US 9892093

I'll verify the patent's current status, focusing on 2026 CAFC activity and USPTO records.

Let me verify the independent claim structure and check for any 2026 Supreme Court activity.

US 9,892,093 B1 — Verified Summary

Search scope: I searched USPTO/PTAB mirrors of the '093 file (Exhibit 1001 = the printed patent; Ex. 2068 = certified file history of appl. 15/197,389), the Google Patents bibliographic record, the Unified Patents patent record, and the Federal Circuit dockets for 2024-1360 / 2024-1361. I confined all hits to the exact number 9,892,093 (appl. 15/197,389) and excluded the sibling patents 9,886,421 ('421) and 9,886,421-family members, which appear in the same search results.

Bibliographic record

Abstract (verbatim, as printed): "When a browsing computer navigates to a network document, such as a web page, the corresponding server also downloads computer readable formatting information necessary for the operating system of the browsing computer to render nonstandard characters within the network document. An installation module is also downloaded to the browsing computer. The installation module is loaded onto the browsing computer which in turn either permanently installs or temporarily exposes the operating system of the browsing computer to the computer readable formatting information. As a result, the operating system of the browsing computer is able to display the network document including the non-standard characters."

Independent claims in plain language

Claim 1 — apparatus of a hand-held device. A hand-held device with a processor and memory; the memory's instructions make the device (a) run a browser that navigates to a network document on a website server, (b) talk to that server and get access to the document, (c) based on the document, send a request to a font server to download a font file for a defined character or character group, (d) receive that font file, and (e) automatically expose at least part of the font file to the device's operating system so the OS can render the character(s) — the exposure done by an installation module that copies the font file to a temporary font directory and updates the operating system's system font table with information about the font file. The "installation module + temporary font directory + system font table" limitation is the crux of all three independent claims.

Claim 10 — non-transitory computer-readable medium. The same invention expressed as instructions on a medium: browser on a hand-held device communicates with a website server; the device accesses the site's network document; it requests and receives a font file from a font server; an installation module automatically exposes the font file to the OS by copying it to a temporary font directory and updating the system font table; and the OS renders the network document's characters using that font file.

Claim 18 — computer-implemented method. The same steps framed as a method: enable communication between the hand-held device and the website server via a browser; access the network document; generate and transmit a font-server request for a font file; receive the font file; automatically expose it to the OS via an installation module that copies it to a temporary font directory and updates the system font table; and render the document's characters, by the OS, using the information in the font file.

Dependencies: claims 2–9 → claim 1 (claims 2–3 recite the apparatus is distinct from the website server and the font server; claim 6/11–13 recite plugin / browser extension / ActiveX; claim 7 recites copying to a directory with other standard system fonts; claim 9 recites erasing or making the font file inaccessible). Claims 11–17 → claim 10. Claims 19–21 → claim 18.

Current legal status — verified as of April 26, 2026

• PTAB: All 21 claims held unpatentable in IPR2022-00800 (FWD Nov. 16, 2023) over Collins (5,781,714) + Gautier (7,127,493) + Schaefer (7,028,305), plus Parthasarathy (6,347,398) for claims 6/11–13. Coinbase's IPR2022-00436 terminated–settled (Mar. 23, 2022).
• CAFC 2026 docket (this is the new/verified item): Judgment entered December 11, 2025 in the consolidated appeals 2024-1360 and 2024-1361, Clantech, Inc., Modern Font Applications LLC v. CoStar Realty Information, Inc., Duolingo, Inc. — nonprecedential disposition, PER CURIAM (Lourie, Reyna, Cunningham): "AFFIRMED. See Fed. Cir. R. 36." (https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/cafc/24-1360/24-1360-2025-12-11.html). A combined petition for panel rehearing and rehearing en banc, filed January 12, 2026, was DENIED on February 13, 2026, by order per curiam before Lourie, Dyk, Prost, Reyna, Taranto, Chen, Hughes, Stoll, Cunningham, and Stark (https://fedcircuitblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Clantech-Denial.pdf). No new 2026-docketed Federal Circuit appeal for the '093 patent exists. The certiorari window (≈90 days from Feb. 13, 2026) was still open at the search date; I found no cert petition for this case, but I cannot exclude one being filed after my search.
• Ownership: Clantech, Inc. remains assignee of record; a LICENSE to Modern Font Applications LLC was recorded 2024-03-14 (reel/frame not retrievable from available sources).

Uncertainty / items I could not verify authoritatively

1. Exact PTAB FWD reasoning beyond the ground-level holdings — I could not retrieve Paper 77's full text; the "all challenged claims unpatentable" and grounds statements come from the Board's opinion as reproduced in the CAFC appendix and third-party mirrors.
2. Reel/frame and execution dates for the three assignment events — the '093 file history certified copy (Ex. 2068) confirms the prosecution correspondence (Customer No. 93219; docketing@patentlawworks.net; TraskBritt's Andrew J. Baca signature, Dec. 29, 2017) but the assignment reel/frame is not in my sources.
3. Priority/expiration date off-by-one: Google Patents says priority 2001-07-16 and expiration 2021-07-16; the Unified Patents portal says 2001-07-15 / 2021-07-15. Unresolved.
4. Face-of-patent citation list: I confirmed the Ex. 1001 printed front page exists and lists references such as US 5,583,978 (Collins), 5,871,714, 5,893,915, 6,012,071 etc. (note the OCR rendering of "5,871,714" and "5,893,915" in that snippet is garbled against the true numbers US 5,781,714 and US 5,893,915 — treat any such figure read from the OCR with caution), but I did not enumerate all 36 citations.

Contradictions flagged against earlier generated sections

• Correction — independent claims. The earlier Prior art section states the independent claims are "claims 8, 14, 18 per the PTAB's challenged-claims grouping." That is incorrect. The Federal Circuit's underlying opinion text confirms: "Claims 1, 10, and 18 are independent claims directed to, respectively, an apparatus, a 'non-transitory computer-readable medium,' and a method. Claims 2 through 9 depend … from claim 1. Claims 11 through 17 depend … from claim 10. Claims 19 through 21 depend from claim 18." The Litigation summary's "independent claims 1, 10, and 18" is the correct statement.
• Correction — docketing of the rehearing petition. The PTAB challenges section says the January 12, 2026 rehearing petition is "docketed in the sibling-patent appeal, 24-1360, not in 24-1361." In fact it is a combined petition filed in, and denied as to, both 2024-1360 and 2024-1361 (captioned in both; denial order lists both docket numbers and both underlying IPRs, IPR2022-00799 and IPR2022-00800).
• Confirmed (no conflict): the Litigation summary's Feb. 13, 2026 rehearing denial and panel composition; the Dec. 11, 2025 per curiam affirmance; the "Expired – Fee Related" status; and Clantech as assignee with MFA as asserting licensee.

