US RE43113

Search Results Summary

I searched for US RE43113 specifically. I found authoritative records confirming the reissued patent's identity, but I did not find any CAFC 2026 appeal docket that names RE43113 itself. Several 2026 Federal Circuit matters involving VideoLabs/NPE patents surfaced, but they concern different patent numbers (e.g., 8,605,794, the '559 patent in VL Collective IP, LLC v. Netflix, No. 25-1132, and U.S. 7,933,431 in In re Gesture). Do not confuse U.S. 7,933,431 with RE43,113 — they are unrelated numbers/patents.

US Patent RE43113 E1 — Profile

• Title: Domain-based management of distribution of digital content from multiple suppliers to multiple wireless services subscribers
• Inventor(s): Rikard M. Kjellberg, Sheng Liang, Tomas G. Lund, William Chan (listed as "Kjellberg, et al.")
• Assignee:
  • Original: Openwave Systems Inc.
  • Current (per USPTO assignment records through Google Patents/PatentCenter): VideoLabs, Inc. (chain: Openwave → Unwired Planet, Inc. → Unwired Planet, LLC → VideoLabs, Inc., Dec. 22, 2020)
• Application No.: 12/622,322 (reissue application)
• Filing date of reissue application: November 19, 2009
• Issue/publication date: January 17, 2012 (USRE43113E1)
• Priority date: June 28, 2002 (four provisional applications: 60/393,024; 60/392,383; 60/393,041; 60/392,999)
• Status: Expired – Lifetime; adjusted expiration date listed as 2023-12-27
• Claims: 34 (per the patent text)

Abstract (condensed from the patent)

A network server system includes a download manager that manages publication, purchase, and delivery of digital content from multiple content suppliers to wireless-services subscribers in multiple "domains." Each domain is a different grouping of subscribers (e.g., a wireless carrier or subsidiary, a business enterprise, or another defined group). The download manager maintains data defining the domains and associations between domains and subscribers. Content suppliers publish/manage products on the server over a computer network; subscribers in each domain access the server remotely over a wireless network to purchase rights to download and use the content on their wireless devices.

Plain-Language Overview of the Independent Claims

The independent claims (1, 10, 17, and 20) are method claims (1, 10), a means-plus-function system claim (17), and a processor/memory system claim (20):

• Claim 1 (method): A server system stores "domain data" defining multiple domains, where each domain is a distinct subset of wireless-services subscribers (more than one subscriber per subset), corresponds to a specific billing relationship between a business entity and that subscriber subset, and has its own assigned set of wireless-device digital products accessible to subscribers in that domain. The server enables many suppliers to publish such digital products over a computer network, and enables subscribers in each domain to acquire those products over a wireless network for use on their devices.

• Claim 10 (method): The server maintains data defining multiple domains (each a subset of more than one subscriber, tied to a billing relationship) and, per domain, an independently settable language and currency used when subscribers identify and obtain products. It enables multiple providers to publish products; lets each subscriber view only products for the subscriber's own domain (not other domains); and provisions requested products to the subscribers' wireless devices over a wireless network.

• Claim 17 (system): Means for associating each wireless subscriber with one of several domains (again: groups of >1 subscriber, billing-relationship per domain, each domain with its assigned set of accessible wireless-device digital products), plus means for managing publication, management, and delivery of digital products by multiple suppliers to the subscribers in each domain.

• Claim 20 (system): Memory plus processor(s) implementing: (i) a domain manager maintaining the subscriber-to-domain associations (with per-domain billing relationships and assigned product sets); (ii) a product manager handling supplier publication of wireless-device digital products; (iii) a delivery manager that, on a subscriber request, delivers a purchased digital product to the subscriber's wireless device over a wireless network; and (iv) a payment manager that charges the requesting subscriber for the product.

(Dependent claims add details such as: each subscriber belongs to exactly one domain; domains correspond to delegated administrative responsibilities; per-domain independent language/currency settings; per-domain pricing; product-catalog display filtered by domain with localized language/currency presentation; domain-restricted product visibility. Note: claim 24 is textually drafted as "A method as recited in claim 23" even though claim 23 is a system claim — an apparent reissue-drafting anomaly worth flagging.)

Litigation / CAFC 2026 Docket Findings (with caveats)

• District-court assertion of RE43113: VideoLabs, Inc. and VL Collective IP LLC asserted US RE43,113 E (among other patents, including 7,440,559, 8,605,794, 7,233,790, 8,291,236, 8,667,304) against Roku in D. Del. Case No. 1:23-cv-01136 (filed Oct. 11, 2023). Unified Patents material also states the patent has been asserted against Roku and Apple, and Unified ran a prior-art contest targeting at least claim 1 of RE43113 (with prior art reportedly found, per Unified's March 2024 insight post). Sources: Docket Alarm (D.Del. 1:23-cv-01136, Doc. 10, Roku motion-to-dismiss brief listing the patent numbers), Justia docket, Unified Patents contest page.

• CAFC 2026 docket: I found no CAFC 2026 appeal specifically naming RE43113. The 2026 CAFC VideoLabs-related dispositions located (No. 25-1131 VideoLabs, Inc. v. Netflix, Inc. — Rule 36 affirmance, entered May 12, 2026, arising from IPR2023-00628; and No. 25-1132 VL Collective IP, LLC v. Netflix, Inc.) concern other patents, not RE43113. I could not verify any pending or decided Federal Circuit appeal in 2026 tied to RE43113 itself.

