US 10593129

I'll search for this specific patent number and any related litigation activity.

Let me look for the actual claim text and any litigation/docket records.

Let me check specifically for any litigation, PTAB, or CAFC records tied to this patent number.

US Patent 10,593,129 — Summary

Note on sourcing and confidence. The facts below are drawn primarily from the patent text and bibliographic data provided in this session (Google Patents page for US10593129B2, fetched 2026‑09‑28T16:34:27Z), which I treat as authoritative. I also ran web searches against USPTO/PTAB-related material and court-listener/docket sources. I did not locate any CAFC 2026 docket entry, any PTAB proceeding (IPR/PGR/CBM), or any district-court complaint naming U.S. Patent No. 10,593,129. I cannot rule out a record I did not reach, so treat the litigation statement as a negative search result rather than proof of absence.

Bibliographic data (literal)

Numbering caution: one aggregate wiki source I retrieved displayed "Patent Application Number 10593129" alongside US Patent 7,358,400 ("Process for producing cyclopropane monoacetal derivative…"). That is a coincidental collision of an application serial number with this patent number, not a family relationship. The application number for US 10,593,129 is 15/463,852.

Abstract (verbatim)

"Methods, computer program products, and systems are presented. The method computer program products, and systems can include, for instance: obtaining user information of a vehicle driver user, the vehicle driver user being a user of a computer based system for managing a parking area; processing information of the user information; and outputting a communication to control an indicator system based on the processing, wherein the indicator system is provided as a fixture of the parking area and wherein the indicator system is configured to provide indications viewable by vehicle drivers driving within the parking area."

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

The Summary section of the specification presents the invention in three parallel aspects — a method, a computer program product, and a system — each reciting substantially the same three-step core, which is the language that appears in the abstract. In plain terms, the independent claims cover:

1. Method (the first, and typical claim‑1 aspect). A processor-based method with three steps:

• obtain user information about a vehicle‑driver user who is a user of a computer-based parking-area management system;
• process that user information; and
• output a communication to control an indicator system based on that processing,
• where the indicator system is (a) a fixture of the parking area — i.e., installed infrastructure, not a handheld/on‑vehicle device — and (b) configured to display indications viewable by drivers who are driving within the parking area.

1. Computer program product. Same three-step method, embodied as instructions on a computer-readable storage medium readable by one or more processing units and executable by one or more processors.

2. System. A memory plus one or more processors in communication with the memory, with program instructions executable to perform the same three-step method.

Uncertainty flag: the text supplied to me does not include the verbatim numbered claim set. I therefore cannot state with confidence the exact independent-claim numbers (e.g., whether they are claims 1, 9 and 16, or another arrangement) or the specific limitations of the dependent claims. What is well-grounded is that (i) there are three independent claims, one per statutory class, and (ii) each recites the same three limitations and the "fixture of the parking area" / "viewable by vehicle drivers driving within the parking area" limitations. I would need the actual claim pages to quote them exactly.

What the disclosure adds behind those claims (context for claim scope)

• Dynamically generated parking-space borders. Rather than relying only on permanent painted indicia, the system can create temporary, repositionable borders via a ground lighting layer (colored LED banks under a light-transmissive environmental layer), wall-mounted electronic displays, or projectors — all described as fixtures of the parking area. The specification expressly states embodiments may instead use permanent indicia, or permanent indicia plus non-border features.
• Indicator semantics. Border color encodes status: e.g., red = reserved but not yet occupied; yellow = the arriving reserving driver's space; blue = occupied; green = unreserved and open. The manager outputs communications to change indications on reservation, arrival, parking, renegotiation, or exit.
• Dynamic sizing/location of spaces based on vehicle dimension data, driver-ability data (e.g., a looked-up driving record), weather, crowding, security/threat information, or customer-incentive status — with conflict-resolution rules for shifting or relocating neighboring spaces and for abandoning an enlargement when permanent boundaries prevent resolution (specification "Table A").
• Marketplace/sublease and payment. Digital activity records track reservation states (reserved → purchased → cancelled/subleased/in negotiation; see FIGS. 6–7), with sell-back/sublease options, a weighted sell-back probability (Equation 1, newsfeed + weather factors run through NLP), and logging entries to a blockchain ledger or financial-institution ledger.
• Sensing/enforcement. Camera/spatial-image and GPS/geofence processing to detect arrival, parking location and accuracy, haptic parking, and to support enforcement (citations, booting, towing) using license-plate/VIN recognition.

Litigation / CAFC 2026 search result

• District court / PTAB: no complaint, IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding naming US 10,593,129 surfaced in my searches. The IBM infringement/enforcement documents that did appear (e.g., IBM v. ASUS, IBM v. Carvana, VirtaMove v. IBM/HP Enterprise, ExactoJoin v. IBM, 7:26‑cv‑00105) concern entirely different patents and are not related to the '129 patent.
• CAFC 2026 dockets: no 2026 Federal Circuit appeal involving US 10,593,129 was found. I cannot confirm a definitive "none exists" from the sources available to me.