I'll research litigation involving US Patent 9,892,093 (the '093 patent). Let me search multiple sources to build a complete picture.

I have good initial results. Let me dig deeper into the specific district court cases and Federal Circuit appeals to get filing dates and current status.

I have most of the pieces. Let me now verify the Federal Circuit appeals (22-1215, 24-1361) and the final outcomes of the district court cases.

Based on my research across PTAB, Federal Circuit, district court, and litigation-tracking sources (Unified Patents, Docket Alarm, iPverse, PatSnap, Justia, Fed Circuit Blog), here is the known litigation involving US Patent 9,892,093 ("the '093 patent," titled Apparatus of a Hand-Held Device for Exposing Non-Standard Fonts in a Network Document to an Operating System).

District Court (Declaratory Judgment Actions, N.D. Cal.)

1. Coinbase, Inc. v. Modern Font Applications LLC

• Case No.: 3:21-cv-05305-LB (N.D. Cal., San Francisco)
• Plaintiff: Coinbase, Inc.
• Defendant: Modern Font Applications LLC ("MFA")
• Filing date: July 9, 2021 (complaint for declaratory judgment of non-infringement of the '127, '421, and '093 patents; MFA had sent a cease-and-desist letter)
• Key events: Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler denied MFA's motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction on January 6, 2022 (finding MFA's California contacts — cease-and-desist letter directed to Coinbase in San Francisco, in-forum in-house counsel, and other California enforcement activities — sufficient).
• Status/Outcome: The parallel IPR filed by Coinbase (IPR2022-00436) was terminated as settled (Mar. 23, 2022), which strongly suggests the overall dispute was resolved by settlement; however, I could not confirm the final district court docket disposition (e.g., stipulated dismissal/consent judgment) in the sources available to me. I cannot state the final district court disposition with high confidence.

2. Duolingo, Inc. v. Modern Font Applications LLC

• Case No.: 3:21-cv-06132-VC (also docketed/reflected as 5:21-cv-06132) (N.D. Cal., San Francisco Division)
• Plaintiff: Duolingo, Inc.
• Defendant: Modern Font Applications LLC
• Filing date: 2021 (case number sequence indicates mid-2021; a Second Amended Complaint for declaratory judgment of non-infringement and invalidity of the '127, '421, and '093 patents is of record)
• Status/Outcome: MFA appealed an aspect of this case to the Federal Circuit (see CAFC 22-1215 below). The district court's final disposition was not confirmed in my sources. Final outcome unconfirmed.

3. CoStar Realty Information, Inc. v. Modern Font Applications LLC

• Case No.: 3:21-cv-07521-VC (also reflected as 5:21-cv-07521) (N.D. Cal.)
• Plaintiff: CoStar Realty Information, Inc.
• Defendant: Modern Font Applications LLC
• Filing date: Original complaint filed 2021 (post-June 18, 2021 threat letter; case number indicates late 2021); Amended Complaint for Declaratory Judgment filed May 18, 2022
• Nature: DJ of non-infringement/invalidity of the '127, '421, and '093 patents as to the LoopNet.com website and iOS/Android apps (asserted claims of the '093 patent identified as independent claims 1, 10, and 18)
• Status/Outcome: Effectively resolved against the patent owner through the IPR and appeal process described below (claims 1–21 of the '093 patent held unpatentable). The district court's own final entry was not confirmed in my sources.

PTAB (Inter Partes Review)

4. Coinbase, Inc. v. Adamson, Robert G. — IPR2022-00436

• Petitioner: Coinbase, Inc.
• Patent Owner: Robert G. Adamson III (named inventor; '093 patent, Appl. 15/197,389)
• Filing date: January 20, 2022
• Status/Outcome: Terminated–Settled (termination date March 23, 2022). No final written decision.

5. CoStar Realty Information, Inc. and Duolingo, Inc. v. Modern Font Applications LLC / Clantech, Inc. — IPR2022-00800

• Petitioners: CoStar Realty Information, Inc. and Duolingo, Inc. (Latham & Watkins)
• Patent Owner: Modern Font Applications LLC (with Clantech, Inc. as patent owner per hearing transcript; counsel: Johnson & Martin / Amin, Turocy & Watson)
• Filing date: April 4, 2022
• Challenged claims: Claims 1–21 of the '093 patent
• Institution: November 23, 2022
• Outcome: Final Written Decision (Nov. 16, 2023) — all challenged claims held unpatentable (obviousness over Collins (US 5,781,714) in view of Gautier (US 7,127,493) and Schaefer (US 7,028,305), plus Parthasarathy (US 6,347,398) for certain dependent claims). The PTAB decision was appealed to the Federal Circuit (see below).

Federal Circuit (Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit)

6. Duolingo, Inc. v. Modern Font Applications LLC — Appeal No. 22-1215

• Originating case: 5:21-cv-06132 (N.D. Cal.)
• Appellant: Modern Font Applications LLC; Appellee: Duolingo, Inc.
• Filing date: 2022 (appeal docketed from the Duolingo DJ action)
• Status/Outcome: Not confirmed in my sources. I found the case listed in docket searches but could not verify its disposition (affirmance, dismissal, or otherwise). I flag this explicitly as unconfirmed.

7. Clantech, Inc. and Modern Font Applications LLC v. CoStar Realty Information, Inc. and Duolingo, Inc. — Appeal Nos. 2024-1361 (and companion 2024-1360, which concerns the related '421 patent / IPR2022-00799)

• Originating proceeding: IPR2022-00800 (PTAB)
• Appellants: Clantech, Inc. and Modern Font Applications LLC; Appellees: CoStar Realty Information, Inc. and Duolingo, Inc.
• Outcome: AFFIRMED per curiam (panel of Lourie, Reyna, and Cunningham) — the Federal Circuit affirmed the PTAB's unpatentability determination, extinguishing enforceability of the '093 patent's claims. The per curiam affirmance was issued in 2025; a combined petition for panel rehearing and rehearing en banc was denied February 13, 2026 (dated order; before Lourie, Dyk, Prost, Reyna, Taranto, Chen, Hughes, Stoll, Cunningham, and Stark).
• Current status: The unpatentability determination is final at the appellate level; the '093 patent is unenforceable. (Clantech's remaining theoretical options — en banc petition to the full court or Supreme Court certiorari — had not resulted in any favorable relief as of the most recent search results.)

