US 10270837

I'll check live sources for this number, then summarize.

Summary — U.S. Patent No. 10,270,837 B2

Scope note: I searched for this exact number. Results confirm it is a single, discrete grant (application no. 15/290,917). No similar-number matches are reported below. All identifiers are reproduced literally as found.

Bibliographic data

Date-discrepancy flag: Google Patents and Unified Patents disagree by one day on filing, grant, priority and expiration. Per my operating rules I treat the authoritative full text (Google Patents, fetched 2026-09-24) as controlling: priority 2012-08-01, filed 2016-10-11, published/granted 2019-04-23, expiration 2033-11-10.

Abstract (as published)

"A transmission management system includes a destination name data managing unit which manages a plurality of destination name data items which indicate a plurality of names of a destination in communications between transmission terminals, a destination name data reading unit which reads a destination name data item from the plurality of destination name data items managed by the destination name data managing unit, and a destination name data transmitting unit which transmits the destination name data item read by the destination name data reading unit to a transmission terminal capable of communicating with the destination."

Subject-matter overview (specification)

The patent is directed at videoconference/communication systems (a Ricoh videoconference "transmission system 1" with terminals 10, relay devices 30, and a transmission management system 50). Its stated problem: in the prior art (referencing Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2012-050063), the management system distributes a single, common destination name (e.g., "Japan," "Tokyo office," "AB terminal"). The patent's premise is that the most user-friendly name for a given destination varies with the communication context — team names are useful inside an organization, company names are useful between organizations. The disclosed solution is to store and manage multiple names/aliases for the same single destination and serve the contextually appropriate one to the terminal.

Three alias tiers are expressly described, stored in three tables:

• First destination name data — in the destination list management table (FIG. 10), keyed by request-source terminal ID (e.g., "Osaka YY planning team," "Osaka BO, A Inc.").
• Second destination name data — in the reservation terminal management table (FIG. 11B), keyed by reservation ID + terminal ID (e.g., "Tokyo KK sales project team," "Tokyo").
• Third destination name data — in the terminal management table (FIG. 12), keyed by terminal ID and broadcast-type (e.g., a telephone number "03-1234-OOOO").

The three tables together are referred to as the "destination name data managing unit 5010." A terminal reading unit 54 selects/reads the appropriate data item and the transmitting/receiving unit 51 sends it to the terminal. The specification describes a fallback ladder: if no reservation-specific (second) name is registered, fall back to the per-request-source (first) name; if neither is registered, use the per-terminal (third) name. Terminals display the received names plus presence icons (online / offline / in meeting).

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Uncertainty flag — important: the authoritative full text supplied to me contains the abstract, definitions, and description, but the verbatim claim set was not included (Google Patents' "Description" body is truncated in the fetched text, and my searches did not surface the granted claim language verbatim). The following is a paraphrase inferred from the abstract, the "Disclosure of Invention" statement, and the specification's summary paragraphs, not a quotation of the claims as granted. Treat it as a technical characterization, not a legal claim chart.

1. Independent claim 1 — transmission management system (the invention's core). A transmission management system for managing communication between transmission terminals, comprising: (a) a destination name data managing unit that manages a plurality of destination name data items representing a plurality of names for a single destination used in terminal-to-terminal communications; (b) a destination name data reading unit that reads at least one of those stored destination name data items; and (c) a destination name data transmitting unit that transmits the read destination name data item to a transmission terminal capable of communicating with that destination. The claimed point of novelty is the many-names-for-one-destination architecture, as opposed to one common name per destination.

2. Independent claim — transmission system. A transmission system combining the above management system with transmission terminals, where the terminal side includes a receiving unit for the destination name data sent by the management system and an outputting/display unit that renders the received name (the spec's 120 display, destination list, and presence icons).

3. Independent claim — recording medium. A (non-transitory) computer-readable recording medium storing a program that causes a computer to function as / execute the process of the management system above — i.e., managing the multiple destination name data items, reading at least one, and transmitting it to a communicable terminal. This claim category matches the "recording medium" in the title.

Likely dependent-claim subject matter (also inferred): the first/second/third destination-name-data tiers and their respective tables; selection of the reservation-specific name in preference to the request-source-specific name; fallback to the terminal-level name; and inclusion of the destination's operating state alongside the name.

Litigation / CAFC check

• No CAFC 2026 docket activity for US 10,270,837 was found in my searches of 2026 Federal Circuit materials. I cannot confirm any appeal or IPR involving this number, and I will not assert one.
• The Google Patents record carries a Darts-ip "First worldwide family litigation filed" badge (family 50028107) linking to https://patents.darts-ip.com/?family=50028107. I was not able to resolve that link to a specific case caption, court, or docket number, so I cannot tell you who sued whom or when. That badge is the only litigation signal on the record I retrieved.
• My searches were run against general web-indexed sources (Google Patents, Unified Patents, Justia, Federal Circuit summary publications); I did not obtain a direct, credentialed USPTO Patent Center / PTAB API dump, so absence of litigation findings is not proof of absence.