Family members worth noting

• US 2018/0268617 A1 — pre-grant publication of this application.
• US 2020/0098196 A1 — a separately published related application (listed as pending in the data I retrieved) appearing in the same IBM family and citing US 10,593,129 B2.
• US 12,211,320 B2 — listed in the provided record as a later application (serial 16/697,674) claiming priority to the 2017‑03‑20 filing, i.e., a continuation-family member.

If you need the exact independent-claim numbering and verbatim claim language, note that the text I was given cuts off in the body of the Summary/description and omits the claims section — I'd flag that as the one gap to close before relying on claim numbering.

I'll search patent-litigation sources for this specific patent number.

Let me query the litigation-specific databases directly.

Let me try additional litigation-specific sources and IBM enforcement activity.

Answer: No litigation found involving U.S. Patent No. 10,593,129

I searched litigation-specific sources for this exact patent number and found no district court case, ITC action, PTAB proceeding, or Federal Circuit appeal naming U.S. Patent No. 10,593,129. Below is what I checked, why the near-miss hits are not this patent, and the appropriate caveats.

Sources searched and results

Disambiguation — results that look like hits but are not this patent

• ExactoJoin LLC v. International Business Machines Corp., No. 7:26-cv-00105 (W.D. Tex., filed Mar. 24, 2026; Judge David Counts; Mag. Judge Derek T. Gilliland; 35:271). IBM is the defendant here, and the asserted patent(s) are not U.S. 10,593,129. Status: open; IBM's answer deadline extended to June 8, 2026. This is an unrelated IBM enforcement/defense matter.
• IBM Corp. v. VirtaMove Corp., IPR2025-00599 (and IPR2025-00591) — challenged patent is U.S. 7,519,814, not the '129 patent.
• General Access Solutions v. T-Mobile/Ericsson/Nokia — asserted patent U.S. 7,230,931, a different patent whose number merely resembles "10,593,129."
• Vanda Pharmaceuticals cases — the " '129 patent" there is U.S. 11,285,129 (tasimelteon), a pharmaceutical patent wholly unrelated to vehicular parking.
• Taction Technology v. Apple — U.S. 10,659,885 and 10,820,117 (haptics), unrelated.
• golden.com wiki "US Patent 7358400" — lists "Patent Application Number 10593129," a coincidental serial-number collision (cyclopropane monoacetal chemistry). Not a family relationship to the IBM parking patent.

Caveats (important)

1. Negative search result, not proof of absence. I could not query PACER directly, and the Unified Patents portal and CourtListener coverage are incomplete (CourtListener's RECAP mirror in particular is explicitly partial). A recently filed complaint, a sealed action, or a state-court dispute could exist that did not surface.
2. Two targeted queries (IBM caption search and the Unified Patents caselist re-check) were cut off when I reached the tool limit, so those two specific avenues are unverified.
3. This is consistent with the earlier-generated section of this analysis, which also found no complaint, IPR/PGR/CBM, or CAFC appeal for the '129 patent. The two sections do not contradict each other.
4. Practical context: the patent is listed as Expired – Fee Related on the Google Patents record (adjusted expiration 2038-06-13), and it is an IBM-owned patent. IBM's recent public enforcement/defense activity I could locate (ExactoJoin, VirtaMove) does not involve this patent.

Bottom line: On the sources available to me as of April 26, 2026, no litigation is known involving U.S. Patent No. 10,593,129. I recommend confirming against PACER (all district courts) and the Unified Patents PTAB/litigation portal directly before relying on this for a freedom-to-operate or enforcement opinion.

I'll verify the canonical list against live sources before finalizing.

Proceedings overview

Zero (0) AIA trial proceedings are on file for US 10,593,129 — the USPTO Open Data Portal (ODP) ingestion returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM for this patent, and my independent web searches against PTAB decision sources, CourtListener, and general web indexes surfaced no petition, institution decision, Final Written Decision, or appeal naming this patent. Defensive posture: the patent is untested at the Board — it is neither "hardened" by surviving IPRs nor narrowed by cancellation. A defendant today is not bound by any petitioner's estoppel, and the full statutory IPR runway is open.

Important framing caveat. The task template anticipates a list of proceedings to analyze. There is none to analyze. I am reporting a negative search result grounded in the canonical ODP block plus corroborating web searches, not a positive finding. I did not fabricate proceeding numbers to fill the template, and I did not adopt either of the template's illustrative postures ("survived two IPRs" / "claims 1–5 canceled") — neither is true here.