Uncertainty Statement

• Bibliographic data (title, inventors, dates, assignee history, claim count) comes from the USPTO-facing records on Google Patents and uspto.report and is high-confidence.
• Whether RE43113 is currently involved in any CAFC 2026 docket is unverified — my searches found no such docket, but absence of evidence is not proof of absence; a PACER/CAFC docket query by patent number would be needed for a definitive statement.
• Current ownership (VideoLabs) is based on USPTO assignment records as mirrored by Google Patents; confirm on USPTO Assignment Center for the latest record.

I'll search for litigation involving US Patent RE43113 specifically.

The first searches returned no relevant results. Let me refine with more specific queries.

The Unified Patents page indicates RE43113 has been asserted against Roku and Apple by Videolabs. Let me find the specific case details.

Based on my searches (which were constrained by a step limit), here is what I can report regarding litigation involving US Patent RE43113. I want to be transparent that I was able to fully confirm only one district-court case, and that the record on a second (Apple) matter is incomplete.

Confirmed litigation

VideoLabs, Inc. and VL Collective IP LLC v. Roku, Inc.

• Plaintiff(s): VideoLabs, Inc. and VL Collective IP LLC (a VideoLabs subsidiary)
• Defendant(s): Roku, Inc.
• Jurisdiction: U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware
• Case number: 1:23-cv-01136 (assigned to Judge Joel H. Slomsky; docket styled 1:23-cv-01136-JHS)
• Filing date: October 11, 2023
• Patents in suit: The Justia docket for this case expressly lists "US RE43,113 E" (i.e., RE43113E1) among the asserted patents. Note: the complaint excerpt I located (via RPX) enumerates seven other VideoLabs patents (7,440,559; 8,605,794; 7,233,790; 8,291,236; 8,667,304; 7,769,238; and 7,970,059), so RE43113 may have been added by amendment or may appear in a related pleading—I could not retrieve the full complaint to confirm exactly when RE43113 was added.
• Status: As of July 18, 2024, Roku had filed a motion to stay pending inter partes review (D. Del. Doc. 37). Roku has pursued multiple IPR petitions against VideoLabs patents (e.g., IPR2024-01024 against U.S. Patent 8,291,236 and IPR2025-00071 against U.S. Patent 7,440,559). I was not able to confirm the current (as of April 2026) final disposition—whether the case settled, was stayed, dismissed, or resulted in a judgment—within my search limits.

Assertion noted but case details not confirmed

• VideoLabs v. Apple: Unified Patents' patent-owner/contest page for US-RE43113-E1 states the patent "has been asserted against Roku and Apple" by VideoLabs (described as an NPE). However, I was unable to retrieve the specific Apple case number, filing date, jurisdiction, or status before reaching my search limit. I cannot confirm those details and will not speculate on them.

Other relevant (non-district-court) activity

• Unified Patents prior-art challenge (PTAB-adjacent): Unified Patents ran a prior-art contest (ended December 31, 2023) seeking art against at least claim 1 of US-RE43113-E1, which it identified as owned by VideoLabs, Inc. and describes as a non-practicing entity. This is a validity-challenge program, not litigation per se.

Caveats

• My training data and the search results agree that the patent's current owner is VideoLabs, Inc. (via assignment from Unwired Planet LLC), and Google Patents flags this patent family as having litigation ("First worldwide family litigation filed").
• The "family has litigation" flag on Google Patents may reflect litigation involving related VideoLabs/Unwired Planet/Openwave patents in the same family, so not every flagged suit necessarily names RE43113 itself.
• For a complete, authoritative list (including any Apple case and any additional defendants), the best sources are PACER, the Delaware docket for 1:23-cv-01136, and RPX/Darts-IP litigation datasets, which I could not fully exhaust here.

The first searches surfaced mostly irrelevant Gesture Technology material. The second search found a key signal — Unified Patents ran a prior-art contest on RE43113. Let me dig deeper for any actual PTAB filings and the underlying litigation.

Let me check whether Unified Patents or anyone followed up the 2023 prior-art contest with an actual IPR petition, and look at the underlying Videolabs litigation asserting RE43113.

Proceedings overview

There are zero AIA trial proceedings (IPR/PGR/CBM) on file for US RE43113 — the USPTO Open Data Portal API reports no PTAB trials, and web search surfaced no indexed or recently-filed petitions against this patent. The bottom line for a defendant: no PTAB estoppel exposure exists yet and all § 102/§ 103 grounds remain available, but the patent is expired (adjusted expiration 2023-12-27 per the USPTO assignment/status record) and is being actively monetized by a VideoLabs NPE entity against Roku and Apple — so an IPR may still arrive despite expiration (the Board can review expired patents for past-damages purposes), and the window to file is not closed.

No PTAB proceedings on file

Because the structured PTAB data is empty and multiple web searches surfaced no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding number naming RE43113, there are no proceedings to summarize at claim level, no judge panels, no institution decisions, and no Final Written Decisions to cite. I will not fabricate proceeding numbers or outcomes. What web search did surface — and what a defendant should treat as meaningful intelligence — is set out below.

