US 10398983

I'll verify the patent details and check for any litigation or docket activity.

Let me check specifically for litigation or PTAB activity involving this patent.

Summary: US 10,398,983 B2

Important framing note up front: I searched for litigation/docket activity and found no CAFC 2026 appeal, no district court case, and no PTAB proceeding naming US 10,398,983 (or its application 14/974,757) as the patent-in-suit. The 2026 Federal Circuit material returned by search (e.g., Flypsi, Inc. v. Google LLC, Nos. 2025‑1010 et al., decided May 13, 2026) and the PTAB material returned (Milestone Entertainment v. Activision; Playtika v. NEXRF) are unrelated to this patent. Treat the litigation portion of your request as unanswered rather than "none exists" — my search tools are not a substitute for a complete PACER/PTAB docket sweep. All bibliographic and claim data below is grounded in the patent text itself (Google Patents, rpxcorp, and the issued PDF), which are consistent with each other.

Bibliographic data

Abstract (as issued)

"In at least one aspect, methods and corresponding systems operable to perform the methods are provided herein that allow multiple players, registered and unregistered, to play a game wherein players submit predictions for box office revenue for a plurality of films and, in certain instances, are awarded points for the proximity of the prediction to actual revenues."

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Claim 1 (independent — method). A processor performs a sequence covering two classes of players and, unusually, bundles in several features that would normally be dependent claims:

1. Unregistered-player intake — receive a prediction for a variable tied to each of several events from a device used by a non-registered player.
2. Automatic ID generation — the processor itself mints a unique identifier for that unregistered player, without the player choosing or entering it.
3. Cookie/data-file storage — cause a data file containing that identifier to be written onto the unregistered player's device.
4. Result retrieval — use the stored identifier to look up that unregistered player's prediction results.
5. Result delivery — send the results back to the unregistered player's device.
6. Registered-player intake — receive, through an interface screen on a registered player's device, a prediction for a variable for each of several events.
7. Registered-player retrieval — look up results using a unique identifier associated with the registered player (i.e., the player's own login/account identifier, rather than an auto-generated cookie).
8. Registered-player delivery — send those results back.
9. Leader-board redirection — generate electronic commands that cause the registered player's interface screen to be redirected to another screen showing a listing of participating players.
10. List of events with a holdover — communicate a list of new events (each event being a film), where the list also includes at least one holdover, and predictions are also collected for that holdover.

In effect, claim 1 = "cookie-tracked anonymous play for non-registered users plus account-tracked play for registered users, with a participants listing shown to registered users, and the slate of films including a carryover title."

Claim 9 (independent — system). Substantively the mirror image of claim 1, recited in apparatus form: at least one processor plus an electronically coupled memory device storing software instructions that, when executed, direct the processor to perform the same ten operations (unregistered intake → auto-ID → cookie storage → retrieval → delivery; registered intake → account-based retrieval → delivery; leader-board screen redirect; list of new film-events including a holdover). Note the claim 9 text contains a minor drafting artifact ("software instructions ... to;receive ..." in some renderings), but the substance matches claim 1.

Dependent claims at a glance

Spec-level context that shapes claim scope

• The single-level service model is described in the spec: base-level users need not register and can play and view prior results; full features (content review, Leader Board, prizes) require registration with a username.
• Scoring example given: 1 point within 25%, 2 points within 10%, 3 points for a near-exact hit; worked examples using Charlotte's Web, Eragon, Night at the Museum, Rocky Balboa, and We Are Marshall.
• The unique identifier may be randomly generated or seeded from player-specific data such as a MAC address or IP address.
• The disclosure expressly acknowledges the technical fragility of the cookie approach — users who refuse/delete cookies cannot play or see results without registering, and a user logging in from a different computer loses their results — which is the stated motivation for supporting registered gameplay in the same system.
• The listed slate is the "Hot 5!" format: top wide releases plus major holdovers, in alphabetical order, entered in millions to one decimal.
• The spec references external research content via HSX.com and HSX MovieStock® pages, and TRUSTe/PII compliance with a 13-and-over age floor.

Confidence and caveats

• High confidence on title, assignee, inventors, application number, filing date, issue date, abstract, claim text, and continuity — these come directly from the issued patent record.
• Moderate confidence on the Google-Patents-stated 2028 anticipated expiration; that field is explicitly labeled an assumption by the source and depends on maintenance-fee payments and any terminal disclaimer or PTA.
• Low confidence / not established on any litigation, appeal, or IPR involving this specific patent. I could not confirm any CAFC 2026 docket entry for patent 10,398,983, and I found nothing indicating it has been asserted. If you need a definitive docket answer, that requires a direct PACER (district court + CAFC) and PTAB/PTAB-API query rather than general web search.
• Do not conflate this patent with US 11,192,030 (same family, titled "Box office game") or with US 9,218,720 (the parent). Those are distinct documents in the same CFPH family and have different claims.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 10398983 across patent litigation sources.

Let me search more specifically for litigation involving this patent and its owner.

Let me try additional targeted searches on litigation databases.

Search Results: Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. 10,398,983

Summary finding: I found no evidence of any litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 10,398,983 (US10398983B2).

What the searches returned

I searched patent-litigation-oriented sources (Unified Patents portal, Google Patents litigation tab, Justia Patents, RPX Insight) using the exact number, and cross-checked by patent title and assignee. Every hit for the exact number resolved to a patent-data record, not a litigation record. Specifically, 10398983 matches only:

• Google Patents — the patent page for US10398983B2, "Controlled gaming between registered and unregistered players." Its litigation/"Cited By" data lists only patent citations (438 references), not lawsuits.
• Unified Patents portal — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-10398983-B2 (a patent record page; no case list surfaced for this number).
• RPX Insight — https://insight.rpxcorp.com/patent/US10398983B2 (patent record with claims/priority data; no litigation section for this patent).
• Justia Patents — https://patents.justia.com/patent/10398983 (referenced-cited list only).

No district court complaint, no IPR/PGR petition, and no CAFC appeal identified this patent number.

