US 10145697

I'll search for authoritative records on this patent number.

Let me run a couple more targeted searches to confirm litigation status.

US Patent 10,145,697 — Verification Summary

Search note: I checked Google Patents (full text + the issued-PDF copy), Justia, FreePatentsOnline, and broad web/docket queries. I found no CAFC 2026 docket, PTAB proceeding, or district-court complaint naming U.S. Patent No. 10,145,697. The Microsoft-related 2026 PTAB/docket hits I retrieved (e.g., IPR2026-00095 re U.S. 8,478,903; IPR2026-00297 re U.S. 12,079,667; Qomplx, ParTec, ToutVirtual matters) involve different patent numbers and are not this patent. That is a negative search result, not a certification — I cannot rule out an unindexed filing.

Bibliographic Record

Continuation chain (all titled "Dynamic destination navigation system")

• 13/533,998, filed 2012-06-27 → US 9,026,367 (issued 2015-05-05; 19 claims)
• 14/679,517, filed 2015-04-06 → US 9,638,535 (continuation of '998)
• 15/478,537, filed 2017-04-04 → US 10,145,697 (continuation of '517)

Abstract (verbatim)

"The claimed subject matter provides a method for navigating to dynamic destinations. The method includes associating a leader mobile device with a follower mobile device. The method also includes displaying, on the follower mobile device, a first path from a follower vehicle to a first location of a leader vehicle. The follower vehicle is associated with the follower mobile device. The leader vehicle is associated with the leader mobile device. The method further includes displaying, on the follower mobile device, a second path from the follower vehicle to a second location of the leader vehicle."

Observation worth flagging: the abstract describes paths to successive positions of the leader vehicle (a "dynamic destination" = the moving leader), while the granted independent claims are directed to an intermediate destination and a travel-time comparison. The abstract appears carried over from the original 2012 disclosure and does not track the claim language. That mismatch is a real feature of the record, not a transcription error.

Independent Claims — Plain Language

Claim 1 (method)

1. Create a "caravan" of a leader and one or more followers heading to a destination.
2. Compute a first route for the leader to an intermediate destination (e.g., a rest stop or restaurant short of the final goal).
3. Direct the leader to drive that first route.
4. Compute a second route for one follower to that same intermediate destination.
5. Determine that the follower's route gets the follower there in less time than staying behind the leader on the first route.
6. Direct that follower to drive the second route instead.

Gist: independent navigation to a shared waypoint — the follower is peeled off the leader's path whenever a separate route is faster to the rendezvous point.

Claim 8 (system) — a processing unit plus memory storing code that performs the same six steps as claim 1, and additionally initiates a conversation between the leader and the one follower on their respective mobile devices. The conversation element is baked into the independent claim rather than left to a dependent claim.

Claim 14 (computer-readable storage media) — code performing the same six steps as claim 1, and additionally: display the first route on the leader's mobile device together with a first map showing the leader's current location, and display the second route on the follower's mobile device together with a second map showing the follower's current location.

Selected dependents

• 2–3: present a user-selectable control on both leader and follower devices that initiates a conversation; conversation starts on activation.
• 4–5: present each route on its own device's map, and cross-present the other route on the other device (swappable route/map views).
• 6: routes take the form of turn-by-turn directions.
• 7, 12, 13, 19, 20: present a message describing a landmark within the first or second route.

Disclosed but Not Claimed (for context)

The specification (Fig. 13–14) describes caravan membership tracking, alerts when a follower drops off the trail, mid-trip transfer of the "leader" role when the leader vehicle breaks down or is stuck in traffic, push-to-talk, and gesture/voice inputs. These are described embodiments; the granted claims are narrower and center on the intermediate-destination routing and time-comparison logic.

Third-Party Listings — Cautions

• Google Patents' "Cited By (1)" shows only US 10,418,863 B1 (Apple Inc., "Charging system," 2019) — facially unrelated subject matter.
• A third-party aggregator (patentleaderboard.com, an "Elwha / Intellectual Ventures" inventor page for Tim Paek) lists 10145697 alongside a large dollar figure. I would not treat that page as authoritative on ownership or value: the issued patent face and Google Patents both name Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC as assignee, and I found no assignment record indicating a transfer. Treat the aggregator entry as unverified.

Confidence

• Bibliographic data, abstract, and claim text: high confidence (read directly from the issued patent text and PDF).
• No CAFC 2026 activity: moderate confidence — based on negative web search results, not an authoritative docket-system query. If you need a definitive litigation check, that should be run directly against PACER/Docket Alarm and the CAFC docket, which I could not query as a primary source here.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 10145697 across the sources you mentioned.

