US 10764044

I'll search for this specific patent number across the web and litigation sources.

Let me search for the specific claims text and any 2026 CAFC docket activity involving this patent.

Let me attempt to retrieve the actual granted claims and check for any litigation listing this patent.

Summary — US 10,764,044 B1

Bibliographic data (as literally stated on the face of the record)

Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US10764044B1](/patent/US10764044B1)/en

Chain of priority (as recited in the patent's own Cross-Reference section): continuation of Ser. No. 14/986,306 (Dec. 31, 2015) → continuation of 14/448,891 (Jul. 31, 2014) → continuation of 13/791,553 (Mar. 8, 2013) → continuation of 11/744,832 (filed May 5, 2007, published as US 2007/0260888 A1) → benefit of provisionals 60/798,172; 60/798,843; 60/838,788; 60/824,758; 60/894,608.

Classifications (representative): G06Q 20/409, G06Q 20/327, G06Q 20/4014, G06Q 20/40145, G06F 21/31, G06F 21/32, G06F 21/34, H04L 63/0861, H04W 12/06, G07C 9/257, G07F 7/1008.

Abstract (verbatim)

"A system and method provide efficient, secure, and highly reliable authentication for transaction processing and/or access control applications. A personal digital key (PDK) is programmed using a trusted programming device to initialize and/or register the PDK for use. In one embodiment, the initialization and registration processes are administered by a specialized trusted Notary to ensure the processes follow defined security procedures. In a biometric initialization, the programming device acquires a biometric input from a user and writes the biometric data to a tamperproof memory in the PDK. In registration, the Programmer communicates to one or more remote registries to create or update entries associated with the user PDK. Once initialized and registered, the PDK can be used for various levels of secure authentication processes."

Plain-language overview of the disclosure (Specification, FIGS. 1–14)

The patent describes a Personal Digital Key (PDK) — a small, wireless, uniquely-identifiable portable device (possibly integrated into a phone, tag, watch, etc.) that stores a unique PDK ID in read-only/once-programmable memory and one or more profiles (biometric, PIN, picture, registry) in tamperproof memory. Combined with a Reader, the PDK supports multiple layers of authentication — "device authentication" (challenge-response/CHAP between PDK and Reader) and "profile authentication" (fingerprint/biometric hash comparison, PIN, photo, and registry lookup) — before a transaction or access is authorized.

The distinctive contribution claimed in the family is the enrollment/initialization pipeline:

• A Programmer (trusted hardware, FIG. 9) simultaneously couples to the user PDK and a Notary PDK.
• The Programmer validates both PDKs against the Central Registry (standing, tamper status, software validity, fraud/expiry) before any writing occurs (FIG. 11).
• The Programmer acquires a biometric input from the user (quality-checked, re-scanned if poor), hashes/encodes it, and writes it into the tamperproof PDK memory (FIG. 12). The Programmer does not retain the user's biometric data.
• A trusted third-party "Notary" (human or automated trusted hardware) must witness/approve the acquisition before initialization data is written (FIG. 13).
• Registration creates or updates Central Registry / private registry entries (PDK ID, purchasing data, personal data) (FIG. 14).
• Audit history (PDK ID, Notary ID, Programmer ID, site ID, timestamps, software revisions/checksums) is written to the user PDK, the Programmer, and in some embodiments the Notary PDK, enabling later auditing and revocation tracing.

⚠️ Independent claims — explicit uncertainty flag

I cannot give you a verified plain-language reading of the independent claims of US 10,764,044 B1, and I do not want to fabricate one. My authoritative source for this document (the Google Patents full-text page, fetched 2026-09-29) reproduces the abstract, description, and figures but the fetched text was truncated before the claims section, and my searches did not surface the granted claim text for the '044 patent specifically.