Proceedings on file

None. No {PROCEEDING_NUMBER} entries exist to expand into the per-proceeding template. Concretely:

• IPR: none.
• PGR: none (and the 9-month § 321(c) window closed around 2020-12-17, three months after the 2020-03-17 grant — a PGR can no longer be filed by anyone).
• CBM: none (and the transitional CBM program sunset on 2020-09-16 under AIA § 18(a)(3)(A) — CBM is no longer an available vehicle).
• Federal Circuit appeals from an FWD: none — there is no FWD to appeal.

False positives I ruled out (so you don't conflate them)

• The IPR2021-00909 / IPR2019-00434 "badness factor" and IPR2020-00019-style decisions that appear in searches are U.S. Patent 8,243,593 (Sable Networks v. Cloudflare/Unified Patents) — a different patent entirely, unrelated to this family.
• The IPR2025-00599 hit is IBM v. VirtaMove (U.S. Patents 7,519,814 / 7,784,058) — IBM is a party, but the patents are unrelated to '129.
• The "10593129" collisions noted in the prior-generated summary (e.g., US 7,358,400 in one aggregate wiki) are serial-number/patent-number coincidences, not family relationships. The correct application number remains 15/463,852.

Strategic summary

Claim status: all claims UNTESTED. There is no cancellation record and no PTAB validity holding, so every claim of US 10,593,129 — independent claim 1 (method), the computer-program-product independent claim, the system independent claim, and the dependents (per the pre-grant publication US 2018/0268617 A1, dependents include the border-position adjustment, vehicle-dimension/driver-ability/reservation/arrival-criteria, parking-space-enlargement-with-price-increase, activity-record state-transition, and the NLP-weighted sell-back-probability claims) — remains presumptively valid and fully available to a plaintiff. Nothing has been narrowed by reexamination or disclaimer either, as far as the sources show.

Estoppel landscape: clean slate. § 315(e)(2) estoppel does not attach to anyone. Because no IPR/PGR was ever instituted against this patent, no petitioner (or privy, or real party in interest) is barred from asserting § 102/§ 103 grounds in district court or before the Board. Conversely, a defendant being asserted against can file an IPR on any ground, subject only to:

• the § 315(b) one-year clock from service of the first infringement complaint, and
• the unavailability of CBM/PGR as noted above — IPR is the only remaining AIA trial vehicle.

Pattern signals: none. No petitioner has filed against this patent once, let alone repeatedly; the patent owner has never had to defend at the Board and has therefore never had a PTAB appeal to pursue; and there is no defensive aggregator (Unified Patents, RPX, etc.) in the chain with respect to '129. The absence of Board activity is a meaningful signal under the task's own premise — heavily asserted patents eventually attract IPRs — which suggests '129 has not been a frequent assertion vehicle, consistent with the prior-generated litigation search that turned up no district-court complaint naming it.

Two non-PTAB facts that matter more than the PTAB picture:

1. Legal status is "Expired – Fee Related" (adjusted expiration listed as 2038-06-13). If that status is accurate — it is expressly flagged by the source as an assumption, not a legal conclusion — the patent has lapsed for failure to pay maintenance fees and cannot sustain an infringement recovery unless revived under 35 U.S.C. § 41(c) / 37 C.F.R. § 1.378. Verify this on USPTO Patent Center / the ODP API before anything else; a lapsed unbilled fee is a complete defense and moots an IPR budget.
2. There is a live continuation-family member. The provided record lists US 12,211,320 B2 (application 16/697,674), claiming priority to the 2017-03-20 filing, published from the same "Cognitive and dynamic vehicular parking" disclosure. An IPR against '129 alone may be spending money to invalidate a claims set that the owner can simply re-assert through the '320 continuation. Counsel should obtain and analyze the '320 claims before committing to a petition on '129.

Recommended next steps

• Confirm the status, then decide whether you need the Board at all. Pull US 10,593,129 from USPTO Patent Center and the ODP API to confirm (a) whether maintenance fees were paid and whether the patent is in force, (b) the exact issue/expiration dates, and (c) the full continuity chain. If the patent is truly lapsed, there is no PTAB task to perform — assert the lapse (and the revival/reissue exposure) rather than funding an IPR.
• No FWD to link, because none exists. There is no disposition to quote and no PTAB opinion URL to cite for this patent. For record-keeping, the authoritative negative check is the PTAB proceeding search at PTAB E2E / P-TACTS (search by patent number 10,593,129) and the CourtListener docket search for the same. Both returned nothing relevant in this analysis.
• No trial-stage milestones to track — there is no pending proceeding, so there is no institution deadline, no oral hearing, and no statutory one-year FWD date. Do not build a schedule around one.
• If assertion is active and the patent is in force, your IPR clock is the binding constraint. File within one year of service of the first complaint under § 315(b). Given zero prior art has been tested against these claims, the § 325(d) "same or substantially the same art previously presented to the Office" risk is confined to what the examiner considered during prosecution (largely parking, reservation, and billing art cited in the G07B/G06Q/G08G classification space) — a relatively thin prosecution record means a well-supported § 103 petition has room to run.
• Coordinate the '129 and '320 analyses. If both are asserted (or likely to be), any petition should be scoped so a win on '129 is not defeated by the continuation. Consider joinder/§ 315(c) sequencing only after you know the '320 claim set.
• Watch the discretionary-denial regime. As of the October 2025 Director memoranda and proposed rules, institution decisions are centralized in the Director and there is a proposed bar on IPRs against patents that have already survived a validity challenge. Neither changes anything for an untested patent like '129 — but it does mean that if you do file and win, a later petitioner against the '320 may face a much higher bar.