What the search actually shows (non-PTAB context)

• No IPR petitions found. Searches combining the patent number with "IPR," "PTAB," "inter partes review," and likely petition-year formats (IPR2024-, IPR2025-) returned nothing for RE43113. (The many hits on "Gesture Technology" 7,933,431 and on VideoLabs' other patents — 7,440,559, 8,605,794, 7,233,790 — are different patents and must not be confused with RE43113.)
• Unified Patents ran a prior-art contest on this exact patent. Unified Patents' "patroll" page (https://patroll.unifiedpatents.com/contests/BhhMn68vJoFN4b4RP) shows a claim-charting contest targeting "at least claim 1 of US-RE43113-E1," open 2023-10-26 through 2023-12-31, with a $2,000 prize. Winning prior art was published ~2024-03-01 ("Videolabs digital content patents prior art found"). This is the classic Unified Patents pre-petition workflow — it is a strong signal an IPR petition was being prepared, but I found no evidence an IPR was actually filed on RE43113 (as opposed to Unified's filed IPRs on other VideoLabs patents, e.g., 8,605,794).
• Active district-court assertion. VideoLabs, Inc. and VL Collective IP LLC sued Roku, Inc. in D. Del. on 2023-10-11 (No. 1:2023-cv-01136), asserting RE43113 among six patents (7,440,559, 8,605,794, 7,233,790, RE43,113 E, 8,291,236, 8,667,304) — docket: https://dockets.justia.com/docket/delaware/dedce/1:2023cv01136/83801. Unified Patents' contest page also states RE43113 "has been asserted against Roku and Apple."
• Patent status. RE43113 is expired (USPTO status: "Expired - Lifetime"; adjusted expiration 2023-12-27). That does not bar IPR (Board jurisdiction over expired patents is settled), but it caps any recovery at pre-expiration past damages.

Strategic summary

Claim status: ALL UNTESTED (no PTAB claims are CANCELED or SUSTAINED). The reissue has 34 claims (method claims 1–16, system claims 17–34 per the certificate); none have been through an AIA trial, and none have been confirmed patentable by the Board either. The only validity work on the record is Unified Patents' private prior-art campaign aimed at independent claim 1 — which has produced no public proceeding so far.

Estoppel landscape — wide open for the defense. 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) only estops a petitioner (and privies) from later raising in district court grounds it raised or reasonably could have raised in an instituted IPR. With no IPR ever filed or instituted, no defendant, petitioner, or privy is estopped on any ground. Every § 102/§ 103 combination — including whatever art Unified Patents' contest surfaced — is fully available to any defendant in the Roku/Apple litigations or a future assertion. There is also no "reasonably could have raised" trap from an earlier instituted petition, because none exists.

Pattern signals. (1) Unified Patents has targeted the VideoLabs family repeatedly — its public contest on RE43113 and its filed-and-won IPRs on sibling VideoLabs patents (e.g., 8,605,794, invalidated in a 2023-12-18 FWD and affirmed at the Federal Circuit in 2026) show this patent is on Unified's radar and a petition may be forthcoming even post-expiration. (2) The patent owner, VideoLabs/ VL Collective IP, has litigated IPR appeals aggressively on its other patents — it has taken multiple PTAB losses to the Federal Circuit (e.g., the '794, '559, '790 invalidations pursued by Netflix/Unified) — meaning if an IPR on RE43113 is instituted and lost, expect an appeal. (3) The same patent owner's district-court pattern (Delaware suits on multi-patent portfolios) is consistent with NPE monetization of a large, now-expired reissue family.

Recommended next steps

• Confirm the zero-PTAB record yourself. Query USPTO Patent Center / PTAB E2E by proceeding type and by patent number RE43113 (and its parent, e.g., the original patent from which it reissues), and re-check the ODP API before relying on this analysis in a filing — the docket can change quickly.
• Because the patent is expired and no IPR is on file, the highest-value near-term move is district-court prior art, not PTAB. If you are the Roku or Apple defendant (or a future defendant), you are free to run every § 102/§ 103 ground — including art developed for Unified Patents' 2023 contest — without any estoppel concern. If you are a VideoLabs licensee or co-defendant, check whether any Unified Patents member relationship or indemnity chain makes you a privy before relying on art Unified developed.
• Watch for a Unified Patents (or defendant) IPR petition in the coming months. The 2023-10-26 contest and 2024-03-01 winning-art publication are precisely the lead-up Unified Patents uses before filing. If a petition arrives, key milestones will be: institution decision due ~3 months after the PO preliminary response (statutorily ~6 months from filing), and a Final Written Decision due within 12 months of institution under 35 U.S.C. § 316(a)(11). Because the patent is expired, the Board retains jurisdiction, but any remedy in the parallel district court is confined to past damages.
• If no IPR ever materializes, that absence is itself notable. RE43113 has been asserted in district court since October 2023 against well-resourced defendants; the fact that nearly three years have passed with no public PTAB petition suggests either the challengers' best art has litigation-only problems, or they are holding their art for district court precisely to avoid § 315(e)(2) estoppel. Either way, a defendant should treat validity as a fully open battlefield and budget for a merits fight on the merits in Delaware rather than waiting on the Board.

Ownership analysis — US RE43113 E1

Important data-availability caveat up front. I was able to confirm the recorded-assignment events and their recording dates from the Google Patents legal-events record (which mirrors USPTO assignment data) and from independent press/SEC coverage. I was not able to retrieve the USPTO reel/frame numbers or the "correspondent of record" attorney entries before exhausting my search budget, and I will not fabricate them. Every entry below that lacks a reel/frame should be verified at the USPTO Assignment Center before it is cited in a filing: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number RE43113 or USRE43113E1; the legacy index is at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html).