Important caveat on search contamination

Several results came back for different patents or different case numbers and must not be attributed to '983:

• eSpeed, Inc. v. BrokerTec USA, L.L.C. and CFPH, LLC v. BrokerTec USA, LLC — these involve CFPH/Cantor Fitzgerald (the assignee of '983) but concern different patents (e.g., the '580 patent on electronic trading protocols). They do not involve '983.
• Motorola Solutions v. STA Group (IPR2023-01295) — involves U.S. Patent No. 8,994,830, an unrelated number.
• Realtime Data / MNI / SoundClear matters and various Delaware and E.D. Tex. dockets — unrelated patents and parties.
• A Belgian/Federal gazette listing for "10398983 TECHNOCANIQUE ELEKTROUS" — an unrelated foreign entry, coincidental number match, not this US patent.

Patents that are related (context, not litigation)

For completeness, US10398983B2 is a continuation of US 9,218,720 ("Box office game") and a parent of later family members:

• US 12/104,166 → US9218720B2 ("Box office game")
• US 14/974,757 → US10398983B2 ("Controlled gaming between registered and unregistered players")
• US 16/543,723 → US11192030B2 ("Box office game")
• US 17/542,603 → US20220088488A1 ("Box office game")

These family relationships are prosecution/priority links, not litigation.

Bottom line

Based on the sources I could reach, no known litigation (district court, ITC, PTAB/IPR/PGR, or CAFC) involves U.S. Patent No. 10,398,983 specifically. The assignee CFPH, LLC has been active in other patent litigation (e.g., the eSpeed/BrokerTec disputes), but none of those cases assert '983.

Limitations to flag: I could not directly query PACER, Docket Navigator, or Unified Patents' case-list page for this patent, so this is a negative finding from the sources I could reach as of the search date — not a positive certification that litigation is impossible. If you need a definitive clearance, a PACER/Docket Navigator party-and-patent search on the exact string "10,398,983" and a PTAB (Patent Trial and Appeal Board) proceeding search would be the appropriate confirmatory step. I will not fabricate a case number, court, or party where the record I retrieved shows none.

I'll start by checking the structured PTAB block against the public record, then run targeted searches for any AIA proceedings the ODP ingest may have missed.

Initial results show no AIA proceedings tied to the '983 patent. Let me probe a few more angles — the parent patent, the assignee, and any litigation that would normally attract an IPR.

Let me run two final confirmatory checks — one on litigation/assertion history that would normally trigger IPRs, and one on the family's PTAB record generally.

PTAB Proceedings — US 10,398,983 B2

Structured-data check (canonical): The "PTAB proceedings on file" block reports that the USPTO ODP API returns no AIA trial proceedings for US 10,398,983 as of the most recent ingest.

Independent verification: I ran targeted searches for IPR/PGR/CBM petitions naming the '983 patent, its parent (US 9,218,720), its continuations (US 11,192,030; US 2022/0088488), its inventors, and its assignee (CFPH, LLC). No AIA petition was found. Search results that referenced "10,398,983" alongside IPR numbers were false positives — the IPR numbers belonged to unrelated patents, and the Unified Patents hit was merely their automated patent-profile page, not evidence of a Unified-filed challenge. I flag that specifically because it is easy to misread as defensive-aggregator activity; it is not.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 10,398,983: 0 (active: 0; claims invalidated: 0; claims sustained: 0; settled: 0; institution denied: 0) — all 16 claims are wholly untested at the PTAB, so a defendant gets neither the gift of canceled claims nor the hardened, IPR-tested claim set that would come from a patent owner victory; the defensive posture is best characterized as "unchallenged but deeply pre-cited."

Per-proceeding detail

No proceedings to detail. No IPR, PGR, or CBM number can be reported for this patent, and I will not synthesize one. The absence is not an artifact of a thin docket — I checked the parent, the two continuations, the inventors, and the assignee, and came up empty across the family.

For completeness, the three ordinary post-grant events that do exist (and which a defendant should not confuse with AIA trials):

Strategic summary

Claim status. US 10,398,983 has 16 claims: independent claim 1 (method) and independent claim 9 (system), with dependents 2–8 and 10–16. There is no PTAB cancellation, no certificate of correction narrowing, and no reexamination certificate that I could locate. Accordingly, claims 1–16 are all UNTESTED at the Board — not "sustained," which is a term of art that presupposes an FWD, and not "canceled." Anyone telling you a claim of this patent is dead is wrong; anyone telling you a claim has been blessed by the PTAB is equally wrong. The only claim-scope narrowing on this record is prosecution-driven: claim 1 was amended (during the 14/974,757 prosecution) to add the "listing of participating players" interface-screen step and the new-releases/holdover limitations that now appear in the issued claim. Those added limitations are the natural center of gravity for any non-infringement argument, because they are what the patent owner had to surrender scope to obtain.

Estoppel landscape. Because no IPR was ever instituted, § 315(e)(2) estoppel does not exist against anyone. There is no petitioner, no privity chain, and no accrued estoppel. A defendant today is free to raise any § 102 or § 103 ground in district court, and — subject only to the § 315(b) one-year bar once that defendant is served with a complaint — free to file a fresh IPR on any art.

The real constraint is not estoppel but § 325(d) and the sheer volume of the intrinsic record. The '983 patent's face lists 438 cited references spanning the 1970s forward (Instinet, Reuters, Merrill Lynch, HSX/Kelser, Asher entertainment-revenue instruments, Lange parimutuel art, Bjordahl's margin-based online game). The examiner and applicant clearly canvassed the field of financial-market-meets-game patents. A petition built on obviousness combinations of art already in that record — which is most of the obvious candidates — will run straight into § 325(d) "substantially the same art and arguments" discretionary denial. The path of least resistance is non-patent-literature and system/device art that is provably outside the cited record, particularly the pre-2007 commercial reality of HSX.com (the specification itself points to HSX and its MovieStock products) and other web-based box-office prediction contests. That is the kind of art an IPR petition can use but a § 325(d) analysis can also sweep in if it is cumulative — so the petition must affirmatively explain what is new.

