US RE46637

I'll search for authoritative information on this patent number, including any 2026 CAFC docket activity.

Now let me check for CAFC 2026 docket activity and the specific claim set.

US RE46637 E — Summary

Note on identifiers: I searched this exact number (RE46637 / US RE46,637 E). Some third‑party databases mislabel it (e.g., Unified Patents' March 2025 prior‑art contest page describes "US RE46637 – Facilitating Transactions Over the Internet"). That is not the official title — per the reissue front page and Google Patents, the title is "Apparatus, methods, and systems for data mining user information." I treat the front‑page/Google Patents data as authoritative.

Bibliographic data (from the patent front page / Google Patents)

Related reissues in the same family: RE41,416; RE41,487; RE41,532; RE41,689; RE41,882; RE42,828; RE43,181; RE48,066; RE48,088; RE49,176.

Minor discrepancies to flag: Unified Patents lists the priority date as 2000‑09‑04 and expiration as 2024‑04‑29, whereas Google Patents shows 2000‑09‑05 and 2024‑04‑30. These are likely time‑zone/formatting artifacts; the front‑page values are the ones I've used.

Abstract (as printed)

The abstract contains two parts. The bracketed portion is the original US 7,099,304 abstract; the un‑bracketed portion was added during the reissue:

[Anonymous voice communication between a first station and a second station is facilitated by providing an interface that allows input of a transaction specification from at least one of the first and second stations. A reference code associated with the transaction is generated, there being a defined relationship between the reference code and the address of the second station for voice communication. The reference code is supplied to the first station, and a voice communication request and the reference code are received from the first station. The reference code is used to recover said address and a channel for voice communication is opened between said first and second stations. Voice communication can thereby be established between the first and second stations without providing the address of the second station to the first station.] An Internet‑based service system may include one or more servers, software, or storage units for use in data mining user information. The disclosed service may facilitate users posting information, connecting to other users, and making transactions over the Internet. Data from each transaction submitted through the service are data mined. The collected data may include personal information, private data, interest, intellectual property, and the like. For increasing transactions, the service system may create a proposed transaction specification specifying a transaction between a first party and a second party based, at least in part, on data mining user information. Feed a reference code associated with a second party to a first party, and receive a communication request from the first party employing the reference code. The reference code may include tagged photo, advertisement etc. The service may also provide private user information to other parties.

Plain‑language overview of the independent claims

The reissue effectively has two claim families: an older set directed to anonymous voice communication, and a newer set (claim 38 and above) directed to the data‑mining transaction subject matter indicated by the reissue title. The full claim text was not fully rendered in my source (the description truncated before the claims), so I describe the independent claims with the confidence level noted.

1. Independent claim 38 (data‑mining family) — verified via the Indeed complaint's element‑by‑element mapping. In plain terms, a controller (server) obtains a transaction specification over the Internet from a second party; data‑mines information about that second party based at least partly on data collected from a history of transactions; verifies the identity of the first party/station; creates a proposed transaction specification for the first party using, at least partly, the mined information about the second party; generates a reference code for the first party that has a defined relationship to the second party; receives a connection request from the first party that employs that reference code; and connects the first and second parties without requiring the first party to first provide its own full transaction specification. (Support cited: col. 28:1–61 and col. 12:19–24 of RE46,637.)

2. Independent claims 47, 53, and 67 (data‑mining family).

   • Claim 47 is the asserted sibling of claim 38 (per Unified Patents' prior‑art contest, claims 38, 47, 53 and 67 were the targets). On the face of the reissue these are parallel independent claims covering the same data‑mining/connection concept expressed at different statutory categories and/or with different required steps (e.g., method vs. system/apparatus framing).
   • Claim 53 and claim 67 appear to add further variations on the same core (e.g., additional receiving/verifying/presenting steps and/or the reference code carrying or being associated with a visual element such as a tagged photo or advertisement).
   • Uncertainty: I do not have the verbatim text of claims 47, 53, and 67 in hand. My characterizations are inferred from the asserted‑claim list and the shared specification; verify against the printed claim set before relying on them.

3. Independent claims 1 / 15 / 29‑style set (anonymous voice communication family). These recite the front‑page summary language nearly verbatim: a method in which a transaction specification is input at an interface (or supplied to a controller); a reference code is generated with a defined relationship to a voice address of the second station; the code goes to the first station; a voice communication request plus the code come back from the first station; the controller uses the code to recover the address; and a voice channel is opened without giving the address to the first station — preserving anonymity. Claim 15‑type variants place the steps at the controller; claim 29‑type variants are apparatus/means‑plus‑function versions ("means for enabling negotiation of a transaction specification," "means for generating a reference code," etc.). Uncertainty: exact independent‑claim numbering in this older set is not fully confirmed from my sources.

Litigation / docket status

• Known district‑court assertion: Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. v. Indeed, Inc., No. 1:24‑cv‑01254 (W.D. Tex.) — RE46,637 (claims 38, 39–42, 52–55 as pleaded) and RE48,066 are asserted against Indeed's ads/resume/Instant Match platform. Docket includes a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss and an opposed motion to strike (early 2025), with case reassignment to Judge Alan D. Albright.
• Other Flexiworld campaigns touching this patent family (per Unified Patents and Stanford's NPE database) include Skype and Lexmark/Amazon/Roku matters, but those predominantly involve the wireless‑printing Flexiworld patents, not RE46,637.
• PTAB IPRs that appear in my results (Roku v. Flexiworld, e.g., IPR2021‑00713/‑00714/‑00715, IPR2022‑01267) concern other Flexiworld patents (10,740,066; 8,898,064; 10,346,114; 9,836,257) — not RE46,637.
• CAFC 2026 dockets for RE46,637: I found none. My targeted searches for a 2026 Federal Circuit appeal naming Flexiworld/RE46,637 returned no matching docket entry. I cannot confirm any 2026 CAFC activity for this patent, and I am flagging that explicitly rather than inferring one. If a 2026 appeal exists, it is not surfacing in the sources I can reach, and you should confirm against PACER/CM‑ECF for the Federal Circuit and the USPTO PatentCenter docket directly.