Let me search the specific litigation databases you mentioned.

I found a promising lead. Let me verify whether US10145697 was specifically asserted in that case.

Based on my searches of the available sources (Google Patents, Patexia, CourtListener, Unified Patents references, Justia, and general web results), here is what I found — with an explicit distinction between what is confirmed and what is not.

Bottom line

I could not confirm any litigation in which US10145697 was specifically asserted as a patent-in-suit. The patent is a Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC asset (continuation family of US 9,026,367 and US 9,638,535), and Microsoft is predominantly a patent holder/defendant rather than a serial patent enforcer. I found no complaint, CAFC appeal, or PTAB proceeding that names US10145697.

One lead — but NOT verified for this patent

The only Microsoft patent-infringement case that surfaced is a possible but unconfirmed match:

Important caveat: I could not verify from the search results that US10145697 was among the patents asserted in this case. The docket snippet I retrieved did not list the asserted patent numbers. So this should be treated as an unverified lead, not a confirmed assertion of US10145697. It should not be reported as litigation "involving US10145697" without pulling the complaint (D.I. 1) and checking the patent schedule.

What I checked and did not find

• Unified Patents litigation portal — no result tying US10145697 to a case list.
• "10145697" / "10,145,697" + litigation/infringed — no relevant hits.
• CAFC / PACER — no appeal naming US10145697 appeared in results.

Caveats on method

Two limitations you should weigh:

1. My search tool returned no direct hits for the patent number in litigation databases, so the absence of results is weak negative evidence — it does not prove no litigation exists.
2. The patent's earlier family members (US 9,026,367; US 9,638,535) could have been asserted even if US10145697 itself was not; I did not verify those either.

Recommendation: To close this out with confidence, pull the D.I. 1 complaint in Route Guidance Systems LLC v. Microsoft Corp., 1:22-cv-02278 (N.D. Ill.), and run the patent number through:

• Unified Patents litigation portal (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist),
• Docket Navigator / RPX Insight (patent-level assertion search),
• PACER / CourtListener for any post-2018 filings.

If you'd like, I can run additional targeted searches on those specific dockets and on the sibling patents US 9,026,367 and US 9,638,535 to see whether the family has ever been asserted.

I'll verify the structured data against public sources before writing up.

Let me do a few more targeted checks before concluding.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0 (0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution-denied) — the USPTO ODP structured list in this prompt is empty, and my independent searches of PTAB public materials and the open web surfaced no IPR, PGR, or CBM involving US 10,145,697. The bottom line for a defendant is therefore: there is no PTAB record to lean on — no claim of this patent has ever been tested in an AIA trial, so all 20 claims are UNTESTED, and you would be the first petitioner.

No proceedings to report (and what I checked)

There is no proceeding section to write because no proceeding number exists to cite. I did not invent one. Verification performed:

False-positive warning (important — do not rely on these). Search hits repeatedly reference a "‘697 patent" in PTAB papers challenging claims 1, 2, 5, 10, 17, 18, 21, 26, 27, 32, 40, and 61 in IPR2013-00412, IPR2013-00413, and IPR2014-00634. That is a different patent — US 10,145,697 has only 20 claims and none numbered above 20, and its claim set (claims 1–20, methods/systems/CRM for caravan routing) does not match. Do not cite those proceedings as applying to this patent. Similarly, the citation to [Microsoft Corp.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Microsoft%20Corp.) v. SurfCast IPRs (IPR2022-00423/00590/00591/00592) that appears in search results concerns SurfCast's patents, not Microsoft's '697.

Strategic summary

Claim status — all UNTESTED. US 10,145,697 issued 2018-12-04 on application 15/478,537 (filed 2017-04-04), a continuation of 14/679,517 (now US 9,638,535), itself a continuation of 13/533,998 (now US 9,026,367), all claiming priority to 2012-06-27. No claim — 1 through 20 — has ever been canceled, confirmed, or even instituted for review in an AIA trial. Independent claim 1 (method), independent claim 8 (system), and independent claim 14 (one or more computer-readable storage media) are all live and untested. There is no narrowing, no certificate, and no estoppel-producing FWD. Anticipated expiration is 2032-06-27, so roughly six years of remaining term as of today.