Inventors

All four inventors are tied to Openwave Systems Inc. by the recorded assignment of their interests to Openwave (recorded 2017-11-13 — see timeline), and the patent issued to Openwave as original assignee. No public record I found shows all four departing Openwave within 12 months of filing, so I do not see the "mass inventor departure" precursor pattern here. The notable pattern is instead at the corporate level: Openwave divested its product lines in 2012 and the patent followed the resulting NPE chain (below).

Original assignee

Openwave Systems Inc. — named on the issued patent and on the 2009 reissue application (US 12/622,322). Openwave was a Redwood City, California mobile-software company (self-styled "inventor of the mobile internet"), best known for mobile browsers, WAP gateways, and messaging/mediation software — i.e., it did ship products embodying this technology area, and the '43113 technology (wireless content download/storefront management) was squarely in its product wheelhouse.

Current status: Not operating as Openwave. In April–May 2012 Openwave sold its messaging and mediation product businesses to Marlin Equity Partners (relaunched as Openwave Messaging / Openwave Mobility) and the residual patent company rebranded as Unwired Planet, remaining public (ticker OPWV). The legal-entity event for this patent is the merger recorded 2012-06-26 (Openwave Systems Inc. → Unwired Planet, Inc.).

Assignment timeline

Plain statement: recorded assignments do exist for this patent (five events below, per the Google Patents legal-events record). Reel/frame numbers and recording correspondents were not retrievable in my public-search pass; each entry is flagged accordingly and must be confirmed on the USPTO Assignment Center. Note also that Google Patents shows no original 2002–2004-era inventor→Openwave record; the inventors' assignment appears to have been recorded late (2017), which is itself a chain-perfecting tell worth verifying.

• ~2002–2003 (executed) / 2017-11-13 (recorded) — Reel/frame: not confirmed

  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest (confirmatory / late-recorded)
  • Assignor: Rikard M. Kjellberg, Sheng Liang, Tomas G. Lund, William Chan (inventors)
  • Assignee: Openwave Systems Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrievable
  • Context: Original/confirmatory employment assignment from the four named inventors to Openwave, recorded ~14 years late — consistent with cleaning up the chain ahead of a downstream sale (the 2020 VideoLabs transfer).

• 2012-06-26 (recorded) — Reel/frame: not confirmed

  • Conveyance: Merger
  • Assignor: Openwave Systems Inc.
  • Assignee: Unwired Planet, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrievable
  • Context: Openwave's product lines were sold to Marlin Equity Partners (Apr–May 2012); the patent-holding shell merged into Unwired Planet, Inc., which pivoted to pure patent licensing/enforcement (Forbes: "A Patent Troll Is Born," May 1, 2012).

• 2013-05-08 (recorded) — Reel/frame: not confirmed

  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest
  • Assignor: Unwired Planet, Inc.
  • Assignee: Unwired Planet, LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrievable
  • Context: Internal reorg — conversion/drop-down of the patent portfolio from the public corporation to the LLC licensing vehicle.

• 2013-05-08 (recorded) — Reel/frame: not confirmed

  • Conveyance: Confirmatory Assignment of Patent Rights
  • Assignor: Unwired Planet, Inc.
  • Assignee: Unwired Planet, LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrievable
  • Context: Duplicative confirmatory record on the same day as the entry above — typical belt-and-suspenders recording for an NPE portfolio.

• 2020-12-22 (recorded) — Reel/frame: not confirmed

  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest
  • Assignor: Unwired Planet, LLC
  • Assignee: VideoLabs, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrievable
  • Context: Transfer of the patent to the current assignee, VideoLabs, Inc., which (per Unified Patents and the district-court record) asserts RE43113 against Roku and Apple.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US RE43113
    2002 : Priority date set
    2009 : Reissue application filed
    2012 : RE43113 issued
         : Openwave merges into Unwired Planet
    2013 : Chain moved to Unwired Planet LLC
    2017 : Inventor assignment recorded
    2020 : VideoLabs acquires patent
    2023 : VideoLabs sues Roku

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Present. Openwave (operating company, shipped products) divested its product businesses to Marlin Equity Partners in 2012 and the residual patent company became Unwired Planet, which per contemporaneous coverage (Forbes, TechCrunch, CNET, May 2012) owned no products and existed solely to license/enforce patents. The patent moved through that licensing-only entity (merger recorded 2012-06-26; Unwired Planet LLC records 2013-05-08) to VideoLabs (recorded 2020-12-22), which Unified Patents identifies as an NPE. Reel/frames unconfirmed — verify at the Assignment Center.

2. Known asserter in the chain — Present. Unwired Planet is a heavily documented NPE (sued Apple, Google, and Research In Motion; structured Ericsson revenue-sharing patent acquisitions; described in the press as a "patent troll"). VideoLabs, Inc. (current assignee per the 2020-12-22 record) is flagged by Unified Patents as an NPE and has asserted RE43113 in at least VideoLabs v. Roku, D. Del. 1:23-cv-01136 (filed 2023-10-11), with an Apple assertion reported but not confirmed in my prior litigation pass.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Unclear. Correspondent-of-record names could not be retrieved from public search results within my step budget. This is the single most useful check to run next at the USPTO Assignment Center: compare the correspondents on the 2013-05-08 and 2020-12-22 recordings — if the same attorney or firm recurs, that is a strong NPE-family tell.

4. Cascading transfers — Weakly present. Two recordings on 2013-05-08 (Unwired Planet Inc. → Unwired Planet LLC, plus a confirmatory duplicate) came within ~11 months of the 2012-06-26 merger. However, these are a single corporate reorg of one business, not chained, unrelated shell LLCs, so I treat this as a reorg cadence rather than a cascading-shell signal on its own.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present for the confirmed suit. VideoLabs' acquisition was recorded 2020-12-22; the first confirmed infringement suit naming RE43113 (VideoLabs v. Roku) was filed 2023-10-11 — roughly 2.8 years later, well outside the six-month window. (Timing vs. any unconfirmed Apple suit cannot be assessed.)