What I can state with reasonable confidence, and what I cannot:

• Confirmed: The '044 is a B1 utility patent in the same specification family as US 10,374,795 B1 (the parent, Ser. No. 14/986,306) and US 2007/0260888 A1 (the grandparent publication). Those share the identical abstract, so the '044's claimed subject matter is drawn from this same initialization/registration disclosure.
• Confirmed: The sibling patent US 10,374,795 B1 issued with 20 claims ("20 Claims, 15 Drawing Sheets"). I have not verified the claim count for the '044.
• NOT verified: The actual claim text. Based on the specification's own framing of the invention, the independent claims most plausibly recite method/apparatus steps such as: coupling a Programmer to a user PDK and a Notary PDK; reading information from each to determine authorization to initialize; acquiring a biometric (or other) input from the user; writing profile data and initialization history to the PDK's tamperproof memory; and creating/updating a registry entry. Treat that as inference from the disclosure, not as claim language.
• Caution against confusion: A widely-cited 2026 Federal Circuit brief excerpt recites claims using language like "a third party that operates a trusted authority," "an access message," "an LED to be activated for requesting the biometric scan," and "an age verification is registered in association with the device ID code." Those claims belong to a different Proxense patent in the biometric PDK authentication family (US 8,886,954 / US 10,698,989 lineage), not to the '044 initialization/registration family. Do not attribute them to 10,764,044.

To obtain the authoritative claim set, the reliable route is the USPTO PatentCenter document viewer for application 16/503,066 (https://patentcenter.uspto.gov) or the patent PDF linked from the Google Patents page — I was unable to retrieve it through the searches available to me.

Litigation and CAFC 2026 docket check

• No CAFC 2026 docket naming US 10,764,044 was found. I searched for the number in litigation and Federal Circuit contexts and found no match.
• The most prominent Proxense Federal Circuit activity in 2026 is Proxense v. Apple / Microsoft (opening brief filed on or about April 3, 2026), an appeal from PTAB inter partes reviews addressing U.S. Patent No. 8,886,954 ("Biometric personal data key (PDK) authentication") — a different patent from the '044. The appeal concerns the PTAB staying a parallel ex parte reexamination, and a claim-construction dispute over "a third party that operates a trusted authority." Sources: ip fray, https://ipfray.com/ptab-abused-discretion-by-staying-reexamination-that-favored-patentee-proxense-tells-federal-circuit/ and the appellate brief PDF at https://ipfray.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/26-04-03-Proxense-v.-Apple-Microsoft-appellate-opening-brief-1.pdf
• Proxense's district-court campaign in which I could actually see the asserted-patent lists involves: Proxense v. Microsoft, 6:23-cv-00319 (W.D. Tex., filed 4/28/2023 — asserting 8,352,730; 8,886,954; 9,298,905; 8,646,042; 9,679,289; 10,073,960); Proxense v. Google, 6:23-cv-00320 (asserting, inter alia, 10,073,960 and 8,646,042); Proxense v. Apple, 6:24-cv-00143-ADA; Proxense v. Samsung, 6:21-cv-00210; and Proxense v. Hyundai Motor, 6:25-cv-00016 (asserting 11,095,640 and 9,251,332). I found no listing of US 10,764,044 as an asserted patent in any of these.
• Separately, IPR activity involving Proxense includes at least IPR2024-00232, IPR2024-00405, IPR2024-00407, IPR2024-00784, and Intel's IPR2025-00327 (Intel v. Proxense, Paper 12, June 26, 2025). None of these that I could inspect are directed to US 10,764,044.
• Family-level caveat: Google Patents does mark the family as having litigation, and the Darts-ip family ID is 38694426. Because the '044 shares a priority chain with the heavily-asserted Proxense patents listed above, it is plausibly present in infringement contentions or family-level litigation reporting even where I could not see it named in a public asserted-patent table. I could not confirm this.

Bottom line

• Reliable: title, inventors, assignees, application number 16/503,066, filing date 2019-07-03, issue date 2020-09-01, earliest priority 2006-05-05, anticipated expiry 2027-05-05, abstract, and the substance of the FIG. 8–14 initialization/registration disclosure.
• Unreliable/unverified: the granted independent claim language and claim count of the '044, and whether the '044 itself (as opposed to its family siblings) has been asserted in litigation or appeared on a CAFC 2026 docket. I found no such CAFC docket. If you need claim-level analysis, pull the granted claims from USPTO PatentCenter for application 16/503,066 rather than relying on secondary sources.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 10764044. Let me run several targeted searches.

Let me search more specifically for cases asserting this patent.

Let me check litigation databases directly for this patent number.

Summary of findings — U.S. Patent No. 10,764,044

No litigation specifically asserting U.S. Patent No. 10,764,044 was identified in the sources searched. I want to be explicit about the limits of this answer rather than overstate it.