Bottom line: US RE46,637 E is a 2017 reissue (from US 7,099,304, earliest priority Sept. 5, 2000) owned by Flexiworld Technologies, naming Liu and Chang, now expired (adjusted expiration Apr. 30, 2024). It covers two themes — anonymous voice connection via a reference code that hides the callee's voice address, and an Internet service that data‑mines users' transaction histories to propose and connect transactions. Its live enforcement footprint is the Indeed W.D. Tex. case. I could not corroborate any 2026 CAFC docket for this number.

I'll research litigation involving US patent RE46637 across patent litigation sources.

Let me dig deeper into the Indeed case and verify details.

Let me verify the Skype assertion and check for a Federal Circuit appeal docket.

Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. RE46637

Bottom line

I found exactly one district-court case in which U.S. Patent No. RE46637 ("Apparatus, methods, and systems for data mining user information") has been asserted: Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. v. Indeed, Inc. I found no other litigation (no other district court complaints, no declaratory-judgment actions, no ITC § 337 proceedings, and no PTAB post-grant proceedings) specifically identifying RE46637. Consistent with this, the Stanford NPE Litigation Database lists RE46637 under only that single case.

Case detail

Procedural history highlights: original complaint (Oct. 18, 2024) → Indeed's first 12(b)(6) motion (Dec. 13, 2024) → First Amended Complaint (Jan. 17, 2025) → second 12(b)(6) motion + motion to strike (Feb. 14, 2025) → Second Amended Complaint (Feb. 28, 2025) → renewed motion to strike and motion to dismiss (Mar. 21, 2025) → motion hearing June 9, 2025 → dismissal with prejudice and final judgment Aug. 19, 2025 → appeal to the Federal Circuit.

Counsel: Plaintiff — Nelson Bumgardner Conroy PC (Timothy E. Grochocinski, Charles Austin Ginnings, T. William Kennedy, Jr.). Defendant — Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP (Brian M. Buroker, Wendy W. Cai) and Shelton Coburn LLP (Barry K. Shelton).

Sources

• Stanford NPE Litigation Database, RE46637: https://npe.law.stanford.edu/patent/re46637 (lists only Flexiworld v. Indeed, 1:24-cv-01254, W.D. Tex.)
• Docket (Justia): https://dockets.justia.com/docket/texas/txwdce/1:2024cv01254/1172809333
• Docket (PACER Monitor, including Aug. 2025 judgment/appeal entries): https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/55514617/Flexiworld_Technologies,_Inc_v_Indeed,_Inc
• RPX Empower: https://litigation.rpxcorp.com/litigation/txwdce-1172809333-flexiworld-technologies-v-indeed
• Complaint/infringement analysis (Ex Parte AI Lab): https://ai-lab-cl-prod.azurewebsites.net/case/dct/txwd/1:24-cv-01254/doc/analysis/25

Related activity that is NOT litigation involving RE46637

Because these are frequently conflated, I want to be explicit about what I found and what I did not find:

1. Unified Patents PATROLL prior-art contest (defensive, not litigation). Unified Patents ran a crowdsourced prior-art contest targeting RE46637 claims 38, 47, 53, and 67, running Dec. 4, 2024 – Jan. 4, 2025 (a $2,000 prize, with a $1,500 award announced Mar. 29, 2025 to winner Ekta Aswal). This is a defensive prior-art effort, not a court case. Sources: https://patroll.unifiedpatents.com/contests/kSHnkiJsAQcJvn74Z and https://www.unifiedpatents.com/insights/2025/3/29/1500-awarded-for-flexiworld-technologies-communication-patents-prior-art

2. No IPR/PGR on RE46637. I found no PTAB proceeding challenging RE46637. Flexiworld's other patents (e.g., 7,609,402 in IPR2023-00845 by Lexmark; 8,989,064 and 9,042,811/10,140,073/9,965,233 in Roku IPRs; various Unified Patents IPRs) were challenged, but those do not involve RE46637.

3. "Asserted against Indeed and Skype." Unified Patents' write-up states that the patents (as a group) "have been asserted against Indeed and Skype." I could not confirm that RE46637 itself was asserted against Skype — that statement appears to describe Flexiworld's broader portfolio litigation campaign. The only confirmed assertion of RE46637 that I located is against Indeed. Treat the Skype statement as unverified with respect to RE46637 specifically.

4. Other Flexiworld campaigns (Amazon, Roku, Canon, Lexmark, Sony, etc.) were brought on different patents — e.g., RE42725, 9,036,181, 10,140,071, 10,873,856, 7,609,402, 9,965,233, 10,642,576, 10,846,031 — not RE46637. Note in particular that the consolidated Lexmark actions (5:22-cv-00097-KKC, 5:22-cv-00098, 5:22-cv-00110, E.D. Ky.) asserted fifteen patents including RE42,725, but not RE46637.

Caveats

• Docket coverage for W.D. Tex. 1:24-cv-01254 was last refreshed in my sources around the Aug. 2025 entries; post-judgment and appellate developments after that date (including the Federal Circuit appeal number and any briefing, settlement, or dismissal of the appeal) should be verified directly on PACER/CM-ECF and the Federal Circuit's docket. I did not obtain the CAFC appeal docket number.
• Google Patents' legal-status field for RE46637 reads "Expired – Lifetime, expires 2024-04-30"; that is a patent-term/legal-status indication, not a litigation record, and Google expressly disclaims it as a legal conclusion.
• I searched litigation aggregators (Stanford NPE Database, RPX/Insight, Unified Patents, Docket Alarm, Justia, PACER Monitor) but did not obtain direct Darts-IP or full PACER output; a small number of additional suits, filed and resolved quickly, could theoretically exist without appearing in these aggregators.
• This is a research summary, not legal advice or a clearance/validity opinion.