Data-quality caveat

The Google Patents page for this number includes an unusual "concepts" list with entries such as "Caenorhabditis elegans unc-18 gene" and "Methylated-DNA-protein-cysteine methyltransferase." These are almost certainly automated tagging/scraping artifacts rather than substantive subject matter of this videoconference patent, and I would not rely on them. I flag them only so they are not mistaken for technical content if you encounter the same page.

Bottom line: US 10,270,837 B2 is a Ricoh (Maeda / Asai) continuation patent on context-dependent destination naming in a videoconference transmission system — managing multiple names for one destination and delivering the appropriate one to the requesting terminal — with a family that extends through at least US 12,368,769 B2 and US 2025/0317484 A1. Verbatim claim language should be verified against the USPTO Patent Center or the granted-PDF before being used in any claim chart, since I could not retrieve it authoritatively.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 10,270,837. Let me search multiple sources.

Let me search more targeted litigation sources.

A promising lead: Ricoh Company, Ltd. v. Zoom Communications, Inc. Let me dig into that case and confirm the asserted patents.

Litigation Search: US Patent No. 10,270,837

Bottom line: Based on the sources I was able to search, I found no litigation in which US Patent No. 10,270,837 ("the '837 patent") is specifically identified as an asserted patent. I want to be explicit about that, because a closely related family member is in active litigation and it is easy to conflate the two — I have not done so below.

What I actually found

1. No case naming the '837 patent as asserted

The Unified Patents litigation portal page for US‑10,270,837‑B2 returns only bibliographic/prosecution data (assignee Ricoh Co Ltd; inventors Asai Takahiro and Maeda Kaoru; app. no. 15/290,917; grant 2019‑04‑22) and no litigation records:

• https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-10270837-B2

No complaint, docket entry, ITC notice, or docket caption I located names "10,270,837" or "10270837" as an asserted patent.

2. Family-level litigation indicator (NOT patent-specific)

The Google Patents page for US10270837B2 carries a family litigation flag ("Family has litigation — First worldwide family litigation filed") pointing to a Darts‑ip family record:

• https://patents.google.com/patent/[US10270837](/patent/US10270837)/en
• Darts‑ip family reference: https://patents.darts-ip.com/?family=50028107

Important caveat: this flag is recorded at the patent‑family level, not at the individual‑patent level. It does not establish that the '837 patent itself is asserted. Family‑level litigation flags attach to sibling/continuation patents as well.

3. The related case that likely drives that family flag: Ricoh v. Zoom

The active case involving Ricoh's videoconferencing patent family is:

Asserted patents in that case (per the Report to the Commissioner and the May 1, 2026 opinion):

• 10,904,487 ('487)
• 10,909,059 ('059)
• 10,931,917 ('917)
• 11,256,464 ('464)
• 11,289,093 ('093)
• 11,516,278 ('278) — titled "Transmission Management System, Transmission System, and Recording Medium"
• 11,546,548 ('548)

Note that 11,516,278 ('278) shares the exact title of the '837 patent ("Transmission Management System, Transmission System, and Recording Medium") and is a likely family relative — but it is a different patent number. Per your instruction not to auto‑correct or substitute similar numbers, I am flagging rather than equating them: the '837 patent is not among the seven patents asserted in Ricoh v. Zoom.

Sources:

• Complaint: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/71231937/1/ricoh-company-ltd-v-zoom-communications-inc/
• Docket: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/71231937/ricoh-company-ltd-v-zoom-communications-inc/
• Opinion (D. Del., May 1, 2026): http://business.cch.com/ipld/RicohCompanyZoomCommunications20260501050426.pdf
• VitalLaw case summary: https://www.vitallaw.com/news/patent-d-del-videoconferencing-patent-infringement-claims-survive-zoom-s-invalidity-challenge/ipm0143b01433bf2242dcaeb56aae083bc19e

Confidence and limitations

• High confidence: the '837 patent is not listed among the patents asserted in Ricoh v. Zoom (1:25‑cv‑01095).
• Moderate confidence / explicit uncertainty: whether any litigation asserts the '837 patent itself. My searches did not surface one, but I could not exhaustively query PACER, Darts‑ip, or the RPX/Unified litigation databases directly in this session. It is possible a case exists that is not indexed in the free sources I searched.
• The Darts‑ip family flag strongly suggests the family has litigation, and Ricoh v. Zoom is the most plausible match — but that is an inference about the family, not proof about the '837 patent.

Recommended next steps to confirm definitively

1. Search PACER directly for "10,270,837" as a patent-in-suit (use the D. Del. docket 1:25‑cv‑01095 first).
2. Pull the full Darts‑ip family 50028107 record (paywalled) to see which family members are asserted.
3. Check the ITC EDIS Section 337 database for any com

I'll start by verifying the structured data against live sources — checking whether any AIA trial proceeding exists that the ODP ingest may have missed.

The first pass found no PTAB hits, but let me run targeted confirmatory searches — including family-member patents and any litigation-driven challenges, since a challenge to a sibling patent could involve the same family.

The Zoom litigation is a significant find. Let me check whether it has spawned any IPR activity against this patent or its family.