What I searched

• Google Patents family/litigation data for US10764044 (fetched from the authoritative patent page, which carries a Darts-IP "family has litigation" link for family 38694426)
• General web searches for "10764044" + litigation / lawsuit / Proxense
• Proxense's complaint-level documents (via RPX Insight litigation documents and Docket Alarm exhibits)
• Unified Patents and PACER/CourtListener docket references surfaced through search

I could not open the Unified Patents case list or PACER directly (search returned unrelated content and the tool step budget was exhausted), so my conclusion rests on the aggregated search results rather than a direct docket-record pull. Treat the "no known litigation" finding as not confirmed by exhaustive docket review.

Important caveat about prefix-truncation confusion

Note that the 8-digit string 10764044 appears in search results in two unrelated ways:

• US 10,764,044 B1 (Proxense LLC) — the patent you asked about; granted 2020-09-01, application 16/503,066, priority 2006-05-05.
• US application 10/764,044 (US-20040200283-A1, "Synchronous Averaging of Epicyclic Sun Gear Vibration," Blunt, assigned to Defence Science and Technology Organisation) — a wholly unrelated 2004 case.

These are different documents sharing a numeric string; I did not conflate them, per the instruction not to auto-correct identifiers.

Related context (NOT litigation of the '044 patent)

The '044 patent is owned by Proxense LLC (an active NPE/former operating company). Proxense has run a broad enforcement campaign against mobile/consumer-electronics and PC defendants — but the patents I have confirmed as asserted in those cases do not include 10,764,044. Confirmed Proxense cases and patents-in-suit I saw in the record:

The Proxense patent family has additionally been the subject of numerous IPRs (e.g., Microsoft IPR2024-00233/00573/00846; Google IPR2024-00782/00783/00784; Apple IPR2025-00074/00562; Samsung IPR2021-01438), several resulting in final written decisions of unpatentability against sibling patents (e.g., U.S. 8,352,730 and 8,646,042), with appeals pending at the Federal Circuit. None of these identified proceedings is against 10,764,044.

Bottom line

• Known litigation asserting US 10,764,044: none found.
• The patent sits within the Proxense PDK/registration family that is heavily litigated, and Google Patents flags litigation across the family (Darts-IP family 38694426) — but that is family-level flagging, not evidence that the '044 patent itself was asserted.
• Recommended verification before relying on this: pull the Darts-IP/Unified Patents Docket Navigator entry for US10764044, and run a PACER/Unified Patents litigation search on the exact citation "10,764,044," since I could not complete direct docket-access queries here.

Strict-identifier note: I have reported the number exactly as 10764044 / US 10,764,044 B1 and did not alter or "correct" it.

I'll verify the structured data with web searches before writing anything.

The structured data says no proceedings; web results show a large Proxense campaign but I need to confirm whether any of it targets this patent (10,764,044) specifically.

The Proxense campaign is extensive but so far every hit is a different patent. Let me check specifically whether the '044 patent (or its IPR-relevant family member 11/744,832 lineage) has ever been challenged.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 10,764,044: 0. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block — the canonical USPTO Open Data Portal list — returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM for this patent, and my web searches surfaced no proceeding naming 10,764,044 as the challenged patent.

In the required taxonomy: active 0 / claims invalidated 0 / claims sustained 0 / settled 0 / institution denied 0.

Defensive posture: This is not "hardened by surviving IPRs" and it is not "claims canceled." It is a pure UNTESTED patent. No claim of 10,764,044 has ever been construed by the Board, held unpatentable, or confirmed patentable in an AIA trial. A defendant cannot point to a PTAB outcome — favorable or adverse — and must build validity challenges from scratch, without the benefit (or the estoppel exposure) of an existing IPR record.

One important caveat on confidence: the ODP block is authoritative for AIA trial proceedings, but it does not capture ex parte reexamination. There is a very active EPR practice in this family (e.g., Reexam Control No. 90/015,053 on U.S. 9,298,905, driven by Samsung). I found no EPR number tied to 10,764,044, but I could not exhaustively confirm that negative from the sources available to me. Treat "no AIA trial" as high confidence and "no reexam" as medium confidence.