Bottom line for a defendant: there is no PTAB file to read on US 10,593,129. That is the whole finding. The patent is untested, unbounded by estoppel, and open to a first IPR — but before spending on one, confirm the fee-lapse status and map the '320 continuation, because either of those facts can change the correct move.

I'll search for assignment records, correspondent details, and any NPE signals tied to this patent.

Let me dig for the specific reel/frame and any post-issuance transfers.

Let me try to locate the specific reel/frame via USPTO assignment resources and check the continuation family.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US 10,593,129 B2

Sourcing limitation up front. The USPTO Assignment Center (assignmentcenter.uspto.gov) and the legacy assignment search are dynamic JavaScript applications whose per-patent hit lists are not exposed to the search tools available to me — I could not pull the raw reel/frame page for this patent, and my targeted queries for the reel/frame returned nothing. The one recorded assignment below is supported by the Google Patents legal-events block supplied in this session (which mirrors the USPTO assignment database) and by the assignment documents IBM uses as a matter of standard practice. Where I could not confirm a data element (notably the reel/frame number and the correspondent of record), I say so rather than invent it. Verify at the Assignment Center search page: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (select "Patent" → search by patent number 10593129).

Inventors

Both inventors are IBM inventors: the record lists them together as assignors to IBM (Google Patents legal events, 2017-03-20), and the application carries IBM internal docketing. Both residences are in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, consistent with IBM's Texas-based workforce (IBM has a substantial Austin/DFW presence).

Unusual-pattern check: I found no evidence that both inventors departed IBM within 12 months of filing, nor any evidence of a pre-issuance fire-sale. The affirmative evidence points the other way — a same-day inventor→IBM assignment (2017-03-20, the filing date) is the standard IBM employment-assignment practice and indicates the inventors were on staff and obligated to assign. I could not independently confirm their current employment status; treat "no departure" as a negative search result, not a proven fact.

Original assignee

International Business Machines Corporation (Armonk, New York) — the entity named on the issued patent and the sole recorded assignee.

• Line of business: IBM is a global technology company (hybrid cloud, AI/cognitive software — e.g., the Watson platform explicitly referenced in the specification — and IT services). The patent's own classification in AI/cognitive parking aligns with IBM's Intelligent Transportation / smart-city research push of the 2016–2020 period.
• Product embodying the claims: IBM did not ship a consumer parking-management product embodying these claims. The subject matter (dynamically delineated LED parking borders, a parking-space marketplace/subleasing, blockchain-logged parking fees) is R&D-stage material — the specification reads as a research disclosure rather than a product spec. This is a prior-art-style portfolio asset, not a commercialized invention.
• Current status: Operating, solvent, publicly traded (NYSE: IBM). Not in bankruptcy, not acquired, not dissolved.
• Legal status of the patent itself: Expired – Fee Related, adjusted expiration listed as 2038-06-13. IBM let the maintenance fee lapse on this specific grant — relevant because an NPE typically pays to keep an asserted asset alive, whereas IBM dropping the fee on the '129 patent (while a continuation-family member, US 12,211,320, lives on) is the behavior of an operating company pruning a non-strategic filing, not of an assertion vehicle.

Assignment timeline

Only one recorded assignment was identified for US 10,593,129.

• 2017-03-20 (executed) / recorded 2017-03-20 — Reel not retrievable from the sources available to me (Assignment Center page could not be scraped)
  • Conveyance: Assignment (assignment of assignors' interest)
  • Assignor: Bruce, Edwin J.; Flores, Romelia H. (joint inventors)
  • Assignee: INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION (New York corporation, Armonk, NY)
  • Correspondent: Not confirmed for this reel/frame. Note: IBM's inventor-to-company assignments of this era are routinely recorded by IBM's own in-house IP department at the North Castle Drive, Armonk, NY 10504 address (a correspondent format that recurs across IBM assignment records, e.g., IBM filings that list an IBM in-house correspondent at that address). I cannot confirm the specific correspondent on this reel/frame, so I flag it as unresolved rather than assert it.
  • Context: Standard employment assignment — inventors conveying rights to their employer contemporaneous with filing. Not a fire-sale, not a securitization, not an NPE transfer.

No post-issuance assignment was found. There is no evidence the patent ever left IBM. Google Patents lists IBM as the current assignee, and the legal-events feed shows only the single 2017-03-20 reassignment entry. If the Assignment Center contains additional records I could not reach, they would be the exception; on the record available, the chain terminates at IBM.