PTAB / AIA Trial Proceedings — US 10,270,837

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings are on file against US 10,270,837. The canonical structured source — the USPTO Open Data Portal "PTAB proceedings on file" block supplied for this patent — returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding, and my independent web searches (Google Patents, Unified Patents portal, PTAB/PTABCTS document hits, and Federal Circuit/CourtListener dockets) surfaced no petition, institution decision, FWD, or appeal naming this patent. The defensive posture is therefore untested, not hardened: no claim of the '837 has been canceled by the Board, but none has been affirmed either — there is no PTAB record to lean on in either direction, and no § 315(e)(2) estoppel has attached against anyone.

Evidence basis for the "no proceedings" conclusion

Because there are no proceedings, there are no entries to enumerate — no petitioner, no panel, no institution decision, no FWD, no settlement, no appeal. I will not invent proceeding numbers to fill the template.

One adjacent signal worth flagging (not a PTAB proceeding)

The "family has litigation" flag is corroborated by a live district court action: Ricoh Company, Ltd. v. Zoom Communications, Inc. The CourtListener record (https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/[10852070](/patent/10852070)/ricoh-company-ltd-v-zoom-communications-inc/) describes a Ricoh complaint filed in August 2025 asserting a portfolio of Ricoh videoconferencing patents, including the '278 Patent, "Transmission Management System, Transmission System, and Recording Medium," issued 2022-11-29. That title and the Google Patents family/continuation chain (US 17/104,322 → US 11,516,278) indicate the '278 is a member of the same priority family as the '837 (both trace to JP 2012-171192 / PCT-JP2013-070953, priority 2012-08-01). The same CourtListener snippet reports a Zoom § 101 motion to dismiss, a First Amended Complaint filed 2026-01-13, and oral argument held 2026-04-01 — I could not independently verify the full docket or any claim-level rulings, so treat those dates as reported by a single source, not confirmed.

Caveat on scope: the '837 itself does not appear in the asserted-patent list I recovered. So the litigation flag does not mean the '837 has been asserted, and it certainly does not mean the '837 has been challenged at the PTAB.

Strategic summary

Claim status. Nothing is canceled, nothing is sustained, nothing is Board-tested. The entire claim set of the '837 is untested at the PTAB. There is no FWD to cite, no survivorship list of narrowed claims, and no claim-level disposition to hand a court under § 315(e) or under the Fintiv/simplification line of cases. Any statement that a particular claim of the '837 "survived" or "was killed" in an IPR would be false.

Estoppel landscape. Because no IPR has reached a final written decision, § 315(e)(2) estoppel has not attached to any party. A current defendant retains the full prior-art universe — § 102 and § 103 grounds, printed publications, patents, and (subject to § 311(b)'s limits) any system-art/patent combination usable as a printed publication. This cuts both ways: you are unconstrained, but so is everyone before you, and there is no prior petitioner's work product to borrow.

Pattern signals. No repeat petitioner exists (no petitioner at all). The patent owner has never had to defend at the PTAB, so there is no track record of aggressive PTAB appeals by Ricoh on this patent. No defensive aggregator (Unified Patents or similar) appears in the chain — the Unified Patents page for this patent is a passive record, not a challenge. The more consequential pattern is on the family-prosecution side: the '837 is one node in an active continuation chain that the Google Patents record shows has produced several additional grants — US 10,904,315, US 11,516,278, US 11,956,301, US 12,368,769 — plus at least one published pending application (US 2025/0317484 A1). Knocking out the '837 would not clear the family, and the '278 member of that family is already in suit against Zoom.

The practical bottom line. The absence of PTAB activity is itself a data point. Well-asserted, high-value patents tend to attract IPRs — especially in the crowded videoconferencing space and especially once a well-funded competitor is sued. That the '837 has never drawn a petition, despite an active 2025 litigation campaign involving a same-family sibling, suggests either (a) the '837 is not the asserted/valuable member of the family, or (b) challenges are coming but have not yet been filed/indexed. Neither possibility is comforting or exculpatory; both require you to build your own invalidity case from scratch.

Recommended next steps

If you are a defendant or prospective defendant:

1. Do not look for an FWD — there isn't one. No claim of the '837 has been invalidated, so any demand letter citing the '837 is supported by a fully intact (if untested) claim set. Budget for a from-scratch validity attack rather than a follow-on to an existing PTAB record.
2. Map the family before you file anything. Confirm the continuation chain (US 10,904,315 → US 11,516,278 → US 11,956,301 → US 12,368,769, and pending US 2025/0317484 A1) and identify which claims in which family members read on your product. Invalidating the '837 alone may leave you facing the '278 or another sibling.
3. Pull the Ricoh v. Zoom docket (CourtListener link above, and the underlying district court docket) for Ricoh's infringement contentions, claim constructions, and any § 101 ruling. Even though it is a different patent, Ricoh's positions on the shared specification and the "destination name data" concepts in the '837 will telegraph its claim-construction strategy.
4. Assess § 101 exposure. Zoom's motion to dismiss on § 101 eligibility (per the reported record) is the single most useful data point available: if a court voids same-family claims on eligibility, that reasoning may extend to the '837's destination-name-data claims, which are directed to database lookup and display of alternate names.
5. If you file an IPR, note there is no § 315(b) one-year bar running against you from any prior petitioner, and no Fintiv overlap with an existing PTAB trial. Standard § 316(a)(11) timing applies: institution decision within ~6 months of the petition's filing date, FWD within 12 months of institution.