No proceedings to report

Because the canonical list is empty, the per-proceeding template does not apply. Instead, here is the verified negative plus the surrounding campaign context, which is what actually matters to a defendant.

Strategic summary

Claim status: entirely UNTESTED. No claim of 10,764,044 — independent or dependent — has been canceled, confirmed, or even instituted upon. Compare this to the rest of the Proxense portfolio, where the picture is very different. The Board and the Central Reexamination Unit have produced adverse outcomes on sibling patents, notably the Microsoft/Apple IPR2024-00573 Final Written Decision of 2025-08-04 finding claims 1, 5, 6, 8–11, 13, and 14 of U.S. 8,646,042 unpatentable under § 103, and the IPR2024-00407 FWD of 2025-07-17 finding all challenged claims of U.S. 9,679,289 unpatentable. Those are different patents — do not let anyone across the table blur them into 10,764,044.

Estoppel landscape: essentially empty, and that is the defendant's advantage. Because no IPR was ever instituted against 10,764,044, no § 315(e)(2) estoppel has attached to any petitioner or privy with respect to this patent. A defendant is free to raise any § 102/§ 103/§ 112 ground, before any forum, using any art. There is no prior IPR record to inherit and no institution denial to navigate around. Conversely, there is also no PTAB claim construction to borrow — the only constructions in the family come from the W.D. Tex. Proxense v. Samsung claim construction order (2022-01-18, with supporting memorandum 2022-12-28), which the Board itself has repeatedly declined to treat as controlling (see the 2024-08-29 teleconference in IPR2024-00782/00783/00784, where the panel noted the district court had not construed the disputed means-plus-function terms).

Pattern signals. Proxense is a serial and aggressive enforcer, but 10,764,044 has stayed on the bench. The patents actually asserted and attacked are the '730, '905, '989, '289, '042, '129, '043, '672, '332, '960, '188, '456, and '979 patents — across suits against Samsung (6:21-cv-00210, W.D. Tex.), Microsoft (6:23-cv-00319), Google (6:23-cv-00320), Apple, LG, Intel, and Hyundai/Kia/Genesis. Petitioners include Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Samsung — no defensive aggregator such as Unified Patents is driving this (Unified's own portal entry for US-10764044-B1 shows "Related Cases: No data" and "Opposition Documents: No data"). Proxense has settled with Samsung, Google (2025-01-24), and Intel (2026-03-24), while Apple and Microsoft litigation remains stayed. Proxense is also litigating PTAB outcomes at the Federal Circuit — including appeal 25-2130 from the IPR2024-00405 FWD, and an APA-based appeal (opening brief filed 2026-04-03) arguing the Board improperly stayed a parallel ex parte reexamination that was moving toward confirming patentability, plus a claim-construction fight over "a third party that operates a trusted authority." None of this touches 10,764,044.

The family matters, though. 10,764,044 sits on the same 2006-05-05 priority chain as U.S. 9,251,326, 8,838,993, 10,374,795, 11,182,792, 12,014,369, and 12,597,030 ("Personal Digital Key Initialization and Registration for Secure Transactions"). The '044 is itself a continuation of 14/986,306 → 14/448,891 → 13/791,553 → 11/744,832, claiming benefit of provisionals 60/798,172, 60/798,843, 60/838,788, 60/824,758, and 60/894,608. This means: (a) the same 2006-era prior art that defeated sibling claims is fully available against the '044, and (b) Proxense can mint new continuations, as it demonstrably does — 12,597,030 issued 2026-04-07. The terminal disclaimer / continuation pipeline is the real long-game risk here, not an existing PTAB record.

Recommended next steps

Because no PTAB activity exists, say so plainly and treat the absence as the signal it is. The '044 has not been asserted in any of the campaigns I could identify. That cuts two ways:

1. If you received a demand letter citing 10,764,044, verify the assertion independently. A patent this deep in a family whose siblings are being invalidated claim-by-claim is a plausible substitute assertion — Proxense may be pivoting to untested claims as the asserted ones fall. If so, an IPR is a live and unattacked option, and no § 315(e)(2) estoppel blocks you.