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. Openwave did not enter Chapter 7/11. It sold product lines to Marlin Equity Partners and pivoted as a going concern into Unwired Planet (April–May 2012), which is a product-divestiture-to-NPE conversion, not a bankruptcy sale.

7. Privateering — Unclear. Unwired Planet engaged in classic privateering inbound deals (Ericsson transferred ~2,000 patents to Unwired Planet in 2013 for revenue sharing), but RE43113 is Openwave-origin and traveled with the Openwave→Unwired→VideoLabs chain, not with Ericsson's patents. Whether VideoLabs asserts this patent for the benefit of any operating company is not evidenced in my sources.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present. The chain terminates at VideoLabs, Inc., an assertion entity, not at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN.

Verdict

NPE — high confidence.

Two strong signals drive this: (1) a documented NPE — Unwired Planet, publicly described at its creation as a patent-licensing-only company ("A Patent Troll Is Born," Forbes, May 1, 2012) and a known litigant against Apple, Google, and RIM — held the patent from the 2012-06-26 merger through the 2013-05-08 LLC transfers; and (2) the chain terminates at VideoLabs, Inc. (recorded 2020-12-22), which Unified Patents lists as an NPE and which has asserted RE43113 against Roku (D. Del. 1:23-cv-01136) and reportedly Apple. The original assignee, Openwave, was a genuine product company, but it converted to non-practicing status in 2012 and the patent has been monetized by NPEs ever since. Confirm the reel/frame numbers and, critically, the recording correspondents at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ to complete the correspondent-recurrence analysis flagged above.

The Google Patents full text doesn't include the citation list in the snippet. Let me look for the specific "Citations" sections on the patent database pages.

Let me determine the original patent RE43113 reissues and its cited references, since the reissue cites the original and typically its prosecution references.

Answer — Prior-Art Citations for US RE43113

Important upfront caveat (per the operating rules, stated plainly)

Within the search steps available to me, I was unable to retrieve the front-page "References Cited" (Patent Citations / Non-Patent Citations) list from the USPTO-facing records for USRE43113E1. The Google Patents full-text capture provided with this task (and the uspto.report record) does not reproduce the citation section, and my targeted searches surfaced only bibliographic/family data, not the examiner's citation list. I will not fabricate a table of "cited references." What follows is (1) what is verified, (2) what is directly relevant but unverified, and (3) the analytical framework for any § 102 assessment.

1. Verified identity (high confidence)

• Patent: US RE43113 E1 (Application No. 12/622,322, filed 2009-11-19, granted 2012-01-17)
• Title: Domain-based management of distribution of digital content from multiple suppliers to multiple wireless services subscribers
• Inventors: Rikard M. Kjellberg; Sheng Liang; Tomas G. Lund; William Chan
• Assignee history: Openwave Systems Inc. → Unwired Planet, Inc. → Unwired Planet, LLC → VideoLabs, Inc.
• Priority: June 28, 2002 (four provisionals: 60/393,024; 60/392,383; 60/393,041; 60/392,999)
• Claims: 34; independent claims 1, 10, 17, and 20.

Because RE43113 is a reissue and the underlying application (12/622,322) was filed in 2009 from a 2002 priority date, any § 102 analysis of the reissue claims is governed by pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102 using a priority date of June 28, 2002 as the critical date — i.e., only references available before that date qualify as anticipating prior art. That framing matters for every reference below.

2. Verified related/family context (relevant to, but not identical with, "cited references")

My searches confirmed these same-family records (same title, same priority date, same assignee), which are the closest documents against which RE43113's subject matter should be compared:

Verification status: I could not, within the step budget, pull the original patent number that RE43113 reissues, nor the EPO search-report citation list from the DE/EP file. Both are checkable on USPTO Patent Center (Application 12/622,322 file wrapper) and the EPO register for DE 603 10 812 T2.

3. Third-party prior-art activity (verified to exist; content not fully retrievable)

• Unified Patents prior-art contest (US-RE43113-E1): Unified Patents (a patent-validity NPE-fighter) ran a contest seeking art against at least claim 1 of RE43113, ending December 31, 2023, and posted "winning prior art" on March 1, 2024 ("Videolabs digital content patents prior art found"). The contest page expressly states: "PRIOR ART THAT HAS BEEN PREVIOUSLY CITED DURING PROSECUTION WILL NOT BE CONSIDERED."
  • Implication (verified): RE43113 does have prosecution-cited prior art (else that exclusion would be meaningless), and that cited art is publicly identified in the reissue file wrapper (12/622,322) — but I could not retrieve that exact list.
  • The contest's winning art (which, by the rules, is not the prosecution-cited art) is at the Unified Patents insight post, which I could not open in full before reaching my step limit.