Summary Notes

• The '093 patent (expired for fee-related reasons; anticipated expiration July 16, 2021) was the subject of a coordinated N.D. Cal. declaratory-judgment campaign by Coinbase, Duolingo, and CoStar in 2021, followed by IPRs in 2022.
• Coinbase's IPR (IPR2022-00436) settled; CoStar/Duolingo's IPR (IPR2022-00800) resulted in all claims 1–21 being held unpatentable, which the Federal Circuit affirmed and for which rehearing was denied (Feb. 13, 2026).
• Litigation involving the related family members (e.g., the '421 and '127 patents) — such as Modern Font Applications v. Peak Restaurant Partners (D. Utah, 2:19-cv-00221) and Modern Font Applications v. Alaska Airlines (Fed. Cir. 21-1838) — is not litigation of the '093 patent itself and was therefore excluded per your instructions, though it reflects the same assertion campaign.

Caveats: (1) I could not confirm the final docket dispositions of the three N.D. Cal. DJ actions (they were superseded in practical effect by the IPR outcome); (2) the disposition of CAFC Appeal 22-1215 could not be verified from the sources retrieved; (3) the listed statuses reflect search results dated as of April 26, 2026. If you need exact PACER docket entries for the district court cases or for 22-1215, I'd recommend a PACER/CM-ECF lookup, as those details were not fully available through the sources I accessed.

Proceedings overview

Two AIA trial proceedings against US 9,892,093 B1 exist — IPR2022-00436 (settled pre-institution, terminated) and IPR2022-00800 (instituted; Final Written Decision holding all 21 claims unpatentable; affirmed on appeal at the Federal Circuit). That is a 2-for-2 loss for the patent owner on the merits track: one IPR settled before the Board ever reached the merits, and the other resulted in cancellation of every claim. Bottom line for a defendant: every claim of the patent (1–21) has been canceled by a final, appeal-affirmed PTAB decision — the patent is dead. Any demand letter citing claims 1–21 of US 9,892,093 has no enforceable basis.

⚠️ Data-source note: The structured USPTO ODP block in this prompt reports no AIA trial proceedings on file. That ingest appears stale. Web search independently confirms both proceedings (USPTO PTAB records via ipverse.greyb.com, docketalarm.com, and ai-lab.exparte.com, plus the litigation docket on Google Patents). Treat the two proceedings below as the canonical list; the ODP "no activity" flag should not be relied on.

IPR2022-00800 — CoStar Realty Information, Inc. & Duolingo, Inc. v. Clantech, Inc. / Modern Font Applications, LLC

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2022-04-04
• Status: Final Written Decision – Appealed (per USPTO/third-party docket data; plain English: FWD issued 2023-11-16 holding all challenged claims unpatentable; patent owner appealed to the Federal Circuit and lost)
• Judge panel: Administrative Patent Judges Gregg I. Anderson, Jo-Anne M. Kokoski, and Jon M. Jurgovan (per ai-lab.exparte.com case summary; corroborated by PTAB filings identifying the panel)
• Petition grounds: All claims 1–21 challenged:
  • Ground 1 — Obviousness under § 103 over Collins (US 5,781,714) + Gautier (US 7,127,493) + Schaefer (US 7,028,305), directed to claims 1–5, 7–10, and 14–21. Collins disclosed a web-based dynamic-font system (portable font resource files downloaded with an HTML document and installed into the client OS font manager); Gautier supplied the hand-held device context (PDAs, cell phones); Schaefer supplied the OS abstraction layer with temporary font enablement ("temporary font directory" / "system font table").
  • Ground 2 — Obviousness under § 103 over Collins + Gautier + Schaefer + Parthasarathy (US 6,347,398), directed to claims 6 and 11–13 (Parthasarathy supplied the browser auto-download of plugin/ActiveX components via <OBJECT>/CODEBASE).
• Institution decision: Instituted on 2022-11-23 (per ipverse case data; scheduling order issued 2022-11-29). The Board found the Collins/Gautier/Schaefer combination and the Parthasarathy-supplemented combination had a reasonable likelihood of prevailing on all challenged claims.
• Final Written Decision (Paper 77, issued 2023-11-16): The Board entered judgment "Determining All Challenged Claims Unpatentable" under 35 U.S.C. § 318(a), and dismissed/denied the Petitioner's motion to exclude (docket entry text via docketalarm). Every challenged claim — independent claims 1, 10, and 18 and dependent claims 2–9, 11–17, and 19–21 — was held unpatentable. No claim survived.
• Settlement / termination: No settlement. The proceeding terminated upon issuance of the FWD (2023-11-16).
• Appeal: Yes — Federal Circuit Docket No. 24-1361, Clantech, Inc. v. CoStar Realty Information, Inc. & Duolingo, Inc. The panel (Lourie, Reyna, and Cunningham, Circuit Judges) entered judgment "AFFIRMED" per curiam. (PatSnap/Eureka, citing PACER docket 24-1361: "THIS CAUSE having been heard and considered, it is ORDERED and ADJUDGED: PER CURIAM (LOURIE, REYNA, and CUNNINGHAM, Circuit Judges). AFFIRMED.") The affirmance is final at the appellate level; a related petition for rehearing/rehearing en banc (dated 2026-01-12) that surfaced in web search is docketed in the sibling-patent appeal, 24-1360 (US 9,886,421), not in 24-1361.
• Defensive value: Claims 1–21 are canceled and that cancellation is affirmed on appeal. No infringement theory on this patent survives. If you are sued on 9,892,093, the FWD is a complete, case-dispositive defense; pressing a claim based on these claims is sanction-bait.

IPR2022-00436 — Coinbase, Inc. v. Adamson, Robert G. / Modern Font Applications, LLC (Clantech, Inc.)