Related family members (also IBM-owned, for completeness):

• US 2018/0268617 A1 — pre-grant publication of this application.
• US 2020/0098196 A1 — continuation of Ser. No. 15/463,852 (expressly recited in its specification), IBM-assigned.
• US 12,211,320 B2 — issued 2025-01-28, from Ser. No. 16/697,674 (a continuation claiming priority to the 2017-03-20 filing), assigned to IBM (Armonk, NY). This is a continuation-family reissue of the same disclosure, not an assignment event in the '129 chain.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10593129
    2017 : Filed by Edwin J Bruce and Romelia H Flores
         : Assigned same day to IBM
    2018 : Pre-grant publication US 2018 0268617
    2020 : Patent issued to IBM
    2025 : Continuation US 12211320 issued to IBM
    2038 : Adjusted expiration listed

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Verdict

Insufficient data — on the record available, the only ownership event is the original 2017-03-20 inventor→IBM assignment, which is precisely the fact pattern the task defines as "only the original assignment." Nothing in the chain resembles an NPE transfer: no LLC, no repeat-player correspondent, no cascading or pre-litigation assignment, and the patent was allowed to go abandoned for non-payment of maintenance fees (Expired – Fee Related) while IBM retained a live continuation (US 12,211,320). An operating company that lapses its own patent and never transfers it is the inverse of an NPE story. The principal gap is that I could not retrieve the reel/frame number or correspondent of record for the single assignment — if the Assignment Center reveals additional entries, that finding should be revisited. Verify at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (patent number 10593129).

Caveat per your rules: the corresponding-attorney element (the most useful NPE tell) is genuinely unknown here, because I could not reach the Assignment Center record — I have not inferred or invented it.

I'll search for the specific patent's citation records. Let me query authoritative sources directly.

The results so far show the patent page but not the citations table. Let me target the citation section directly.

I found the Justia "Referenced Cited" list. Let me retrieve the complete citation table from both Justia and Google Patents to avoid a truncated list.

Prior Art / Cited References for US 10,593,129 B2

0. Scope and sourcing note (read first)

This section addresses the citation record — the "References Cited" (backward citations) that appear on the front page of the patent. Two things you should know before relying on it:

• What I could ground. The backward-citation list below was retrieved from the Justia patent page for 10593129 (https://patents.justia.com/patent/10593129), which mirrors the USPTO front-page "(56) References Cited" data. The surname and date for each entry are as printed there.
• What I could not fully ground. The Google Patents citations table for US10593129B2 did not render in the fetched content (only its title/abstract/classifications/description came through), and the Justia snippet I retrieved contained an internal ellipsis, which means the list may be missing one or more entries — most likely between the 2007 and 2012 items. Treat the set below as substantively complete but verify against the patent's printed front page (US10593129B2, col. 1) before quoting it as exhaustive.
• Description confidence. For most references I can state the topic from the inventor/context with reasonable confidence, but I did not retrieve the underlying reference texts. Where I am not confident of a reference's substance, I say so rather than inventing a title. I have not fabricated any citation.

Disambiguation (per the "no similar numbers" instruction). A golden.com wiki page for US Patent 7,358,400 ("Process for producing cyclopropane monoacetal derivative…," a chemistry patent) lists its application number as "10593129." That is a serial-number/patent-number coincidence, not a citation of, or family member of, the IBM parking patent. It is excluded.

1. Confirmed target

2. Backward citations — U.S. patent documents

3. Backward citations — non-patent literature (NPL)

4. § 102 analysis — reading the citation set against the claims

The claim-1 core (which the three independents share) requires all of: (a) obtaining user information of a vehicle-driver user of a parking-area management system; (b) processing it; and (c) outputting a communication to control an indicator system that is (i) a fixture of the parking area and (ii) configured to provide indications viewable by vehicle drivers driving within the parking area.

Two analytical points drive the whole mapping:

1. The "fixture / viewable by drivers driving within" limitation is the chokepoint. Nearly all of the cited references are reservation-, allocation-, availability-, or navigation-centric disclosures that output to a mobile phone, an in-vehicle unit, or a central operator console. That anticipates claims only if the reference also discloses a fixed, parking-area-installed indicator (sign, display, ground lighting, projector) seen by drivers on-site. A reference that ends at "send the reservation to the user's smartphone" does not meet claim 1 as written. This is the limitation your screening should test reference-by-reference.

2. Date rule for the five post-filing citations (items 13–17). US 2017/0206786, 2017/0267233, 2017/0329342, 2017/0341640, and 2018/0218605 all published after 2017-03-20. Under AIA § 102(a)(2), a U.S. patent application publication can be prior art only if it was effectively filed before the '129 filing date. So these five are § 102 art only if their effective filing dates precede 2017-03-20; otherwise they are not § 102 art at all against claim 1 (they may still be relevant background). Pull each one's priority/filing date before treating it as anticipatory. Their presence on the front page may also reflect applicant-cited rather than examiner-cited status, which changes their probative weight.

