US RE46777

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

The initial results mostly surfaced a different patent (US 9,769,477, "Video Data Compression Systems"), so let me isolate the correct number and check for the reissue lineage and any 2026 CAFC activity.

Search scope note (important)

Searches for RE46777 return two very different families, and the near-identical numbers make them easy to conflate:

• US RE46777 E1 — "Quantization for hybrid video coding," Narroschke & Musmann (the patent you asked about).
• US 9,769,477 B2 — "Video Data Compression Systems," Fallon et al., Realtime Adaptive Streaming (a different patent, litigated in IPR2018‑01187 / ‑01630 etc.). Not RE46777; excluded here.

Also, in the Delaware litigation (e.g., Realtime Adaptive Streaming v. Haivision, 1:17‑cv‑01692), the shorthand "the '477 patent" refers to 9,769,477, not to RE46777. RE46777 is instead referred to in briefing as "the R777 Patent."

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US RE46777 E1 — identity and bibliographic data

Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/USRE46777/en ; https://patents.justia.com/patent/RE46777 ; EPO register record for EP 2137980 B1 (http://data.epo.org/pise-server/rest/collections/lgpi/EP2137980B1.pdf) ; original patent cover page at https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/Delaware_District_Court/1--17-cv-01693/... (US 8,634,462 B2 front page).

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Abstract (as granted)

Method for coding a video signal using hybrid coding, comprising: reducing temporal redundancy by block based motion compensated prediction in order to establish a prediction error signal; performing quantization on samples of the prediction error signal or on coefficients resulting from a transformation of the prediction error signal into the frequency domain to obtain quantized values, representing quantized samples or quantized coefficients respectively; calculating a quantization efficiency for the quantized values; calculating a zero efficiency for a quantization, when the quantized values are set to zero; selecting the higher efficiency; and maintaining the quantized values or setting quantized values to zero, for further proceeding, depending on the selected efficiency.

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Independent claims — plain-language overview

Claim 1 — Method. A hybrid video-coding method that (a) uses block-based motion-compensated prediction to produce a prediction error signal; (b) quantizes either the prediction-error samples directly (spatial domain) or transform coefficients of the error (frequency domain), where the error signal contains multiple subblocks each with multiple quantized values; (c) computes a first "quantization efficiency" for the quantized values of a subblock; (d) sets that subblock's quantized values all to zero and computes a second efficiency for that all-zero state; (e) compares the two and keeps whichever is higher — i.e., either retains the subblock's quantized values or keeps them zeroed, for further processing (entropy coding).

Claim 11 — Coder (apparatus), means-plus-function format. A hybrid video coder with: (i) means for reducing temporal redundancy via block-based motion-compensated prediction to establish a prediction error signal; (ii) a quantizer that quantizes the prediction error signal into quantized values representing samples or coefficients, the prediction error signal including a plurality of subblocks; and (iii) control means for: calculating a first quantization efficiency of at least one subblock; setting that subblock's quantized values to all zeroes; calculating a second quantization efficiency while all values are zeroes; selecting which efficiency is higher; and selecting the subblock with values retained or zeroed accordingly. (Claim text per the claim-construction record in Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC v. Adobe, reproduced at https://www.b2ipreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/realtime-v-Adobe.pdf.)

Dependent claims (illustrated): Claim 2 adds macroblock/subblock hierarchy and an overall quantization-vs-zero efficiency comparison at the macroblock level; claim 3 says the efficiencies are based on a cost function; claims 4–5 specify rate-distortion cost (required rate + weighted distortion); claim 6 gives the formula Cj = Dj + L·Rj (distortion plus Lagrange-weighted rate). The specification also discloses a Lagrange parameter L = 0.85·2^((QP−12)/3) as used in H.264/AVC coder control.

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Uncertainty / verification flags

1. I could not verify the complete claim set of RE46777 from the retrieved sources — the Google Patents page I fetched truncated the claim text, and my sources directly evidence only claims 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 11. The specification clearly describes decoder and coded-data-signal aspects (with side-information flags such as Slice_FD_SD_coding_flag, MB_FD_SD_coding_flag, FD_or_SD_flag), so additional independent decoder/data-signal claims may exist in the reissue. Treat the total claim count and any third independent claim as unconfirmed.
2. Two different "filing dates" appear for RE46777. Google Patents shows "filing date 2008‑03‑10" (the parent PCT date) alongside application number 15/013,843 (a 2016-era serial). The consistent reading is: parent application filed Mar. 10, 2008; reissue application 15/013,843 filed in 2016; reissue granted Apr. 3, 2018. I could not retrieve the exact 2016 filing date.
3. Assignee discrepancy. Google lists Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC as current assignee (matching the litigation record), while at least one patent-portfolio aggregator (patentleaderboard) lists RE46777 under Sun Patent Trust / Matthias Narroschke. Which entity currently owns the reissue is not conclusively established by my sources.
4. Reissue scope. The Adobe claim-construction record notes that "[bracketed language, i.e. language removed from reissued patent claim]" appears — indicating the reissue changed claim scope relative to US 8,634,462. I did not retrieve the reissue's formal statement of the reissue error or a full pre/post claim comparison.
5. "Reexamination" vs. reissue. The Adobe briefing describes the examiner's §112 ¶6 statements as occurring "during reexamination proceedings" (Office Action June 7, 2017), which is how the parties referenced the reissue prosecution history. These are the same proceeding as far as the record shows, but I flag the terminology.

Federal Circuit / CAFC 2026 dockets

I found no authoritative CAFC 2026 docket activity for RE46777. The searches did not return any Federal Circuit appeal, brief, or docket keyed to RE46777 (or to its parent 8,634,462) with 2026 dates, and the Federal Circuit query exhausted without results. What I can confirm is pre‑2026, district-court-level: RE46777 ("R777") was at issue in Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC v. Adobe (claim construction of the "control means for…" §112 ¶6 term and the corresponding structure limited to the FIG. 3 algorithm; b2ipreport PDF) and appears in the C.D. Cal. case Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC v. Google LLC, Case No. 2:18‑cv‑03629. The obvious caution applies: the well-known Realtime Adaptive Streaming appellate activity (including Realtime Adaptive Streaming v. Netflix and the Intel/Sony appellate line) involves its Fallon-family patents (e.g., 8,867,610; 9,769,477), not RE46777. Any statement that those appeals concern RE46777 would be an error.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent RE46777 across patent litigation sources.

Let me dig deeper into the district court litigation involving this patent.

Let me search for additional district court cases and the appeal.

Preliminary: identifying the patent (and a trap to avoid)

US RE46777 E1 — "Quantization for Hybrid Video Coding" — is a reissue of U.S. Patent No. 8,634,462 (inventors Matthias Narroschke and Hans-Georg Musmann). Priority date 2007‑03‑13; application 15/013,843; reissue granted 2018‑04‑03; current assignee Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC; Google Patents flags that the family has litigation. Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/USRE46777/en

⚠️ Do not confuse this with U.S. Patent No. 9,769,477 (the "'477 patent"). That is a different patent — "Video Data Compression Systems," from the so‑called "Fallon" family, also asserted by Realtime Adaptive Streaming. Many search hits and litigation captions refer to "the '477 patent" when they mean 9,769,477, not RE46,777. In the descriptions below I separate the two wherever the sources allow. Where a source only says "'777 patent" or "RE46,777," I treat it as RE46777 (the reissue of the '462 patent).

Also note a timing point that explains the case pattern: the reissue issued 2018‑04‑03. Complaints filed in 2017 asserted the parent '462 patent; complaints filed/amended after April 2018 asserted RE46777 itself.

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Contested PTAB proceedings on RE46777 (post‑grant, adversarial — not district court "litigation" but directly on this patent)

Sources: https://gaeflexstaging-dot-docketupdate.appspot.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2018-01189/Hulu_LLC_v._Realtime_Adaptive_Streaming_LLC/ and https://ipverse.greyb.com/ptab-web/cases/case-details/IPR2019-01037

Key practical consequence: in the Google IPR, Realtime statutorily disclaimed the challenged claims of RE46777 (March 2020), and the Board entered adverse judgment. That disclaimer/termination is the most significant "outcome" tied specifically to RE46777's asserted claims. (I cannot confirm from my sources which specific claims were disclaimed, nor whether the Netflix/Hulu IPR2018‑01189 FWD held claims unpatentable — that outcome detail is not established in the material I retrieved.)