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2022-01-20
• Status: Terminated – Settled (pre-institution; termination effective 2022-03-23)
• Judge panel: None assigned to merits — the Board never instituted.
• Petition grounds: Same two obviousness grounds as IPR2022-00800, against the same claims 1–21: Collins + Gautier + Schaefer (claims 1–5, 7–10, 14–21) and Collins + Gautier + Schaefer + Parthasarathy (claims 6, 11–13). (Petitioner's exhibit list confirms CB-1005 = Collins '714, CB-1008 = Gautier '493, CB-1009 = Schaefer '305, CB-1006 = Parthasarathy '398.)
• Institution decision: None. The parties settled before any institution decision.
• Final Written Decision: None.
• Settlement / termination: Joint motion to terminate filed 2022-03-21 and granted — Board terminated the proceeding 2022-03-23. The confidential settlement agreement (filed as Ex. CB-1051) resolved all disputes concerning the '093 patent, including the related district court case, which was dismissed with prejudice on 2022-02-02. The joint motion expressly invoked 35 U.S.C. § 317(a), so no § 315(e) estoppel attaches to Coinbase as a result of this termination.
• Appeal: None.
• Defensive value: Procedurally important mostly for what it shows: Coinbase (through Perkins Coie) mounted the identical Collins/Gautier/Schaefer attack that CoStar/Duolingo later won on. The settlement means no merits precedent from this proceeding, and no estoppel against Coinbase — but because IPR2022-00800 later canceled every claim, this proceeding's practical value is now moot.

Naming note: Google Patents' litigation feed labels this case with the data-provider attribution "Unified Patents PTAB Data." The actual petitioner was Coinbase, Inc. (petition and ipverse docket both so identify it). Unified Patents is the litigation-data source, not a party here.

Strategic summary

Claims status. All 21 claims of US 9,892,093 — independent claims 1, 10, 18 and every dependent claim — are CANCELED by the final, unappealable-after-affirmance FWD in IPR2022-00800. No claims are "sustained" or "untested" in the sense that matters: the entire patent was challenged on the same Collins/Gautier/Schaefer combination, and the Board found every claim obvious. Compounding the situation, the patent is also expired (20-year term from the 2001-07-16 priority application; Google Patents lists anticipated expiration 2021-07-16 and status "Expired – Fee Related"), so even pre-cancellation damages exposure is limited to the pre-expiration period.

Estoppel landscape. 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) estops CoStar and Duolingo (and their privies) from re-litigating in district court or the ITC any ground they raised or reasonably could have raised in IPR2022-00800 — i.e., the Collins/Gautier/Schaefer(+Parthasarathy) obviousness combination. But estoppel is largely academic here because the claims no longer exist. Coinbase took a § 317(a) settlement exit in IPR2022-00436 with no estoppel attached, meaning Coinbase (and any defendant not in privity with CoStar/Duolingo) is not barred from raising the same art — and, of course, any defendant can simply rely on the final cancellation itself, which binds the patent owner as to the canceled claims.

Pattern signals. This is a defensive-aggregator-adjacent, high-pressure campaign against a single patent family. Clantech (via exclusive licensee Modern Font Applications LLC) asserted the '093 patent and sibling patents (e.g., US 9,886,421) in multiple N.D. Cal. cases (3:21-cv-06132 Duolingo v. Modern Font Applications, Judge Vince Chhabria; 3:21-cv-07521; 5:21-cv-06132) before CoStar and Duolingo filed IPR2022-00800 — with Latham & Watkins (Inge Osman) as petitioner's counsel and TraskBritt/Johnson Martin (James Watson / Perry Clegg) for Clantech/Modern Font. Coinbase settled out early; CoStar/Duolingo fought through to a full win, then beat the patent owner at the CAFC. The patent owner's aggressive posture (appealing the FWD and petitioning for rehearing in the sibling case 24-1360 as recently as January 2026) is worth noting: expect continued attempts to keep family members alive even though 9,892,093 itself is finished.

Recommended next steps

• If you are a defendant being asserted against on US 9,892,093: treat the assertion as baseless. Link the IPR2022-00800 FWD (Paper 77, issued 2023-11-16) — PTAB decision available via USPTO PTAB (DocketAlarm mirror: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2022-00800/) — which "determin[ed] all challenged claims unpatentable" under § 318(a). Cite the CAFC affirmance in 24-1361 (per curiam: Lourie, Reyna, Cunningham — "AFFIRMED"). If the demand targets claims 1–21, respond that the claims are canceled and the cancellation is final; a complaint on those claims invites Rule 11 / § 285 fee exposure.
• No active PTAB proceeding remains — both IPRs are closed (one settled, one FWD'd and affirmed). There are no pending institution deadlines, oral hearings, or FWD due dates to track for this patent.
• Watch the family, not the patent. The live risk is the continuation family (e.g., US 9,886,421, US 10,188,421-type siblings; appeal 24-1360 and the January 2026 rehearing petition). Before clearing any product, run the family's claim sets separately — the '093 patent's cancellation does not automatically invalidate its siblings.

Caveat on sourcing: PTAB decision documents were verified through third-party mirrors (ipverse.greyb.com, ai-lab.exparte.com, docketalarm.com) and the Google Patents litigation feed; the USPTO ODP API ingest for this patent shows no proceedings, which appears to be a lag. Verify FWD Paper 77 and the CAFC mandate directly on PTAB E2E / PACER before relying on the exact judgment language in a filing.

I've reconstructed the ownership record from the available sources. One important disclosure up front: I could not retrieve reel/frame numbers or correspondent-of-record names for this patent's recorded assignments from the sources available to me — Google Patents' legal-event feed (which mirrors USPTO assignment data) gives recording dates and parties but not reel/frame or correspondent fields, and I did not have live access to the USPTO Assignment Center's full record. I have not fabricated those fields. Everything below that is asserted is sourced to Google Patents legal events, court pleadings, and PTAB records, each cited.

Inventors

• Robert G. Adamson, III — sole inventor; residence listed as Draper, UT on the '093 patent and on the family members (US 8,522,127; 9,405,735; 9,886,421; 10,108,184; 10,878,172; 10,963,622). Adamson is the principal of the named assignee Clantech, Inc. (Draper, UT) — the inventor-to-company assignments recorded in 2016 and 2017 (below) are founder-to-his-own-company transfers, not the "inventors flee the assignee" pattern that precedes a fire-sale. No unusual departure pattern.