Proceedings overview

There are zero (0) AIA trial proceedings on file against US RE46637 — no IPRs, no PGRs, no CBMs, whether instituted, denied, settled, or terminated — so the breakdown is 0 active / 0 invalidated / 0 sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution-denied, and the defensive posture is not "the patent has been hardened by PTAB wins" but rather the more important signal that the patent has never been tested at the Board and has already lapsed (status: "Expired - Lifetime," adjusted expiration 2024-04-30), meaning your exposure is a closed-window damages problem for pre-2024 conduct, not a going-forward injunction problem — and you retain a completely unconstrained § 102/§ 103/IPR toolkit because no petitioner estoppel exists.

Caveat on sourcing: the canonical PTAB list in the "PTAB proceedings on file" block is empty (USPTO ODP returned no AIA trials for this patent as of the most recent ingest). I searched for older/unindexed proceedings — e.g., any petition naming RE46637 or its parent US 7,099,304 — and found none. What search does surface are IPRs against other Flexiworld patents, which I flag below under Pattern signals but which are not proceedings on RE46637.

Proceedings on US RE46637

None. No AIA trial proceeding has been filed, instituted, or decided on this patent.

I am not going to pad this section with invented docket numbers. For completeness, the closest thing to a formal challenge currently in the public record is a crowdsourced prior-art bounty, not a PTAB filing:

Unified Patents PATROLL contest — US RE46637-E1 (pre-petition prior-art search, not a trial)

• Type: Not an AIA proceeding — a PATROLL crowdsourcing contest run by Unified Patents, LLC
• Filed / window: 2024-12-04 to 2025-01-04 (ended; winner announced 2025-03-29)
• Status: Contest ended — winner paid ($1,500 total across several Flexiworld contests); no IPR petition has been shown to follow
• Scope: Unified sought prior art on at least claims 38, 47, 53, and 67 of US-RE46637-E1 (title used by Unified: "Facilitating Transactions Over the Internet")
• Defensive value: This is the clearest tell. When a defensive aggregator spends money on RE46637 art instead of just filing an IPR, it usually means the art is being collected for a future petition and/or for a district-court invalidity defense. Treat the PATROLL winning art as candidate § 102/§ 103 material — but verify it independently; a claim chart from a contest is not a PTAB record.
• Links:
  • Contest: https://patroll.unifiedpatents.com/contests/kSHnkiJsAQcJvn74Z
  • Winner announcement: https://www.unifiedpatents.com/insights/2025/3/29/1500-awarded-for-flexiworld-technologies-communication-patents-prior-art
  • Patent profile: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/RE46637

Strategic summary

Claim-status landscape. Because no IPR ever reached a Final Written Decision, no claim of RE46637 has been canceled, and no claim has been adjudicated patentable — every claim is technically "untested," not "sustained." The operative facts about scope come from the assertion side, not the Board: in Flexiworld Techs., Inc. v. Indeed, Inc., No. 1:24-cv-01254 (W.D. Tex., filed 2024-10-18), Flexiworld asserted claim 38 (independent) and claims 39–42 and 52–55 (see the complaint analysis at https://ai-lab-cl-prod.azurewebsites.net/case/dct/txwd/1:24-cv-01254/doc/analysis/25 and the NPE docket entry at https://npe.law.stanford.edu/patent/re46637). Unified's bounty separately targeted claims 38, 47, 53, and 67, which tells you the industry views claim 38 as the keystone independent claim and claims 47/53/67 as the other likely assertion vehicles. Nothing in the record shows an adjudication of claims 1–37, 43–46, or 48–51 — treat those as untested and unconstrued.

Estoppel landscape. This is the single most defendant-favorable fact in the file: § 315(e)(2) estoppel is a nullity here because estoppel attaches only to a petitioner (or its privies/real parties in interest) in an instituted IPR/PGR. With no institution, no party is barred from raising any § 102 or § 103 ground in district court, and any defendant remains free to file its own IPR on any art it chooses (subject only to the § 315(b) one-year clock and § 315(a)(1) civil-action bar). Practically: prior art from the PATROLL contest, art cited during original prosecution of US 7,099,304 and the reissue, and any new art are all on the table with no estoppel friction. Two timing traps matter: (i) § 315(b) — a defendant served with an infringement complaint more than one year ago is barred from filing an IPR; if Indeed was served in late 2024, that window has already closed for Indeed (today's date is 2026-09-29), so any new defendant must move within one year of its own service; and (ii) § 315(a)(1) — a defendant who files a DJ action of invalidity before filing its IPR is barred, so sequence the filings.

Pattern signals. Flexiworld is a serial, family-wide asserter, and the PTAB activity you'll find is all against sibling patents — not RE46637: IPR2022-00775 (Unified Patents v. Flexiworld, on US 9,836,257; institution granted 2022-11-08), IPR2022-01114 (Roku v. Flexiworld, on US 9,965,233), IPR2023-00845 (Lexmark v. Flexiworld, on US 7,609,402), and IPR2023-00846 (Lexmark v. Flexiworld, on US 9,965,233 — instituted 2023-11-14 and then terminated on joint motion after a patent license agreement settled the parties' disputes, per the joint motion to terminate in that case: https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1553926](/patent/1553926)). Two inferences follow: Flexiworld is willing to settle when a well-funded defendant files, and Unified Patents is already in the chain as a defensive aggregator targeting the Flexiworld portfolio — so if an IPR on RE46637 appears, Unified is the most likely filer. I found no evidence of Flexiworld appealing anything to the Federal Circuit on RE46637 (there is nothing to appeal).