Estoppel landscape — no § 315(e)(2) estoppel runs against anyone. Because no IPR/PGR was instituted and no FWD issued, no petitioner (or privy) is estopped, and you would face no estoppel either. Conversely, the absence of any prior PTAB construction means the district court would construe the claims on an open record — there is no PTAB claim construction to borrow for a Phillips-based defense, and no IPR record to mine for admissions. Note also that prior art on the face of the '697 patent is thin: the examiner-cited references are non-patent literature (Baccou et al. 2001 on cooperative positioning for multiple AUVs; Ghaffarkhah et al. 2009, "Communication-Aware Target Tracking using Navigation Functions") plus a handful of old vehicle patents (e.g., Mio US 5,680,122; Yamashita US 5,781,119). That is a workable but not obviously rich starting set — expect to build § 103 combinations from the caravan/platooning and dynamic re-routing art (the '697 is classified in G01C21/3438 "Rendezvous; Ride sharing" and G08G1/22 "Platooning").

Pattern signals — there is no pattern, and the usual triggers are absent.

• No repeat petitioner, no defensive aggregator. No proceeding means no Unified Patents, no RPX, no serial petitioner chain. (A Unified Patents analytics page exists for sibling patent US 9,026,367, but that is a patent-profile page, not a filed challenge — do not mistake it for a filing.)
• No patent-owner appeal activity, because there was nothing to appeal. No PTAB FWD on the '697 or its two parents has reached the Federal Circuit that I could find.
• Enforcement posture. The patent is owned by Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC — an operating company, not a litigation-funded NPE. Every search returned prosecution and family documents only; I found no public record of this patent, or its parents US 9,026,367 / US 9,638,535, being asserted in litigation. The prompt's stock framing about a "troll demand letter" does not fit this patent. If you have received an assertion built on the '697, that is worth flagging as unusual and worth verifying the asserted claims and family member (the parents have different claim counts — the '367 has 19 claims) before assuming your accuser's patent matches.

Statutory posture for any future challenge (as of 2026-09-29). The '697 has an effective filing date of 2012-06-27, i.e., pre-AIA. Consequences: PGR is unavailable (only patents with effective filing dates on/after 2013-03-16 are PGR-eligible); CBM review is no longer available (the transitional program sunset on 2020-09-16); the only AIA trial route left is IPR, on § 102/§ 103 grounds limited to patents and printed publications, with a § 315(b) one-year bar running from service of a district-court complaint alleging infringement.

Recommended next steps

1. Treat "no PTAB activity" as the operative fact, not as an inconclusive search result. There is no FWD to link to and no disposition to quote. Any claim-by-claim invalidity story you build will be the first one litigated against this patent.
2. Before filing anything, confirm on the primary sources UI. Re-check the patent's PTAB E2E page (ptacts.uspto.gov) and the PTAB Decisions portal (uspto.gov PTAB decisions) under the patent number and each family member (15/478,537; 14/679,517; 13/533,998). Confirm no recently filed (2025–2026) petition has been accorded a filing date but is not yet in ODP. A newly filed petition would show up on E2E first.
3. If a petition is contemplated, watch the § 315(b) clock. The one-year bar runs from service of the infringement complaint. There is no prior petitioner whose filing could toll or bar your challenge — you would be the sole petitioner and would bear the only estoppel exposure arising from the proceeding.
4. Build the prior art from the caravan/convoy and dynamic-destination space, not from the '697's own sparse face references. Relevant field art to develop: convoy/platooning location sharing and gap control (e.g., the Peloton Technology family cited as citing the '697: US 9,582,006; US 2017/0242443), vehicle-to-vehicle route sharing to a common destination (e.g., GM's US 8,930,122 and US 9,767,698, cited as citing this family), Apple's US 9,310,213 ("Obtaining updated navigation information for road trips"), and later Ford work (US 2020/0056899, routing following vehicles toward a lead vehicle in a caravan). Note that several of these are later than the 2012 priority date and are only useful as evidence of the state of the art or for copied-claim defenses, not as § 102 art.
5. Check the continuation family for claim scope that may already be foreclosed. The published sibling application US 2015/0211874 discloses claim language not present in the issued '697 (e.g., claims expressly reciting removing a former follower from the caravan and notifying members). Those claims did not issue in the '697 as claimed — useful for a prosecution-history/§ 112 or disavowal argument about what the '697 does and does not cover. Pull the full file histories of 13/533,998, 14/679,517, and 15/478,537 from USPTO PatentCenter.
6. Independent verification limits. I could not query PTAB E2E directly in this session; my conclusion rests on the ODP block supplied as authoritative plus public web search. I found no contrary evidence, but if a proceeding was filed in the last few weeks, ODP indexing lag is the most likely place for it to hide.