Per-claim screening summary (preliminary):

5. Caveats and what to verify before using this

1. Completeness. The retrieved list may omit one or more entries (the source snippet contained an ellipsis). Confirm against US10593129B2 front page, "(56) References Cited" and the USPTO Patent Center / ODP record for 15/463,852.
2. Citation ≠ prior-art status. "Referenced Cited" blends examiner-cited and applicant-cited art. Only examiner-cited art carries the usual § 325(d) emphasis; and the five post-2017-03-20 publications need their effective filing dates checked (§ 4, point 2).
3. Descriptions of items 1–3 and 5–12 are topic-level inferences, flagged as such — I did not retrieve their texts, so do not quote my one-line descriptions as if taken from the references. Items 4 (Cassandras), the Geng et al. paper, and IPCOM000223086D are the three I can characterize with higher confidence.
4. This is a screening mapping, not an invalidity opinion. No reference here was retrieved in full, so the § 102 column is a "where to look first" list, not a conclusion that any claim is anticipated.
5. Forward citations are not prior art. Google Patents shows ~41 "Families Citing this family" and lists US10593129B2 as cited by later Allstate, Samsung, and other parking disclosures. Those are forward citations and are excluded from this prior-art analysis by definition.

Bottom line: The '129 patent's cited prior art is a parking-technology set — reservation/allocation systems (Geng et al. 2013, Cassandras US 2014/0149153, ip.com IPCOM000223086D) plus a block of 2012–2018 U.S. publications on parking availability, telematics and vehicle services. None, on the face of the retrieved record, squarely discloses the claim-1 chokepoint — an indicator system provided as a fixture of the parking area and viewable by drivers driving within it — and the dynamic-enlargement claims (5–7) have no clear cited anticipator at all. The strongest § 102 candidates to pull and read first are Geng et al. (2013), IPCOM000223086D (2012), and US 2014/0149153 (Cassandras); the five post-filing publications (items 13–17) must have their effective filing dates verified before they can count under § 102(a)(2).

I'll flag one gap up front: the user message says to "use the results from the Prior Art section of this page," but no Prior Art section was actually included in what was provided to me. The previously-generated sections cover the patent summary, litigation, and PTAB—not prior art. So before writing the § 103 analysis, let me go find and verify actual prior-art references in this field rather than invent them.

Good — I'm finding real prior art. Let me search for the more specific features (dynamic space resizing by vehicle size, indicator-based space delineation, sublease/marketplace, and IBM/other parking patents).

Let me search for prior art on the marketplace/sublease and payment aspects, plus driver-skill-based allocation.

Obviousness Analysis — US 10,593,129 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

0. Critical preliminary: the premise of the task is missing

The task directs me to "use the results from the Prior Art section of this page." No Prior Art section was provided in my inputs. The materials I was given consist of (a) the full Google Patents text of US 10,593,129 and (b) the three previously-generated sections (Patent summary, Litigation, PTAB). None of them contains a prior-art list or examiner citations.

Flag explicitly (contradiction/gap): I cannot "use" a section that was not supplied. Rather than fabricate a prior-art list, I ran independent searches and built the reference set below from sources I actually retrieved, and I mark each reference's § 102 qualification and confidence. If your workflow has a separate prior-art page, its contents would supersede anything here and I would need it to reconcile.

Two further grounding caveats carried forward from the earlier sections (unchanged, and I do not repeat them):

• The verbatim numbered claim set was not in the provided text; the independent claims are known only through the Summary/abstract language (method + computer-program-product + system, each reciting the same three steps). I therefore analyze at the feature level and state the claim-numbering limitation.
• The patent is listed as Expired – Fee Related (adjusted expiration 2038-06-13, flagged by the source as an assumption). Obviousness analysis is moot for an unenforceable patent, but I proceed as if the claims are live.

1. What must be shown (the claim scope, reconstructed)

Each independent claim recites three steps plus two structural constraints on the indicator:

1. obtain user information of a vehicle-driver user who is a user of a computer-based parking-area management system;
2. process that information; and
3. output a communication to control an indicator system based on the processing,
   • where the indicator system is (a) provided as a fixture of the parking area, and (b) configured to provide indications viewable by vehicle drivers driving within the parking area.

The "fixture" and "viewable-by-driving-drivers" limitations are the only real narrowing language. Everything else is functional and broad. Per the pre-grant publication (US 2018/0268617 A1, as noted in the prior PTAB section), the dependent claims add: border position/dimension adjustment; vehicle-dimension / driver-ability / reservation / arrival-criteria bases; enlargement with price increase; activity-record state transitions; and NLP-weighted sell-back probability.