4. Which claims a § 102 challenge must address

For any reference (cited or third-party) to "potentially anticipate" under pre-AIA § 102, it must be dated before June 28, 2002 and disclose every limitation of the claim at issue. The claims that matter:

• Claim 1 (method): server storing "domain data" defining multiple domains, each domain = a distinct subset of >1 wireless-services subscriber tied to a particular billing relationship between a business entity and that subscriber subset, each domain having its own assigned set of accessible wireless-device digital products; multiple suppliers publishing such products over a computer network; subscribers in each domain acquiring the products over at least one wireless network.
• Claim 10 (method): adds per-domain, independently settable language and currency; providers publishing; subscribers viewing only their own domain's product descriptions (not other domains'); provisioning over a wireless network.
• Claim 17 (means-plus-function system): means for maintaining the subscriber↔domain association (billing-relationship/assigned-product-set structure) + means for managing publication/delivery by multiple suppliers.
• Claim 20 (system): domain manager, product manager, delivery manager, and payment manager implementing the same structure.

The "most relevant" prior art for RE43113 will therefore be mid-1990s-to-2002 systems combining: (i) centralized multi-supplier mobile-content catalogs; (ii) carrier/enterprise subscriber partitioning with per-partition billing; and (iii) localized language/currency presentation. The Unified Patents program targeted exactly this combination for claim 1.

5. Explicit statement of what I could not verify

• The complete list of references cited by the examiner during prosecution of RE43113 / its original patent — not retrieved (not present in the supplied full text; not surfaced in snippets).
• The original patent number that RE43113 reissues — not confirmed (likely US 7,299,033 B2 based on identical title/priority/assignee, but I will not assert this as fact).
• The winning Unified Patents prior-art references — the contest page and insight URL are verified to exist, but the actual art list was not retrievable in my step budget.

Authoritative next steps for the complete citation table the task requests: pull the USPTO Patent Center file wrapper for Application 12/622,322 (the reissue prosecution — its Information Disclosure Statements and examiner search notes list all cited art, and the issued front page names the original patent), and, for the family's EPO-cited art, the EPO register for the parent of DE 603 10 812 T2. I recommend treating any table of "each patent citation for RE43113" produced without those file-wrapper records as unreliable.

The original patent behind RE43113 appears to be US 7,299,033 (family also includes US 7,233,790 and EP 1,376,438). Let me locate the actual prior art cited during prosecution and any identified prior art, so I ground the obviousness analysis in real references.

Preliminary note on sources

The task instruction says to use "the Prior Art section of this page," but no Prior Art section was included in the materials provided. The provided sections cover the patent profile, claim overview, litigation status, and PTAB status — not prior-art references. My supplemental searches confirmed the family facts below but were truncated (step limit) before I could retrieve the Unified Patents contest's winning-art list (the link https://www.unifiedpatents.com/insights/2024/3/1/videolabs-digital-content-patents-prior-art-found was referenced but its contents were not retrieved). Accordingly, this analysis identifies classes of references and named, historically verifiable pre-2002 systems that would render the independent claims obvious, and it flags every reference that still needs citation-level verification before use in a filing. I do not fabricate pinpoint cites for documents I could not open.

Verified family facts (grounding for the analysis):

• RE43113 E1 reissues US 7,299,033 B2 ("Domain-based management of distribution of digital content from multiple suppliers to multiple wireless services subscribers," Openwave, granted 2007-11-20; priority 2002-06-28 from four provisionals). Confirmed by uspto.report's grant record for 7,299,033 and by the identical specification text on freepatentsonline.com/7299033.html.
• European family counterpart: EP 1,376,438 A1/B1 (same title/spec).
• Published family application: US 2004/0054787 A1 (App. 10/601,022).
• Sibling patent: US 7,233,790 B2 ("Device Capability Based Discovery, Packaging and Provisioning of Content for Wireless Mobile Devices," same four provisionals; published as US 2004/0054786 A1) — sharing the same download-manager architecture and much of the same spec.
• RE43113 claims: independent method claims 1 and 10; means-plus-function system claim 17; processor/memory system claim 20; dependent claims 2–9, 11–16, 18–19, 21–34 (claim 24 textually miscites claim 23).
• No PTAB proceeding exists on RE43113; the patent is expired (adjusted expiration 2023-12-27) but was asserted against Roku (D. Del. 1:23-cv-01136) and, per Unified Patents, Apple.

I. Claim construction anchors for the § 103 analysis

For the obviousness analysis, the operative claim elements are:

Claim 1 (method): (1a) server stores "domain data" defining plural domains, each = a different subset of wireless-services subscribers with more than one subscriber; (1b) each domain = a billing relationship between a business entity and that subscriber subset; (1c) each domain has its own assigned set of wireless-device digital products accessible to that domain's subscribers; (1d) multiple suppliers can publish once on the server over a computer network; (1e) subscribers in each domain acquire products over a wireless network and use them on their devices.

Claim 10 (method): claim-1-type domain partitioning, plus (10a) an independently settable language per domain; (10b) an independently settable currency per domain; (10c) subscribers can view only their own domain's product descriptions; (10d) requested products are provisioned over a wireless network.

Claim 17 (means-plus-function system): means for maintaining subscriber-to-domain association (with >1 subscriber per domain, billing relationship per domain, per-domain product set) + means for managing publication/management/delivery by multiple suppliers.

Claim 20 (system): memory + processors implementing a domain manager (association maintenance, per-domain billing relationship and product set), product manager (supplier publication), delivery manager (wireless delivery of a requested item), payment manager (charging the subscriber).

The specification frames the "problems" as: (i) suppliers must re-deploy content per device/provisioning model; (ii) single-organization/single-currency billing is inadequate for multinational carriers and subsidiaries with local taxes/currencies; (iii) credit-card intermediation only partially solves localization. These admissions are themselves useful in a § 103 case because they confirm the problems were known in the art and the claimed solution is a rearrangement of known building blocks.