Term/expiration reality check. The Google Patents record lists RE46637 as "Expired - Lifetime" with adjusted expiration 2024-04-30 (https://patents.google.com/patent/USRE46637E1/en). Confirm this against the USPTO PatentCenter maintenance/expiration record before relying on it, but if correct, no ongoing royalties or injunction exposure exists. Damages would be limited to pre-expiration infringement, further capped by the § 286 six-year lookback measured from the complaint date.

Recommended next steps

1. Do not lead with an IPR. The patent is expired and no claim has been invalidated, so an IPR buys you a validity judgment but no ongoing-royalty relief. Prioritize (a) a § 286 / damages-window defense keyed to the 2024-04-30 expiration, and (b) § 101/§ 112 and Markman positions in the district court (note the W.D. Wash. claim-construction order addressing § 112 ¶ 6 means-plus-function treatment in the parallel Flexiworld campaign: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.[302246](/patent/302246)/gov.uscourts.wawd.302246.161.0.pdf).
2. Mine the PATROLL output now. Pull the winning charts behind the 2025-03-29 Unified announcement for claims 38, 47, 53, and 67. If the art is genuinely anticipatory, it supports invalidity at the summary-judgment stage even without a PTAB record.
3. Watch the § 315(b) clock. Calendar one year from your own service date. If you intend to file an IPR, file before the district court reaches a merits decision to avoid § 315(a)/(b) traps, and confirm whether your customer/indemnitor has already blown the window.
4. Verify the live docket. Confirm the current status of Flexiworld v. Indeed (1:24-cv-01254) at Docket Alarm or RPX (https://litigation.rpxcorp.com/litigation/txwdce-1172809333-flexiworld-technologies-v-indeed) — a settlement there would be the obvious trigger for a license-defense or license-based estoppel argument. I have not confirmed its present posture.
5. Check for a very recent filing I could not see. My search hit a rate limit before I could exhaustively query PTAB E2E and the § 315(b)-period dockets. Before finalizing strategy, run RE46637 and parent US 7,099,304 through the PTAB E2E "Patent" tab (https://ptacts.uspto.gov) and re-check ODP — a late-2025 or 2026 petition is plausible given the December 2024 PATROLL contest, and the USPTO ODP ingest in your prompt may simply lag it.

Bottom line for a defendant: there is no adverse PTAB record to work around and no estoppel against you — but that is cold comfort, because the real exposure is a pre-2024 damages claim, not validity. Verify expiration, then decide whether your budget is better spent on a PTAB petition or on a damages-window/Markman defense. If you are served after 2026-09-29 and want PTAB cover, move inside 12 months.

I'll research this patent's assignment record and litigation history before reconstructing anything.

I was able to pull substantial corroborating material, but I must be upfront about a verification limit before presenting the record.

Verification caveat: I could not open the USPTO Assignment Center / Patent Assignment Search UI directly in this session, so I could not independently read the reel/frame number or the correspondent of record for the RE46637 recording itself. The timeline below is built on the Google Patents legal-events record for RE46637 (which shows one assignment), cross-referenced with Flexiworld's own district-court complaints, Unified Patents' PATROLL/NPE coverage, and the Stanford NPE Litigation Database. Where a datum is for a sibling Flexiworld patent rather than RE46637, I say so explicitly. Nothing below is fabricated.

Inventors

Pattern note (inverse of the usual red flag): There is no inventor departure. Both inventors are still the controlling principals of the assignee — Chang is the founder/president and Liu is a shareholder, and both appear as the assignors on the recorded assignment and as counsel-facing parties in the assertion campaign. The "all inventors bolted within 12 months" fire-sale precursor is not present. On sibling Flexiworld applications a third inventor, Vinaynathan Viswanathan, appears (e.g. assignment signed 2010-05-20/06-01, Reel/Frame 039641/0817, Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. Oregon), but Viswanathan is not a named inventor on RE46637.

Original assignee

Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. (Oregon corporation; addresses of record span PMB 267, 3439 NE Sandy Blvd., Portland, OR 97232; 16100 NW Cornell Rd., Suite 220, Beaverton, OR 97006; and Vancouver, WA).

• Primary line of business at founding (2001): wireless/embedded software ("FlexiCore™ / FlexiJet™") enabling mobile devices to print, stream and control devices over short-range wireless (Bluetooth/Wi-Fi). FlexiCore was a genuine product concept — Lexmark's third-party alliances manager was quoted in The Columbian (Apr. 18, 2002) praising it, and Flexiworld won Silicon Valley "Gong Show" and Portland Business Journal startup accolades in 2002–03.
• Funding/status: privately held; ~$1.5M raised (Series A 2002, Series A2 2006, a private secondary in 2022). Listed as "operating/active" in Crunchbase, but a Voicebot.ai audit (June 2020) found the website frozen at a 2005–2006 copyright, no news after Oct. 7, 2005, and no current employees on LinkedIn. Stanford's NPE Litigation Database classifies Flexiworld's asserter categories as "3 – Failed startup" and "1 – Acquired patents."
• Did it ship a product embodying the claims? By Flexiworld's own pleading, no. In its complaints (e.g. Flexiworld v. LG, E.D. Tex.) it affirmatively alleges: "Since issuance of each of the Patents-in-Suit, Flexiworld has not made, offered for sale, sold, or imported a product that practices any of the Patents-in-Suit…" (¶90). That is the single most probative fact in this record.
• Current status: operating as a patent-monetization/assertion entity run by its founder; not dissolved, not in bankruptcy, no evidence of any of the classic fire-sale events.

Assignment timeline

One recorded assignment is associated with RE46637.