The entity-relevant notice also appears in a joint motion captioning the IPRs on Realtime's patents: Hulu, LLC, Amazon.com, Inc., and Netflix, Inc., Petitioners v. Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC, Case IPR2018‑01189 (Patent RE46,777), etc. Source: Docket Alarm document PDF (Joint Motion to Terminate as to Hulu and Amazon.com).

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District court litigation asserting RE46777

Sources: RPX Insight complaint documents (Samsung amended complaint; Google/YouTube stay stipulation; Colorado complaint), Cadwalader case-analysis PDF (Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC v. Netflix, Inc., re the California actions and fee award), and the RPX/Unified Patents dockets.

Related Realtime cases (parent '462 patent or the distinct 9,769,477 patent — NOT RE46777 itself)

Because the reissue post‑dated them, these pleaded the '462 patent rather than RE46777, or pleaded the unrelated 9,769,477:

• Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC v. Netflix, Inc. & Netflix Streaming Services, Inc., D. Del. 1:17‑cv‑01692‑CFC‑SRF, filed 2017‑11‑21 — asserted '046, '462, '535, '298, '907 and 9,769,477 ('462 was the pre‑reissue parent of RE46777). Voluntarily dismissed without prejudice 2019‑07‑23.
• Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC v. Hulu, LLC, C.D. Cal. 2:17‑cv‑07611‑SJO‑FFM, filed 2017‑10‑17 — asserted, inter alia, the '462 patent. Joint motion to dismiss by plaintiff (2018).
• Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC v. Brightcove Inc. et al., D. Del. 1:17‑cv‑01519‑CFC‑SRF — dismissed 2018‑10‑31 (plaintiff's claims with prejudice).
• Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC v. Sony Electronics, Inc., D. Del. 1:17‑cv‑01693‑CFC‑SRF — dismissed 2018‑11‑05.
• Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC v. Haivision Network Video Inc., D. Del. 1:17‑cv‑01520‑CFC‑SRF.
• Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC v. Apple Inc., D. Colo. 1:17‑cv‑02869 (amended complaint 2018‑03‑26) — asserted '046, '462, '442, '535, '298 and 9,769,477.
• Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC v. Sling TV L.L.C. et al., D. Colo. 1:17‑cv‑02097.
• In re: Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC Patent Litigation, MDL No. 2845 — motion to centralize 12 actions in 5 districts denied (2018‑08‑01). The eight Realtime patents recited include 8,634,462 (the parent of RE46777). Source: https://www.bartlit-beck.com/assets/htmldocuments/20180801%20MDL%20Denial.pdf
• PTAB IPR2018‑01187 (on 9,769,477) — a companion proceeding frequently referenced in the same joint-motion papers.

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Appeal

• Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC v. Netflix, Inc., No. 2021‑1484 (Fed. Cir., July 27, 2022) (precedential, 2‑1). The listed patent numbers include 8,634,462 (RE46,777) among Realtime's asserted family. The court held that dismissing a case on the eve of a potentially adverse merits ruling and refiling in a new forum to avoid or delay that ruling is impermissible forum shopping, in connection with the District of Delaware's § 285 attorney‑fee award. (I am confident of the holding and precedential status; I am less certain of every procedural detail of the disposition, so treat the disposition description as medium confidence.)

Sources: https://www.pattersonsheridan.com/publications/federal-circuit-summary-for-week-ending-july-29-2022/ ; https://www.cadwalader.com/uploads/media/Realtime_v_Netflix.pdf

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Bottom line

• Litigation involving US RE46777 is known. The clearest instances are the Google/YouTube case (C.D. Cal. 2:18‑cv‑03629, stayed), the Samsung case (E.D. Tex. 6:18‑cv‑00113, amended complaint expressly pleads RE46,777), and the second Netflix California action (2019, dismissed 2019‑11‑14, leading to the § 285 fee dispute affirmed in the 2021‑1484 appeal).
• The decisive event for the patent's asserted claims is the March 2020 statutory disclaimer of the challenged claims in IPR2019‑01037 (Google), with the Board granting adverse judgment on 2020‑03‑24, plus the related IPR2018‑01189 (Hulu/Amazon/Netflix) proceeding that reached Final Written Decision and terminated 2020‑01‑15.
• Confidence flags: (i) I could not confirm from retrieved sources the final disposition of the Samsung action, the Wowza action's asserted patents, or the substantive holding of the IPR2018‑01189 Final Written Decision. (ii) Watch the RE46777 vs. 9,769,477 distinction — several sources use "'477 patent" for 9,769,477, which is a different patent. (iii) The Google Patents listing marks the family as having litigation (Darts‑IP family 39642989), which is consistent with the above.

Given the strict identification rule, I have not merged RE46777 with any similarly numbered patent; where sources were ambiguous, I flagged it rather than assumed.

I'll start by checking the structured record against live sources for any AIA trial activity on RE46777.

The structured block says no AIA proceedings, but search results show RE46777-related IPRs. I need to verify these are actually on RE46777 (and not on the similarly-numbered '477 patent) before reporting.

IPR2018-01189 is confirmed on RE46,777 with an FWD finding claims unpatentable, and Google's IPR2019-01037 shows a disclaimer. Let me pin down the claim-level details and identify all RE46777 proceedings.

AIA Trial Proceedings — US RE46777 ("Quantization for hybrid video coding")

Critical discrepancy flagged up front. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block supplied with this task states the USPTO ODP API returns no AIA trial proceedings for RE46777. That is wrong or stale. Live sources — PTAB documents themselves, a district-court joint status report, and the Federal Circuit's 2022 precedential opinion in Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC v. Netflix, Inc. — establish at least two IPRs on RE46777, both resolved against the patent. I report the verified record below and mark every point I could not independently confirm.

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Proceedings overview

Two confirmed AIA proceedings on RE46777; both terminated with the patent losing its claims — zero proceedings survived with claims upheld. Breakdown: 1 proceeding ended in a Final Written Decision invalidating claims (IPR2018-01189), and 1 ended in statutory disclaimer of the challenged claims followed by adverse judgment (IPR2019-01037). Active proceedings: none. Settled-as-to-some-petitioners: 1 (Hulu/Amazon settled out of IPR2018-01189 in 2018; Netflix carried it to judgment).

Bottom line for a defendant: this is not a "hardened" patent — it is a gutted one. The PTAB found claims 1–12 and 14 unpatentable, and Realtime then statutorily disclaimed claims 1, 3–7, 9, and 11. If a demand letter cites RE46777 claim 1 (the claim Realtime actually asserted in litigation), that claim is canceled/disclaimed and cannot support an infringement case. Any assertion of the disclaimed or invalidated claims is sanction-bait.

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IPR2018-01189 — Hulu, LLC; Amazon.com, Inc.; and Netflix, Inc. v. Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC

• Type: Inter Partes Review (35 U.S.C. §§ 311–319)
• Filed: 2018-06-08
• Status: Final Written Decision (docket aggregator status); terminated 2020-01-15. Plain-English gloss: the Board held the challenged claims unpatentable and issued a certificate-style loss for the patent owner.
• Judge panel: Sources conflict on the exact trial panel. The related-proceedings termination order (Paper 14 in the companion cases) lists Georgianna W. Braden, Gregg I. Anderson, Kevin W. Cherry, Garth D. Baer, Nabeel U. Khan, and Kamran Jivani across the five related IPRs (IPR2018-01169/01170/01187/01189/01227); a third-party docket page for 01189 lists the same six names. I could not confirm which subset authored the FWD. Treat the six-name list as the panel pool, not a verified FWD panel.
• Petition grounds: Not confirmed. I could not retrieve the petition or FWD text, and I will not guess the art or statutory basis. The joint motion to terminate and status-report sources describe only the disposition, not the grounds. (Context: RE46777 is a reissue of U.S. 8,634,462; the art in this family is H.264/AVC-era video-compression prior art, but that is inference, not record evidence.)
• Institution decision: Instituted — the Federal Circuit's opinion places institution for the '777 patent in the January–May 2019 rolling wave (J.A. 6034–60). Exact institution date not confirmed.
• Final Written Decision: Issued 2020-01-15, finding claims 1–12 and 14 of RE46777 unpatentable. Source: Realtime's own joint status report in Realtime Adaptive Streaming, LLC v. Sling TV L.L.C., No. 1:17-cv-02097 (D. Colo.), Dkt. 172, which states: "On 1/15/2020, the PTAB issued a FWD in IPR2018-01189 finding claims 1-12 and 14 of the '777 patent to be unpatentable." Same report: "All challenged claims of the '777 Patent have been found unpatentable by the PTAB and/or disclaimed (canceled) by Realtime." I could not confirm the fate of claim 13 — the FWD enumeration conspicuously stops at 12 and 14; do not assume claim 13 was challenged or sustained.
• Settlement / termination: Partial settlement. Hulu and Amazon settled with Realtime (their district-court cases were dismissed 2018-09-24 and 2018-09-25). The three petitioners jointly moved to terminate as to Hulu and Amazon only on 2018-10-03 under 35 U.S.C. § 317(a) and 37 C.F.R. § 42.72; the Board granted that motion on 2018-10-18, leaving Netflix as sole petitioner to trial. The two settlement agreements were filed under seal as business-confidential exhibits (Exs. 2001/2002) and kept separate from the patent files — terms are confidential.
• Appeal: No appeal by Realtime. The Sling/DISH status report states: "Patent Owner Realtime did not appeal IPR2018-01189." Accordingly the unpatentability of claims 1–12 and 14 is final.
• Defensive value: Very high for a defendant. Claims 1–12 and 14 are canceled — any infringement theory premised on them is dead on arrival. This is the single most useful proceeding for a defense.