Pattern signals. No petitioner has filed multiple IPRs against this patent, because none has filed one at all. The patent owner (CFPH, LLC, a Cantor Fitzgerald affiliate) has not pursued any PTAB appeal from this patent, because there was nothing to appeal. No defensive aggregator — Unified Patents or otherwise — appears in the chain. Two structural signals matter more than the docket: (1) the family is still being prosecuted forward — US 11,192,030 issued 2021-12-07 and US 2022/0088488 is pending as of the last family data — so CFPH is actively maintaining this line, which is mild evidence it intends to assert it; and (2) the anticipated expiration of 2028-04-16 leaves roughly eighteen months of enforceable term from today's date. Google's own status line disclaims this as a legal assumption, but if it holds, the patent's remaining economic value is short and a defendant's best play may simply be to run the clock rather than spend IPR money.

Recommended next steps

If you are a defendant and want to invalidate:

• There is no FWD to link and none to rely on. I have nothing to quote at claim level, because no panel has ever written a dispositive word about claims 1–16. Do not bring a § 315(e)(2) estoppel argument to court; it has no foundation.
• Run the § 315(b) clock the moment you are served. No prior service has started a one-year window, so your window opens fresh. Docket the date; the bar is absolute and non-extendable, and a missed window converts your best invalidity grounds into district-court-only grounds.
• Prioritize art outside the 438-reference citation list. Assume any combination of Instinet/Reuters/HSX/Asher/Lange art is § 325(d) bait. Non-patent literature (2005–2007 press, archived HSX game pages, contemporaneous box-office prediction contests) and any system art are your cleanest theories.
• Attack the amended limitations directly. Claim 1's "listing of participating players" interface step, the "new events" list, and the "at least one holdover" element were added to secure allowance. Invalidity theories should map to those elements, not just to generic "predict box office revenue and score it" concepts.
• Note the § 101 angle. This is a software/gaming method patent with a pre-AIA 2007 priority date and a heavy G06Q/A63F classification footprint. Claim 1-on-its-face § 101 challenges are a district-court and § 282 tool (the PTAB cannot decide § 101 in an IPR), so brief them in litigation rather than in a petition.

If you are the patent owner (CFPH) or monitoring the estate:

• No FWD deadline, oral hearing, or institution-decision deadline is running — there is nothing to calendar. You have a clean slate and no PGR window remains (PGR is available only within nine months of issuance, and the patent issued 2019-09-03; that window closed 2020-06-03). CBM review is unavailable for new petitions following the § 18 transitional-program sunset on 2020-09-16. Practically, the only AIA vehicle left against you is IPR.

How to confirm this yourself (the negative is worth double-checking before you rely on it):

• USPTO PTAB E2E / Patent Trial and Appeal Board End-to-End: https://ptab.uspto.gov — search by patent number 10398983 and by application 14/974,757.
• USPTO PatentCenter for the application file: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov
• CourtListener (for any Federal Circuit appeal, of which I found none): https://www.courtlistener.com

Confidence and caveats: I have high confidence that no AIA trial proceeding has been filed against US 10,398,983 on or before 2026-09-29, based on the ODP structured block plus independent searches. I have moderate-to-good confidence that the recent-filing gap is real rather than an ingest lag, but a petition filed in the last few weeks could in principle not yet be indexed — re-run the PTAB E2E query before filing anything that depends on the absence. I have no information on any district-court assertion of this patent; I did not identify litigation, but my search budget was exhausted before I could verify that, so do not treat the litigation silence as a finding.

I'll research the assignment record for US 10398983 before drafting. Let me run several searches in parallel.

Let me dig deeper on the CFPH ownership chain and any recorded assignments.

Assignment / Ownership Record — US 10,398,983 B2

Patent: US 10,398,983 B2 — "Controlled gaming between registered and unregistered players"
App. No.: 14/974,757 · Filed: 2015-12-18 · Granted: 2019-09-03 · Priority: 2007-04-16
Family: US 12/104,166 (US 9,218,720 B2, "Box office game") → US 14/974,757 (this patent) → US 16/543,723 (US 11,192,030 B2) → US 17/542,603 (US 2022/0088488 A1); PCT/US2008/060491 (WO 2008131010 A1).
Where I verified: Google Patents legal-events record supplied in the patent text; USPTO Assignment Center (assignmentcenter.uspto.gov) / assignment.uspto.gov indexed record; Plainsite assignment index; Unified Patents patent portal.

Important caveat on reel/frame. The patent text supplied to me (Google Patents "Legal Events") lists only routine prosecution events — application filed, priority, publication, grant, continuation filings — and no assignment event with a reel/frame. Searches of the Assignment Center/Plainsite indexes did not surface a recorded reel/frame for US 10,398,983 or app. 14/974,757. I therefore cannot cite a reel/frame for this patent, and I will not invent one. Everything below is stated at the confidence level the record supports.

Inventors

• The application (and its 2008 parent, US 12/104,166) was filed with CFPH, LLC as assignee. The specification repeatedly ties the game to HSX.com and HSX MovieStock® (the Hollywood Stock Exchange property held within the Cantor Fitzgerald group), which is the strongest available indicator that the inventors were affiliated with the CFPH / Cantor–HSX business — but the individual inventors' employers are not stated in the patent or in any record I could retrieve. Treat the HSX/Cantor affiliation as inference, not fact.
• Unusual-pattern check: No evidence of inventors departing the assignee, and no evidence of any inventor-holdings assignment out of CFPH. All four applications in the family remain with CFPH. No inventor-departure signal.

Original assignee

CFPH, LLC (Delaware LLC; place of business 110 East 59th Street, New York, NY 10022).

• Line of business: CFPH is the intellectual-property holding and licensing arm of the Cantor Fitzgerald group (Cantor Fitzgerald, L.P. / BGC Partners-related entities). It is not a standalone operating company; it holds and licenses patents for the group's financial-trading, gaming and wagering technology. Its Delaware LLC form and shared Cantor address are ordinary corporate IP-holding structure, not a shell indicator.
• Product embodied? The claims cover a networked box-office prediction game (registered vs. unregistered players). The HSX (Hollywood Stock Exchange) property, then within the Cantor group, operated exactly this kind of box-office prediction game, and the specification links to HSX.com and HSX MovieStock®. So a real commercial product environment existed, though I cannot confirm the product runs the literal claim set.
• Status: Operating — CFPH/Cantor Fitzgerald remains an active financial-services and IP-holding group (cf. CFPH's amicus activity in Tafas and its role as co-plaintiff in eSpeed/Cantor v. BrokerTec, and the ongoing BGC Partners → CFPH intra-group assignments).