2. Level of ordinary skill (POSITA)

A person having ordinary skill would be a software/systems engineer with a bachelor's degree in electrical/computer engineering or computer science and 2–4 years of experience in parking-management, telematics, or reservation/dispatch systems, or equivalent. The field is the intersection of G07B15/02, G06Q10/02, and G08G1/14 (the '129 classifications). POSITA is charged with knowledge of: reservation/inventory servers, occupancy sensors, in-situ availability indicators, projected/illuminated markings, and marketplace/payment flows.

3. Prior art references (retrieved, with § 102 status)

References I deliberately did NOT rely on (date traps):

• US 10,510,251 B2 / US 11,132,902 B2 ("Parking space light," Resilience Magnum IP) — earliest provisional priority 2017-10-04, after the '129 filing. Not prior art.
• JP 2019-087161 A (projected parking frame sized to measured vehicle) — published 2019. Not prior art as a publication (discloses the same concept as PA-4, which is prior art).
• US 2019/0197897 A1 (virtual partitioning by vehicle dimensions) — published 2019. Not prior art unless it carries a pre-2017-03-20 priority, which the record I retrieved does not establish.
• EP 3 421 329 A1 (move parked cars to enlarge a slot) — publication 2019. Not prior art unless earlier priority is shown.
• US 9,852,627 B2 / US 9,990,850 B2 / US 2018/0374004 A1 — grants/publications post-date the '129 filing; usable only if an earlier pre-grant publication or provisional exists. Verify before citing.

4. Ground 1 — The independent claims are obvious over PA-1 in view of PA-2 (optionally + PA-7)

The combination. PA-1 supplies the entire structural heart of the claim: an indicator system provided as a fixture of the parking area (LED housing mounted in the ground/hump), configured to provide indications viewable by vehicle drivers driving within the parking area (light deliberately directed "towards oncoming vehicles," color-coded states). PA-1 also already has a control unit — expressly "an external control unit … can be a server" — that outputs control signals to the LEDs based on status. PA-2 supplies the "computer-based system for managing a parking area" and its user of a vehicle-driver user: a processor + inventory DB that accepts a remote user request for a reserved space, reserves it, and confirms — i.e., "obtaining user information of a vehicle driver user" and "processing information of the user information."

Every limitation is met:

• obtain user information of a vehicle-driver user of a parking-management system → PA-2 (remote reservation request, user/payment data); PA-1 (RFID-tag identity data).
• process the user information → PA-2 (accept → reserve → confirm → decrement inventory); PA-1 (control unit evaluates sensor/RFID output).
• output a communication to control an indicator system → PA-1's server→signalling-means control channel is this output.
• indicator system as a fixture of the parking area → PA-1 (in-ground/hump-mounted housing); PA-6 and PA-4 also (projector / light source in the lot).
• viewable by drivers driving within the area → PA-1 ("emitted towards oncoming vehicles"; "enable drivers to easily and quickly find a free parking space even in daylight").

Motivation to combine (KSR, 550 U.S. 398): Both references are in the same field (parking management), address the same problem (a driver must find/take a specific space), and are drawn from the same body of art the Examiner already traversed (G08G1/14). Combining a reservation server with an in-situ indicator yields the predictable, anticipated benefit that the reserving user can see which fixture-marked space is theirs — precisely the problem PA-1 itself states it solves and PA-2 itself states it solves ("often parking lots can be identified as 'full' even when spaces are available"). The combination is a mere arrangement of known elements, each performing its known function (KSR). PA-7 independently corroborates the combination by teaching a reservation server that indicates each spot as occupied/empty/reserved and monitors the user's proximity to the spot — eliminating any hindsight argument.

Result: Independent claims 1 (method), the CPP claim, and the system claim are rendered obvious by PA-1 + PA-2, and are independently obvious over PA-7 alone when combined with any in-situ indicator such as PA-1 or PA-10.

5. Grounds 2–6 — The dependent/disclosed features

Ground 2 — Dynamic sizing/location by vehicle dimension (PA-4, PA-3, PA-7)

PA-4 expressly: obtain defined vehicle measurements, calculate size and position, and mark the space by illuminating a perimeter with a light source. PA-3 (1995) does the same via gate measurement + reserved-space selection + display guidance. PA-7 assigns a spot by matching vehicle attributes to spot features. → The dimension-based adjustment limitation is obvious; motivation: maximize utilization (stated in PA-4) and reduce wasted space (PA-4's own background).

Ground 3 — Border position/shift and enlargement-with-price-increase (PA-4 + PA-5 + PA-12)

PA-4's boundary/buffer-zone + alarm and PA-5's event-driven re-allocation (on arrival/departure/cancellation) supply dynamic border adjustment. PA-12 supplies real-time re-allocation of the reserved site. PA-5 supplies pricing by allocation state. → Enlarging (or shrinking) an allocated space and adjusting the charge accordingly is the predictable union of "re-price on reallocation" (PA-5) and "resize to need" (PA-4).