IPR2019-01037 — Google LLC et al. v. Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2019-05-06
• Status: Docket aggregator status "Final Written Decision"; terminated 2020-03-24 on the Board's grant of a request for adverse judgment.
• Judge panel: Not confirmed in the sources retrieved.
• Petition grounds: Not confirmed. The petition for Inter Partes Review of U.S. Patent No. RE46,777 is listed on the docket; I could not retrieve the grounds. Notably, the docket shows "Google's Election of Asserted Prior Art," which is a procedural election, not a merits ground.
• Institution decision: Instituted 2019-12-04 (per the IPVerse case record).
• Final Written Decision: None on the merits. The merits were never reached because the patent owner pulled the claims. Docket sequence:
  • 2020-03-18 — Patent Owner files "Notice of Disclaimer of the Challenged Claims" with exhibit "Disclaimer of Challenged Claims of '777 Patent."
  • 2020-03-24 — Board issues "Granting Request for Adverse Judgment After Institution of Trial, 37 C.F.R. § 42.73(b)."
  • A separate Realtime disclaimer dated 2020-03-05 disclaimed claims 1, 3–7, 9, and 11 (Sling/DISH status report). The 03-05 and 03-18 dates may reflect the statutory disclaimer at the Office versus the notice filed in the IPR; the record does not let me collapse them.
• Settlement / termination: Not a settlement — an adverse judgment following patent-owner disclaimer. Adverse judgment under § 42.73(b) is generally not appealable.
• Appeal: None. An adverse judgment following disclaimer ends the proceeding.
• Defensive value: Very high, and it confirms the pattern. Realtime chose to give up the claims rather than defend them before a second panel — the strongest possible signal of invalidity. Claims 1, 3–7, 9, and 11 are statutorily disclaimed (35 U.S.C. § 253) and treated as though they never existed.

Related-but-not-confirmed

• IPR2019-01033 (Google v. Realtime) — a Realtime exhibit filed in this case lists the asserted RE46,777 claims (1, 3–7, 9, 11) against Google/YouTube, but that exhibit proves only which claims were asserted in the litigation, not which patent IPR2019-01033 challenges. I could not confirm that IPR2019-01033 is on RE46777. Do not cite it as such without pulling the petition.
• I likewise found no evidence of a CBM or PGR on RE46777, and no Unified Patents filing naming RE46777 (Unified's Realtime IPRs in 2018 targeted other patents in the portfolio).

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Strategic summary

Claim status. Taking the record together: claims 1–12 and 14 were held unpatentable by FWD in IPR2018-01189, and claims 1, 3–7, 9, and 11 were additionally statutorily disclaimed. The overlap is total for the disclaimed set (all within 1–12). So claims 1–12 and 14 are dead; claim 13 is unaccounted for in my sources — neither confirmed canceled nor confirmed surviving; and I have no information about whether claims numbered above 14 exist in the reissue, let alone whether they were challenged, sustained, or UNTESTED. That last category is the only place residual risk could live, and it should be checked against the actual reissue claim set and the FWD's claim-by-claim disposition before anyone relies on "the patent is dead."

Estoppel landscape. Under § 315(e)(2), Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and Google (and their privies — e.g., YouTube) are estopped in civil actions from asserting any ground they raised or reasonably could have raised in these instituted IPRs. That doesn't help a new defendant directly, but it barely matters: the reason is that disclaimed claims can't be asserted by anyone, and IPR-canceled claims can't be asserted by anyone. For a defendant being asserted today, the practical question is not "what art can I use" but "is the asserted claim even alive." If a demand cites a disclaimed or invalidated claim, the § 315(e)(2) analysis is a distraction — the claim is gone.

Pattern signals. Realtime was a serial, portfolio-wide assertor (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Google/YouTube, DISH/Sling, ARRIS, Cisco, Adobe, Sony and others). The portfolio got hit from every direction at once: rolling IPR institutions across all six asserted patents in early 2019, a Delaware magistrate's § 101 ineligibility recommendation (2018-12-12), and parallel-venue losses. The '777 came out worst — invalidated in one IPR and abandoned by disclaimer in another. Realtime's response to the IPR wave was to dismiss, disclaim, and re-file — conduct the Federal Circuit found exceptional in Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC v. Netflix, Inc., No. 2021-1484 (Fed. Cir. 2022-07-27) (precedential, 2-1), affirming a § 285 fee award for "impermissible forum shopping." No defensive aggregator is in the chain on this patent.

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Recommended next steps

1. Pull the IPR2018-01189 FWD and read the claim-by-claim disposition. That's the dispositive document. Use PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptabweb/) and search for IPR2018-01189, or the aggregator mirror at https://gaeflexstaging-dot-docketupdate.appspot.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2018-01189/Hulu_LLC_v._Realtime_Adaptive_Streaming_LLC/ and https://www.law360.com/ptab_cases/5b1e4668d1ba056fac00c27f. Confirm (a) whether claim 13 was challenged or sustained, and (b) whether any claims above claim 14 exist and were left unadjudicated. Until those two points are confirmed, don't tell a client the entire patent is dead — only that claims 1–12 and 14 are.
2. Pull the IPR2019-01037 docket and the 2020-03-18 disclaimer exhibit (https://ipverse.greyb.com/ptab-web/cases/case-details/IPR2019-01037). The disclaimer is the cleanest kill: 35 U.S.C. § 253 statutory disclaimer means the claims are treated as if they never existed, with no invalidity burden for you to carry.
3. Verify the Office's claim-status record for RE46777 (Patent Center / PTAB E2E "Patent" tab) so you have the certificate reflecting the FWD and the disclaimers — you want documentary proof, not a brief's summary.
4. Anchor the estoppel and litigation narrative to Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC v. Netflix, Inc., No. 2021-1484 (Fed. Cir. 2022-07-27) (precedential) — https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/[8240447](/patent/8240447)/realtime-adaptive-streaming-v-netflix-inc/ — and to Realtime's own joint status report in Realtime Adaptive Streaming, LLC v. Sling TV L.L.C., No. 1:17-cv-02097 (D. Colo.), Dkt. 172, which is Realtime's admission that "all challenged claims of the '777 Patent have been found unpatentable by the PTAB and/or disclaimed (canceled) by Realtime." A patent owner's own court filing saying that is worth more than any invalidity contention you can draft.
5. No pending proceedings to monitor. There is no live trial deadline, no institution deadline, and no FWD due date on RE46777. If you are a defendant, the correct posture is invalidity/disclaimer-based dismissal early, plus a § 285 fees demand if the assertion continues after notice of the disclaimers.

Caveat on sourcing. I verified proceeding numbers, petitioner identities, key dates, and the core dispositions from PTAB filings and court records surfaced by web search. I did not retrieve the IPR2018-01189 petition, its institution decision, or its FWD text, so I have deliberately left petition grounds, specific prior art, statutory basis, and the FWD panel blank rather than reconstruct them. The ODP block's "no proceedings" answer is contradicted by this record and should be treated as an ingest gap.

I'll search the assignment records and related sources for RE46777 and its parent patent.

Let me dig for the specific assignment reel/frame records and the acquisition chain.

Let me search for the specific assignment records and legal events.

Assignment & Ownership Reconstruction — US RE46777 E1

Retrieval limitation (read first). In this session I could not pull the machine-readable Assignment Center records (reel/frame) for RE46777 or its parent US 8,634,462. The USPTO Assignment Search index is not returning inline for this record set here. Below I distinguish (a) verified facts from (b) items that require a live Assignment Center confirmation. I have not invented any reel/frame numbers. Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (legacy: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html) — search by patent number RE46777 and by 8,634,462.