2. Run a full-scope clearance check before relying on the negative. The ODP block covers AIA trials only. Confirm directly:

   • PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov) search by patent number 10,764,044 and by application 16/503,066, for both AIA trials and any terminated/denied petitions.
   • USPTO Patent Center (https://patentcenter.uspto.gov) for the reexamination tab on 10,764,044 — given the family's EPR activity (e.g., 90/015,053), an unpublished or recently filed EPR is the most likely thing my search would have missed.
   • Docket Alarm / Darts-ip for the family's litigation and PTAB linkage (the Google Patents family link cites https://patents.darts-ip.com/?family=38694426).

3. Map the family, not the patent. Pull the continuations (9,251,326; 8,838,993; 10,374,795; 11,182,792; 12,014,369; 12,597,030) and identify which claims of those have been invalidated. Prior art that worked against 8,646,042 in IPR2024-00573 (Giobbi '157 or Broadcom as primary, combined with Giobbi '139 and/or Dua) and the means-plus-function / § 112 ¶ 6 attack that succeeded in IPR2024-00407 are the obvious starting points against a sibling priority-2006 patent with overlapping specification.

4. If you institute, calendar the statutory § 316(a)(11) one-year deadline from the institution date, and expect a Proxense v. Microsoft/Apple style means-plus-function fight — in the family, Proxense has anchored its defense to MPF constructions of non-"means" claim terms, and the Board has generally rejected them.

Bottom line for a defendant today: no AIA trial has ever touched 10,764,044. There is no FWD to cite, no canceled claim to hide behind, and no estoppel to worry about. That is an opening, not a shield — but confirm the reexamination and litigation picture before you commit to it, because an empty ODP list does not rule out a parallel EPR that has not yet surfaced.

I'll research the assignment record for US 10,764,044. Let me run several targeted searches.

Let me dig into the specific assignment records and Proxense's corporate history.

Let me look for the actual assignment reel/frame records and Proxense's corporate/funding history.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 10,764,044 B1

Scope note up front (read before the timeline). I could not open the USPTO Assignment Center (assignmentcenter.uspto.gov) or assignment.uspto.gov directly in this session — the tool set returned search results, not live database queries. Every assignment fact below is drawn from (a) the Google Patents legal-events feed carried on the authoritative patent page for US10764044, and (b) assignment abstracts of title that third parties reproduced verbatim inside PTAB/re-examination exhibits for sibling Proxense patents. I have labeled which is which. No reel/frame for the '044 itself was retrievable, and I am not going to invent one. The sibling reel/frame I cite (034843/0145) belongs to a different patent and is offered only as an analog to explain Proxense's recording practice.

Inventors

Unusual-pattern check — the fire-sale precursor is absent. The classic tell (all inventors leaving the original assignee within 12 months of filing, preceding a portfolio dump) is not present here. The opposite is true: all three inventors are still named on the 2024-filed continuation in this same family (application 18/664,076 → US 12,597,030 B2, listed on the patent page as a later priority link, inventors Giobbi / Brown / Hirt). Inventor continuity across an 18-year chain (2006 priority → 2024 filing) with the founder still running the assignee indicates the technology was retained, not abandoned by departing staff.

Original assignee

Proxense, LLC, of Bend, Oregon. The assignment record for a sibling Proxense patent gives the full street address as 689 NW Stonepine Drive, Bend, Oregon 97701 (assignee block, reel 034843/0145, '905 patent re-examination exhibit).

• Primary line of business: short-range wireless personal digital key ("PDK") / reader-decoder circuit technology for biometric authentication, proximity-based access control and mobile payment. A Proxense complaint alleges the company "was founded in 2001" and that "from approximately 2004–2012, Proxense developed, inter alia, mobile payment technologies." A 2016 Proxense counsel letter instead says "Proxense was established in 2005." Flagging this contradiction rather than picking one.
• Did it ship a product embodying the claims? No evidence of a currently shipping product. Proxense's own outbound 2016 letter to Apple describes technology that was "developed and commercialized," and references press coverage from mid-2008 — but the Stanford NPE litigation database tags the entity "3 Failed startup," and ip fray describes Proxense as "a non-practising entity (NPE) and former operating company." I found no evidence of a commercial product in market today.
• Current status: Operating as an IP-assertion entity — not dissolved, not in bankruptcy. It remains the named assignee and is an active plaintiff (see the litigation summary in the prior section). I found no record of acquisition, Chapter 7/11, or dissolution.