Original assignee

• Clantech, Inc. (Draper, UT) is the assignee named on the face of US 9,892,093 B1 and remains the record owner per Unified Patents' current-assignee field ("Current Assignee: Clantech Inc"; https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/[9892093](/patent/9892093)).
• Product status: no credible evidence Clantech ever shipped a product embodying the claims. The claims describe a hand-held device that exposes non-standard fonts to an OS; nothing in the record shows Clantech commercialized it. In the CoStar declaratory-judgment complaint (3:21-cv-07521-VC, N.D. Cal.), CoStar alleged on information and belief that the patents "are owned by Clantech Inc., which does not have any right to enforce or license" them and that exclusive licensee Modern Font Applications LLC's "revenue and activities are comprised substantially of patent assertion and licensing" (Compl. ¶¶ 7–8).
• Current status: Operating as a patent-holding entity; patent itself is now expired (anticipated expiration 2021-07-16; status "Expired - Fee Related"; $0 lifetime renewal fees recorded) and has been held unenforceable — PTAB Final Written Decision in IPR2022-00800 (Nov. 16, 2023) and Federal Circuit affirmance in case 24-1361 (per curiam AFFIRMED; see PatSnap litigation summary of the PACER docket).

Assignment timeline

The USPTO Assignment Center record for US 9,892,093 (via Google Patents legal events, which aggregate USPTO assignment recordations) shows three recorded events. Reel/frame numbers and correspondents were not retrievable from my sources — verify at the Assignment Center search page: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search "Patent Number 9892093").

• exec. date not retrievable / recorded 2016-07-20 — Reel/Frame: not retrievable from available sources

  • Conveyance: Assignment (inventor → company; Google Patents labels it "Assigned to CLANTECH, INC.")
  • Assignor: Robert Adamson, III
  • Assignee: CLANTECH, INC.
  • Correspondent: not retrievable from available sources
  • Context: Routine inventor-to-company assignment for the then-pending continuation application 15/197,389 (filed 2016-06-29). Original-assignment only; not an NPE tell by itself.

• exec. date not retrievable / recorded 2017-05-12 — Reel/Frame: not retrievable from available sources

  • Conveyance: Assignment (inventor → company; Google Patents labels it "Assigned to CLANTECH, INC.")
  • Assignor: Robert G. Adamson, III
  • Assignee: CLANTECH, INC.
  • Correspondent: not retrievable from available sources
  • Context: Second inventor-to-company assignment, covering the sibling continuation applications 15/581,921 (US 9,886,421) and 15/582,399 (US 10,108,184) filed 2017-04-28.

• exec. date not retrievable / recorded 2024-03-14 — Reel/Frame: not retrievable from available sources

  • Conveyance: LICENSE (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)
  • Assignor: CLANTECH, INC.
  • Assignee: MODERN FONT APPLICATIONS LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrievable from available sources. (In the parallel PTAB proceeding IPR2022-00800, the exclusive licensee's counsel of record is Perry S. Clegg, Johnson & Martin, P.A., and patent-owner counsel is Andrew J. Baca / James C. Watson, TraskBritt PC — but these are litigation counsel, not the recorded assignment correspondent, and I did not confirm either firm as the assignment correspondent.)
  • Context: This is the money event — a license of the patent (and family) to the entity that had been asserting it since 2018, recorded after the entire first wave of litigation. Note the anomaly: MFA filed its first infringement suits in 2018 and was litigating as exclusive licensee in 2021–2023, yet this license was not recorded until 2024-03-14. Either the license was executed years before and only belatedly recorded, or it formalized an existing arrangement — the recordation date alone cannot tell us, and the execution date is not shown in my sources.

Cross-reference: Google Patents litigation entries for this patent (Unified Patents data) list: Duolingo, Inc. v. Modern Font Applications LLC, 3:21-cv-06132 / 5:21-cv-06132 (N.D. Cal., filed Aug. 10, 2021); CoStar Realty Information, Inc. v. Modern Font Applications LLC, 3:21-cv-07521 (N.D. Cal., filed Sept. 27, 2021); Coinbase DJ action; Federal Circuit appeals 22-1215 and 24-1361; IPR2022-00436 (settled) and IPR2022-00800 (final written decision). PTAB records confirm MFA participated as "Exclusive Licensee" alongside Clantech as "Patent Owner" (e.g., IPR2022-00800 Institution Decision, Nov. 23, 2022; MFA Mandatory Notices, IPR2022-00798, May 19, 2022).

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 9892093
    2001 : Priority application filed
    2016 : Continuation filed by Clantech
         : Inventor assignment to Clantech
    2017 : Second inventor assignment
    2018 : Patent issued
         : MFA first infringement suits
    2021 : CoStar and Duolingo DJ suits
    2022 : IPR filed against patent
    2023 : Final written decision
    2024 : License recorded to MFA
         : Appeal affirmed unpatentable

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — present. The recorded 2024-03-14 license moves substantial rights from Clantech, Inc. (an entity that per the CoStar complaint retains no right to enforce or license) to Modern Font Applications LLC, a Utah LLC whose address (299 S. Main St., Suite 1300, Salt Lake City, UT 84111) is a single-suite law-firm-style address and whose revenue, per the CoStar complaint ¶ 7, "is comprised substantially of patent assertion and licensing." The court record, not the name, is the evidence: MFA owns no product and exists to assert. (Reel/frame unavailable; supported by the 2024-03-14 recordation event and CoStar v. MFA, 3:21-cv-07521-VC.)

2. Known asserter in the chain — present. MFA is a repeat, high-frequency plaintiff surfaced in Unified Patents litigation data for this family: Modern Font Applications LLC v. Nebraska Furniture Mart, Inc., 6:18-cv-00446 (E.D. Tex., dismissed with prejudice 2019); MFA v. El Pollo Loco, Inc., 8:19-cv-01699 (C.D. Cal.); MFA v. The Habit Restaurants, LLC, 8:19-cv-01690 (C.D. Cal.); plus suits against BJ's Restaurants and Dine Brands Global (per CoStar complaint ¶ 35), and threat letters to CoStar and Coinbase in June 2021 signed by MFA in-house counsel/VP Andrew Oliver (Compl. ¶¶ 9–13, 28–34). MFA is not on the classic Acacia/Marathon/IPNav list, but it is a documented licensing-only asserter.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear / not verifiable. I could not obtain the correspondent-of-record fields for the three recorded assignments from my sources, so I cannot test whether one attorney or firm filed all three. What I can say: in the PTAB proceedings, Clantech used TraskBritt PC (Andrew J. Baca, James C. Watson) and MFA used Johnson & Martin, P.A. (Perry S. Clegg) — two different firms for the two entities, but that is litigation counsel, not assignment correspondent. Flag for verification in Assignment Center.