• 2013-06-20 (recorded) — Reel/Frame not independently verified in this session
  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
  • Assignor: CHANG, WILLIAM HO; LIU, CHRISTINA YING (the named inventors)
  • Assignee: FLEXIWORLD TECHNOLOGIES, INC. (Oregon)
  • Correspondent: Not verified. The Assignment Center correspondent of record for this filing could not be read in this session, so I will not name one. For context only, the recurring litigation-side attorney on Flexiworld's patent-owner filings is C. Austin Ginnings, Reg. No. 62,706, Nelson Bumgardner Conroy P.C., 15020 S. Ravinia Ave., Suite 29, Orland Park, IL 60462 (Patent Owner's Response, PGR2021-00112; co-counsel Timothy Grochocinski appeared for Flexiworld in Flexiworld v. Indeed). These are litigation counsel, not confirmed as the recording correspondent — do not conflate them.
  • Context: Founder-to-company assignment consolidating inventor rights in the original assignee. This is the only link; the patent has never left Flexiworld.

Family context (sibling patents, for the correspondent/recurrence analysis — NOT RE46637's reel/frame): Flexiworld's complaints cite assignments from Chang and Liu to Flexiworld at, e.g., 042385/0202 (multiple patents: '031, '072, '178, '259), 028733/0064 ('402), 029112/0430 ('811), 012325/0362 ('233), 039816/0200 ('596), 046519/0534 ('871), 043675/0454 ('856), and 039641/0817 (a different application, assigning Chang and Vinaynathan Viswanathan). The recurrence of a single reel/frame (042385/0202) across several unrelated Flexiworld patents implies one bulk recording filed by a single correspondent covering a batch of applications — a real tell, but the correspondent name is unverified here.

If the Assignment Center shows no further records beyond this one, that is itself the finding: Flexiworld has been the sole owner continuously since 2013 and is the named plaintiff in every suit.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US RE46637
    2000 : Provisional filed by Chang and Liu
    2001 : Original application filed
    2006 : Original patent 7099304 issued
    2008 : First reissue application filed
    2012 : Continuation reissue application filed
    2013 : Assigned to Flexiworld Technologies Inc
    2017 : RE46637 granted
    2024 : First suit on RE46637 filed vs Indeed

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT. There is no "IP / Holdings / Licensing / Ventures" LLC anywhere in the chain. The patent never moved; the original operating assignee (Flexiworld, an Oregon corporation at real Portland/Beaverton addresses, not a registered-agent drop) is itself the asserter. Note the substantive tell is still met without the shell wrapper: Flexiworld admits it sells no product practicing the claims (LG complaint ¶90).

2. Known asserter in the chain — PRESENT. Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. is expressly identified as an NPE by Unified Patents ("The patents are owned by Flexiworld Technologies, Inc., an NPE" — PATROLL contest for RE46637 and the RE48,066 reexam coverage), and appears as a patent asserter in the Stanford NPE Litigation Database (categories: Failed startup; Acquired patents). It is a serial filer against Roku, Canon, Epson, Lexmark, Amazon, Hisense, Sony, Samsung, LG Electronics (2025, E.D. Tex.) and Indeed (1:24-cv-01254, W.D. Tex., filed 2024-10-18) — one of the few single-patent-defendant RE46637 assertions. Not on the classic Acacia/Marathon/IV lists; it is its own house NPE.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR (chain has only one link). There is no multi-link chain in which to observe recurrence. For corporate-context, the recurring Flexiworld litigation firm is Nelson Bumgardner Conroy P.C. (Ginnings; Grochoncinski), and the recurring recording reel/frame 042385/0202 across several sibling patents implies a single bulk-filing correspondent — but I could not confirm the correspondent name, so I am not making this a finding.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT. A single assignment, no chained LLCs, no <24-month cascade.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT. The only assignment (2013) predates by ~7–11 years the first suit naming RE46637 (2024). No six-month pre-suit transfer.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. No Chapter 7/11 of Flexiworld is evidenced. It raised only ~$1.5M and simply never commercialized; it did not go through a Kodak/Nortel-style proceeding.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT. No operating parent funneled the patent to a separate NPE. Flexiworld retained and asserted its own patents directly.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT (inverse). The chain does not terminate at RPX/AST/LOT/Unified. To the contrary, Unified Patents is attacking Flexiworld, not sheltering it: a PATROLL crowdsourced prior-art contest on RE46637 (claims 38, 47, 53, 67; closed Jan. 2025) and an ex parte reexamination of sibling RE48,066 (filed 2025-05-23; institution granted 2025-06-24, CRU, Unified in-house counsel).

Verdict

NPE — high confidence.

Two independent strong indicators drive this. First, Flexiworld is named as an NPE by Unified Patents and is a Stanford NPE Litigation Database asserter ("Failed startup"), asserting a single patent family across printers, TVs, speakers, earbuds, job-search and streaming defendants — a cross-industry campaign characteristic of monetization, not competition. Second, Flexiworld admits in its own complaints that it has made, sold, or imported no product practicing the Patents-in-Suit since issuance (LG complaint ¶90), i.e., its only revenue path is licensing/assertion. The chain itself is a single link (inventors Chang and Liu → Flexiworld, recorded 2013-06-20 per Google Patents legal events; reel/frame not verified here), so the classic shell-LLC/correspondent-recurrence signals are absent — but the "original assignee is the NPE" structure removes the need for them.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number RE46637) — please pull the reel/frame and correspondent of record for the 2013-06-20 recording, which I could not read in this session and which would resolve signal 3 definitively.

I'll research this specific patent and its cited prior art.

Let me dig deeper into the specific citation records for this patent.

Prior-Art Analysis — US RE46637 E1

1. What I was able to verify about the patent

Prosecution chain (from the specification's CROSS‑REFERENCE section): continuation reissue of 12/199,647 (issued 2012‑02‑14 as RE43,181), itself a reissue of US 7,099,304 (app. 09/947,116, filed 2001‑09‑04), which claims benefit of provisional 60/230,021 (filed 2000‑09‑05). Related reissues named in the same paragraph: RE42,828; RE41,416; RE41,487; RE41,532; RE41,689; RE41,882.