Ground 4 — Arrival detection / geofence / proximity criterion (PA-7 + PA-3 + PA-6)

PA-7 explicitly monitors device proximity and crosses a threshold. PA-6 uses camera + registration-number matching on arrival to trigger a projected message. → "Determining that the user has arrived at the parking area" and switching the indicator on arrival is squarely taught.

Ground 5 — Activity-record state transitions and marketplace/sell-back/sublease (PA-2 + PA-8 + PA-9)

PA-2's virtual reservation + confirmation is the "reserved → purchased" transition. PA-8 teaches a space-rental marketplace (owner designsates availability, renter selects, space marked unavailable, fee paid). PA-9 teaches, on the same timer model, offering additional time, soliciting bids, and a "takeover opportunity to a second user" — i.e., selling back / subleasing remaining reserved time. → The "activity record" state machine and the sell-back/sublease options are the predictable combination of PA-2 + PA-8 + PA-9; motivation: the patent's own stated market incentive (recover value from unused reserved time) is a recognized commercial objective (KSR).

Ground 6 — Payment logging (PA-1 + PA-2)

PA-1 (RFID billing) and PA-2 (payment for a reservation) supply automated payment logging. The blockchain-ledger implementation is a known, general-purpose way to log financial transactions and would be an obvious design choice to a POSITA where tamper-evidence/auditability is desired.

6. Weak spots — features for which I found no strong reference

I will not invent art. The following limitations, if claimed as dependents, are the softest for an obviousness challenge on the record I can actually cite:

1. "Driving ability"/"driver skill" as the basis for allocating a larger space (spec: allocate smaller spaces to higher-skill drivers via a looked-up driving record). I found no reference squarely teaching allocating space size inversely to driver skill/driving record. PA-11's "driver credit record" is close but is used for reservation admission/credit, not space sizing. Confidence that good art exists: moderate; I did not locate it.
2. The NLP-weighted sell-back probability (Equation 1: W1·F1 + W2·F2 over newsfeed and weather factors, each run through NLP). I found no reference combining NLP-extracted newsfeed/weather signals into a re-sale probability. The ingredients (weather data, event data, dynamic pricing) are old (PA-5; PA-8), so a § 103 case can be built on "obvious automation of a known pricing decision," but expect the patentee to press this as the point of novelty.
3. Blockchain-ledger logging specifically for parking — generic; likely obvious as a design choice, but the evidentiary record for a § 103 prima facie case is thin in what I retrieved.

Counsel's practical read: If the goal is to invalidate, attack the broad independent claims via PA-1 + PA-2 (and PA-7) — the "fixture" and "viewable-by-driving-drivers" limitations are fully anticipated by PA-1, so there is little to no inventive weight left for the patentee to defend. The Equation-1 and driver-skill dependents are where a validity fight would concentrate.

7. Specification admissions useful to a § 103 attack

The '129 specification affirmatively concedes a crowded field and describes the broader prior art itself (Background): roadside/parking-lot spaces delimited by permanent indicia; parking meters/kiosks with payment and time display. The "recognize that current parking area systems do not provide…" passages concede the existence of systems that do perform reservation, occupancy detection, billing, and static sizing. This is applicant-admitted background art and supports treating the base claim's elements as known, leaving only the combination — which PA-7 and PA-1+PA-2 make obvious.

8. Bottom line

• § 103 conclusion: On the art I retrieved — the strongest is US 2011/0102197 A1 (in-situ LED fixture indicator with server control) combined with US 7,783,530 B2 (reservation/inventory server + virtual reservation + payment), optionally with WO 2017/033174 A1 (reservation server indicating occupied/empty/reserved + proximity monitoring) — the three independent claims of US 10,593,129 are obvious. Every limitation, including the "fixture" and "viewable-by-driving-drivers" constraints, is expressly taught.
• The dynamic-sizing, arrival, re-allocation, and marketplace dependents are likewise obvious over PA-4 / PA-3 / PA-7 and PA-8 / PA-9 / PA-5 respectively.
• The two features where I could not locate art are (i) driver-skill/driving-record-based space-size allocation and (ii) the NLP-weighted newsfeed+weather sell-back probability of Equation 1. I flag these as research gaps, not as verdicts that no art exists.

Two things I must flag as unresolved inputs, not analysis:

1. The "Prior Art section of this page" was never provided; if it exists, it overrides this analysis and may already contain better, date-verified art.
2. The verbatim numbered claims were not in my inputs, so the mapping above is at the feature level, not claim-by-claim. Before any petition or invalidity contention, obtain (a) the issued claim set and (b) the prior-art page, and re-run this mapping limitation-by-limitation.

All patent numbers, publication numbers, and dates above are transcribed literally from the sources retrieved; where a date determines § 102 qualification I have marked it ⚠️ rather than assuming an earlier priority.