4. Cascading transfers — not present. The recorded chain is inventor → Clantech (2016, 2017) → license to MFA (recorded 2024). No rapid LLC-to-LLC churn within 24 months.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present as recorded, but anomalous. The recorded license (2024-03-14) comes years after the first MFA suit (2018, E.D. Tex.) and the 2021 N.D. Cal. DJ actions, i.e., the opposite of a pre-suit transfer. The anomaly is that MFA litigated for six years as exclusive licensee before the license hit the record — meaning the effective transfer predates the first suit even though the recordation does not. Execution date not retrievable; this is a standing/chain-of-title curiosity worth pulling from Assignment Center.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. No Chapter 7/11 anywhere in the chain.

7. Privateering — not present. No operating company with competitors is in the chain. Clantech shows no product, and MFA's targets (restaurants, Nebraska Furniture Mart, CoStar, Duolingo, Coinbase) are not anyone's "competitors" in a privateering sense — this is a direct NPE assertion program, not a company-funded privateer.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — not present. Chain terminates at MFA (asserting licensee), not at RPX/AST/LOT/Unified/OIN. Inverse signal applies: the patent was instead neutralized by PTAB invalidation (IPR2022-00800 FWD, affirmed in 24-1361).

Verdict

NPE — high confidence.

The recorded chain itself (Clantech → Modern Font Applications LLC license, recorded 2024-03-14) places the patent in the hands of a licensing-only entity, and the litigation record — MFA's 2018–2021 suits against restaurants, Nebraska Furniture Mart, CoStar, Duolingo, and Coinbase, with CoStar's complaint alleging MFA's revenue is "substantially" patent assertion and licensing and that Clantech retains no enforcement rights (3:21-cv-07521-VC ¶¶ 7–8) — confirms this is a pure assertion vehicle. Signals 1 and 2 are both strong and independently supported by court pleadings and Unified Patents litigation data, even though the reel/frame and correspondent fields could not be verified from my sources. The patent is now expired and has been held unenforceable (IPR2022-00800 FWD; Federal Circuit 24-1361 affirmed), so the NPE program has been neutralized by invalidation rather than by a defensive aggregator.

Verify the underlying recordations (reel/frame, execution dates, correspondents) at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (Patent Number 9892093) and cross-reference https://patents.google.com/patent/US9892093/en and https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/9892093.

Based on my searches (which reached the available tool-call limit), here is what I can verify and, where the record is incomplete, what I cannot. I will flag confidence levels throughout.

1. Patent identity confirmation

The target is US9892093B1 (application 15/197,389) — "Apparatus of a hand-held device for exposing non-standard fonts in a network document to an operating system," inventor Robert G. Adamson, III, assigned to Clantech, Inc. Filing date June 29, 2016; grant date February 13, 2018; effective priority date claimed through a continuation chain back to July 16, 2001 (application 09/906,444). Status per Google Patents/Unified Patents: Expired – Fee Related. Note: the priority date shown on Google Patents (2001-07-16) and the Unified Patents portal (2001-07-15) differ by one day; I could not resolve that discrepancy.

Key procedural context: the patent was challenged in IPR2022-00800 (CoStar Realty Information, Inc. & Duolingo, Inc. v. Clantech, Inc.), instituted November 23, 2022, with a Final Written Decision of unpatentability (all claims 1–21) on November 16, 2023, affirmed per curiam by the Federal Circuit in Case 24-1361 on December 11, 2025.

2. Most relevant prior art (verified from the IPR2022-00800 record)

These are the references actually applied against the claims and are therefore the most probative prior art. Important caveat: all IPR grounds were under 35 U.S.C. § 103 (obviousness), not § 102 (anticipation). I analyze § 102 potential separately below.

(a) US 5,781,714 — "Collins"

• Reference: U.S. Patent No. 5,781,714 to Collins et al. (IPR Ex. 1005). Issue date in the mid-1998 range (I could not verify the exact date or exact title from my searches; the number is confirmed by the PTAB exhibit list).
• Description (from the IPR record): A web-based system for displaying non-standard fonts by downloading portable font resource (PFR) files — containing font descriptions — alongside an HTML document. An "extended browser" processes non-standard HTML tags that reference the PFR files and installs the contained fonts into the client operating system's font manager.
• § 102 anticipation potential: Partial. Collins alone plausibly reads on most of independent claim 1's elements — browser navigation to a network document, requesting/downloading a font file corresponding to defined characters, and exposing the font file to the OS via an installation mechanism. However, the IPR petitioners did not assert Collins alone under § 102, and Collins does not expressly teach (i) the hand-held device limitation (claims 1–21 all require a hand-held device) or (ii) the specific "copies the font file to a temporary font directory and updates a system font table" limitation (claim 1 element E). Those gaps were filled by Gautier and Schaefer under § 103. As a strict § 102 single-reference anticipation case, Collins is likely insufficient standing alone, particularly for claim 1 and the independent claims (claims 8, 14, 18 per the PTAB's challenged-claims grouping).

(b) US 7,127,493 — "Gautier"

• Reference: U.S. Patent No. 7,127,493 to Gautier (IPR Ex. 1008). Issue date in the October 2006 range (unverified exact date/title).
• Description (from IPR record): Disclosure of adapting web content for a variety of client devices, expressly including pocket organizers, PDAs, and cellular telephones — i.e., the "hand-held device" limitation. It was used to supply the handheld context that Collins lacked.
• § 102 anticipation potential: Not a standalone anticipator. Gautier is about content adaptation/device classes, not font-file installation. It was used only to satisfy the "hand-held device" limitation in combination (e.g., claims 1–5, 7–10, 14–21 per Ground 1).

(c) US 7,028,305 — "Schaefer"

• Reference: U.S. Patent No. 7,028,305 to Schaefer (IPR Ex. 1009). Issue date in the April 2006 range (unverified exact date/title).
• Description (from IPR record): An operating system abstraction layer ("OSGuard") creating a virtual application environment; it included a font manager and file manager able to enable fonts for an application and then remove them afterward — i.e., a temporary font installation mechanism. This supplied the "installation module copies the font file to a temporary font directory and updates a system font table" limitations (claims 1E, 10C, 18C).
• § 102 anticipation potential: Not a standalone anticipator of the apparatus claims, because Schaefer is an OS-level virtualization environment rather than a browser/network-document font-delivery system. It was combined with Collins under § 103.