II. The § 103 legal framework to apply

• Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966): scope/content of prior art; differences; level of ordinary skill; secondary considerations.
• KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007): a combination of known elements performing their known functions in a predictable way is ordinarily obvious; "obvious to try"; common-sense motivation to combine; no requirement of a specific "teaching, suggestion, or motivation" in a reference.
• Reissue-specific point: the claims being tested are the reissued claims of RE43113. Because this is a broadening reissue filed 2009-11-19 (within two years of the 2007-11-20 grant of 7,299,033), the examiner already considered whether the reissue claims were patentable over prior art, but that is not dispositive — a district court applies § 103 de novo to the reissued claims as of the original priority date.
• Availability gateways (§ 102 as of priority 2002-06-28): any asserted reference must have been a patent/printed publication publicly available before June 28, 2002 (or otherwise § 102(g) prior invention). Family members (7,299,033; 7,233,790; EP 1,376,438; US 2004/0054787) are not prior art against RE43113.
• Practical posture: no IPR exists, so no § 315(e)(2) estoppel constrains a district-court defendant from running every § 102/§ 103 combination (see prior sections). The patent's expiry caps remedies at pre-December-2023 damages.

III. Proposed prior-art combinations

Because none of the claim concepts is a new kind of system — each is a known element of pre-2002 wireless data, e-commerce, and billing practice — the strongest § 103 case is built as combinations of (A) a wireless content-download/storefront platform, (B) a multi-tenant hosted e-commerce/portal platform, and (C) carrier billing/mediation and device-capability provisioning standards. Below, each reference is named with its historical status; every one must be verified as a § 102-available document before reliance.

Reference Group A — Wireless content download platforms and over-the-air (OTA) provisioning (pre-2002)

1. Qualcomm BREW (Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless), publicly launched and documented in 2001. BREW's distribution system gave each wireless carrier its own branded application catalog/storefront; content developers published applications once to a central distribution system; BREW handled device-compatibility screening and OTA download; the carrier billed the subscriber. This alone supplies elements 1a/1c/1d/1e and 20's domain manager/product manager/delivery manager/payment manager in a single system: carrier-specific subscriber sets, carrier-specific catalogs, supplier publication to a shared platform, carrier-mediated payment.
2. NTT DoCoMo i-mode (launched February 1999; extensively described in English-language engineering/business literature 2000–2001). Central portal operator (DoCoMo) hosting many third-party content providers; DoCoMo collected content fees on behalf of providers through the subscriber's carrier bill — i.e., a single "business entity ↔ subscriber" billing relationship over third-party-published content acquired over a wireless network. Supplies 1b/1d/1e and the payment-manager concept.
3. MIDP OTA provisioning ("Over The Air User Initiated Provisioning," JSR-37 expert group, finalized ~2001) and WAP UAProf (WAP-248, 2001). Establish the server-side catalog → content-descriptor (JAD) → device-request → OTA delivery loop, and machine-readable device-capability profiles. These are the substrate for the delivery/provisioning limitations (10d) and for per-domain catalog presentation driven by device capability (the spec's FIG. 9/12 flow).
4. Handset-maker portals circa 1999–2001 (e.g., Nokia Club Nokia / Smart Messaging for ringtones and graphics, per-country portals with local pricing and languages). Evidence that per-country/per-carrier product sets, languages, and currencies in mobile content stores were already practiced.

Reference Group B — Multi-tenant hosted commerce/portal platforms (pre-2002)

1. Enterprise commerce-server platforms (e.g., Broadvision One-To-One, Intershop Enfinity, ATG Dynamo) and hosted storefront services for ISPs/portals, all publicly documented by 2001. These provided exactly the "domain" mechanics the claims recite, applied to online stores generally: partitioning of subscribers/customers into groups, each group bound to a business entity, each with its own catalog/product set, its own language(s), its own currency, its own price list, its own payment/billing configuration, and delegated administrators. A PHOSITA adapting such a proven multi-tenant architecture to a wireless download server would implement claims 1, 10, 17, and 20's data model (domain data; subscriber-to-domain association; per-domain billing relationship; per-domain product assignment; per-domain language/currency) without invention.
2. Carrier billing/mediation and prepaid/postpaid/online payment-handler systems (pre-2002). The patent's own Background concedes that carrier systems already generated billing events routed to external billing systems and that subsidiaries operated under local currencies/taxes. Pre-2002 mediation/billing products and standards supported per-subscriber/region selection of currency, tax, and payment model. These supply the "particular billing relationship between a business entity and the corresponding subset" limitation (1b, 10b, 20's payment manager) and the payment-handler/rating-handler design of the spec.

Reference Group C — Delegated administration and content lifecycle (pre-2002)

1. Enterprise content-management/workflow and partner-management systems (pre-2002) with role-based administrator hierarchies (system/domain/product/customer-care administrator roles) and supplier-submission → QA → approval → publication → retirement workflows. These map directly onto dependent claims 2, 3, 6, 14, and 23's "delegation of administrative responsibilities" and supplier self-management, all of which were stock features of commerce and content platforms by 2001.

IV. Element-by-element mapping (illustrative; pinpoint cites to be supplied from verified documents)

For claim 10, add: 10a per-domain independent language and 10b per-domain independent currency ← Group B5 (localized storefronts) + Group A4 (per-country portals), with the patent's Background conceding the local-currency/tax problem was known; 10c own-domain-only product visibility ← Group B5's per-tenant catalog access controls (and i-mode/DoCoMo's walled-garden menu); 10d wireless provisioning ← Group A3 (MIDP OTA + UAProf) and A1.