I'll research the assignment chain for US 10,145,697, starting with the primary USPTO sources and corroborating databases.

Let me query the assignment databases directly with more targeted terms.

I have a key data point (the '367 patent lists Microsoft in-house counsel as attorneys of record). Let me now chase the actual recorded assignment reel/frames.

I hit the tool-call limit before I could pull reel/frame data directly from USPTO Assignment Center. Below I report exactly what I could verify, and I explicitly mark the gaps rather than filling them in.

Ownership Analysis — US 10,145,697 B2

Scope note / limitation up front: I could reach Google Patents' Legal Events text, the issued-patent face, Unified Patents' patent page, and FreePatentsOnline/patentimages copies of the documents. I was not able to complete a session on USPTO Assignment Center (assignmentcenter.uspto.gov / assignment.uspto.gov) before my tool budget expired, so I cannot print verified reel/frame numbers or the correspondent of record for the assignment(s). I will not invent them. Where the record below rests on Google Patents' Legal Events rather than a Patent Assignment Abstract of Title, I say so.

Inventors

All three are named on the face of US 10,145,697 and on the two parents (US 9,026,367; US 9,638,535). The addresses on the patent face are all Puget-Sound-area Washington, consistent with Microsoft Research employment at the 2012 priority date.

Unusual-pattern check: No evidence of a mass inventor departure within 12 months of the 2012 filing. The inventors are long-tenured Microsoft Research staff, and the same three are carried through both continuations in 2015 and 2017 — the opposite of the "all inventors leave, portfolio gets flipped" pattern. (I did not independently verify each inventor's current employer; treat individual post-Microsoft careers as unverified.)

Prosecution-side observation (not an assignment fact, but relevant color): The parent '367 patent lists attorneys of record as Dan Choi; Doug Barker; Micky Minhas — all Microsoft in-house counsel. The '697 lists International IP Law Group, PLLC as the agent firm. That shift reflects a change in outside/in-house prosecution staffing between the 2012 and 2017 filings, not an ownership change.

Original assignee

• Entity on the issued patent: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC, One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052.
• Nuance worth stating: the 2012 application (13/533,998) was filed in the era when Microsoft Corporation was the applicant; Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC (MTL) was established in 2014 as Microsoft's patent-holding/licensing subsidiary (created alongside the Microsoft–Nokia Devices transaction). By the time the '367 issued (May 2015), the face already named MTL. So the original applicant of record and the assignee-as-issued differ in corporate form, but both trace to the same parent.
• Primary line of business: Microsoft is an operating software/cloud/devices company; MTL is its wholly owned IP holding-and-licensing arm. Unified Patents' page for the sibling '367 lists Parent Company: Microsoft Corp and Original Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC — consistent with MTL being an internal licensing vehicle, not a third-party NPE.
• Product embodying the claims: No evidence found. The granted claims are directed to caravan/convoy routing to an intermediate destination with a travel-time comparison. I found no Microsoft commercial product shipped under this family. This is a descriptive finding, stated as "not found," not a certification.
• Current status: Operating. Microsoft and MTL are both active; Google Patents lists MTL as current assignee and the patent as Active with anticipated expiration 2032-06-27.

Assignment timeline

What the accessible record actually shows. Google Patents' Legal Events for US 10,145,697 contains exactly one reassignment event:

• Executed date not shown / recorded 2017-04-04 — Reel unknown (not retrievable in this session)
  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest ("ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)")
  • Assignor(s): Paramvir Bahl; Paul N. Bennett; Tim Paek
  • Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrievable — no correspondent name/firm surfaced in the sources I could reach. Cannot flag recurrence.
  • Context: ordinary inventor-to-employer assignment, recorded contemporaneously with the filing of continuation 15/478,537 on 2017-04-04. Internal/inbound IP capture, not a third-party transfer.
  • Caveat: Google Patents' Legal Events page does not expose the reel/frame in the text I retrieved, and it may collapse prior-appointment records. This one event is the only post-filing reassignment I can confirm on the '697.

What I could NOT confirm and will not fabricate:

1. The inventor → Microsoft Corporation assignment for the 2012 original application (13/533,998). This is expected to exist (standard Microsoft employment-agreement assignment) but I could not pull its reel/frame.
2. The Microsoft Corporation → Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC portfolio transfer (~2014–2015). Given that the '367 issued in 2015 already naming MTL as assignee, some transfer or new-co assignment must have moved the family into MTL. I did not verify a reel/frame for it, so I am recording its existence as an inference from the issued face, not as a confirmed reel/frame entry.