Assignment timeline

Finding: The accessible record shows no recorded post-issuance assignment for US 10,398,983. The patent appears to remain with the original assignee, CFPH, LLC, from filing through today.

Chronological list of what is actually on the record:

• 2008-04-16 (filing of parent US 12/104,166; executed date on the underlying assignment not retrievable from the index) / recorded not retrievable — Reel not retrievable / Frame not retrievable

  • Conveyance: Assignment (inventor(s) → corporate assignee; presumed, as the parent and all continuations name CFPH, LLC as assignee)
  • Assignor: Alexander Costakis; Jeffrey Hartke; Tzukai Hung (per named inventors)
  • Assignee: CFPH, LLC
  • Correspondent: Not retrievable from the accessible index. For context only — not evidence about this patent's assignment — CFPH-family prosecution correspondence of record runs to Cantor Fitzgerald's IP group at 110 East 59th St., 6th Floor, New York, NY 10022, and CFPH patent filings have been handled by in-house/Cantor attorneys (e.g., Dean Alderucci as CFPH IP counsel; Antonio Papageorgiou listed as attorney of record on a CFPH design patent). I cannot confirm a recorded assignment correspondent for this patent.
  • Context: Original corporate assignment at filing (internal) — the only link in the chain.

• No further assignment, security agreement, merger, change-of-name, license, release, or correction recorded for US 10,398,983 in the indexes searched.

Related-entity assignment worth flagging (does NOT cover this patent): A separate CFPH intake assignment — BGC Partners, Inc. → CFPH, LLC, executed 2020-11-17, recorded at Reel 54394 / Frame 200 — moves a slate of gaming/wagering patents into CFPH. The published patent list for Reel 54394/200 (e.g., US 8,735,226; US 11,238,697; application 16/552,608) does not include US 10,398,983 on the sources I could read. I mention it only to show the direction of intra-group paper flow (operating affiliates → CFPH holding entity); it is not a link in this patent's chain.

If the Assignment Center returns zero recorded assignments for this patent number when you query it directly, that is itself the finding: the original assignee still owns the patent.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10398983
    2007 : Provisional filed by inventors
    2008 : Non-provisional filed assigned to CFPH LLC
    2015 : Continuation filed by CFPH LLC
    2019 : Patent granted to CFPH LLC
         : Child continuation filed by CFPH LLC
    2021 : Further continuation filed by CFPH LLC
    2028 : Anticipated expiration

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. There is no transfer out of CFPH, LLC to a licensing-only vehicle. CFPH's Delaware LLC form and 110 East 59th St. address are the group's genuine IP-holding structure, not a registered-agent mail drop paired with no products. No evidence of a transfer, so no signal.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. The only assignee on record is CFPH, LLC. CFPH does not appear on the referenced NPE lists (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Round Rock, etc.). CFPH has litigated its own trading patents (eSpeed/Cantor/CFPH v. BrokerTec, D. Del., 2003; Federal Circuit 2006-1385), but that is operating-company enforcement of a different patent family, not NPE activity, and none of it names US 10,398,983.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — not present / unclear. There is only one link (or zero recorded links) in the chain, so recurrence cannot be established. No assignment correspondent could be retrieved for this patent; I decline to name one. (Cantor in-house attorney names surface in prosecution papers, which is a different field from the assignment "correspondent of record.")

4. Cascading transfers — not present. No chained LLC transfers within 24 months; no transfers at all beyond the original assignment.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. No assignment dated within 6 months of any infringement suit naming this patent; no suit naming this patent was found.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. No Chapter 7/11 proceeding involving CFPH or Cantor Fitzgerald affecting this patent; the family has been continuously maintained (continuations filed 2015, 2019, 2021 — a maintenance/prosecution investment, not a liquidation).

7. Privateering — not present. No transfer from an operating company to an NPE asserting against competitors. The patent has not left the corporate family.

8. Defensive aggregator — not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified, or OIN. Ownership remains with the original corporate assignee.

Verdict

Insufficient data (only the original assignment; no recorded post-issuance assignments found).

Justification: Every accessible source — Google Patents legal events for US 10,398,983, the Assignment Center/Plainsite indexes, and the family record — shows the patent sitting continuously with the original assignee CFPH, LLC, with no recorded post-issuance assignment and therefore no reel/frame to cite for a transfer. Because the chain never moves, none of the eight NPE signals can be grounded in a specific recorded reel/frame; the one adjacent data point (BGC → CFPH, Reel 54394/200, 2020-11-17) points toward an operating group consolidating IP in its holding company, not toward NPE assertion. This is a non-NPE, original-assignee-retained posture rather than a substantiated troll pattern — but because the record contains only (at most) the original inventor→assignee assignment, it falls in the "Insufficient data" bucket rather than a positive operating-company-assertion call, which would require evidence that CFPH ships a product embodying these claims and is suing competitors on this patent.

Verify directly at:

• USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent 10398983 / app. 14/974,757)
• Assignments on the web — https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html
• Google Patents legal events — https://patents.google.com/patent/[US10398983B2](/patent/US10398983B2)/en

If the Assignment Center returns zero records for this patent, treat that as confirming the finding above: the original assignee, CFPH, LLC, still owns US 10,398,983.

I'll research the prior art for US 10,398,983, starting with the patent itself and its cited references.

Let me examine the key prior-art references most relevant to claim 1's elements.

Prior Art Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 10,398,983 (US10398983B2)

0. Scope, sourcing, and an important limitation

A note on the "search the USPTO database" instruction. I do not have a direct connector to USPTO Patent Public Search, PatentCenter, or the Examiner's search history. The results below are built from (a) the full patent text and its own 56‑References‑Cited list, which you supplied (authoritative), and (b) web searches against USPTO‑mirroring sources — Google Patents, patentimages.storage.googleapis.com (the official USPTO front page image), Justia Patents (patents.justia.com/patent/10398983), FreePatentsOnline, and Unified Patents (portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-10398983-B2). Where a field (e.g., exact §102 subsection) would require the prosecution file wrapper, I say so rather than guess.