For claims 17 and 20 (system forms), the same combination supplies each claimed "means"/component: domain manager ← B5's tenant/grouping engine + B6; product manager ← A1's supplier-publication engine; delivery manager ← A3's OTA download engine; payment manager ← B6/A1's carrier-charge engine. A PHOSITA implementing BREW-type distribution on a multi-tenant commerce core, with carrier-billing mediation, would arrive at the claimed system as a matter of ordinary design choice.

V. Motivation to combine — the required KSR narrative

The motivation story is unusually strong because it tracks the patent's own statement of the problems, which were industry-recognized by 2001:

1. Publish-once / reach-many carriers. BREW and i-mode already proved that suppliers benefit from submitting content once to a platform that reaches many subscribers. Adding multi-tenant domain partitioning (Group B5) to such a platform is the obvious way for a hosted, multi-carrier operator (or a platform vendor like Openwave selling to many carriers) to let one supplier publication reach many carriers/subsidiaries without per-carrier redeployment — precisely the "efficient distribution" goal the Background describes as unmet.
2. Localization (language/currency) for multinational carriers. The Background concedes the known problem that multinational carriers have subsidiaries in different countries with different currencies/taxes and that each subsidiary runs its own billing infrastructure. Multi-tenant e-commerce platforms had solved the identical problem for online stores (per-tenant language, currency, tax, price list) years earlier. Applying that proven per-tenant localization model to per-domain subscriber groups is the quintessential KSR "combination of familiar elements according to known methods" — no unexpected result.
3. Carrier control of catalog + billing relationship. The claims' "particular billing relationship between a business entity and the corresponding subset" and per-domain payment-model handlers mirror the standard carrier/merchant-of-record relationship in BREW and i-mode (carrier owns the customer and the bill; content provider gets revenue share). The spec's own domain properties (currency, payment handlers, rating handlers) are catalog entries of a standard billing-mediation configuration.
4. Delegated administration. Role-based administration (system/domain/product/customer-care) was a checkbox feature of 2001-era commerce/content-management platforms; adding it to a download manager is obvious for multi-tenant operation.
5. Predictable result. Each element performs its known function (catalog storefront, tenant isolation, billing mediation, OTA delivery) in its known way; the combination yields no new capability beyond what each component already provided in adjacent fields.

Secondary considerations (likely weak for patentee): no evidence of long-felt need or industry skepticism appears in the record; the technology was commercialized by Openwave itself shortly after filing; copying is not established; and Unified Patents' 2023–24 prior-art campaign (which produced winning art on claim 1, per its March 2024 insight post) suggests robust § 102/§ 103 art exists. None of these are verified in the materials before me, so they are flagged, not asserted.

VI. Level of ordinary skill and person of ordinary skill

A PHOSITA circa June 2002: a software engineer or systems architect with 2–4 years' experience in (i) wireless data / mobile content delivery (WAP, OTA, handset provisioning), (ii) server-side multi-tenant web/commerce application architecture, and (iii) telecommunications billing/mediation — or an equivalent team. Such a person would routinely consult the BREW/i-mode/OTA literature and enterprise commerce-server documentation.

VII. Caveats and verification requirements (important)

1. No Prior Art section was actually supplied, and my search budget was exhausted before retrieving Unified Patents' winning-art list or any examiner-cited references from the 7,299,033/EP 1,376,438 file wrappers. Every reference above must be confirmed as a § 102-available document predating 2002-06-28, with page/paragraph pinpoint cites, before being used in a brief or declaration. Named systems (BREW, i-mode, UAProf, MIDP OTA, and the commerce platforms) are historically real, but their documentary form and dates must be pinned down (product manuals, standards, press, or patents).
2. Avoid the family trap: 7,299,033, 7,233,790, EP 1,376,438, and US 2004/0054787 are all the same priority family and cannot serve as prior art against RE43113.
3. Check the file wrapper for examiner-cited art first: any reference already of record during prosecution of 7,299,033 or the reissue is available for a § 103 argument but will carry the presumption that the examiner considered it; the strongest combinations will add at least one new non-cumulative reference (the reason Unified Patents excluded prosecution-cited art from its contest).
4. Reissue-specific validity arguments (e.g., recapture, enlargement of claim scope beyond the original, § 251 issues) are analytically distinct from § 103 and are not addressed here; a complete invalidity position would pair the § 103 grounds with any reissue-defect grounds.
5. No estoppel barrier: with no IPR instituted, all § 102/§ 103 grounds (including art developed for Unified's 2023 contest) remain available in district court — but confirm there is no petitioner/privy relationship to a Unified member before relying on art Unified developed.

Bottom line: Independent claims 1, 10, 17, and 20 of RE43113 are strong § 103 targets under KSR. The claimed invention is best characterized as applying well-known multi-tenant, per-business-entity domain partitioning (catalogs, billing relationships, languages, currencies, delegated administration) — familiar from 2001-era hosted commerce platforms — to known wireless content-download and carrier-billing systems (BREW, i-mode, MIDP OTA, UAProf). A PHOSITA had concrete, documented motivations (publish-once distribution across carriers, localization for multinational carriers, carrier-managed billing) to make exactly that combination, and the predictable-result standard of KSR would likely carry the day. The remaining work is documentary: retrieve and verify the specific pre-June-2002 references (starting with the Unified Patents winning-art publication and the file-wrapper citations) and build the pinpoint claim charts.