Enforcement context: Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. v. Indeed, Inc., No. 1:24‑cv‑01254 (W.D. Tex.) (Stanford NPE Litigation Database, https://npe.law.stanford.edu/patent/re46637). Unified Patents' Patroll program ran a prior-art bounty (Dec 4, 2024 – Jan 4, 2025) specifically on claims 38, 47, 53 and 67 of US‑RE46637‑E1 (https://patroll.unifiedpatents.com/contests/kSHnkiJsAQcJvn74Z).

2. Important methodological caveat — read before relying on Section 3

I was not able to retrieve a complete, verified IDS/“Patent Citations” list for RE46637. Google Patents' citation tables did not render in my search results, and USPTO PatentCenter (which would host the app. 13/371,318 file wrapper and the PTO/SB/08 Information Disclosure Statements) requires a direct structured query I could not complete here. The list below is built from partial snippets only (chiefly a uspto.report page for RE46637 and Google Patents' citation cross-references). Treat it as incomplete and needing confirmation against the file wrapper.

To complete this properly, pull the documents listed in the "USPTO Patent Center / USPTO Assignment / Global Dossier" links on the Google Patents page for app. 13/371,318, and read the PTO/SB/08 forms plus the March 13, 2009 and August 17–20, 2009 Office Actions referenced there.

3. References identified (partial list)

A. U.S. patent documents cited (as reported by uspto.report)

Key point: the four U.S. patent documents I could see in the RE46637 citation snippet are, on their face, the applicants' own family members (Liu/Chang) published after the 2000 priority date. They were almost certainly cited for disclosure context, not as § 102 art. They cannot anticipate any claim of RE46637.

B. Non-patent literature cited (the substantive § 102 candidates)

4. Claim-level § 102 assessment

I could not verify the text of any claim of RE46637 in this session, so I cannot responsibly map individual limitations to individual references. For absolute precision you need the claim set (claims 38, 47, 53, 67 are the asserted/attacked ones) and, ideally, the exemplar claim charts.

Subject to that limitation, my assessment based on the disclosure and on the claim description given by Unified Patents ("an Internet‑enabled device and a computer‑readable medium containing software for connecting parties over the Internet… transfer and reception of product, service, intellectual property, and other information"):

• VocalTec Internet Phone Release 4 (1993–1996) + Buyer's Guide + Readme — the strongest single § 102(b) ground, but only against claims whose novelty rests on voice over the Internet and user directory/identification. If a claim requires a transaction-specific reference code generated from a negotiated transaction specification and used to recover the called party's voice address, VocalTec alone almost certainly does not anticipate — it lacks the transaction-specification/reference-code architecture.
• keen.com and exp.com production documents (2000‑08‑06) — the strongest factual match to the "expert marketplace + anonymous paid voice connection" narrative, but they are § 102(a) art only, and their anticipation value depends on the record supporting the Aug 6, 2000 date and on the applicant's invention date (provisional filed 2000‑09‑05, so this is a very tight window).
• Hoshi et al. (1999) and Dodd (1999) — § 102(b) publications, but directed to gateways/infrastructure and general telecom background respectively. Usable in § 103 combinations; unlikely to anticipate standing alone.
• All Chang/Liu U.S. patents cited — no § 102 effect whatsoever (same inventive family and/or post‑priority publication).

5. Bottom line / recommended next steps

1. No anticipatory prior art can be confirmed from what I retrieved. The only U.S. patent documents visible in the citation snippet are the applicants' own post‑2000 family patents, which are legally incapable of anticipating RE46637.
2. The genuine § 102 candidates are the VocalTec Release 4 materials (1993–1996, § 102(b)) and the keen.com / exp.com web pages (2000‑08‑06, § 102(a) at best). Whether either anticipates depends on claim text I could not verify.
3. Fetch the file wrapper for application 13/371,318 via USPTO PatentCenter (links are on the Google Patents page) and read the PTO/SB/08 IDS forms and the 2009 Office Actions. That will give the authoritative, complete citation list — which is what the question actually asks for, and which I could not obtain from the sources available to me.
4. Note the internal date discrepancies recorded above (filing 2012‑02‑09 vs. 2012‑02‑10; priority 2000‑09‑04 vs. 2000‑09‑05; grant 2017‑12‑11 vs. 2017‑12‑12; expiration 2024‑04‑29 vs. 2024‑04‑30). I have reported them literally rather than reconciling them.

I'll start by gathering the cited prior art for USRE46637, since the "Prior Art" section of the Google Patents page (References Cited) isn't included in the text you provided.

Let me pull the full cited-references list and the claim text, which aren't in the excerpt you provided.

Preliminary caveats (important — please read before relying on this)

I could not retrieve the actual "Prior Art" / "References Cited" table from the USRE46637 page itself, because the page text supplied in your message is truncated before the claims and contains no citation table. I reconstructed the cited-reference list from secondary sources (Justia's reference listing for RE46637 and Google Patents linkage snippets surfaced in search). Two consequences:

1. The claim text of RE46637 is not in the material you provided (the fetched page cuts off inside the "Summary of the Invention"). I therefore analyze the claim groups identified from the abstract, the specification, and the public record (the Unified Patents contest for RE46637 expressly targeted claims 38, 47, 53, and 67; the NPE docket shows it asserted in Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. v. Indeed, Inc., 1:24-cv-01254, W.D. Tex.). Any chart you build must be re-verified against the literal claim language.
2. Where I characterize the disclosure of an individual reference, I flag my confidence. Under your operating rule I will not fabricate reference contents.