Net: For this patent the chain appears to be a single-hop inventor assignment into the original corporate owner's licensing affiliate, terminating there. That is the finding: no third-party chain exists. Per the task instruction, "the original assignee still owns the patent."

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10145697
    2012 : Filed by Paek Bahl Bennett
         : Assigned to Microsoft
    2014 : MTL formed as Microsoft IP arm
    2017 : Continuation filed
         : Inventors assign to MTL
    2018 : Patent issued to MTL

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Verdict

Insufficient data — no records beyond the original assignment chain.

Justification: every ownership datapoint I could verify points to continued, single-hop ownership by the original corporate family — the 2017-04-04 recording assigns interest from inventors Bahl, Bennett, and Paek to Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC, and Google Patents and the issued face both still name MTL as current assignee with the patent Active to 2032-06-27. There is no recorded transfer to any third-party or licensing-only LLC, no known-asserter in the chain, and no confirmed litigation, so none of the eight NPE signals is affirmatively present — the calls are "not present" or "unclear" only because I could not retrieve reel/frame/correspondent detail. I chose "Insufficient data" rather than "Defensive / non-asserting" because MTL is not a defensive aggregator, and rather than "Operating-company assertion" because there is no verified suit by MTL on these claims.

To close the two real gaps, run: USPTO Assignment Center search by patent number 10145697 (and application 15/478,537) at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ to capture the reel/frame and the correspondent of record for the 2017-04-04 recording; also pull the corresponding abstracts for 13/533,998 and 14/679,517 to confirm the Microsoft Corp → MTL transfer. A patent-level assertion search on Docket Navigator/RPX would settle whether US 10,145,697 was ever asserted (including whether it was in the dismissed Route Guidance Systems complaint).

Contradictions / open items to flag for the file:

1. Aggregator vs. record: patentleaderboard.com ties inventor Paek to "Intellectual Ventures" and this patent; the issued face and all primary records say Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC. Unresolved, and the aggregator is non-authoritative. Do not propagate the IV attribution without a reel/frame.
2. Prior-section lead unresolved: the Route Guidance Systems LLC v. Microsoft Corp. (N.D. Ill. 1:22-cv-02278) case remains an unverified lead — the asserted patent schedule was never confirmed, so it should not be listed as litigation "involving US 10,145,697."

I'll search for the prior-art citations of record for US 10,145,697 and its family.

Let me pull the citation records directly for this patent and its parent.

Let me get the complete "References Cited" list from the issued patent front page.

Prior Art of Record — US 10,145,697 B2 ("Dynamic destination navigation system")

Basis and limits of this report. I was able to retrieve the "(56) References Cited" front page of the printed patent for both US 10,145,697 (and, by inheritance, US 9,026,367) from the USPTO documents as mirrored on Google/patentimages:

• US10145697 front page: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/43/98/bc/4bcbb3b4ca272e/US10145697.pdf
• US9026367 front page: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/cc/78/6d/48f34d0a64f6ef/US9026367.pdf
• Google Patents: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US10145697B2](/patent/US10145697B2)/en

Two honest caveats up front, because they affect the answer:

1. The retrieved citation list is truncated. The OCR of the '697 front page runs out mid-entry at "2011/0…". So the list below is complete through Sept. 2011 publications and then stops. I cannot certify that no further U.S. entries, foreign entries, or NPL items follow it on the printed page. The analogous list on the parent US 9,026,367 (which is shorter and ends at the 2013 entries + 2 foreign refs + NPL) suggests what the tail probably looks like, but probable is not verified.
2. I did not obtain the examiner's reasons for allowance or any rejection, so the mapping of references to claims below is my own §102 analysis of the cited art against the granted claim language — not a restatement of a USPTO record. I flag per-reference confidence throughout. Where I could not verify a reference's subject matter in this session, I say so rather than guess at a title.

Two OCR-variant readings of the same entries appear across the two front pages; per your rule I am not silently correcting them — I list both readings.

1. U.S. patent documents cited on the face of US 10,145,697

Pre-grant publications cited (as printed)

2. Foreign patent documents and non-patent literature on the family front pages

The presence of three robotics/multi-vehicle NPL items tells you what the §102 theory of record looks like: the leader/follower-caravan spine was treated as old (robotics art), and the allowance had to rest on the "intermediate destination" + relative-travel-time comparison feature — exactly the language that appears in granted claim 1 but not in the parent US 9,026,367's claim 1 (which instead claimed traffic-condition-triggered leader/follower role reversal). That is a real, checkable structural difference between the two grants and it corroborates the point.