Verification note and re-check cadence. The ODP ingest can lag newly filed petitions. Given the active 2025–2026 Ricoh v. Zoom litigation and the family's continuation activity, re-run the ODP proceedings query and a PTAB docket search quarterly. A first petition against the '837 or its siblings would materially change the defensive posture described here — but as of 2026-09-30, none exists on file.

Confidence and limits. High confidence that no AIA trial proceeding is on file against US 10,270,837: the canonical ODP list is empty and independent searches corroborated it. Lower confidence on the Ricoh v. Zoom specifics (asserted-patent list, § 101 posture, and the 2026 dates), which come from a single CourtListener snippet I could not fully corroborate before reaching my search limit — verify against the live district court docket before relying on them. I did not verify the '278-to-'837 family relationship against the USPTO patent-application continuity data directly; that inference rests on the identical patent title plus the Google Patents continuation chain showing US 11,516,278 issuing from application 17/104,322 in the '837 priority chain.

I'll research the assignment record for US 10,270,837, starting with the USPTO Assignment Center and cross-referencing other sources.

Let me look for the specific assignment records and legal events for this patent.

Let me search for the recorded assignment documents and any legal-events/ownership transfers.

I attempted to query the USPTO Assignment Center directly (assignmentcenter.uspto.gov / assignment.uspto.gov), but my tooling in this session could not retrieve the raw reel/frame records, and I exhausted my search budget. I will not fabricate reel/frame data. Below is what I can establish from the authoritative patent text and the cross-referenced sources, with explicit flags on the one gap.

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Assignment Record: US Patent No. 10,270,837

Patent: US 10,270,837 B2 — "Transmission Management System, Transmission System, and Recording Medium"
Application: 15/290,917 · filed 2016-10-11 · granted 2019-04-23
Continuity: Continuation of US 14/417,868 (now US 9,661,057), which is a National Stage of PCT/JP2013/070953, filed 2013-07-26, claiming priority to JP 2012-171192 (filed 2012-08-01).
Adjusted expiration: 2033-11-10 (per Google Patents).

⚠️ Sourcing note: The primary source named in the task — the USPTO Patent Assignment Search — was not directly retrievable in this session. The findings below rest on the patent text, Google Patents/legal-events metadata, and the Unified Patents patent page (all of which report the same original and current owner). Where a reel/frame would normally appear, I mark it [not verified] rather than invent one.

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Inventors

• Both inventors are listed on the granted patent and on the Unified Patents record for US‑10,270,837‑B2 (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-10270837-B2).
• The Google Patents page lists the current assignee as Ricoh Co Ltd with the inventors as Maeda and Asai.

Unusual-pattern check — NOT observed / cannot substantiate a departure pattern. I found no evidence that either inventor departed Ricoh within 12 months of filing, and I found no evidence of a subsequent inventor-side assignment of these rights. Note the recurrence of these two inventors across a wide Ricoh videoconference/Ricoh Unified Communication System (UCS) portfolio: Kaoru Maeda is associated with ~22 Ricoh patents (https://www.patentleaderboard.com/ricoh-company/kaoru-maeda/[249301](/patent/249301)), and Takahiro Asai appears on multiple related Zoom-asserted Ricoh patents (e.g., the '917 patent per the Ricoh v. Zoom complaint). This is the profile of a career corporate inventor team, not a departing-founder pattern. [No fire-sale precursor signal.]

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Original assignee

Ricoh Company, Ltd. (Ricoh Co Ltd), 3‑6, Nakamagome 1‑chome, Ohta‑ku, Tokyo 143‑8555, Japan.

• Primary business: A large, publicly listed Japanese multinational — office imaging (MFPs/copiers/printers), digital services, and its Ricoh Unified Communication System (UCS) videoconferencing line. The patent squarely maps to Ricoh's own UCS videoconference product line.
• Product practice: Ricoh ships/operated products and services (UCS and related conferencing systems) that practice this family's subject matter. This is operating-company behavior, not a patent-holding shell.
• Current status: Ongoing, solvent, publicly traded (TYO: 6501). No bankruptcy, no dissolution, no acquisition of the parent.
• Litigation posture of the family: Ricoh is asserting sibling patents from this same videoconference family against Zoom in Ricoh Company, Ltd. v. Zoom Communications, Inc., No. 1:25‑cv‑01095 (D. Del.), and the complaint states "Ricoh is the assignee and sole owner" of each asserted patent. The '837 patent itself is NOT among the asserted patents (asserted: 10,904,487; 10,909,059; 10,931,917; 11,256,464; 11,289,093; 11,516,278; 11,546,548). This is a direct, in-court confirmation of sole ownership within the same corporate family, which strongly corroborates that no assignment to an NPE has occurred. Complaint PDF: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ded.90435/gov.uscourts.ded.90435.1.0.pdf

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Assignment timeline

The Assignment Center returned no transfer records that I could retrieve or verify for US 10,270,837 beyond the original inventor-to-Ricoh assignment. I could not open the reel/frame detail, so I cannot cite a specific reel/frame number, and I will not invent one.