Assignment timeline

Recorded post-issuance/pre-issuance assignments located for the '044: one.

• 2019-07-05 (recorded; execution date not exposed in the source I reached — necessarily on or shortly before this) / recorded 2019-07-05 — Reel/Frame: not retrieved. Google Patents legal events lists this without a reel/frame; the Assignment Center was unreachable from this session.
  • Conveyance: Assignment — recorded by Google Patents as "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)"
  • Assignor: BROWN, DAVID L; HIRT, FRED S; GIOBBI, JOHN J
  • Assignee: PROXENSE, LLC
  • Correspondent: Not shown on the legal-events entry. Family-level correspondence address is Patent Law Works LLP, attn. Greg Sueoka, 201 South Main Street, Suite 250, Salt Lake City, UT 84111 (see the '905 ex parte re-examination cover sheet inside the Microsoft IPR2024-00846 exhibit). I did not observe this correspondent recurring across multiple links of this chain, because this chain has only one link — see signal 3 below.
  • Context: Routine internal recordation — the three inventors assigning their rights to the original operating company, recorded 2 days after the continuation application 16/503,066 was filed (2019-07-03). Not an acquisition, not a fire-sale, not a transfer to an asserter.

Why this is routine, not a title event (analog, different patent): Proxense's practice is to record a fresh inventor→Proxense assignment for each new continuation filing. The sibling '905 patent (application 14/521,982, filed 2014-10-23) shows:

Assignment 1 — Reel/Frame 034843 / 0145; Received 01/29/2015; Recorded 01/29/2015; Mailed 01/30/2015; Pages 3. Conveyance: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST. Assignor: GIOBBI, JOHN J. Assignee: PROXENSE, LLC, 689 NW STONEPINE DRIVE BEND, OREGON 97701.

This is a sibling reel/frame, not the '044's. Its value is explanatory: it establishes that the 2019-07-05 entry on the '044 is the same ministerial per-application recordation habit, i.e., title has continuously sat with Proxense, LLC since the 2007 parent was filed.

Nothing else is in this chain. There is no assignment to a licensing vehicle, no security agreement, no merger, no change of name, and no release on the record for the '044. Title runs: inventors → Proxense, LLC (2019-07-05) … and stops there. Per the rules, the absence of a downstream assignment is itself the finding: the original operating company still owns the patent.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10764044
    2006 : Priority provisional filed
    2007 : Parent application filed
    2016 : Proxense offers entire portfolio for sale
         : States it has never enforced the patents
    2019 : Continuation application filed
         : Three inventors assign to Proxense LLC
    2020 : US 10764044 granted
    2021 : Proxense begins enforcement campaign

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT.
The only recorded link moves rights from the individual inventors to Proxense, LLC, the original Bend, Oregon operating company (2019-07-05). There is no "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" successor, no registered-agent address, no single-purpose LLC. Caveat stated plainly: Proxense, LLC now behaves as an assertion-only entity, but that is a business-model change by the same legal person, not a shell transfer, and I will not dress it up as one.

2. Known asserter in the chain — PRESENT (strong).
Current assignee Proxense, LLC is designated an NPE by three independent third parties:

• Unified Patents: "patents owned and asserted by Proxense LLC, an NPE" (PATROLL contests, July 21, 2025 and Sept. 25, 2025).
• Stanford NPE litigation database, case Proxense, LLC v. Intel Corp., 6:24-cv-00283 (W.D. Tex.): "NPE Status: Non Practicing Entity"; patent asserter tag: "3 Failed startup."
• ip fray (April 2026): "Proxense LLC is a non-practising entity (NPE) and former operating company."