(d) US 6,347,398 — "Parthasarathy"

• Reference: U.S. Patent No. 6,347,398 to Parthasarathy et al. (IPR Ex. 1006). Issue date in the February 2002 range (unverified exact date/title).
• Description (from IPR record): Technique by which software components — including ActiveX controls and Netscape plugins — are automatically downloaded and installed by a browser, triggered by a standard <OBJECT> tag with a CODEBASE attribute. Added in Ground 2 for dependent claims 6 and 11–13, which recite exposing the font file "using at least in part one or more of: a plugin, a browser extension, or an Active X Control."
• § 102 anticipation potential: Limited to the dependent-claim limitation only. Parthasarathy teaches component auto-download generally, not font-specific rendering; it is a § 103 secondary reference for claims 6 and 11–13.

Additional prior art in the IPR exhibit list (verified as filed, not asserted as primary grounds)

• US 6,608,697 (Schorr) — Ex. 1007. Listed in the petition exhibit list; not identified in my searches as a primary ground reference.
• US 5,893,915 (Cordell) — Ex. 1012. In the exhibit list; content unverified in my searches.
• US 7,647,553 (Mogilevsky) — Ex. 1017. In the exhibit list; content unverified in my searches.
• Numerous NPL exhibits (Ex. 1011, 1013–1032) including Microsoft Computer Dictionary (4th ed. 1999), W3C CSS2 (Jan. 28, 1998), PC Magazine font articles (1996), and Windows Millennium Edition manual excerpts (2000) — used primarily as dictionary/state-of-the-art support, not as anticipating disclosures.

3. § 102 analysis summary

No single reference in the IPR record was asserted to anticipate under § 102. The PTAB's unpatentability finding rested on § 103 combinations:

• Ground 1 (Collins + Gautier + Schaefer): claims 1–5, 7–10, 14–21
• Ground 2 (Collins + Gautier + Schaefer + Parthasarathy): claims 6 and 11–13

The most plausible § 102 anticipation candidate is Collins alone against claim 1's core browser/download/expose framework, but the "hand-held device" and "temporary font directory/system font table" elements make strict single-reference anticipation doubtful — which is precisely why the petitioners proceeded under § 103.

4. Citations appearing on the face of the patent / family prosecution history

The Unified Patents portal reports 36 patent-art citations, 4 NPL citations, and 3 "referenced-by" entries on US9892093B1, but I was unable to retrieve the complete face-of-patent citation list within my search budget. What I did verify from the family's file-history exhibits (e.g., IPR Ex. 2065, the certified file history of the 11/443,664 ancestor; and the IDS appearing in family member US10963622) includes NPL such as:

• Håkon Lie, "WebFonts: how to reference fonts from HTML" (W3C, Jul. 7, 1996)
• Microsoft, "Font Embedding on the World Wide Web" (Apr. 19, 1996)
• Adobe Acrobat Reader 4.0 Guide (1999)
• RFC 2045, MIME Part One (Nov. 1996)

These are family-level IDS references, not necessarily the 36 citations on the face of the '093 patent itself. I cannot, with confidence, enumerate all 36 patent citations on the face of US9892093B1 from the available search results.

5. Bottom line for your analysis

If your goal is the most relevant prior art, the verified answer is the IPR2022-00800 set: Collins (5,781,714), Gautier (7,127,493), Schaefer (7,028,305), and Parthasarathy (6,347,398) — the combination the PTAB and Federal Circuit ultimately found to render all claims 1–21 unpatentable (under § 103, with only partial § 102 anticipation potential for Collins against claim 1). For a complete § 102 anticipation analysis of every face-of-patent citation, I would need to retrieve the full citation list from the USPTO/Google Patents "Patent Citations" section of US9892093B1 directly, which I could not fully access in this session.

Confidence note: patent numbers, party names, case numbers, and claim groupings above are taken from the search results (PTAB exhibit lists, exparte.com case summaries, Docket Alarm, and the Federal Circuit affirmance reporting) and are high-confidence. Exact titles/issue dates of Collins, Gautier, Schaefer, and Parthasarathy were not independently verified and should be confirmed against USPTO records before citation in a formal document.

Obviousness Analysis of US 9,892,093 B1 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Note on sources: The patent text you supplied does not include a discrete "Prior Art" section (the Google Patents rendering omits the citation list). I have therefore grounded this analysis in (a) the prior art the specification itself admits in its Background section, and (b) the prior art actually asserted against the patent in the inter partes review proceedings — IPR2022-00800 (CoStar Realty Information, Inc. and Duolingo, Inc. v. Modern Font Applications, LLC; Final Written Decision, appealed) and IPR2022-00436 (Coinbase/Unified Patents; settled), which collectively constitute the strongest evidence of obviousness on the record. See https://ai-lab.exparte.com/case/[ptab](/ptab)/IPR2022-00800/doc/1005 and the petition at https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2022-00436/COINBASE_INC/docs/01-20-2022-Petitioner/Petition-2-Petition_for_IPR_9,892,093.pdf.

1. The patent and the challenged claims

US 9,892,093 B1 ("the '093 patent") claims priority back to a July 16, 2001 application (US 09/906,444) via a chain of continuations. It is directed to allowing an operating system to access non-standard fonts in a network document. All 21 claims were challenged in IPR2022-00800.

Independent claim 1 recites an apparatus of a hand-held device comprising a processing unit and memory storing instructions that cause the processing unit to:

• implement a browser for navigating to a network document hosted at a website server;
• enable communication between the browser and the website server;
• generate a transmission for a request to a font server, based on the network document, to download a font file corresponding to a defined character or group of characters;
• receive the font file; and
• automatically expose at least a portion of the font file to an operating system on the hand-held device via an installation module that copies the font file to a temporary font directory and updates a system font table of the operating system.

Dependent claims add: apparatus distinct from the website server (claim 2) and font server (claim 3); font file containing formatting information to render a non-standard display character (claim 4); the OS rendering the character (claim 5); exposure via plugin, browser extension, or ActiveX control (claim 6, 11–13); copying to a directory with other standard system fonts (claim 7); availability to other executing processes (claim 8); and erasing or making the font file inaccessible (claim 9).

Critically, the specification itself concedes that the core concept — downloading font descriptions with a document and rendering them via a player — was prior art. The Background describes the "proprietary vector font description" solution in which a "character shape player" interprets font descriptions downloaded with the document, and the prior-art image-file solution (bitmaps/JPEGs). The '093 patent's only asserted advance is installing/exposing the font file at the operating-system level (temporary font directory + system font table) so the OS itself renders the characters.