What is determinable:

• Original assignment (inventors → Ricoh Company, Ltd.) — the standard corporate employee invention assignment. Execution date: [not verified] / Recorded: [not verified] — Reel /__ [not verified] — Conveyance: Assignment. Assignors: Takahiro Asai; Kaoru Maeda. Assignee: Ricoh Company, Ltd. Correspondent: [not verified — Ricoh's Japanese/foreign filing firm or Ricoh's in-house IP department]. Context: routine corporate ownership assignment at filing, not a monetization event.

• No post-issuance assignments located. Neither Google Patents legal events, the Unified Patents page, nor the Ricoh v. Zoom complaint reflects any transfer of the '837 patent out of Ricoh. Both the "Original Assignee" and "Current Assignee" fields resolve to Ricoh Co Ltd.

Because I could not directly confirm even a single recorded reel/frame, the honest statement is: this patent appears to have only the original inventor→Ricoh assignment (if any is recorded at all) and no post-issuance transfer chain — but I was unable to verify that against the Assignment Center within this session.

Verification link (for the reader to confirm the above):

• USPTO Assignment Center: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search "10,270,837")
• Alternate: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html
• Also cross-checked: https://patents.google.com/patent/US10270837/en and https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-10270837-B2

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10270837
    2012 : JP priority filed 2012 Aug 01
    2013 : PCT filed by Ricoh
    2015 : US national stage entered
    2016 : Continuation 15/290/917 filed
    2017 : Parent patent 9661057 issues
    2019 : US 10270837 granted to Ricoh
    2025 : Ricoh sues Zoom on sibling patents

Parser note: I used the year-only form ("15/290/917") to avoid a slash inside event text; the accurate application number is 15/290,917.

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

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Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

Justification: The patent's ownership never left its large operating-company originator — both the original and current assignee fields resolve to Ricoh Company, Ltd., and there is no verified assignment record of any transfer to an NPE or shell entity. Ricoh is an active product company (UCS videoconferencing) that asserts this same patent family in its own name against a direct competitor in Ricoh v. Zoom (D. Del. 1:25‑cv‑01095), where it pleads "assignee and sole owner" of the sibling patents — behavior categorically inconsistent with an NPE holding pattern. Caveat I must state plainly: I could not directly retrieve the Assignment Center reel/frame records in this session, so the absence of a post-issuance assignment chain is supported by secondary sources (Google Patents legal events, Unified Patents, the Zoom complaint) rather than by a first-party pull of the recording record; a reader should confirm via https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ before relying on this for diligence.

Recommended confirmation steps: (1) Pull the Assignment Center record for 10,270,837 to capture the original inventor→Ricoh reel/frame and confirm zero post-issuance entries; (2) if a recording exists, capture the correspondent of record to close out signal #3; (3) check the Ricoh v. Zoom docket for any later-filed amendment adding the '837 patent to the asserted set.

I'll research the USPTO record and prior-art citations for this specific patent number.

Let me pull the front-page "References Cited" and citation data specifically.

Prior-Art Citation Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 10,270,837 B2

Current-task date note: You state today is April 26, 2026. Your earlier sections carry a "2026-09-30" marker and the fetched document a "2026-09-24" fetch timestamp. I flag the inconsistency but proceed.

1. USPTO record for the exact number

I searched for 10270837 literally and did not accept similar numbers. The record confirms:

Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/US10270837/en ; https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-10270837-B2

CRITICAL LEGAL FRAMING (affects every § 102 statement below). The '837 patent claims priority to 2012-08-01, i.e., before March 16, 2013. Under the AIA transition rules, the pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102 (subsections (a), (b), (e), (g)) controls. This materially changes the analysis versus a post-AIA patent: the relevant cutoffs are the priority date (2012-08-01) and, for printed publications, the one-year § 102(b) critical date (2011-08-01). It also means "first-inventor-to-file" § 102(a)(2) art does not apply.

2. Retrieval limitation — read this before relying on the list

I could not retrieve the verbatim "(56) References Cited" block from the front page (face) of US 10,270,837 B2 itself within this session. Google Patents' text view did not expose the front-page citation block, and the Patent Center / PTACTS pages surfaced were for unrelated applications (e.g., 13/734,178; 14/064,826). Accordingly, I will not present an invented citation list for the '837. What follows is: (a) the one prior-art reference the '837 specification itself names, and (b) the face citations of a direct family continuation, clearly labeled as such.

3. Prior art expressly named in the '837 specification

REF-A: Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2012-050063

• Full citation: JP 2012-050063 A (Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2012-050063).
• Publication date: Not verified verbatim in this session; the number series (2012-…) indicates publication in Japanese FY2012. It is cited in the '837 as the background/related art, so it is necessarily pre-2012-08-01 on the patent's own face. Treat the exact publication date as unverified.
• Brief description (from the '837 text): Describes a method of establishing a session between terminals by selecting a destination name from among candidate destination names contained in a destination list; the transmission management system generates the destination list of destination names and transmits it to the terminal, prompting the user to select a destination. The '837 characterizes this art as using a single, common destination name per destination (e.g., "Japan," "Tokyo office," "AB terminal").
• Potential § 102 relevance: Under pre-AIA § 102(a)/(b) this is the closest single-reference art for the framework claims — a management system that builds a destination list and transmits it to a terminal. It is strong against any claim that does not require the plurality-of-names-for-one-destination limitation. Because it discloses one common name per destination, it is weak/fails to anticipate the core independent claims (1 and the system/medium counterparts) as I paraphrased them, which require "a plurality of destination name data items… a plurality of names of a destination." Likely cited as background rather than as an anticipatory rejection. The verbatim claim set was not provided to me (see prior sections), so I cannot map this to specific claim numbers with confidence.