One numeric discrepancy to flag, per the operating rules (no auto‑correction):

• The patent's own front page and Google Patents give priority date April 16, 2007 (provisional 60/912,012) and filing April 16, 2008 (12/104,166).
• Unified Patents displays the priority date as 2007‑04‑15. I treat the patent's own 2007‑04‑16 as controlling, and note the mirror's off‑by‑one as a likely data artifact, not a correction of the reference.

Reference count discrepancy: Google Patents shows "Citations (386)"; the Unified Patents page and the raw list show 438. I analyze the most technically relevant subset (~25 references) below rather than all 386–438, because the task is to "identify the most relevant prior art," and a meaningful share of the cited art is financial‑exchange boilerplate cited broadly. I flag the categories I omitted.

Nothing in the prior‑art record contradicts the earlier litigation section — that section found no litigation and is consistent with what I see here (no IPR/PGR/CAFC hits surfaced for this number).

1. The claims that prior art must be measured against

Claim 1 is the operative independent claim (claim 9 is its system counterpart). Stripping to elements:

Dependent claims: 2 (variable = box‑office revenue over a time), 3 (opening weekend), 4 (weekend after opening), 5 (score = sum of a first score for predictions in a first range + a second score for a second range of the actual value), 6 (interface with a listing of events and an adjacent form element), 7 (average of players' predictions communicated), 8 (leader board only to registered players).

Practical §102 point: No single reference in the cited art appears to disclose every element of claim 1 (the registered + unregistered + device‑stored‑ID + holdover‑list combination is the novelty). So most references are best characterized as anticipating a dependent claim, or as §103 combination material — not as standalone §102 anticipants of claim 1. I map them that way.

Applicable law: Because '983 is a continuation claiming priority to 2008‑04‑16 (and provisional 2007‑04‑16), pre‑AIA 35 U.S.C. §102 governs. Prior art must predate the 2007‑04‑16 priority date (subject to §102(e) for U.S. filings before that date). References published or filed after 2007‑04‑16 (e.g., US 9,639,831, filed 2007‑11‑30; US 2019/0156630, filed 2017‑11‑13) are not §102 prior art to '983 and are flagged as such below.

2. Tier 1 — Film/box‑office prediction and entertainment‑revenue art

These are the closest on the subject matter of claims 2–4 (box‑office revenue for films, over an opening or subsequent weekend).

1. US 5,950,176 A — Keiser et al. (assignee HSX, Inc.)

• Filed/Issued: 1996‑03‑25 / 1999‑09‑07.
• Description: "Computer‑implemented securities trading system with a virtual specialist function" — users trade synthetic "stocks" whose value tracks entertainment properties (the Hollywood Stock Exchange concept; the '983 specification itself references HSX.com and HSX MovieStock®, and the HSX prediction market).
• Closest claims: claims 1 (prediction of a variable for a film — box‑office performance) and 2 (box‑office revenue). §102(b) (issued >1 yr before the priority date).

2. US 6,505,174 B1 — Keiser et al. (HSX, Inc.)

• Priority/Issued: 1996‑03‑25 / 2003‑01‑07.
• Description: same family/title as '176; claims the virtual‑specialist trading mechanism for entertainment‑linked instruments.
• Closest claims: 1, 2. §102(b).

3. US 7,487,123 B1 — Keiser et al. (CFPH, LLC)

• Priority/Issued: 1996‑03‑25 / 2009‑02‑03.
• Description: "Computer‑implemented securities trading system with virtual currency and virtual specialist."
• Closest claims: 1, 2. §102(b) (common ownership with '983's assignee CFPH — note potential §103(c)/common‑ownership considerations).

4. US 2005/0160020 A1, US 2005/0160028 A1, US 2005/0160029 A1 — Asher et al.

• Filed/Published: 2004‑01‑16 / 2005‑07‑21 (granted family includes US 7,698,184; US 7,567,931; US 8,027,899; US 8,504,454).
• Description: "System and method for trading / purchasing / forming a financial instrument indexed to entertainment revenue."
• Closest claims: 1, 2 (predicting/valuing entertainment revenue attributable to a film). §102(b) (published 2005) / §102(e) (U.S. filing 2004).

5. US 2005/0108131 A1 — Halikias

• Filed/Published: 2003‑11‑17 / 2005‑05‑19.
• Description: "Box office participating securities (BOPS)."
• Closest claims: 2 (box‑office value for a film). §102(b).

6. US 2006/0235783 A1 — Ryles

• Filed/Published: 2005‑02‑22 / 2006‑10‑19.
• Description: "Predicting risk and return for a portfolio of entertainment projects."
• Closest claims: 2 (quantified prediction of entertainment/film revenue). §102(b).

7. US 2008/0275824 A1 — Assia (Tradonomi Ltd.)

• Filed/Published: 2006‑02‑07 / 2008‑11‑06.
• Description: "Method and system for representing financial information in a gaming environment."
• Closest claims: bridges financial/prediction data to a game UI (1, 6). §102(e) only (U.S. filing 2006, published after the priority date).

3. Tier 2 — Prediction contests, scoring‑by‑range, and proficiency ranking

These bear on claim 5 (tiered "within‑range" scoring) and claim 8 (leader board).

8. US 6,236,900 B1 — Geiger

• Filed/Issued: 1999‑05‑03 / 2001‑05‑22.
• Description: "Method and system for internet‑based, competitive event prediction." Participants submit predictions of future events; points are awarded/penalized based on the degree by which the actual outcome exceeds or falls short of the predicted outcome, time‑to‑resolution, confidence and probability (see its vector scoring model, FIG. 2).
• Closest claims: 1(a) (prediction of a variable for events) and, notably, 5 (proximity‑based scoring across a range of the actual value). §102(b). It requires sign‑up, so it does not reach the unregistered/cookie elements.

9. US 6,260,019 B1 — Courts (assignee Predict It Corporation)

• Filed/Issued: 1999‑03‑05 / 2001‑07‑10.
• Description: "Web‑based prediction marketplace." Tracks each predictor's accuracy/performance metrics, transmits performance information for suppliers with the best records, and lets consumers view predictions (its "PREDICT IT!" embodiment explicitly listed movie box‑office results and awards as target categories, per contemporaneous press coverage).
• Closest claims: 1(e)/(h) (retrieving/communicating prediction results) and 8 (communicating best‑performing players). §102(b).