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Inventors

Sources: US 8,634,462 B2 front page (https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/Delaware_District_Court/1--17-cv-01693/.../1/2.pdf); provisional filing papers showing the Hannover institute as correspondence address (https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/[PTAB](/ptab)/IPR2024-00920/.../Exhibit-1007-US60_766300_Narroschke_provisional.pdf).

Unusual patterns noted:

• No corporate assignee at all. The issued '462 patent carries the (76) Inventors designation, not a (73) assignee — i.e., the inventors filed as applicants and retained personal ownership. The corresponding EP family (EP 2137980 B1 / EP 2950544) likewise lists Narroschke, Matthias and Musmann, Hans-Georg personally as proprietors (see the Czech/EP national-register gazette at https://isdv.upv.gov.cz/doc/vestnik/2019/vestnik_UPV_201925.pdf). This is a university-research-group ownership pattern, not a corporate one.
• This is not the classic "inventors bail within 12 months" fire-sale tell. It is the milder variant: an academic group whose patents were never assigned to a manufacturer, leaving a clean unencumbered title that is easy to sell to an acquirer later.
• Narroschke later moved to industry (Panasonic) and accumulated a large Sun Patent Trust-assigned portfolio. That is why an aggregator lists "RE46777" on a Sun Patent Trust inventor page (https://www.patentleaderboard.com/sun-patent-trust/matthias-narroschke/19902). Flag: that listing is almost certainly an aggregation artifact — it pools Narroschke's later Panasonic/Sun patents with his Hannover-era output. RE46777's litigation record shows Realtime Adaptive Streaming as owner, not Sun Patent Trust. Treat the Sun attribution as unverified/contradicted by the litigation docket.

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Original assignee

None. The entity named on the issued patent's face is the inventors themselves ((76) designation, US 8,634,462 B2, issued 2014‑01‑21). There was no operating-company assignee, no product line, and no commercial embodiment of the claims by the inventors.

• Primary line of business of the "original owner": academic research in hybrid video coding / H.264·AVC prediction-error coding at Leibniz Universität Hannover.
• Current status of the original owner: the inventors remain individuals; no corporate successor acquired the original title by operation of law or merger.
• Who owns it now: Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC (per the '462 patent's assertion chain and the reissue applicant of record).

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Assignment timeline

Verified anchor points (dates supportable from public dockets/records):

• 2007‑03‑13 — Priority date (US provisional; cf. Google Patents priority field for RE46777).
• 2008‑03‑10 — PCT/EP2008/052824 filed (WO 2008/110535) by Narroschke and Musmann personally; U.S. national-stage entry 12/531,025 with §371(c) date 2010‑03‑05.
• 2014‑01‑21 — US 8,634,462 B2 issues; face of patent shows no assignee.
• 2016 (serial 15/013,843; exact execution/recording dates not retrieved) — Reissue application filed, applicant Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC. Because a reissue must be filed by the then-current owner (35 U.S.C. §251), this is hard evidence that title had already passed from the inventors to Realtime by 2016.
• 2017‑11‑21 — Realtime Adaptive Streaming sues Netflix (D. Del. 1:17‑cv‑01692) and Sony Electronics (D. Del. 1:17‑cv‑01693) asserting the '462 patent among the patents-in-suit.
• 2018‑03‑09 — Realtime asserts the family against Samsung (E.D. Tex. 6:18‑cv‑00113), listing 8,634,462.
• 2018‑04‑03 — RE46777 E1 grants to Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC (current assignee of record per Google Patents bibliographic data).
• 2018‑06‑08 / 2018 — RE46777 becomes an IPR target: Hulu, LLC v. Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC, IPR2018‑01189 (PTAB, terminated 2020‑01‑15) — the docket entry is literally captioned "Patent No. RE46777."

The recorded assignment chain itself (reel/frame, correspondent, conveyance type) — NOT VERIFIED. What must be confirmed at Assignment Center, and what I expect to find (stated as expectation, not as fact):

1. Inventors → Realtime (Data / Adaptive Streaming) — a single portfolio conveyance. The Netflix complaint pleads that "Realtime is the owner by assignment of the patents-in-suit"; the 2016 reissue filing date brackets this assignment to on or before early 2016.
2. A possible intra-family step Realtime Data LLC → Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC, reflecting the corporate split under which the "Adaptive Streaming" arm received the video/image-coding (Narroschke/Musmann + Fallon) assets around 2017.

I cannot supply reel/frame numbers, execution dates, recording dates, or a correspondent of record for either step without the Assignment Center record. Do not treat the absence of these particulars below as a finding that no assignment was recorded — the 2016 reissue filing by Realtime proves at least one was.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US RE46777
    2007 : Priority date 13 March
    2008 : PCT filed by the two inventors
    2014 : US 8634462 issues with no assignee
    2016 : Reissue filed by Realtime Adaptive Streaming
    2017 : Realtime sues Netflix and Sony on the 462 patent
    2018 : RE46777 reissue granted
         : Family asserted against Samsung

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — PRESENT (strong). The chain terminates in Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC, which is not merely a name that looks like a holding vehicle: it is described in a public-company SEC filing as "an entity that seeks to license an acquired patent portfolio without itself practicing any of the claims recited therein." (EchoStar/DISH annual report disclosure, https://ir.echostar.com/static-files/e7e3af29-3d66-4199-a9d0-ddbe27aa7060.) A party admission in an SEC filing that the assignee does not practice the claims is about as concrete as this signal gets. Caveat: I could not pull the reel/frame evidencing the transfer itself.

2. Known asserter in the chain — PRESENT (strong). Realtime Adaptive Streaming / Realtime Data LLC d/b/a IXO is a high-frequency plaintiff whose campaign triggered repeated Unified Patents and RPX-adjacent challenges, e.g. Unified Patents, Inc. v. Realtime Adaptive Streaming, LLC, IPR2018‑00883 and the Netflix/Amazon/Hulu petitions against the same family (IPR2018‑01187 / ‑01189 / ‑01630). RE46777 appears in PTAB as a challenged patent (IPR2018‑01189).

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR / partially accessible. The prosecution attorney of record on the '462 patent is Robert Iannucci, Seed IP Law Group PLLC (Seattle). I did not retrieve the recording correspondent for the assignment(s), so I cannot say whether the same attorney/firm filed the assignment recordations or recurred on other Realtime-family links. This is the single most checkable item left open — capture the recording correspondent and firm address for each reel/frame at Assignment Center and compare against other Realtime acquisitions (the Fallon family, 7,386,046; 8,934,535, etc.). No finding on recurrence is possible on current data.

4. Cascading transfers — UNCLEAR. The Realtime Data → Realtime Adaptive Streaming split plausibly yields a two-hop chain inside 2016–2017, but I lack the recorded dates to confirm the <24-month chaining or shared correspondent/principals.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — UNCLEAR, leaning NOT PRESENT. The first RE46777-family suit was filed 2017‑11‑21; the ownership transfer is bracketed to on or before early 2016 by the reissue filing, i.e. likely more than 6 months before suit. Not a clean "bought and sued within 6 months" fact pattern on the evidence available.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. No evidence of a Chapter 7/11 sale of this patent. (The inventors are individuals; there is no insolvent operating company in the chain.)

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT. No operating company transferred this patent to the NPE to assert against competitors — the transferors were the individual academic inventors.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN; Unified Patents appears here only as a petitioner against the owner.

Additional observation (worth verifying): Google Patents lists RE46777's status as "Expired – Fee Related," with an adjusted expiration of 2029‑11‑27. If that reflects a maintenance-fee lapse rather than a term expiry, it is itself a mild NPE-lifecycle tell — the asserting entity stopped paying to keep the title alive after the IPRs and Alice-based dismissals gutted the family. Confirm the fee status in Patent Center before relying on it.

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Verdict

NPE — high confidence.

The current assignee, Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC, is not a practising company by its own admission in an SEC filing ("an entity that seeks to license an acquired patent portfolio without itself practicing any of the claims recited therein"), and the patent sits inside a well-documented mass-assertion campaign — the '462 parent was sued on against Netflix (D. Del. 1:17-cv-01692) and Sony (1:17-cv-01693) on 2017‑11‑21 and against Samsung (E.D. Tex. 6:18-cv-00113) on 2018‑03‑09, and the reissue RE46777 itself was challenged in IPR2018‑01189. That gives two strong signals (shell/licensing-only assignee; known high-frequency asserter) plus the corroborating fee-lapse status. Caveat carried forward: the specific assignment reel/frame, execution/recording dates, and recording correspondent are unverified in this session — the "owner by assignment" fact is established by the pleadings and the 2016 reissue filing, but the recordation particulars must be pulled from USPTO Assignment Center (https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/) before use in any formal chain-of-title opinion, and the assignment chain must not be conflated with the Fallon family (e.g. 9,769,477) that dominates the Realtime appellate record.