4. Face citations of a direct family continuation (US 10,904,315 B2) — flagged, NOT the '837's own list

US 10,904,315 B2 (application 16/291,842) is a continuation in the same Ricoh family. Its face "(56) References Cited" block lists the following. I present these because the '837 was the family's earlier member and these references typify the art the examiner/attorney considered — but I have NOT confirmed that each appears on the '837's own face. Source: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/06/fe/e5/5a772a0d3d044e/US10904315.pdf

I cannot honestly supply, for each of these, a "brief description" or a claim-by-claim § 102 mapping, because I did not retrieve their texts in this session and your strict no-fabrication rule forbids me filling the gaps from memory. Doing so would risk misdescribing references and mis-mapping claims you have not yet given me verbatim.

5. What a proper § 102 analysis requires (and what is still missing)

To complete the task you asked for — "which claim(s) it potentially anticipates under 35 U.S.C. § 102" — I need two things I do not currently have:

1. The verbatim granted claims of US 10,270,837 B2. Your own prior section flags that the "Description" body supplied was truncated and the claim set was not retrieved. Anticipation is claim-by-claim and element-by-element (§ 102 requires all elements in a single reference, arranged as claimed); without the literal claim language I can only reason about the independent-claim gist (managing multiple names for one destination → reading one → transmitting it).
2. The '837's actual front-page citation list (its own "References Cited"), plus any non-patent literature. The family-sibling list above is indicative, not dispositive.

6. Bottom line

• Confirmed prior art named in the '837 text: JP 2012-050063 A — the sole reference the specification itself identifies; relevant under pre-AIA § 102(a)/(b) to the destination-list framework, but it teaches a single common name per destination and therefore does not appear to anticipate the plurality-of-names core claims.
• Likely-cited reference family (from continuation US 10,904,315 B2's face), unverified as to the '837: the parent US 9,661,057 B2 (family, not art) and U.S. publications 2002/0138650, 2007/0086065, 2009/0094694, 2009/0177974, 2012/0140022, 2013/0242038, 2013/0278712. Of these, the pre-2011-08-01 publications are the candidate § 102(b) art; the 2012/2013 publications raise publication-date and § 102(e) questions that cannot be resolved without their actual texts and the '837's face list.
• Legal regime reminder: with a 2012-08-01 priority date, the pre-AIA § 102 analysis governs.
• No fabrication: I did not invent citation dates, reference contents, or claim mappings. Items marked "not verified" are genuinely unverified in this session.

To finish this properly, I recommend: (i) pulling the granted-PDF front page of US 10,270,837 from Patent Center or patentimages to capture its exact "(56) References Cited"; and (ii) providing the verbatim claim set so I can produce a genuine § 102 claim chart. I can do that mapping immediately once those two inputs are in hand.

Would you like me to attempt a targeted retrieval of the '837 granted PDF front page next (I can run a focused search for the patentimages PDF of US10270837) so the § 102 chart rests on the patent's own citation record rather than a family sibling's?

I'll first check whether a "Prior Art" section exists for this patent, since the instruction references one but none was included in my working set.

Good — I found a partial verbatim claim 1. Let me pull the full claim set and the references cited on the patent's face.

Let me get the full verbatim claims and the patent's own cited-references list.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 10,270,837 B2

0. Two input problems I must flag before analyzing

(a) No "Prior Art section" was supplied. Your instruction says to use "the results from the Prior Art section of this page." No prior-art section exists in my working set. What I actually have is: the full specification/abstract/description text, a Google Patents "Prior art keywords" list (terminal, destination, data item, name data, terminals), the litigation section, and the earlier summary. I have not fabricated a prior-art section to fill the gap. My analysis below therefore rests on (i) the admitted prior art expressly identified in the specification and (ii) art categories I can characterize as generally known — with confidence flags on everything.

(b) A contradiction with the previously generated summary — flagged as instructed. The earlier "Patent summary" characterized independent claim 1 as the three-unit functional form (destination name data managing unit / reading unit / transmitting unit). That is not what issued. A search result I retrieved reproduces the granted claim text, and claim 1 is in "memory + processing circuitry" form with a different substantive core. Per your rule to prefer live results over prior characterization, I use the retrieved claim text and flag the earlier paraphrase as superseded. (Source: https://insight.rpxcorp.com/patent/[US10270837B2](/patent/US10270837B2))

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1. What the claims actually cover (basis for the §103 analysis)

The '837 patent has 8 claims. Claim 1 is reproduced in the search result as follows (verbatim as retrieved, including the "; " typographical artifacts):

1. A management system comprising:
— a memory; and
— processing circuitry configured to;
— record name data items for use in communications between terminals using identification data items; and
— store in the memory, with respect to a first identification data item, a first name data item associated with a second identification data item to indicate that a terminal using the first identification data item is a destination terminal for a terminal using the second identification data item, and a second name data item different from the first name data item and associated with a third identification data item to indicate that a terminal using the first identification data item is a destination terminal for a terminal using the third identification data item.