Priority / §103 framework: Provisional 60/230,021 filed 2000-09-05; US 09/947,116 filed 2001-09-04; U.S. Pat. 7,099,304 issued 2006-08-29 → Re. 43,181 → continuation reissue 13/371,318 → RE46637, published 2017-12-12, expired 2024-04-30. This is a pre-AIA case. A reference must therefore qualify under §102(a)/(b) as of 2000-09-05 / 2001-09-04, or under §102(e) via its own U.S. filing date. Several cited references are 2001-dated patents (Kahane 6,243,398; Amit 6,259,538; Vanderveldt 6,266,668; Jenkins 6,285,983; Roth 6,285,987; Jacobi 6,317,722; Cohen 6,332,153; Burger 6,353,660; Haitsuka 6,366,298) — these are only available if their underlying applications were filed before the critical date. Step one of any §103 challenge is establishing the §102(e) date of each.

1. The prior art of record (as best reconstructed)

From Justia's "References Cited" listing for RE46637, the U.S. patent references include (partial, truncated in the source I could retrieve):

5,809,114 (Solomon) · 5,809,224 (Schultz) · 5,818,836 (DuVal) · 5,825,771 (Cohen) · 5,845,266 (Lupien) · 5,864,612 (Strauss) · 5,907,604 (Hsu) · 5,907,677 (Glenn) · 5,910,946 (Csapo) · 5,918,010 (Appleman) · 5,933,811 (Angles) · 5,933,827 (Cole) · 5,948,061 (Merriman) · 5,956,020 (D'Amico) · 5,974,148 (Stambler) · 5,983,200 (Slotznick) · 5,991,735 (Gerace) · 6,011,794 (Mordowitz) · 6,038,433 (Vegt) · 6,067,347 (Farris) · 6,069,890 (White) · 6,072,780 (Johnson) · 6,081,788 (Appleman) · 6,108,004 (Medl) · 6,148,067 (Leipow) · 6,167,432 (Jiang) · 6,175,619 (DeSimone) · 6,243,398 (Kahane) · 6,259,538 (Amit) · 6,266,668 (Vanderveldt) · 6,285,983 (Jenkins) · 6,285,987 (Roth) · 6,317,722 (Jacobi) · 6,332,153 (Cohen) · 6,353,660 (Burger) · 6,366,298 (Haitsuka) …

High-confidence characterizations (verified in retrieved materials or long-standing and uncontroversial):

• US 6,069,890 (White et al.) — "Internet telephone service." Title directly confirmed in the search results linking to RE46637. Discloses a web-based interface by which a client computer requests a call to a PSTN terminal, with the network establishing the voice path. This is the single most load-bearing reference for the gateway/bridging concept.
• US 5,948,061 (Merriman et al.) — delivery, targeting and measuring of advertising over a network; profile-based selection of ads served to a user. High confidence.
• US 6,317,722 (Jacobi et al.) — generating personal recommendations from a user's stored transaction/purchase history (use of electronic shopping carts to generate recommendations). High confidence.
• US 5,933,811 (Angles et al.) — delivering customized advertisements within interactive communication systems based on user characteristics. High confidence.
• US 5,983,200 (Slotznick) — interactive on-line product/service information and selection. Medium-high confidence.

Medium/low confidence — must be verified against the specifications before use:

• US 5,907,677 (Glenn et al.) — I believe this is directed to anonymous voice communication established through an online data service (caller supplies an alias; the service, not the caller, holds the destination number). (Medium confidence.)
• US 6,148,067 (Leipow), US 6,175,619 (DeSimone), US 6,108,004 (Medl), US 5,974,148 (Stambler), US 6,266,668 (Vanderveldt) — titles in the space of anonymous communications, matching, profiling and transaction systems, but I cannot verify their disclosures from the retrieved material. Do not chart these without pulling the PDFs.

Non-patent / admitted prior art (very significant here). The specification itself contains an extended applicant-admitted prior art (APA) discussion (usable under MPEP 2129 / §301 principles):

• the "user code" system — a magazine advertisement carries the marketplace's phone number plus a user code; a caller dials in, enters the code, and the system looks up the participant's number and bridges the call, "thus preserving the participant's anonymity";
• the "contact code" system — each party dials in at a scheduled time and enters a code; the system compares codes and connects the calls;
• the extension in which the system records the first successful pairing and thereafter "places a call to the non-calling party" and may supply "information to the called party about the calling party."

That admission is fatal to any claim whose only novelty over it is "anonymous voice bridging by reference code." The only arguably novel additions are (a) transaction-specificity/multiplicity of codes, and (b) the data-mining → proposed-transaction-specification features of the reissue claims.

2. Grounds of rejection

Ground 1 — The "anonymous voice communication by reference code" claims (the original '304 claim family)

Primary combination: Admitted prior art (contact-code / user-code bridging, spec. pp. 6–9) in view of White (6,069,890) and Glenn (5,907,677).

• What each supplies: APA supplies the entire logic of "receive code → look up hidden destination address → open the voice channel without revealing the address." White supplies the Internet-client-to-PSTN-gateway call-setup architecture (which the patent's own FIG. 2 and its PSTN-gateway discussion merely re-describe). Glenn supplies (if confirmed) an alias/anonymity layer.
• Motivation: KSR, 550 U.S. at 417, 421 — a market/design incentive to move a proven telephony-bridging service onto the Web, and the predictable substitution of an Internet-based controller for a PSTN switch. Applicant's own background concedes the desirability: "the service/system preferably is not restricted to circuit-switched networks…" and "the problem of keeping clients satisfied." In re Ethicon (Fed. Cir. 2014) taxonomies (i)–(iii) and (vii) apply.
• Predictability: the combination is a "mere duplication of parts" / substitution of one known network element for another, with the same function performed in the same way.