Proxense is not on the enumerated classic list (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, etc.). It is an originator-company-turned-assertor, which is why I cite the directories rather than a name match.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — NOT PRESENT within this chain (only one link).
I cannot satisfy the stated recurrence test: with a single assignment, there is no repetition to observe. Family-level observation, flagged but not counted as a finding: Patent Law Works LLP / Greg Sueoka, 201 South Main Street, Suite 250, Salt Lake City, UT 84111 is the constant correspondence address across Proxense filings (see the '905 re-examination cover sheet, "Patent Law Works/Proxense, Greg Sueoka," and US 9,990,628's "Attorney, Agent, or Firm — Patent Law Works LLP"). One firm serving one client is normal prosecution practice, not an NPE tell.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT.
One recorded assignment; no chained LLCs; no shared correspondent addresses to compare.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT.
The single assignment (2019-07-05) predates Proxense's first campaign suit (Proxense, LLC v. Samsung Electronics, 6:21-cv-00210, W.D. Tex., filed 2021-03-05) by roughly 20 months, which is well outside the 6-month window, and it is the standard inventor→assignee recordation rather than a transfer staged to enable assertion. Moreover, the prior section found the '044 has not been identified as asserted in any suit — so there is no suit for this chain to have been arranged around.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT.
No Chapter 7 or Chapter 11 proceeding involving Proxense was identified. There is a documented failed attempted fire-sale: a Proxense counsel letter dated 2016-07-25 (filed as an exhibit in Proxense v. Apple, 6:24-cv-00143, Dkt. 1-39) states the client "intends to sell the entire portfolio in a single transaction to a single purchaser," adds that "Proxense has never engaged in any patent enforcement litigation" and that "there are no current licenses granted under the Proxense patents," and pitches the buyer on using the portfolio "offensively against others." No sale occurred; Proxense later asserted the portfolio itself.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT.
Privateering requires a product company transferring to an NPE that asserts on its behalf. Here the assignee asserts in its own name; there is no downstream NPE and no operating-company sponsor.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — NOT PRESENT.
The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. The inverse is documented: Unified Patents is running prior-art bounty contests against Proxense patents, i.e., funding the opposition, not holding the asset.

Verdict

NPE — high confidence.

The chain itself is thin — a single routine inventor-to-company assignment to Proxense, LLC, recorded 2019-07-05 (assignors Brown, Hirt, Giobbi), with title never moving again — so the NPE character does not come from chain topology (no shell LLC, no cascading transfers, no defensive-aggregator terminus, and I could not retrieve the '044's reel/frame to cite). It comes from two independently corroborated facts about the assignee: (i) Proxense, LLC is affirmatively designated a non-practicing entity by Unified Patents ("an NPE"), Stanford's NPE litigation database ("Non Practicing Entity"; "Failed startup"), and ip fray ("NPE and former operating company"); and (ii) Proxense itself conceded in its 2016-07-25 portfolio-sale letter that it had "never engaged in any patent enforcement litigation," had granted no licenses, and was shopping the entire portfolio for offensive use by a buyer — a documented failed monetization exit that ended in self-assertion instead. What would move this call: retrieval of the '044's Assignment Center abstract of title showing an unrecorded-in-Google downstream transfer, or evidence Proxense currently ships a product embodying the claims.

Verification links:

• Assignment Center (search by patent number 10764044): https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/
• USPTO Assignment Search (same records): https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html
• Google Patents legal events (source of the 2019-07-05 entry): https://patents.google.com/patent/US10764044/en

Strict-identifier note: the patent is reported exactly as 10764044 / US 10,764,044 B1. The unrelated 2004 application 10/764,044 (Blunt, DSTO) noted in the earlier litigation section is a different document and was not conflated with this one.

I'll research the cited prior art for US 10,764,044. Let me search for the patent's citation records.

I have search results but need the actual "References Cited" list. Let me search more specifically.

Let me locate the actual front-page "References Cited" list for the '044 patent and its closely-related family member.

Prior Art Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 10,764,044 (Literal ID: 10764044 / US 10,764,044 B1)

0. Scope, method, and an important honesty caveat

Patent identification (verified, interpreted literally). Per the authoritative Google Patents record and the assignment history:

Do not confuse with: U.S. application 10/764,044 (US 2004/0200283 A1, "Synchronous Averaging of Epicyclic Sun Gear Vibration," DSTO/Blunt) — an unrelated document sharing the numeric string. It is not used here.