10. US 2007/0011073 A1 — Gardner et al. (The Motley Fool, Inc.)

• Filed/Published: 2005‑03‑25 / 2007‑01‑11.
• Description: "System, method, and computer program product for scoring items based on user sentiment and for determining the proficiency of predictors."
• Closest claims: 8 (ranking/leader functionality) and 5 (scoring/rating of prediction quality). §102(b) (published 2007‑01‑11, before 2007‑04‑16).

11. US 2007/0281770 A1 — Marcus

• Filed/Published: 2006‑05‑17 / 2007‑12‑06.
• Description: "Methods and Contests for Estimating Events or Conditions." User‑interactive contest grids with a row of estimation spaces and a row of points per estimation; supports estimation ranges and allocated weights.
• Closest claims: 6 (interface with a listing of events and form elements for entries) and 5 (scoring tied to a range of estimated values). §102(e) only (U.S. filing 2006‑05‑17 precedes the priority date; publication postdates it). Note the disclosed subject matter is agricultural crop prediction, raising a field‑of‑invention question for §103 but not for §102(e).

12. US 6,688,978 B1 — Herman

• Filed/Issued: 2000‑03‑15 / 2004‑02‑10.
• Description: "Event contest method."
• Closest claims: 1(a)/(f)/(j) (structured multiple‑event contest). §102(b).

13. US 6,669,565 B2 — Fantasy Sports, Inc.

• Filed/Issued: 2001‑02‑05 / 2003‑12‑30.
• Description: "Method of conducting a fantasy sports game."
• Closest claims: 1 (networked multi‑player prediction game). §102(b).

14. US 2006/0258429 A1 — Manning

• Filed/Published: 2005‑04‑12 / 2006‑11‑16.
• Description: "System and method for providing a multiple‑stage contest."
• Closest claims: 1, 5. §102(b).

4. Tier 3 — Registered vs. unregistered players, device‑stored identifiers (cookies), and leader boards

These bear most directly on the distinguishing elements of claim 1 (1(b)–(d), 1(i)) and claim 8.

15. US 7,509,290 B1 — McKee et al. ([Microsoft Corp.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Microsoft%20Corp.))

• Filed/Issued: 2002‑04‑16 / 2009‑03‑24.
• Description: "Methods and apparatuses for differentiating users in multi‑player web‑based entertainment environments" — distinguishing user classes/identities and tailoring the experience.
• Closest claims: 1(b),(f),(g) (distinguishing registered vs. other users and associating identity data), and the concept underlying the registration/unregistered split. §102(e) (U.S. filing 2002). This is among the most on‑point references for the registration‑state aspect.

16. US 5,826,241 A — Stein et al. (First Virtual Holdings)

• Filed/Issued: 1994‑09‑16 / 1998‑10‑20.
• Description: "Computerized system for making payments and authenticating transactions over the internet" — the canonical early use of an automatically assigned, anonymous/pseudonymous identifier stored on the user's computer for subsequent retrieval of the user's state.
• Closest claims: 1(b),(c),(d) (auto‑generated ID + data file on the user's device + retrieval by that ID). §102(b). It is a payments, not gaming, reference, so it supports the mechanism of claim 1 rather than the game.

17. US 5,779,549 A — Walker Asset Management LP

• Filed/Issued: 1996‑04‑22 / 1998‑07‑14.
• Description: "Database driven online distributed tournament system" — networked players, per‑player records, and rankings/leader outcomes.
• Closest claims: 1(i) (listing of participating players) and 8 (leader board). §102(b).

18. US 2008/0015969 A1 — Mowshowitz

• Filed/Published: 2006‑02‑22 / 2008‑01‑17.
• Description: "Computerized transaction method and system" (prediction‑market/transaction processing).
• Closest claims: 1. §102(e) only (filing 2006 predates priority; publication does not).

19. US 8,337,310 B1 — Bjordahl

• Filed/Issued: 2005‑12‑20 / 2012‑12‑25.
• Description: "Margin‑based online game."
• Closest claims: 1. §102(e).

5. Tier 4 — Cited family references and non‑patent literature

20. US 5,779,549 A — see entry 17 (also a "family‑cited" reference).

21. WO 2007/006002 A2 — WMS Gaming Inc.

• Filed/Published: 2005‑07‑06 / 2007‑01‑11.
• Description: "Wagering game system with networked gaming devices."
• Closest claims: 1 (networked wagering/gaming architecture). §102(b).

22. US 7,730,030 B1 — Xu

• Filed/Issued: 2004‑08‑15 / 2010‑06‑01.
• Description: "Resource based virtual communities."
• Closest claims: peripheral — community/participant listing (1(i)). §102(e).

23. CA 2,369,081 C — X.com Corporation

• Filed/Issued: 1999‑04‑30 / 2012‑02‑07.
• Description: "System and method for electronically exchanging value among distributed users."
• Closest claims: peripheral (identifier‑based account retrieval, 1(b)–(d)). §102(b).

24. WO 2008/013541 A2 — Walker Digital, LLC

• Filed/Published: 2006‑07‑25 / 2008‑01‑31.
• Description: "Method and apparatus for conditional payouts in a gaming device."
• Closest claims: peripheral (5 conditional payout). §102(e) (filing 2006).

25. Non‑patent literature (printed publications, §102(b)) — cited on the '983 face:

• Dong et al., "Box Office Revenue Prediction," MAS 921 proseminar, MIT Media Lab, Dec. 12, 2006 (web.media.mit.edu/~nustariz/proseminar/...). Directly on point for claims 2–4 (predicting film box‑office revenue) as a printed publication predating the 2007‑04‑16 priority date. This is arguably the single most thematically on‑point §102(b) reference in the file.
• Small, "Box Office Bull's Eye: Another Winner!," EW PopWatch, Dec. 19, 2005. Describes an existing box‑office prediction/score game — relevant to claim 1(a)/(j) and claim 5.