3. §102 element map for the granted claims

Claim 1 (method) requires, in order:

• E1 generate a caravan of a leader + follower(s) travelling to a destination
• E2 determine a first route for the leader to an intermediate destination
• E3 direct the leader to travel that first route
• E4 determine a second route for a follower to the same intermediate destination
• E5 determine the second route reaches that destination in less time than following the leader
• E6 direct the follower to travel the second route

Claim 8 = E1–E6 + initiate a conversation on both devices. Claim 14 = E1–E6 + first-route-on-leader's-map / second-route-on-follower's-map. Claims 2–3, 9, 17–18 = user-selectable conversation control. Claims 7, 12, 13, 19, 20 = landmark message. Claims 4–6, 10–11, 15–16 = map/turn-by-turn presentation.

Anticipation of claim 1 requires one reference disclosing ALL of E1–E6. Based on what the face of this patent actually cites:

4. Forward citations (for context — not §102 art)

Google Patents lists one "Cited By" item for the '697: US 10,418,863 B1 (Apple Inc., "Charging system," 2019) — facially unrelated. The larger "Families Citing this family" table is third-party forward citation of the family, and includes convoy/navigation art with its own dates, e.g.:

• US 2017/0242443 A1 (Peloton Technology, prio. 2015‑11‑02) — gap measurement for vehicle convoying
• US 9,582,006 B2 (Peloton Technology, prio. 2011‑07‑06) — semi-autonomous vehicular convoys
• US 9,310,213 B2 (Apple, prio. 2012‑11‑08) — updated navigation information for road trips
• US 8,930,122 B2 (GM, prio. 2013‑03‑15) — associating vehicles en route to a common destination
• US 9,767,698 B2 (GM, prio. 2013‑03‑15) — facilitating stops for vehicles en route to a common destination
• US 2016/0187141 A1 (McAfee, prio. 2014‑12‑24) — collective and collaborative navigation by a group

The two GM filings and the McAfee filing are, substantively, the closest third-party art to the '697's intermediate-destination claims (a stop "en route to a common destination" is precisely E2–E4). But every one of them was filed after 2012‑06‑27, so none is §102 art against claims entitled to the '697's priority date. They are relevant only as §103/commercial-context material, or if the priority claim were ever successfully challenged.

5. Where I'd rank the on-record art, and what I could not verify

Ranked most → least relevant to the granted claims:

1. US 8,965,692 B2 / US 2011/0137552 A1 (Chang) — classification-identical rendezvous art; the only §102 candidate plausibly hitting E5.
2. US 9,141,112 B1 (Loo/Allstate, "Caravan management") — closest vocabulary, but a post-priority reference; not available as §102 art.
3. US 2006/0194593 A1 (Drabeck et al.) — candidate for the conversation limitations that sit inside independent claim 8.
4. Leader/follower vehicle-control cluster (Mudalige ×3, Schmidt, Tolstedt, Whittaker, Mott) + the Fujimori / Baccou / Ghaffarkhah NPL.
5. Route-determination cluster (Downs, Mueller, Rinscheid, Waris, Klassen).
6. US 9,026,367 (Paek et al.) — family, non-art.

Explicitly not verified / not obtained in this session:

• The tail of the '697 "(56) References Cited" page (everything after the "2011/0…" truncation), including whether the 2012/2013 publications, the two foreign documents, and the NPL items I attribute from the '367 page are in fact carried onto the '697 page.
• The actual disclosure of every reference marked "substance unverified." I did not open those documents. I am not going to invent titles or quotes for them.
• The examiner's reasons for allowance / any §102 rejection and its claim mapping. If you need the official claim-by-claim art application, that lives in the file wrapper for application 15/478,537 (USPTO Patent Center) and in the corresponding papers for 14/679,517 and 13/533,998.
• I could not run a USPTO Patent Center / PAIR "References Cited" query directly — the list above comes from the printed front pages, which is normally identical to the USPTO record but is not the Patent Center itself.

Recommended next steps to close the gaps:

1. Pull the full first page of US10145697.pdf (or the Patent Center "Patent Full Text / References Cited" view for 15/478,537) to recover the truncated tail.
2. Pull the file wrapper for 15/478,537 and 14/679,517 to see which of these references the examiner actually applied, and against which claims.
3. Open US 8,965,692 / US 2011/0137552 (Chang) first — verify whether it discloses travel-time comparison to a shared meeting point (that is the whole ballgame for claim 1).
4. Confirm the priority-date question before anyone cites US 9,141,112 (Loo/Allstate) or the GM filings as §102 art.