I'll research the specific prior-art citations for RE46777, being careful to keep it separate from the similarly-numbered 9,769,477.

Excellent — I found the examiner-cited reference list. Let me now verify the details of each cited reference and also check the IPR petitions that challenged RE46777.

Prior-Art Analysis — US RE46777 E1 ("Quantization for Hybrid Video Coding")

Identification guardrail (maintained). All searching below was keyed to RE46777 / USRE46777E1 / application 15/013,843. I did not merge results from the similarly numbered US 9,769,477 ("Video Data Compression Systems," Fallon family), which appears in many of the same Realtime Adaptive Streaming litigations. Where a source said only "the '777 patent," it is treated as RE46777.

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1. Source of the citation list — and its limits

The Google Patents HTML I have access to (https://patents.google.com/patent/USRE46777/en) truncates the "References Cited" section, and I could not pull the USPTO PatentCenter front page directly. The complete examiner/applicant citation list below is therefore taken from the Justia reproduction of the RE46777 front page (https://patents.justia.com/patent/RE46777), cross-checked against the family/EPO records for EP 2137980 B1 (http://data.epo.org/pise-server/rest/collections/lgpi/EP2137980B1.pdf) and against Google Patents citation tables that reproduce individual entries.

Confidence flag: the set of cited documents below is well-evidenced. The mapping of each document to what it discloses is verified only for the four references I could open (Park, Keesman, Hatabu, and the Sethi/7929776 entry); the remainder are marked.

Two structural observations that matter for the §102 analysis:

• The cited list is a pre-AIA-style list. Because the priority/filing chain runs US 11/685,566 (2007‑03‑13) → PCT/EP2008/052824 (2008‑03‑10) → 12/531,025 → US 8,634,462 → reissue 15/013,843, the AIA first-inventor-to-file provisions do not apply. Prior art is measured under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. §102(a)/(b)/(e), and the critical one-year bar date for §102(b) is 2006‑03‑13 (one year before the 11/685,566 filing date).
• Most cited references are background citations, not rejections. Notably, the RE46777 specification itself reproduces the JM-reference-software "second quantization step" (the I_k,j importance/threshold procedure, Tables 1–2) as admitted prior art. That admission is more dangerous to the claims than several of the cited patents.

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2. U.S. patent documents cited

3. Foreign patent documents cited

4. Non-patent literature cited

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5. Anticipation analysis — which claims each reference can reach

Claim set assumed. Only claims 1–6 and 11 are confirmed in the record I have; the reissue's full claim set (including any decoder or coded-signal independent claim) is unconfirmed. The §102 mapping below is therefore directed to claim 1 (method) and claim 11 (apparatus, means-plus-function), plus the dependent limitations 2–6.

Pre-AIA §102 gate — applicable subsections. Using 2007‑03‑13 as the US filing date (11/685,566):

5.1 Most relevant: Keesman, US 5,691,770 (+ WO 96/34495 / EP 0 768 007 B1)

Disclosure. Keesman teaches exactly the economic core of RE46777's claim 1: after quantization, coefficients are selectively set to the quantization level zero "if that … is better in a rate vs. distortion sense," by finding the coefficient set b that minimizes the Lagrangian cost

L(b, λ) = D(b) + λ·R(b),

and it computes λ = dD/dR from the measured coefficient-amplitude distribution. That is the same rate-distortion-cost engine recited in RE46777 claims 4–6 (and the same C_j = D_j + L·R_j structure).

Potential §102(b) effect.

• Claim 3 / 4 / 5 / 6-type limitations (efficiency based on a cost function; rate-distortion cost; distortion plus Lagrange-weighted rate): strongly anticipated. Keesman discloses the cost function, the rate term, the distortion term, and the multiplier.
• Claim 1 / claim 11 as a whole: not clearly anticipated. Keesman's decision is made per coefficient (thresholding), not per subblock, and it does not compute two distinct "efficiencies" (a retention efficiency and an all-zero efficiency) and compare them. There is no macroblock-then-subblock hierarchy (claim 2). Its strongest use is as the primary reference in a §103 combination, and as §102 art against claims 4–6.
• Claim 2 (overall macroblock comparison): Keesman's "all coefficients of a picture" RD-envelope approach is conceptually adjacent but is not a discrete macroblock-vs-zero comparison. Not anticipated.

5.2 Most relevant: Hatabu, US 7,203,374 (pub. US 2003/0128887 A1)

Disclosure. Per vector, Hatabu computes a threshold ("minimum possible power … quantized to a value other than zero"), compares the vector's power to that threshold, and if the power is below it, generates a zero coefficient vector in place of the quantized vector. It also processes vectors in decreasing order of the probability that all coefficients become zero.

Potential §102(b) effect.

• Structurally this is the closest disclosed subblock-level "keep vs. force-to-zero" selection in the cited US patents, so it is genuinely dangerous to claim 1(c)–(e) and claim 11.
• But the selection criterion is a power-vs-threshold test, not "calculate a quantization efficiency for the quantized values, calculate a zero efficiency …, select the higher." If RE46777's claims are construed to require two computed efficiencies compared against each other (as the specification's C_j-vs-zero framework implies, and as the Adobe claim-construction record's FIG. 3 structure suggests), Hatabu does not anticipate claims 1 or 11, and it does not reach claims 2–6 (no cost function, no macroblock-level overall comparison).
• Best deployed as a §103 secondary reference combined with Keesman (Hatabu supplies the "generate an all-zero vector and select it" mechanism; Keesman supplies the D+λR comparison).

5.3 Park, US 5,371,549 (§102(b))

Disclosure. Zero-masking of transform coefficients — but as a decoder-side downsampling/display technique ("zero masking transform coefficients" to fit subpictures), not an encoder-side efficiency decision.

Potential §102(b) effect. Reaches only the abstract notion of "setting quantized values to zero." It does not disclose computing any efficiency, comparing two efficiencies, or an encoder decision. Cannot anticipate claims 1 or 11 on its own; at most a §103 adjunct, and weak at that (different problem, different domain).

5.4 Lim et al., JVT‑K049 (JM reference software) — the highest-risk cited reference

Disclosure. RE46777's own Background (§ [0003]–[0008]) reproduces this document: after the first scalar quantization and zigzag scan, a "second quantization step" computes I_k,j per coefficient from the coefficient magnitude and the number N_k,j of preceding zero coefficients (Tables 1–2), sums to I_j, and sets the whole 8×8 block to zero if I_j < 5, then sets the whole macroblock to zero if I_MB < 6.

Potential §102(b) effect.

• This is an admitted-prior-art teaching of precisely the two-level (block, then macroblock) zeroing hierarchy that RE46777 claim 2 recites. Claim 2 is exposed.
• Claims 1 and 11 are not anticipated, because the JM rule applies a fixed importance threshold (5 / 6), not "a quantization efficiency" and "a zero efficiency" that are computed and compared. Reissue claim 1's novelty over JM rests entirely on the replacement of the threshold test with a dual-efficiency comparison (which is exactly what the specification argues JM "fails" to do).
• Because the applicant admitted this document in the specification, whatever claim scope is asserted must be coextensive with the difference between (i) a threshold-on-importance and (ii) a compare-two-efficiencies test.

5.5 Same-inventor NPL (Narroschke 2005 report; Narroschke et al., VCEG Bangkok Jan. 2006; Narroschke, SPIE Jul. 2005)

Disclosure. These are the same inventor's publications on adaptively coding the prediction error in the spatial vs. frequency domain and on extending the H.264/AVC prediction-error coder — i.e., the subject matter of the second independent concept in RE46777 (the spatial/frequency decision, the encoder of FIG. 4, and the decoder of FIG. 5).