Claim 5 is the independent management-method counterpart ("A management method for performing a process by a management system including a memory and processing circuitry…"), and claim 7 is the independent non-transitory computer-readable recording medium counterpart. Same substance, different statutory category.

Claim 1 parsed into limitations:

Two observations that dominate the §103 posture — both critical:

1. Claim 1 is a storage claim only. It recites recording and storing. It contains no transmitting limitation (contra the abstract's "destination name data transmitting unit"), no display limitation, and no selection/fallback logic. The abstract and the earlier summary describe transmission and a three-tier fallback ladder; those appear to have been left to dependent claims or dropped entirely. A claim that stops at storage must be measured against prior art that merely stores such a table.

2. The substantive core is "two different names for the same destination, keyed to different requesting terminals." This is precisely the FIG. 10 destination list management table ("first destination name data") described in the specification, where "Osaka YY planning team" and "Osaka BO, A Inc." are both managed for the single destination terminal 10ba. If that is the whole of claim 1, the reservation tier (FIG. 11B) and the per-terminal broadcast tier (FIG. 12) are not in the independent claim.

Caveat: the search result rendered claim 1 with … continuation ellipses and I could not retrieve claims 2–4, 6, and 8 verbatim. Any element in those dependent claims (e.g., the reservation-keyed tier, the fallback ordering, or the operating-state display) could narrow the analysis meaningfully. Verify against the granted PDF / Patent Center before relying on this.

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2. The admitted prior art — the specification's own starting point

The specification expressly identifies Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2012-050063 as the state of the art, and characterizes it as disclosing:

"a transmission management system which controls the starting of the communication generates a destination list in which the names of the destinations (the candidates) are contained and transmits the destination list to a transmission terminal, and prompting a user on the transmission terminal to select one of the destination names…"

This is applicant-admitted prior art under MPEP 2129 / In re Fout. It supplies:

• the transmission management system architecture,
• the destination list data structure,
• the name-per-destination pairing, and
• the server→terminal delivery of names.

What it does not supply is the plurality-of-names-for-one-destination. That single delta is the entire inventive contribution of claim 1.

What I could not obtain: the examiner's actual PTO-892 reference list. The Unified Patents page shows the '837 patent carries "Patent Art (22)" and "Non-Patent Literature (7)" and names the examiner as Dalencourt, Yves (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-10270837-B2), but the page did not expand those 22 references in the result I retrieved, and my searches of Google Patents / Justia / FPO did not surface a "References Cited" block. I therefore cannot tell you what the examiner actually cited, and I will not invent it. One artifact that did surface in a family member's reference list is US 8,630,962 B2 (Maeda, 1/2014) (http://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/4d/8c/78/6f33ded2dab7bd/[US11194317](/patent/US11194317).pdf) — a Ricoh-family listing, not evidence of what issued over the '837 claims.

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3. The prior art landscape for the delta

Using the Google Patents "Prior art keywords" as the search-space indicator (terminal, destination, data item, name data, terminals) plus the technical field, the relevant art clusters for claim 1's delta are:

Honest limitation: I could not expand the 22 cited references, and my session hit the tool-call ceiling before I could verify specific reference numbers, columns, or paragraphs for the alias/nickname cluster. I am describing art categories I am confident are prior art (per-user contact aliases are decades old — they predate the 2012-08-01 priority by a wide margin), but I am not giving you a verified citation-by-citation chart, because I did not retrieve one. Do not put column/line pin cites from this section into an invalidity contention without pulling the actual documents.

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4. Combination theories

All three use JP 2012-050063 as the primary reference (it is admitted prior art in the four corners of the patent, which makes it the cleanest starting point) plus a secondary reference for the aliasing delta.

Combination A — JP 2012-050063 + per-user contact-alias/nickname art

• JP 2012-050063 provides A (management system, memory, processing), B (name data items indexed by terminal identifiers for a destination list), and the terminal/ID framework.
• The alias/nickname reference provides C and D: a contact store in which one destination is listed under a first name for one owning account and a different name for a different owning account.
• Motivation: Both references are in the same field of endeavor (network-mediated directory/contact presentation for communication endpoints) and address the same problem — presenting a human-meaningful label for a destination. The patent itself supplies the motivation in its "Problems to be Solved" text: "the easy-to-specify names of the destinations may vary depending on the communications." That statement is a concession that the problem was recognized, and the claimed fix (keep more than one name and key it to the context) is the most predictable solution available. Under KSR, "the improvement is a predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions."
• No teaching away: JP 2012-050063 uses a single name per destination; that is a design choice, not a teaching that multiple names are inoperable or undesirable. There is no criticality or disparagement argument available.

Combination B — JP 2012-050063 + enterprise directory / address-book service

• Same mapping. The directory service supplies the relational structure (destination ↔ viewer ↔ display name). Enterprise directories with per-user contact folders and per-user display names were standard well before 2012, and the "reason to combine" is the ordinary business requirement of letting different users see the same counterpart under different, familiar labels — a requirement the patent's own background concedes.
• This combination is strongest because claim 1 is a database-schema claim. A relational contacts table with a viewer foreign key and a name column reads on C and D on its face; no networking, signaling, or videoconference-specific structure is required by the claim.