Ground 2 — The "transaction-specific reference code distinguishing multiple transactions between the same parties"

Combination: APA in view of Farris (6,067,347) and/or White (6,069,890), plus the admitted "user code vs. transaction" passage.

The specification's own statement of the problem — "user code is not sufficient to identify and describe different transactions having different transaction specifications" — is a statement of the problem, not of the solution. Where the specification frames the difference between user codes and transaction codes, the claimed distinction is (per KSR) an obvious design choice ("obvious to try") in database key design: an artisan needing multiple concurrent transactions between the same two endpoints would naturally key the connection record on a per-transaction identifier rather than a per-user identifier. This is a classic "arranging data in a database according to known principles" rationale. Also see Grp. 1 rationale in MPEP 2143(A) — "obvious to try a known option from a finite number of identified, predictable solutions."

Ground 3 — The "confirmation / reminder / automatic-connection" claims (FIGS. 5–6)

Combination: APA or White in view of Slotznick (5,983,200) and/or Burger (6,353,660), and the admitted prior art of calendaring/PIM reminders.

• The FIG. 5 screen (called-party identity 172, scheduled time 174, current time 176, "call now"/"cancel" buttons 178/180) is indistinguishable from a conventional appointment-reminder dialog box as implemented in any 1999-vintage personal information manager or Internet-enabled phone. A reminder is the predictable use of a known technique (scheduling software) with a known device (a dual-enabled phone, itself admitted prior art in the specification's Background).
• Post-2000 art confirming this technique (e.g., click-to-call launched from a web page) is abundant, but for a 2000 priority date the safest support is the PIM/reminder art and White's web-initiated calling.

Ground 4 — The reissue "data mining → proposed transaction specification" claims (approx. claims 38, 47, 53, 67 group)

Primary combination: Merriman (5,948,061) in view of Jacobi (6,317,722), further in view of Angles (5,933,811) and/or Roth (6,285,987); optionally add Vanderveldt (6,266,668) and Jenkins (6,285,983) for the matching/marketplace layer.

Mapping to the abstract's limitations:

• "Data from each transaction submitted through the service are data mined" and "collected data may include personal information, private data, interest…" → Merriman, targeted advertising over networks based on accumulated user profile data.
• "create a proposed transaction specification … based, at least in part, on data mining user information" → Jacobi, generating recommendations/proposed purchases from mined purchase history. The step "mine history → propose next action" is exactly Jacobi's disclosed function.
• "The reference code may include tagged photo, advertisement etc." → Angles/Roth/Merriman, ad serving keyed to a user/identifier.
• "The service may also provide private user information to other parties" → Merriman/Angles (profile data shared with advertisers), plus the admitted marketplace "profile descriptions" and "ratings/comments/reviews" prior art in the specification's Background.

Motivation: Both references address the same commercial objective — increasing the number and quality of matched transactions — and the specification itself states the purpose: "[f]or increasing transactions, the service system may create a proposed transaction specification." A POSITA would combine profile-mining (Merriman) with recommendation generation (Jacobi) because each improves the other's accuracy and revenue; KSR at 417 ("if a technique has been used to improve one device, and a person of ordinary skill … would recognize that it would improve similar devices in the same way, using the technique is obvious"). The Federal Circuit's "predictable results" line (and the USPTO's own appeal decisions holding recommendation-on-history abstract and conventional) reinforce that no unexpected result is claimed.

Ground 5 — Dependent "connection criteria / charging / who-initiates" limitations

These (pre-agreed time frame, rejection outside the window, per-duration billing, designated caller) are each disclosed or suggested by APA + White + Farris, and by conventional telephony billing. Rejecting a call outside an agreed window is a business rule implemented with a clock comparison; the specification itself says the time frame "is inputted by the user and stored in a database," i.e., a generic lookup. No non-obvious engineering is claimed.

3. Secondary considerations (Graham factor 4)

• Commercial success / copying: none of record in the material before me; Flexiworld is characterized in third-party databases as an NPE (see the Stanford NPE Litigation Database entry for RE46637 and the Unified Patents contest page). Absent a nexus between the claims and any product success, secondary considerations carry little weight (In re GPAC).
• Skepticism / long-felt need: the specification alleges a long-felt need for anonymity in voice communication, but the admitted prior art already solved it (user codes, contact codes), which undercuts the "long-felt need" narrative.
• Industry praise / licensing: any licenses obtained under litigation threat are not probative of non-obviousness absent a nexus.

4. Practical notes for the challenger

1. Reissue-specific defenses are independent of §103 and should be run in parallel: (i) the reissue claims must be supported by the 2000/2001 disclosure — the "data mining → proposed transaction specification" claims rest on a single permissive sentence in the specification ("by the service/system's collection of data and/or data mining of same in the context of the user's history of transactions"), which raises a §251 new matter / §112(a) written-description attack that, if successful, moves those claims' effective date forward and opens up 2001–2003 art; (ii) recapture (§251(d)) for subject matter surrendered during the 7,099,304 prosecution.
2. Verify §102(e) dates for the ten-or-so 2001-issued references before relying on them (list supra).
3. Pull the PDFs for the low-confidence references (Glenn, Leipow, DeSimone, Medl, Stambler, Vanderveldt) — I could not verify their disclosures from the retrieved material and will not guess.
4. The expired status (2024-04-30) limits exposure to past damages; the live dispute of record is Flexiworld v. Indeed, 1:24-cv-01254 (W.D. Tex.).

Bottom line: the strongest §103 ground is Admitted Prior Art (the applicant's own "contact code"/"user code" bridging disclosure) in view of White (6,069,890) for the voice-anonymity claims, and Merriman (5,948,061) in view of Jacobi (6,317,722) for the reissue data-mining/proposed-transaction claims. Both combinations rest on predictable, conventional, previously-known techniques combined to achieve no more than their expected sum — the KSR standard for "ordinary creativity."