Potential §102 effect — two important points:

1. Date problem for the applicant. All three were published before 2006‑03‑13, i.e., inside the §102(b) one-year bar window measured from 11/685,566 (2007‑03‑13). A publication more than one year before filing is §102(b) art even if it is the inventor's own. If RE46777 contains claims directed to the spatial-vs-frequency decision (or to decoder-side domain selection), that subject matter carries an on-sale/public-use/publication bar exposure generated by the inventors' own papers.
2. Subject-matter problem. These papers disclose the adaptive spatial-domain prediction-error coding and the scanning/quantization aspects in substantially the same terms as the specification. Any claim drawn to "deciding whether to transform the prediction error signal into the frequency domain or to maintain the prediction error signal in the spatial domain" would face these as §102(b)/(a) art.
   • Caveat I must flag: I could not open these documents in this session. The titles, venues and dates come from the RE46777 front-page list; the scope paragraph above is an inference from those titles and from the specification's own citations, not from reading their text. Treat the §102 conclusions for this group as medium confidence and verify against the documents themselves (Ex. 1003-type exhibits in IPR2018‑01189 would be the fastest route).

5.6 WO 2007/079964 A1 (Narroschke, "Adaptive coding of a prediction error in hybrid video coding")

Date problem. Published 2007‑07‑12, i.e. after the 2007‑03‑13 priority date. Priority 2006‑01‑09.

Potential §102 effect. It cannot be §102(a)/(b) art. Under pre-AIA §102(e) a foreign PCT publication qualifies only if it designates the US and was published in English. And if the inventive entity is the same (Narroschke), it is not "by another" for §102(a). This reference is at most §102(e)/§103-relevant and most likely was cited for completeness or family overlap. Note the litigation-adjacent family point raised in the earlier sections: US 9,749,660 ("Adaptive coding of a prediction error in hybrid video coding," Musmann) and EP 2 950 544 B1 (Narroschke) are sibling-family members on the same subject matter — a different patent number from RE46777.

5.7 Sethi / US 7,929,776 & US 2006/0233239 (Qualcomm)

Disclosure (title-based). "Method and apparatus for error recovery using intra-slice resynchronization points."

Potential §102(e) effect. §102(e) art (US filing 2005‑03‑10). Its plausible relevance is to the slice/macroblock/block side-information flag aspects (Slice_FD_SD_coding_flag, MB_FD_SD_coding_flag, FD_or_SD_flag) and to slice-level resynchronization, not to the core efficiency-comparison quantization. Cannot anticipate claims 1–6 or 11. Flag: disclosure not verified in this session.

5.8 Matsumura, US 2006/0098733 A1 (Toshiba) — variable-length coding

Potential §102(a)/(e) effect. Directed to variable-length/entropy coding (CAVLC-type) hardware. Relevant only to the entropy-coding environment referenced in RE46777's description; not to any confirmed claim limitation. No anticipation of claims 1–6 or 11.

5.9 Un-retrieved references — cannot be assessed

US 7,352,905 (Mukerjee), US 2002/0114392 (Sekiguchi), US 2007/0009044 and US 2007/0047648 (Tourapis), US 2007/0133891 (Jeong), US 2010/0220784 (Tanimoto), and WO 96/34495 (assuming it is not the Keesman PCT).

I explicitly decline to characterize these. Fabricating a disclosure description for a reference I did not open would be worse than leaving the gap. The two Tourapis filings are the ones I would prioritize: they are dated immediately adjacent to the critical date (Jan. 2007 and 2007‑03‑01, two weeks before the 2007‑03‑13 filing) and sit in the video-coding rate-distortion space, so they are precisely the kind of reference that can be §102(e) art and that turns on a two-week date margin.

5.10 Ostermann 2004 / Puri et al. 2004 (§102(b))

Textbook-level H.264/AVC overviews. They supply the hybrid-coding environment (motion-compensated prediction, integer transform, 4×4/8×8 selection, zigzag scan, CABAC/CAVLC) recited in the preambles of claims 1 and 11, but neither discloses the efficiency-vs-zero-efficiency comparison. No anticipation of the confirmed independent claims; relevant to the preamble/environment and possibly as §103 background.

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6. Bottom line

1. No single cited reference appears to anticipate independent claim 1 or claim 11 as written. The distinguishing element of both is the paired computation and comparison of a "quantization efficiency" against a "zero efficiency." The closest cited art breaks down as:
   • Keesman (US 5,691,770) — same cost-function mathematics (D + λR), but a per-coefficient thresholding decision, not a paired efficiency comparison; best §102 art against claims 3–6, best §103 primary reference against claim 1.
   • Hatabu (US 7,203,374 / US 2003/0128887) — explicit quantize-vs-force-to-zero vector selection, but the criterion is a power-vs-threshold test; strong §103 secondary reference.
   • Lim et al., JVT‑K049 (JM reference software) — admitted prior art in the specification and the direct target of claim 2's macroblock/subblock zeroing hierarchy; defeated by the claims only through the "efficiency comparison" substitution.
2. The most dangerous art is not a patent — it is the applicant's own NPL. The Narroschke Hannover report (2005‑12‑02), the VCEG Bangkok contribution (Jan. 2006) and the SPIE paper (Jul. 2005) all fall inside the §102(b) one-year bar window and cover the spatial/frequency prediction-error subject matter. Any claim directed to the domain-decision features faces a self-generated bar. This should be verified against the documents.
3. Claim 2's "overall" macroblock comparison is the most exposed. It is described in the admitted JM prior art via I_j < 5 and I_MB < 6.
4. The IPR art is the missing piece. The petitions in IPR2018‑01189 (Hulu/Amazon/Netflix) and IPR2019‑01037 (Google) would identify what petitioners actually asserted against RE46777 rather than what the examiner cited — and the March 2020 statutory disclaimer of the challenged claims in IPR2019‑01037 means the claim set that survived to be litigated was narrower than the granted set. I could not retrieve those petition grounds in this session and recommend pulling the IPR2018‑01189 and IPR2019‑01037 Petition + Exhibit lists (the exhibits will include the Keesman, Hatabu and JM/Narroschke materials, plus H.264/AVC standard text) as the definitive "most relevant prior art" set.

Verification flags carried forward

• The complete RE46777 claim set is still unconfirmed; if a third independent claim exists (decoder or coded data signal, per the specification's Slice_FD_SD_coding_flag discussion), the §102 mapping above is incomplete and the spatial/frequency-decision art (§5.5, §5.6) becomes far more important.
• Citations vs. rejections: inclusion on the front page does not mean a reference was applied against a claim. Several of these (notably the Sethi error-recovery documents and Matsumura's VLC device) appear to be environment/hardware citations with no claim-level reach.
• Venue/OCR discrepancy: the Google text renders JVT‑K049's venue as both "Munich, Germany" and "Kunststoff, Germany." "Kunststoff" is an OCR artifact; the EPO record confirms Munich, 15–19 March 2004. Same document throughout.
• The RE46777 vs. 9,769,477 distinction remains in force: nothing above reflects the Fallon-family patent.

I'll ground the analysis with searches on the PTAB grounds for this patent and the key prior-art references.

Now let me look for the actual PTAB grounds on RE46777 and additional spatial-domain/transform-skip prior art.

Obviousness Analysis — US RE46777 E1 ("Quantization for hybrid video coding") under 35 U.S.C. § 103

0. Input-scope flag (read first)

Your instructions say to "use the results from the Prior Art section of this page." No such section exists in the material I was given. The previously generated sections cover the bibliographic record, abstract, an independent-claim overview, litigation, and CAFC dockets — no prior-art table, no "References Cited," no IPR-grounds list.

I therefore did three things, and I label which is which throughout:

1. Used the patent's own Background of the Invention as admitted prior art (this is the only prior-art content actually present in the authoritative patent text I was given — and it is unusually useful here, because it is the applicants' own description of the H.264/AVC JM-reference-software quantization scheme).
2. Retrieved and dated external references by live search (citations and URLs given below).
3. Explicitly flagged where I could not verify something.

Critical gap: I could not retrieve (a) the "References Cited" list printed on the face of RE46777 or its parent 8,634,462, (b) the actual grounds/prior art in IPR2018‑01189 (Hulu/Amazon/Netflix v. Realtime, Patent RE46777) whose substantive holding I do not have, or (c) any district-court invalidity contention chart specifically for the R777 patent (the Google election-of-prior-art document I retrieved elects art only for the '046, '535, and 9,769,477 patents — not for R777). Anyone filing a real §103 challenge should start by pulling those documents; my analysis below is constructed independently.

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1. Governing framework

• Graham v. John Deere, 383 U.S. 1 (1966): scope/content of claims, differences over prior art, PHOSITA level, secondary considerations.
• KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007): the rationales relied on below — (A) known elements combined by known methods yielding predictable results; (B) substitution of one known element for another; (C) known technique improving similar devices in the same way; (D) design need / market pressure; (E) finite number of identified, predictable solutions ("obvious to try"); (F) adaptation of known work with predictable results; (G) express teaching, suggestion, or motivation in the art.
• MPEP § 2141–§ 2144: articulated reasoning with rational underpinning required; "obvious to try" applies where the art identifies a finite set of predictable solutions.
• The claim element "efficiency" is a metric, not a formula, as claimed in the independents. Dependent claims (3–6 per the earlier section) supply the cost-function content, so the §103 story differs between the independents and the dependents — treated separately below.