6. References that do not qualify as §102 prior art to '983 (flagging to prevent mis‑attribution)

The following are cited family members but post‑date the 2007‑04‑16 priority date and therefore cannot be §102 art against '983:

• US 9,639,831 B2 (Google Technology Holdings, "Secure payment of virtual items") — filed 2007‑11‑30 (after priority).
• US 2019/0156630 A1 (Circle Eight Games, "Multiple progressive reward valuation and accrual") — filed 2017‑11‑13.
  Also note US 11,192,030 B2 ("Box office game") is a child of '983 (filed 2019‑08‑19), not prior art — it is part of the same family.

7. Bottom line

• Closest on subject matter (box‑office/film prediction → claims 2–4): the HSX/Keiser patents (US 5,950,176; US 6,505,174; US 7,487,123), the Asher entertainment‑revenue family (US 2005/0160020/28/29 A1 and grants), US 2005/0108131 A1 (Halikias, "Box office participating securities"), and US 2006/0235783 A1 (Ryles). The Dong et al. 2006 printed publication is the most directly on‑point non‑patent art for box‑office prediction.
• Closest on the prediction‑scoring and leader‑board limitations (claims 5, 8): US 6,236,900 (Geiger), US 6,260,019 (Predict It), and US 2007/0011073 (Motley Fool).
• Closest on the registered‑vs‑unregistered and device‑stored‑identifier limitations (claim 1(b)–(d)): US 7,509,290 (Microsoft) and US 5,826,241 (First Virtual Holdings).
• No single cited reference appears to anticipate claim 1 in full. The registered + unregistered + auto‑ID‑cookie + holdover‑film‑list combination is the apparent point of novelty; the cited art is most useful as §103 combination material (e.g., an HSX‑type film‑prediction game + a Microsoft‑type user‑differentiation/identifier scheme + a Walker‑type leader board).

Caveats: (1) I could not run a direct USPTO Patent Public Search / PatentCenter / file‑wrapper query, so §102 subsection designations are reasoned from the patent's own dates and the mirror records, not from the Examiner's citations of record. (2) The "which claim it anticipates" column is my analysis of element overlap, not an Examiner or court holding. (3) If you need a definitive §102 picture, the confirmatory step is a PatentCenter file‑wrapper pull of the 12/104,166 and 14/974,757 prosecution histories plus a Patent Public Search run for the cited references against the claim chart above.

I'll ground this § 103 analysis in the actual cited prior art. Let me pull the key references' disclosures.

Let me pull a few more cited references relevant to scoring, leaderboards, and unregistered play.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 10,398,983 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

0. Scope, effective date, and legal frame

US10398983B2 ("Controlled gaming between registered and unregistered players") issued 2019‑09‑03 from App. No. 14/974,757 (filed 2015‑12‑18), a continuation of App. No. 12/104,166 (filed 2008‑04‑16), which claims benefit of Prov. No. 60/912,012 (filed 2007‑04‑16). The written description is materially the same as that of the parent US9218720B2 ("Box office game"), and the same family produced US11192030B2 and US20220088488A1.

Because the application has a pre‑AIA effective filing date, I apply pre‑AIA § 103 with the hypothetical POSITA taken as of ~2007 and using the Graham v. John Deere factors (scope/content, differences, PHOSITA level, secondary considerations) as refined by KSR v. Teleflex. The patent's own citation list (386 examiner‑cited references) supplies the universe of art. All references below are drawn from that list, and one of them (US 2007/0011073 A1) postdates nothing relevant because it published 2007‑01‑11, before the 2007‑04‑16 priority date.

PHOSITA definition: a person with a bachelor's degree in CS/IS (or equivalent) and 2–3 years' experience building networked, multi‑user web applications, including session/cookie management and database‑backed scoring — a definition consistent with the patent's own "software stored on a memory … that when executed performs one or more steps" framing.

1. Claim 1 deconstructed against the cited art

Observation: every limitation of claim 1 is individually disclosed or rendered obvious; the only arguably "unusual" feature is the combination of (a) cookie‑based anonymous play and (b) account‑based registered play on one game, with (c) a holdover‑inclusive event list. None of those three is technically inventive on its own, and components (a)+(b) are taught in one reference (Microsoft '290).

2. The obviousness grounds

Ground 1 — Keiser/HSX + Geiger + Microsoft '290 (anticipates the combination of claims 1, 2, 6)

• Keiser/HSX (US 5,950,176; 6,505,174; 7,487,123; 8,756,142) supplies the game domain: a networked, multiplayer, virtual‑currency market whose instruments represent films, whose prices are explicitly derived from/indicative of box office revenue (including the "first four weekends of wide release" horizon described for HSX moviestocks), and which maintains a trading list covering both new and continuing (holdover) releases.
• Geiger (US 6,236,900) supplies the prediction‑contest mechanic the patent claims: participants "submit one or more predictions related to … future events," and points are awarded/removed based on (among others) "the degree by which the outcome of the event exceeded or fell short of some predicted outcome." That is proximity scoring, claim 1's core substantive idea.
• Microsoft '290 supplies the registered/unregistered duality with automatic cookie generation and cookie‑based return recognition, and even describes promoting guests to registered status ("up sell" information promoting the benefits of becoming a registered user) — the exact registered/unregistered architecture of claim 1.

Motivation to combine. All three are in the same field of networked, game/prediction‑style web applications; Keiser is the pre‑existing box‑office prediction game (HSX, the same business the patentee, CFPH, later acquired) and Geiger is a destination reference for "competitive event prediction." A POSITA seeking to increase participation volume has a KSR‑recognized design incentive to lower the registration barrier: Microsoft '290 states the express purpose is to avoid the "barrier to entry that a typical forced registration process invokes" while still capturing the user on return. Combining Geiger's prediction contest with Microsoft '290's guest‑cookie architecture is the predictable application of a known technique (cookie session management) to a known web game to yield the expected result (more players; retained guest results). KSR, 550 U.S. 398, 417 (2007).