2. The primary prior art references

These are the exact references asserted in the IPR petitions. Ground 1 of IPR2022-00800 was obviousness of claims 1–5, 7–10, and 14–21 over Collins + Gautier + Schaefer; Ground 2 was obviousness of claims 6 and 11–13 over Collins + Gautier + Schaefer + Parthasarathy. See https://ai-lab.exparte.com/case/ptab/IPR2022-00800/doc/1005.

3. Element-by-element mapping of claim 1

• "hand-held device" / browser / website server / communication: Gautier discloses serving adapted web content to hand-held devices (pocket organizers, PDAs, cellular telephones) via browsers. Collins discloses a browser that requests HTML documents from a server over a network.
• "request to a font server … to download a font file … corresponding to a defined character or group of characters": Collins discloses an HTML document that references a PFR (portable font resource) file containing font descriptions; the browser downloads the PFR alongside the document. A POSITA would recognize the PFR as the claimed "font file" and the serving host as the "font server."
• "automatically expose at least a portion of the font file to an operating system … via an installation module": Collins discloses installing downloaded font files into the client operating system's font manager, making the fonts available to the OS for rendering. Schaefer discloses an OS-level font manager that enables fonts for use and later removes them.
• "copies the font file to a temporary font directory and updates a system font table": Schaefer's font manager operates in a virtualized environment in which fonts are enabled temporarily and removed after use — i.e., a temporary font directory and font-table update without permanent installation. This maps directly onto the claim's most distinctive limitation, and it is a limitation the '093 patent itself discloses as merely an alternative to permanent installation (spec at col. describing "Temporary fonts directory 507" and "system font table 506").
• "to enable the operating system to render one or more of the defined character or group of characters": Collins's entire purpose is OS-level rendering of downloaded font resources, and claim 5's OS-rendering requirement is therefore met.

Claims 2 and 3 (apparatus distinct from the website server and font server) are inherent in Collins's client/server architecture, where the browsing client is remote from the content host. Claims 4 and 14/19 (non-standard display characters and formatting information) are met by Collins's PFR font descriptions. Claim 7 (copying to a directory with standard system fonts) is the permanent-install variant disclosed in the '093 patent itself and would be a straightforward implementation of Collins's font-manager installation; Schaefer likewise manages fonts alongside system fonts. Claim 8 (availability to other executing processes) is the natural consequence of installing at the OS level, as Collins does. Claim 9 (erasing or making the font file inaccessible) is Schaefer's enable-and-remove teaching.

Claims 6 and 11–13 (plugin, browser extension, or ActiveX control) are supplied by Parthasarathy, which teaches the browser-initiated, on-demand download and installation of such components through a standard <OBJECT> tag with a CODEBASE attribute — precisely the mechanism the '093 patent describes for delivering its "installation module" (spec: "the file name and relative path of installation module 501 are identified in instruction code 310 within a tag that indicates to the browser that installation module 501 is to be downloaded").

4. Motivation to combine and reasonable expectation of success

Collins + Gautier. By the priority date (2001), hand-held devices with browsers (Palm, Pocket PC, early smartphones) were proliferating, and they had even more limited font sets than desktop PCs — making Collins's PFR technology more, not less, valuable on such devices. A POSITA seeking consistent cross-platform document display would have had a direct, predictable motivation to port Collins's proven web-font download-and-install system to the hand-held form factor taught by Gautier. This is a classic combination of a known technology with a known environment for its known purpose.

+ Schaefer. Collins installs fonts into the OS font manager; a POSITA would be concerned about permanently modifying a hand-held device's limited system resources and about font-name collisions. Schaefer's OS-level virtualization layer, whose font manager enables fonts for an application and removes them afterward, is the obvious, known solution for safe, reversible font installation — exactly the "temporary exposure" branch the '093 patent itself describes. The claimed "installation module copies the font file to a temporary font directory and updates a system font table" is nothing more than Schaefer's font management applied to Collins's downloaded font files.

+ Parthasarathy. Once Collins's browser-extension-based font handler is identified, implementing it as a downloadable ActiveX control or plugin using the standard <OBJECT>/CODEBASE download mechanism of Parthasarathy is a routine engineering choice, not an inventive leap. The '093 specification's own installation-module description tracks this mechanism.

Expectation of success. Each reference addresses a discrete, known sub-problem (font delivery, handheld adaptation, temporary OS-level font management, component auto-download), and the combination integrates them for their established purposes to yield the predictable result of an OS-level, temporarily installed web font on a hand-held device. No reference teaches away; the '093 patent's own specification confirms temporary font-table installation was a conventional OS mechanism (WM_FONTCHANGE notifications, hidden temporary files, virtual memory-mapped files).

Secondary considerations. The specification's distinguishing argument — that prior "character shape player" systems did not permit copying/pasting into other applications — is undercut because Collins installs fonts into the OS font manager (making them OS-available), and the IPR petitions map that teaching to the claims. The IPR procedural history is also significant: the Board instituted review in IPR2022-00800 on November 23, 2022, issued a Final Written Decision (terminated November 16, 2023), and that decision was appealed to the Federal Circuit (case 24-1361 listed in the patent's litigation record), which is consistent with an adverse merits outcome for the patent owner. IPR2022-00436 settled. I note I have not confirmed the FWD's specific claim-by-claim holdings from the available search results; that outcome should be verified against the PTAB decision before relying on it.

5. Conclusion

Under § 103, the '093 patent's claims — particularly claim 1 and its dependents — would have been obvious to a POSITA as of the 2001 priority date. The strongest combination is Collins (US 5,781,714) + Gautier (US 7,127,493) + Schaefer (US 7,028,305) for claims 1–5, 7–10, and 14–21, plus Parthasarathy (US 6,347,398) for claims 6 and 11–13, with a well-documented motivation: porting known downloadable-font technology to hand-held devices while managing installation safely at the OS level using known virtualization and component-download techniques. This is corroborated by the IPR grounds asserted in IPR2022-00800 (https://ai-lab.exparte.com/case/ptab/IPR2022-00800/doc/1005) and the IPR2022-00436 petition (https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2022-00436/COINBASE_INC/docs/01-20-2022-Petitioner/Petition-2-Petition_for_IPR_9,892,093.pdf).

Caveat: I could not verify from the available search results (a) the complete examiner-cited prior art list (the Unified Patents portal reports 36 patent and 4 NPL backward citations), or (b) the precise holdings of the IPR2022-00800 Final Written Decision. Both are worth retrieving before finalizing any validity opinion.