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2. Claim scope and effective date of the claims under attack

Two scope caveats that matter to the §103 analysis:

1. The reissue removed language from claim 11. The Adobe record reproduces claim 11 "bracketed language, i.e. language removed from reissued patent claim, omitted." If that characterization is accurate, the reissued claim is broader than the original — which helps a §103 challenger (more scope to read on the art) and simultaneously raises a § 251(d) broadening-reissue question (flagged in §13 below, not a §103 point). I could not retrieve the formal reissue error statement or a marked-up comparison.
2. Claim 11 was construed under § 112 ¶ 6 to a narrow structure. The court limited the "control means" structure essentially to the FIG. 3 two-level algorithm. That narrowing affects both infringement and validity: it gives the patentee a non-obviousness argument (specific algorithm ≠ generic RD-cost computation), but the FIG. 3 algorithm is the prior-art loop structure plus a known cost metric, so the narrowing is not a safe harbor.

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3. Level of ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA)

A bachelor's in EE/CS (or equivalent) plus roughly 2–4 years in digital video compression, or a master's plus 1–2 years — with working familiarity with: H.264/AVC (including the JM reference software and JVT documents), block-based motion-compensated hybrid coding, integer/DCT transforms, scalar quantization, CABAC/CAVLC, and Lagrangian rate-distortion optimization. This level is supported by the patent's own Background (it cites the JVT reference-software document, Lim/Sullivan/Wiegand, JVT‑K049, Munich, March 2004) and by the art below.

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4. Prior-art landscape (with § 102 status against a 2007‑03‑13 date)

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5. Ground 1 — the primary combination for claims 1 and 11

5.1 The closest prior art is the patent's own admitted Background

The patent describes, as the state of the art it improves on, precisely the claimed architecture:

• hybrid coding, temporal redundancy removed by block-based motion-compensated prediction → prediction error; macroblocks of 16×16 subdivided into four 8×8 blocks (or sixteen 4×4 blocks) — "a plurality of subblocks";
• each subblock transformed to the frequency domain and scalar-quantized (FIG. 1 quantizer) → quantized coefficients;
• a "second quantization step" that computes an importance value I_k,j per quantized coefficient, sums them (I_j), and compares the sum to a threshold (5); if below, "all quantized coefficients of the 8×8 block are set to zero."
• then an aggregate over the macroblock (I_MB, threshold 6) that zeroes all 256 coefficients of the macroblock.

So the admitted art already discloses, for claim 11: the coding means, the quantizer, a plurality of subblocks, a computed value for the subblock, the act of setting the subblock's quantized values to all zeroes, a second computed value for the zeroed state (I_j is expressly reset to zero in that case), and a selection between keeping and zeroing — at both subblock and macroblock levels.

The only material difference between claim 1/11 and the admitted art:

the admitted art's decision metric is a one-sided heuristic (an importance sum compared to a fixed threshold) applied only to trigger zeroing; the claims require two "efficiencies" — one for the retained quantized values, one for the all-zero state — and selection of the higher.

That is a change in how a binary decision is evaluated, not a change in what is done. That is the classic fact pattern for a KSR substitution analysis.

5.2 [S&W98] supplies exactly the missing element — and does so expressly

The retrieved text of [S&W98] frames the hybrid-coder design problem as including:

*"How to do DFD coding, i.e., how to select the approximation to use as a refinement of the INTER prediction (with a zero-valued approximation being an important special case)"* — https://www.itu.int/wftp3/av-arch/video-site/9807_Whi/q15e26.pdf

and identifies SKIP mode as "A prediction mode in which the picture content of a macroblock region is represented as a copy of the macroblock in the same location in a previously decoded picture." The paper's own abstract states it presents "Lagrangian optimization techniques [that] try to answer the question: what part of the video signal should be coded using what method and parameter settings?"

That is a direct, express teaching to (i) treat "send nothing / zero-valued prediction-error approximation" as one candidate in a set of candidate representations, (ii) compute a Lagrangian cost for each candidate, and (iii) choose the better one. The patentee's own claim 6 defines the metric as C_j = D_j + L·R_j — i.e., the metric is a cost, and "higher efficiency" = lower cost. [S&W98]'s "Distortion Measures" (pp. 78–79) and "Intra/Inter/Skip Mode Decision" (pp. 84–85) subsections supply the distortion measures (SSD, MAD) and the mode-decision architecture.

5.3 Element chart (Claim 1 / Claim 11) — [APA] in view of [S&W98] (and [W03])

5.4 Motivation to combine — articulated under the KSR rationales

A petition or office action should plead at least three independent rationales, so that invalidating any one does not sink the ground:

• KSR rationale (A)/(C) — known technique improving a similar device the same way. RD-cost minimization was the art's standard tool for binary/tri-state coding decisions in hybrid coders ([S&W98] mode decision; [W03] rate-constrained coder control). The JM second-quantization step is itself a binary coding decision ("keep this subblock's coefficients or zero them all"). Applying RD optimization to that existing decision point is the ordinary use of a known technique, with predictable results.
• KSR rationale (B) — substitution of a known element to obtain predictable results. Replace the fixed importance-sum threshold (a heuristic acknowledged by the patent as "unsatisfactory") with the known RD-cost comparison, keeping everything else (the subblock loop, the macroblock aggregate, the entropy coder) intact. The substitution is field-recognized and the result is a predictable RD-performance improvement.
• KSR rationale (D)/(E) — design need + a finite set of identified, predictable solutions. The problem is stated in the patent itself: "The coding of these single quantized coefficients unequal to zero may require a high data rate and may reduce the distortion only marginally." That is the rate-distortion trade-off, and the art supplies a two-element solution set (keep / zero) plus the standard tool for choosing among a finite candidate set ([S&W98]). "Obvious to try" applies squarely.
• KSR rationale (G) — express motivation in the references. [S&W98]'s parenthetical — "with a zero-valued approximation being an important special case" — is about as close to an express teaching to evaluate the all-zero candidate by cost as a reference can get.

5.5 Reasonable expectation of success

High. The combination requires no new hardware, no new syntax, and no unknown physics: it computes, for an already-computed quantized subblock, one additional cost figure (the rate/distortion of the all-zero representation), which the JM encoder already effectively has (the count of non-zero coefficients for rate; the coefficient energy for distortion). The patent's own specification demonstrates this is a straightforward implementation (its FIG. 3 loop is the JM loop with two cost computations per subblock).

5.6 Anticipation vs. obviousness

I do not assert plain anticipation of claim 1/11 by [APA] alone — the two-sided efficiency comparison is a genuine textual difference. If [JM] itself computes and compares per-candidate RD costs for the second-quantization step (likely, but not verified in the excerpt I have), then the challenge upgrades to §102. Action item: pull JVT‑K049 §5 and the JM source to check the exact form of the second quantization step. That single document check is the highest-value next step in this analysis.

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6. Ground 2 — dependent claims 2–6

Motivation for claim 2 in particular: a POSITA already operating the admitted two-level threshold scheme has, by construction, two aggregation levels; the only question is which metric to aggregate. Aggregating Lagrangian costs (rather than importance scores) is the technique the RDO art teaches for block- and macroblock-level decisions, and it is applied "in the same way" (KSR rationale (C)).

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7. Ground 3 — the spatial-domain / frequency-domain selection aspect (if separately claimed)

The specification discloses a second invention: adaptively deciding whether to transform the prediction error or to code it in the spatial domain, plus a third possibility (set to zero), with the decision by RD cost, and with domain-indicating side information (Slice_FD_SD_coding_flag, MB_FD_SD_coding_flag, FD_or_SD_flag). I could not verify whether this is claimed in the reissue as issued. If it is, the challenge is strong:

Motivation: the patent's own problem statement supplies it — "the coding efficiency of the transform is only high, if the prediction error samples are correlated. For samples being only marginally correlated in the spatial domain, the transform is less efficient." The art identifies a finite, predictable solution set (transform / no transform / nothing) and a known decision tool (RD cost). KSR rationales (B), (D), (E), (G) all apply.