Combination C — JP 2012-050063 + telephony/PBX personal directory art

• A PBX or softphone directory in which a single called party appears under different labels across different subscribers' personal directories supplies C/D; JP 2012-050063 supplies the server-mediated destination-list delivery.
• Motivation: both are "select a destination by name from a server-provided list, then establish a session" arts — the very method the specification describes as "known." Motivation is "use of a known technique to improve similar devices in the same way."

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5. Motivation-to-combine rationales (explicitly, for the record)

For any of the above, the KSR / MPEP 2143 rationales available are:

1. Predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions — aliasing a contact per viewer was a known, routine database technique; applying it to the destination list of JP 2012-050063 yields nothing more than expected.
2. Obvious to try — with a recognized problem ("the names should be easy to specify, and that varies by communication") and a finite, small set of known solutions (one name, several names selected by context, several names keyed by viewer), the claimed solution is one of the anticipated options, pursued with a reasonable expectation of success.
3. Design incentive / market pressure — enterprise video-conference deployments routinely span intra-company and cross-company sessions; giving each viewer a locally meaningful name improves usability. This is a business motivation, which KSR recognizes as sufficient.
4. Same field, same problem, reasonably pertinent references — no field-of-invention barrier, no bodily-incorporation problem.
5. Reasonable expectation of success — purely a data-model change; no unpredictable technology is implicated.

No secondary considerations are described in the specification. The description contains no unexpected-results data, no industry praise, no licensing narrative tied to this feature, and no evidence that competitors tried and failed. Nothing in the specification establishes a nexus between any commercial success and the "plural names per destination" element, so the patent's own text supplies no rebuttal evidence.

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6. Where the patent may be defensible (candor on the other side)

• The dependent claims are the likely locus of value. The specification's genuinely more specific content — the reservation-ID-keyed second name (FIG. 11B) and the fallback ladder (reservation name → request-source name → terminal-level name, steps S53-3 through S53-7) — is not visible in the retrieved claim-1 text. If claims 2–4/6/8 recite that conditional selection logic, combining JP 2012-050063 with a mere alias table will not reach them; you would need a secondary reference teaching context-dependent alias selection with fallback defaults (e.g., directory systems with a per-entity default plus per-group overrides, or caller-ID name lookup with precedence rules).
• The §101 shadow. The sibling patent in this family, US 11,516,278, shares this title and is among the seven patents asserted in Ricoh Company, Ltd. v. Zoom Communications, Inc., No. 1:25-cv-01095 (D. Del.), where Zoom's renewed Rule 12(b)(6) §101 motion was denied on May 1, 2026 (Alice step one found an abstract idea; step two found a plausible inventive concept). That is a different patent number — per your rule I am flagging the family relationship, not equating them — but it tells you the litigation vector for this family has been §101, not §103. The broad, storage-only claim 1 of the '837 patent is, in my view, more exposed to Alice step one than it is to a §103 attack that requires assembling references.

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7. Bottom line

• Claim 1 as retrieved is very likely obvious under §103 over JP 2012-050063 in view of any per-user contact-alias/address-book reference, with a clean KSR motivation drawn from the patent's own admitted problem statement. The claim is a data-model claim (two names for one destination, keyed to two different requesting terminals), and per-viewer aliasing of a contact is long-standing, well-known art in the directory/IM/telephony fields. The absence of any transmitting, displaying, or selecting step in claim 1 materially strengthens the obviousness case.
• My confidence in the legal conclusion is moderate, not high, for two reasons: (1) I could not verify the full verbatim claim set — claims 2–4, 6, 8 are unknown to me; and (2) I could not retrieve the examiner's actual 22 cited references, so I cannot tell you what the art actually looked like at the 2012 priority date as applied. Categories of art I am confident existed; specific citations I am not asserting.
• The strongest §103 attack is Combination B (JP 2012-050063 + enterprise-directory/address-book aliasing), because it needs only a storage-capable secondary reference.
• The strongest attack on the dependents requires a secondary reference teaching precedence/fallback among multiple aliases, not merely coexistence of aliases.

8. Recommended next steps before this is used in any contention

1. Pull the granted claims verbatim from USPTO Patent Center for application 15/290,917 (or the granted PDF) and replace my partial claim 1 with the authoritative text; map claims 2–4, 6, 8.
2. Pull the PTO-892 / Notice of References Cited and any IDS from the 15/290,917 file wrapper to obtain the examiner's actual art — the Unified Patents "Patent Art (22)" set is the shortcut (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-10270837-B2).
3. Verify the priority chain against JP 2012-171192 and PCT/JP2013/070953 to confirm the effective filing date for art-qualification purposes; note the Google/Unified one-day variances already flagged in the summary (priority 2012-08-01 vs. 2012-07-31).
4. Obtain the verified bibliographic details of the concrete alias/nickname and enterprise-directory references before pin-citing any column, line, or paragraph — I have deliberately not supplied pin cites I could not verify.