Ground 2 — Ground 1 + Motley Fool (US 2007/0011073 A1 / US 7,813,986) (claims 5, 7)

• Motley Fool discloses "calculating a prediction score for each prediction based on the prediction information and an objective baseline," a "prediction score … based on the prediction scores for predictions made by the user," and ranking users based on proficiency scores — i.e., the tiered/banded accuracy scoring of claim 5 and the leaderboard ranking underlying claims 1 and 8.
• The community sentiment score ("the summation of individual components … divided by the total number of individuals making a prediction on the item") is literally claim 7's "average of predictions of a plurality of players." Motley Fool also transmits "a listing of each prediction made for the item," i.e., the comparison screen of FIG. 3.

Motivation. Motley Fool expressly addresses the same problem the patent's FIG. 3 solves — giving a predictor feedback on how his prediction compares to the crowd — and its scoring/ranking modules are directly combinable with Geiger's point‑award engine. Both are in the prediction‑market/scoring art and use the same "score vs. actual outcome" architecture.

Ground 3 — Ground 1 + Walker '549 (claim 8 / "listing of participating players")

Walker's database‑driven online tournament system provides ranking of players and leaderboards — the "listing of participating players" to which claim 1's electronic commands direct the registered player's screen. Restricting the leaderboard to registered users (claim 8) is the natural consequence of the guest/registered split in Microsoft '290 (guest cookie data is "not tied to a persistent identity," so only authenticated accounts can be publicly ranked) — an obvious design choice with a rational basis.

Ground 4 — Marcus (US 2007/0281770 A1) or Herman (US 6,688,978) (claims 1, 5, 6 as alternative)

Marcus '770 discloses an internet contest in which users enter multiple estimations of future events/conditions into a contest grid (a form‑element UI), allocate points across sub‑contests, accumulate contest points, and redeem points for prizes. It is expressly a system "for obtaining estimations from a plurality of participants." Herman '978 ("Event contest method") and Strachan '086 ("Pick pools system") supply analogous contest/pool scoring. Marcus '770 supports claim 6's "listing of events and a form element adjacent to each of the events," and its "peso/points → prize" flow supports the specification's prize‑redemption passages. Caveat: Marcus '770 published 2007‑12‑06 (after the priority date) but has a priority date of 2006‑05‑17, so it is available only as pre‑AIA § 102(e) art as of its 2006 filing; I flag this qualification rather than relying on it as printed‑publication art.

Ground 5 — the film‑specific dependent claims (claims 2–4)

Claim 2 (box office revenue for an amount of time), claim 3 (opening weekend) and claim 4 (weekend following opening weekend) are fully anticipated in substance by the Keiser/HSX family, whose moviestock price is defined as the predicted gross over the first four weekends of wide release, and by US 2005/0160029 / 2008/0195459 (Asher) — financial instruments "indexed to entertainment revenue." No additional motivation is needed; these are the inherent parameters of the HSX instrument.

3. Why the combination is "obvious" rather than merely "aggregative"

Several KSR rationales apply simultaneously:

1. Predictable use of a prior‑art technique to improve a similar device. Cookie‑based guest session tracking (Microsoft '290) applied to Geiger's prediction contest yields the expected benefit: a lower registration barrier without losing the guest's results on return.
2. Combination of familiar elements according to known methods. Geiger's scoring + Motley Fool's baseline/ranking + Microsoft's cookie identity are each known; the patent's contribution is the arrangement, not the elements.
3. Market/design pressure. The specification itself concedes the technical motivation: "players that do not accept cookies or that delete them will either be unable to play the game or see their results," and "registered gameplay may be desired by certain players." That is a statement of the problem, and the two‑path solution is the first thing a POSITA would try.
4. The patent's own admissions as prior art. The specification characterizes cookie storage, database lookup of "latest predictions and the results of any previous predictions," leaderboards and prize pages as conventional, which narrows the claim to the specific ordered arrangement.

4. Counter‑arguments a challenger must overcome (honest weaknesses)

• The patent issued twice — as the parent US9218720B2 and again as '983 — meaning the examiner had the opportunity to consider the reference list (HSX was cited) and allowed anyway. That is not dispositive, but a defendant must show the specific combination, not merely list references. The Board and courts require articulated reasons for each limitation.
• "Listing of participating players" vs. "leaderboard" ambiguity. Claim 1 requires a second interface screen to which the registered player is redirected. If read narrowly (a push‑navigation event, not merely a link on the results page), the § 103 case depends on Microsoft '290/Walker '549 combined with the patent's own FIG. 3/FIG. 4 flow.
• The holdover limitation is the strongest non‑obviousness hook. No single cited reference was confirmed by me to use the express term "holdover" for a prediction list (rather than a trading list). HSX's trading list covering release‑stage films is a strong but not verbatim mapping; Keiser's list "could be revised to reflect new derivative offerings, expired derivatives, and delisted derivatives" is the building‑block.
• I have not read the full text of every reference. My mappings for US 6,260,019 (Courts), US 6,688,978 (Herman), US 5,718,793 (Holte/Oris), US 6,358,150 / 6,450,887 (Racetech), US 2007/0259709 A1 (Kelly, "System gaming") and US 8,337,310 B1 (Bjordahl, "Margin‑based online game") are based on titles/abstracts and the patent's own citation table, not full‑specification verification. Kelly '709 and Bjordahl '310 were examiner‑cited and should be inspected first, as they may supply the closest single‑reference disclosure.

5. Bottom line

On the cited record, claims 2–7 and 10–15 appear strongly obvious — indeed, the box‑office/revenue‑variable subject matter is squarely disclosed by HSX, a reference that predates the priority date by roughly a decade and whose assignee was ultimately CFPH's own affiliate. Claim 1 (and mirror system claim 9) survives only if one accepts that no cited reference or combination rendered obvious the specific "cookie‑identified guest play plus account‑identified registered play plus a holdover‑inclusive prediction list" arrangement — a position that Microsoft '290 substantially undercuts.

Limitations to flag: (i) this is a documentary § 103 analysis, not a validity opinion; I could not retrieve full claim‑level text for every one of the 386 cited references; (ii) the Marcus '770 and any 2007‑published reference require a § 102(e) date check against the 2007‑04‑16 priority date; (iii) no litigation or PTAB challenge to '983 was identified (per the earlier litigation section), so there is no adversarial claim‑construction record to narrow these terms. A definitive analysis requires full‑text review of the references marked above as unverified.