One cross-reference to the earlier sections: the summary already flagged that the '697 abstract describes paths to successive leader positions, while the granted claim 1 is about an intermediate destination and a time comparison. The prior-art picture is consistent with that observation — the cited art is overwhelmingly about following a moving leader, which is precisely the subject matter the '697 chose not to claim, and the intermediate-destination framing is what distinguishes the grant.

I'll work through this systematically. First, let me pin down what prior art is actually on the record for this patent family, then build the § 103 analysis. Let me run several targeted searches.

Let me pull the actual cited references on the face of this patent and its parent, and check dates on the key candidates.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 10,145,697 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Building on the prior "Patent summary" and "Litigation summary" sections. I do not repeat their bibliographic findings; where I rely on them I cross-reference.

0. Note on the "Prior Art" record for this page

Google Patents' page for US 10,145,697 (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US10145697B2](/patent/US10145697B2)/en) does not surface a backward-citation ("Patent Citations / References Cited") table in the text I retrieved — it shows only "Cited By (1)" and "Families Citing this family (68)." Those are forward citations (later documents citing this family), which are presumptively not statutory prior art against the '697 claims.

To build a § 103 case I therefore used two things:

1. The forward-citation table on the page, filtered by date (only entries with a priority/publication date before 2012-06-27 can be prior art), and
2. References and search-report citations that surfaced for the sibling applications and family members (Google Patents, Unified Patents portal for US 9,026,367, and PCT search reports citing the same art).

I flag explicitly where a reference is not prior art by date, and where I could not verify a reference's content.

1. Threshold: which statutory regime and what is the critical date

• The '697 issued from 15/478,537 (filed 2017-04-04), a continuation of 14/679,517 → 13/533,998 (filed 2012-06-27). The claimed subject matter (an "intermediate destination" plus a travel-time comparison) is supported by the 2012 disclosure at the FIG. 13 description — "the caravan service 120 determines which caravan members can get to the restaurant faster if they do not follow the leader vehicle… may provide directions directly to the selected restaurant instead of directions to follow the leader vehicle." So the effective filing date is 2012-06-27.
• All claims have an effective filing date before 2013-03-16, so pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. §§ 102/103 govern (AIA § 3(n)(1)).
• Consequence: post-2012-06-27 art cannot be used. This excludes the most on-point-looking caravan references on the page:

⚠️ Flag: the GM "caravan + stops en route" pair is nearly a picture of claim 1, but because it postdates 2012-06-27 it is not available under pre-AIA § 102/103. Any obviousness holding resting on GM alone would be legally erroneous. It is nonetheless useful corroboration that the field was moving this way, and it may become directly relevant if the '697's priority claim were ever successfully challenged.

2. The usable prior-art set (pre-2012-06-27)

3. Claim 1 mapped element-by-element

Verdict on claim 1: elements (a)–(d) and (f) are taught by US 7,865,300 (as to (b)–(d),(f)) in view of a convoy reference (as to (a)). The case rises or falls on (e).

3.1 Why (e) is obvious — the two-reference combination

Combination A — US 7,865,300 + Peloton US 8,744,666 + the ordinary ETA capability of a navigation device.

• US 7,865,300 already computes an intercept route and an intercept speed plan, and outputs directions to a rendezvous. Computing whether an intercept route to a waypoint arrives sooner than merely following the waypoint is the definitional purpose of an "intercept" (to meet/catch the moving target). Once a device computes two candidate routes to one waypoint, deriving each route's travel time is the routine operation of any turn-by-turn navigator (the reference itself must time the intercept to the waypoint's predicted position).
• The motivation is stated in the field itself: the problem addressed by both references is keeping a following vehicle on track with a lead vehicle without getting lost. The '697 specification's own framing — "it is common to stop for a bite … determines which caravan members can get to the restaurant faster if they do not follow the leader vehicle" — shows the incentive (time/fuel/efficiency) is a design driver, not an insight.
• KSR rationales (MPEP 2143): (i) combination of known elements yielding predictable results; (ii) use of a known technique (ETA comparison) to improve a similar device in the same way; (iii) "obvious to try" where there is a finite, predictable set of options (follow the leader or navigate independently to the shared waypoint — two choices).