Caveat: [J81]'s lossless mode is intra-picture DPCM, not motion-compensated inter prediction-error coding, so a petition must bridge with [H264]'s I_PCM (which is in a motion-compensated hybrid coder) and, ideally, an express VCEG contribution on transform bypass. I did not retrieve a 2007-or-earlier VCEG "transform skip" proposal in this session — if one exists, it should be added; if it does not, the spatial/frequency aspect rests on the combination above. Flag as medium confidence.

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8. Ground 4 — decoder / coded-data-signal claims

If the reissue contains decoder claims (entropy-decoding block outputting domain-selection signals; scan control unit; inverse quantize/inverse transform branch) or data-signal claims (side information indicating the domain of a slice/macroblock/block):

• [H264] discloses the complete decoded-side architecture for a hybrid coder with a bypass/escape path (I_PCM) and syntax-driven branch selection (mb_type), including slice-header and macroblock-layer signalling. Decoder-side symmetry with the encoder is the ordinary practice in the art (a decoder must invert what the encoder signalled) — KSR rationale (A)/(C).
• The claimed flags are, functionally, conventional syntax elements; the name Slice_FD_SD_coding_flag is not inventive subject matter.

Strength: strong on the encoder-symmetry and known-syntax rationale, conditional on my inability to verify the claim language.

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9. Ground 5 — adaptive scanning derived from prediction-image gradients (weak; flagged)

The specification discloses scanning the spatial-domain quantized samples in an order derived from the gradient magnitude of the prediction image (FIG. 7(a)/(b)), or from the reference-block prediction error plus motion vector, or a linear combination. I could not verify whether any such scan order is claimed, and I did not retrieve an anticipatory reference for the gradient-derived scan order specifically. Gradient/edge-magnitude ordering is intuitive but I am not going to manufacture a citation. If such a claim exists, this is the weakest §103 ground in my analysis and should be researched separately (early candidates: adaptive-scan/adaptive-entropy-coder-selection art of the MPEG-2/MPEG-4 era, and edge-adaptive scan literature). Low confidence / not established.

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10. Ground 6 — "subjectively weighted quantization error" claims (flagged)

The specification's FIG. 8/FIG. 9 material and Table 3 concern a quantizer optimized for subjectively weighted quantization error with parameters a, b, c and representative levels r_i, and mentions visual masking at edges. I could not verify whether this is claimed. If it is, the art is deep and old (HVS-weighted quantization matrices and activity/visibility-weighted quantization in MPEG-1/MPEG-2 TM5, JPEG Annex K quantization tables, dead-zone quantizer design for Laplacian sources). I did not retrieve these in this session, so I mark this ground medium confidence on the general proposition, unverified on specific citations — do not file it without pulling the references.

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11. The § 112 ¶ 6 construction of claim 11 and how it cuts both ways

The Adobe record shows the parties disputed the "control means" and "quantizer" terms, with corresponding structure limited to the FIG. 3 algorithm. Consequences:

• For the patentee: the narrow structure is a non-obviousness argument — "the art does not disclose this specific two-pass algorithm." Expect this argument.
• For the challenger: the FIG. 3 algorithm is (i) the admitted prior art's block loop (iterate subblocks), (ii) the admitted prior art's macroblock-level aggregate test, and (iii) the [S&W98] per-candidate cost computation. Nothing in FIG. 3 is beyond the ordinary skill level once the RD-cost metric is adopted — which is the point of the combination. The narrow construction therefore does not rescue the claim.
• Practical note: since claim 11 is a means-plus-function claim, the §103 analysis must compare the claimed function to the art and then separately address whether the disclosed corresponding structure was known or obvious. Both inquiries favor the challenger here because the structure is a loop the art already had.

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12. Arguments the patent owner will make, and my assessment

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13. Non-§103 validity flags you should not ignore

These are not §103 arguments, but they materially affect how a §103 challenge should be framed:

1. Broadening reissue / § 251(d). If the reissue removed claim language from claim 11 (as the Adobe record indicates), the reissue is broadening. 35 U.S.C. § 251(d) requires a broadening reissue to be applied for within two years of the original patent's grant. The parent, US 8,634,462 B2, issued 2014‑01‑21; the reissue application is serial 15/013,843 (a 2016-era serial, consistent with early 2016). I could not retrieve the exact 2016 filing date, so I cannot confirm whether the two-year window was met. Verify the reissue filing date and the reissue's statement of error from the file wrapper; if the reissue is broadening and untimely, that is an independent invalidity ground. (Confidence: the dates I have; not the conclusion.)
2. Prior-art date if the reissue broadened. If any reissued claim is treated as broadened, there is a colorable argument that its effective date for the broadened subject matter is later than 2007‑03‑13. If a tribunal credits that, the entire 2008–2016 literature (including the HEVC-era RDOQ and transform-skip work) becomes available. I flag this as an open question, not a conclusion; the general rule is that reissue claims take the original application's date where supported.
3. Efforts against this patent have historically been § 101/§ 112, not § 103. The R777 patent appears in the record mainly as a § 112 ¶ 6 claim-construction dispute (Adobe) and as a case that was stayed pending IPRs (Google/YouTube, C.D. Cal. 2:18‑cv‑03629). The high-profile PTAB outcomes I could verify in this session — Netflix v. Realtime, 2020 WL 120083 (PTAB Jan. 10, 2020) and Google v. Realtime, 2020 WL 959190 (PTAB Feb. 27, 2020) — concern the '535 patent (claims 1–14 unpatentable on obviousness), and IPR2018‑01187 (Netflix/Comcast FWD, Jan. 30, 2020) concerns 9,769,477 ("claims 1–6, 9–14, 20–22, 25–27 unpatentable"). These are NOT RE46777. Do not cite them as RE46777 outcomes.
4. The most decisive historical event for RE46777's asserted claims was a statutory disclaimer, not a merits holding. In IPR2019‑01037 (Google v. Realtime, instituted 2019‑12‑04), Realtime filed a Notice of Disclaimer of the Challenged Claims (2020‑03‑18) and the Board entered adverse judgment (2020‑03‑24). IPR2018‑01189 (Hulu/Amazon/Netflix v. Realtime, Patent RE46777, filed 2018‑06‑08) reached Final Written Decision status and terminated 2020‑01‑15; I do not have its substantive holding. A disclaimer does not prove obviousness (it is a § 253 statutory abandonment of the claims, treated as never having existed), but it is highly relevant context and worth checking which claims were disclaimed and whether any of my Ground 1–6 claims survived.

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14. Bottom line

Claims 1 and 11 are, in my assessment, likely obvious over the combination of the admitted prior art (JM/H.264 second-quantization step, as recited in the patent's own Background) in view of Sullivan & Wiegand 1998 (and, for the λ and rate-constrained-control details, Wiegand et al. 2003). The single material difference — evaluating both the retained and the all-zero representations with an "efficiency"/cost metric and selecting the higher — is expressly taught by [S&W98]'s treatment of "the zero-valued approximation [as] an important special case" of Lagrangian DFD-coding optimization. The motivation is supplied by the patent's own problem statement (high rate for marginal distortion reduction), by the standard RDO practice of the same field, and by the finite, predictable two-candidate solution set. Reasonable expectation of success is high; no new hardware, syntax, or unknown physics is required.

Dependent claims 2–6 are obvious for the reasons in §6 — most strongly claim 2, because the admitted art already contains the exact two-level (subblock- then macroblock-) decision cascade that claim 2 recites, so only the metric changes.

The spatial-vs-frequency-domain aspects, decoder/data-signal claims, and scan/quantizer-design claims are conditional on claim language I could not verify. Of these, the spatial/frequency decision aspect is well supported (medium confidence, §7); the gradient-derived scan order aspect is not supported by anything I retrieved and should not be asserted without further research (§9).

Missing inputs that would materially change or sharpen this analysis (in priority order):

1. The "References Cited" list on RE46777 / 8,634,462 and the reissue file wrapper (including the reissue filing date and statement of error).
2. The IPR2018‑01189 petition and Final Written Decision (the actual grounds and art the Board evaluated against RE46777).
3. The complete claim set of RE46777 as issued, including any decoder/data-signal independent claims.
4. JVT‑K049 § 5 / JM source code to confirm the exact operation of the second quantization step (to test near-anticipation of claims 1/11 by [JM] alone).

Standing caveats: patent numbers are interpreted literally — RE46777 (reissue of 8,634,462) is not 9,769,477, and I have not merged them anywhere; the "Prior Art section" referenced in your instructions was not present in the material supplied; and where I could not verify a fact (reissue filing date, IPR2018‑01189 holding, unclaimed aspects), I have said so rather than assumed it.