20.

• King (E2, E3, E6, E7 — ranked candidate display + "next"/cycling of rejected candidates); Schroeder (E1, E3, E8, E9, E10 — index of names in a wireless telephone, retrieved and acted upon from a limited keypad/directional input); Hargrove (E6 — adaptively learned ordering of presented options).
• Motivation: all three are directed to retrieval/selection from stored lists of character-string identifiers on limited user interfaces. Combining a ranking engine (King/Hargrove) with a mobile stored-name list (Schroeder) is the combination of familiar elements according to known methods to achieve a predictable result — the KSR paradigm case.

Ground 4 — Any of Grounds 1–3 in view of Hachamovitch (U.S. 6,377,965)

Targets: E4, E5, and the "growing the entry so far" behaviour. Hachamovitch teaches displaying and accepting prefix-based completions in a text field; a POSITA would integrate that mechanism into a menu-based retrieval UI to avoid requiring the user to type the remaining characters.

Ground 5 — Grounds 1–4 in view of a handheld-device reference (Kraft 6,744,423; Finke-Anlauff 6,580,932; Dunleavy 6,748,242; Tuomela 6,795,287)

Targets: the apparatus claims ("means for display," "input means," joystick/d-pad) and E9. These references supply the conventional structural environment; the apparatus claims are prima facie obvious as the obvious structural implementation of the method.

Ground 6 — Grounds 1–5 in view of Lewak, Kamvar, Mansfield, Krause or Matta

Targets: E6 ("predetermined criteria") and E7 ("more"). Once the disclosure's own list of ranking mechanisms is considered — frequency, location, time, sequence — the claimed "predetermined criteria" is a result every one of these references reaches. Their use in combination is supported by the express design objective of ordering candidates by likelihood.

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6. Why a POSITA would have combined the references — the KSR/Graham factors

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7. What cuts against obviousness (a candid counterweight)

1. The Office/Board outcome. The page records IPR2020-00736 as "Not Instituted – Merits." In Unified Patents' taxonomy that denotes a denial of institution on the merits — i.e. the Board was not persuaded there was a reasonable likelihood that at least one claim was unpatentable. That is meaningful, contemporaneous, expert-adjudicator evidence against the grounds in §5 (as applied in that petition, to whichever family member it targeted). Any §103 attack on the '264 patent must confront and distinguish it, and must explain the difference in claim scope if the target differences exist. Verify the docket at https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/ptab/case/IPR2020-00736 before relying on this.
2. The priority date shuts out the strongest references. If priority is 2002-08-20, then: Perlman published 2002-08-22 — two days late for §102(a)/(b); the Moxi WO 2002/069240 published 2002-09-06 — late; Krohn issued 2003-07-15 — available only if its filing predates 2002-08-20 (plausible, must be verified); Pu (2006), Dostie (2004), Kamvar, Bates, Matthews, Mansfield, Rainisto, Lim, Krause, Matta are presumptively late. The burden shifts onto the challenger to prove §102(e) filing dates, or to prove that the claims are not supported by the 2002 disclosure and thus lose the priority claim. The Ground 3 pre-2002 combination (King + Schroeder + Hargrove) is the safest, but is also the one whose mapping onto multi-character selectable segments is the most arguable.
3. Objective indicia are on the record (though nexus is contestable): the specification reports measured results in FIGS. 5–8 — ≈3.8 s / 5.5 clicks per contact selection vs. 6.8 s on a keypad-refined phone address book and 6.3 s on a PC application; ≈3.6 s per song selection from ~1,000 vs. 11.5 s with a click wheel and 4.8 s on a PC; ≈7.8 s (joystick) and 7.4 s (touch) per selection from >500,000 tracks vs. 10.5 s on a PC — and the family was commercially asserted (SDNY 1:19-cv-04297; Fed. Cir. 21-1638) and licensed/enforced. Counter: the claims are not limited to the tested interface, ordering rule, or segment length, so the "nexus" between the measured advantage and the claimed subject matter is weak, and KSR counsels that advantages flowing predictably from known techniques do not establish non-obviousness.
4. Termination of the family by obviousness-type double patenting rather than §103 is at least as promising: Dinn's own US 2005/0043063 A1 and the numerous granted siblings (8,370,393; 8,375,058; 8,995,579; 9,436,354; 9,836,489; 11,573,939) all claim the same priority and the same specification.
5. Practical posture. The patent is recorded as Expired – Fee Related (adjusted expiration 2030-01-26) and is already lapsed. A §103 holding now has value chiefly as a defence to pre-lapse damages in the pending litigation, not as prospective relief.

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8. Bottom line

• Most likely to succeed (contingent on §102(e) dates or loss of the 2002 priority): Krohn + Pu, further in view of Dostie — carried over element-for-element from the parallel PTAB petition on sibling U.S. 9,436,354, and matching E1–E7 of the reconstruction in §3.
• Most robust to the priority-date problem: King (5,953,541 / 6,011,554) + Schroeder (5,797,098 / 6,032,053) + Hargrove (5,787,417), further in view of Hachamovitch (6,377,965) — a combination drawn entirely from art that can predate 2002-08-20.
• Common motivation across all grounds: same field, same problem (too many candidate strings, too few input affordances), known solutions (ranked candidate menus, candidate paging/"more," prefix completion, learned ordering), predictable results, no recited criticality, and no algorithmic limitation in the claims — the KSR "combination of familiar elements according to known methods" fact pattern.
• Principal headwinds: the denial of institution in IPR2020-00736 (as recorded on the page), the two-day miss by Perlman against the 2002-08-20 date, and the objective-indicia record in FIGS. 5–8.
• Confidence: I am confident in the legal framework, the priority-date analysis, the reference categories, and the structure of the grounds. I am not confident in the verbatim claim text, the exact front-page citation list (OCR-corrupted across sources), or the specific paragraph-level disclosures of Perlman, Krohn, Pu, Schroeder, Strubbe, Hargrove and Dostie, none of which I verified from primary documents in this session. Those four items must be confirmed against the printed patent and the referenced documents before any position here is filed or relied upon.