Combination B — US 7,865,300 + Honda US 7,158,879 (multi-vehicle navigation) + Bacelon US 5,923,294.

Adds (i) an express multi-vehicle navigation teaching to reinforce "caravan / leader / followers travelling to a destination," and (ii) paired-device position sharing to reinforce the mobile-device implementation. The motivation is one of same-field, overlapping-problem combination (both address guiding one vehicle relative to another).

4. Independent claims 8 and 14

• Claim 8 = claim 1's six steps + "initiate a conversation between the leader and the one follower on [their] mobile devices."
  • Conversation initiation between the two coordinating devices is taught by US 5,923,294 and US 6,414,630 (position-sharing devices that also carry a communication link), and is a ubiquitous telephony feature. Combining a "call" affordance with a rendezvous/navigation app is a mere aggregation of known functions yielding predictable results (KSR; MPEP 2143). A POSITA coordinating a meet-up between two vehicles would plainly add voice contact — that is precisely the coordination the references describe.
• Claim 14 = claim 1's six steps + display the first route on the leader's device with a first map showing the leader's current location, and the second route on the follower's device with a second map showing the follower's current location.
  • Map-with-current-location display is the baseline feature of every turn-by-turn navigator, and US 5,923,294 expressly displays each unit's position relative to the other's. Motivation: routine.

5. Dependent claims

6. Rebuttal — where the obviousness case is weakest

To be straight about the limits:

1. Element (e) is the entire inventive contribution. No reference I found expressly states the comparison "follower's independent route vs. staying behind the leader's route." A patent challenger must therefore prove it was obvious to pose that comparison, not merely that ETAs are computable. That is a genuine, if modest, hurdle — and it is likely where the applicant's amendment away from the '367 claim set ('367 claims focused on successive leader positions + automatic leader transfer) was aimed.
2. "Following the leader along the first route" is an odd baseline. It requires the follower's device to model the leader's path as an option for the follower — a somewhat artificial construct that a court could find the prior art does not suggest.
3. Counterweight: KSR expressly rejects the "rigid" TSM test and permits an "obvious to try" holding where the solutions are finite and predictable; here there are exactly two candidate behaviors (follow, or route independently to the shared waypoint), and the outcome measured (arrival time) is objective. The Bell Atlantic/In re KSR predictable-results rationale applies.
4. No secondary considerations. Per the earlier sections, the family appears unasserted and there is no evidence of record of unexpected results, licensing skepticism, or commercial success with nexus — so there is nothing to rebut a prima facie case.

7. Bottom line

• Claim 1 (and claims 14, 6, and the map/route dependents) is reasonably strong § 103 ground: US 7,865,300 B2 teaches dynamic-destination rendezvous routing with a shared intermediate waypoint (rest stop/parking lot), an intercept route for the follower, and turn-by-turn directions to both the follower and the leader; joined with Peloton US 8,744,666 (convoy/leader-follower) and the routine ETA-comparison capability of a navigator, the "less time than following the leader" step is a predictable application of known techniques.
• Claim 8's conversation element adds little: US 5,923,294/6,414,630 show paired communicating position devices, and adding voice contact to a rendezvous app is a predictable combination.
• Landmark dependents (7, 12, 13, 19, 20) are the weakest; the Office's own G01C21/3644 classification supports a general-knowledge rationale, but I did not verify a dedicated pre-2012 reference.
• Do not build a challenge on GM US 8,930,122 / US 9,767,698 — those postdate the 2012-06-27 critical date and are not pre-AIA prior art.

8. Confidence and gaps

• High confidence in the claim text, effective filing date, and pre-AIA framework (read from the issued text; continuation chain and § 112 support verified).
• High confidence in the content of US 7,865,300 (read from the patent/PDF and RPX abstract/claims).
• Moderate on Peloton's specific disclosure (relied on title/abstract/priority, not full text).
• Low/unverified: the contents of Honda CN 1629605 A / US 7,158,879 B2 and US 2008/0114538 A1 (Lindroos) — I have only the search-report categorizations, not the passages; and I did not retrieve the '697's own "References Cited" list (the page did not render it), which may contain additional examiner-cited art I could not evaluate.
• Recommendation: pull (i) the '697 file wrapper / "References Cited" list, (ii) full text of US 7,158,879 and US 2008/0114538, and (iii) any NPL cited on the '367 (the Unified Patents portal shows "Patent Art (23), Non-Patent Literature (4)" for US 9,026,367 — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-[9026367](/patent/9026367)-B2) before finalizing a validity opinion.