Caveat on provenance (please read before relying on the tables). Two limits apply to this answer:

1. I could not open a USPTO Patent Center / Patent Public Search full-text "References Cited" pane for 10764044 in this session: the search tool returned aggregated patent-page snippets, not a docket-style citation pane, and the step budget was exhausted before I could pull the '044 PDF or its pre-grant publication (US 2013/0219186 A1 / US 2015/0026480 A1) front page directly. Searching for "similar numbers" was avoided per your instruction.
2. The (56) References Cited list I did recover comes from a same-specification, same-inventor, same-family sibling — U.S. 10,374,795 B1 (also "Personal digital key initialization and registration for secure transactions," Giobbi et al., granted 2019-08-06) — whose front page was retrievable, plus corroborating context from the family's published parent US 2007/0260888 A1 (Unified Patents reports "Patent Art (99), Non-Patent Literature (1)"). Because the '044 is a continuation off the same 2006 priority chain with an identical specification, its examiner-cited list is expected to overlap heavily, but I cannot represent the '795 list as the verbatim '044 list. I flag every item's provenance below.

Claim-text caveat. The Google Patents full text you supplied is truncated before the claim set (Google's rendering places claims outside the cited text). I therefore could not read the '044 claims verbatim. For the §102 element-by-element mapping I use the family's issued-claim framing, which the record shows for the published parent (claim 1 is a "method of using a programmer to initialize a PDK" requiring: reading user information from a user PDK; reading notary information from a notary PDK; acquiring a biometric input witnessed by the notary; and, responsive to both being authorized, storing a biometric profile to the user's PDK). Treat the per-reference §102 conclusions as preliminary pending the exact '044 claim text.

1. The (56) References Cited list (retrieved from sibling US 10,374,795 B1; expected to overlap the '044 list)

1A. U.S. Patent Documents (partial — page-1 entries)

1B. U.S. Patent Documents (Continued table)

The list is explicitly marked "(Continued)", and Unified Patents reports 99 patent-art items associated with the parent publication US 2007/0260888 A1. The handful above is therefore not the complete set.

1C. Foreign Patent Documents

1D. Non-Patent Literature

2. §102 anticipation assessment (preliminary)

Bottom line up front: None of the retrieved (56) items appears to be a single-reference anticipation of the '044's flagship initialization claims, because the claims' distinguishing element is the dual-PDK Notary architecture — (i) reading a user PDK's authorization data, (ii) reading a separate notary PDK's authorization data, and (iii) a biometric acquisition witnessed by the notary before the biometric profile is written. The 1988–2000 documents above predate and do not disclose a "Notary PDK" witness role. They read far more naturally as §103 background art (biometric-carrying portable credentials, secure transaction management, registry lookup) than as §102 anticipatory references.

Element mapping for the independent initialization claim:

Practical consequence: the anticipation theory that actually matters for the '044 in the real world is the family ISR record (below) and the Proxense IPR/invalidity art (already summarized in the litigation section you generated) — not these front-page (56) items, none of which the record shows was used for a §102 rejection.

Reference-by-reference §102 conclusion (abbreviated):

• 4,993,068 A (Piosenka): closest of the retrieved set for the "biometric profile stored on a carried credential" idea, but no programmer, no notary PDK, no witness. Does not anticipate any independent claim; relevant at most under §103.
• 6,016,476 A (Maes): portable biometric authentication; no notary-witnessed enrollment. Does not anticipate.
• 6,018,739 A (McCoy): personnel biometric identification; no dual-PDK authorization. Does not anticipate.
• 5,892,900 A (Ginter), 5,5991,399 A (Graunke), 5,629,980 A (Stefik): secure transaction/rights frameworks — tangential to initialization by a trusted witness. Do not anticipate.
• All remaining 1988–2000 U.S. items, WO 0062505 A1, WO 0122724 A1: no discernible Notary-witnessed dual-PDK initialization. Do not anticipate on the record available.
• Dai (2017): not prior art (post-priority). Cannot anticipate.

⚠️ Because I could not verify the disclosure content of most items from primary sources, the "does not anticipate" entries are provisional and should be re-run against each reference's full text.

3. Family-level prior art that was substantively applied (context for §102/§103)

The International Search Report for the same-family application PCT/US2007/011102 (published as WO 2007/133540 A3, "Personal Digital Key Differentiation of Secure Transactions") lists documents "considered to be relevant," with relevance categories:

The PTAB/IPR record further shows Kelly et al. (U.S. 7,090,126) in view of Iwamura (US 2006/0022046) was the operative §103 obviousness combination against sibling claims in the Proxense family — i.e., the real invalidating art for this family is a Kelly+Iwamura combination, not any single §102 reference on the '044 front page.

4. Contradictions / discrepancies to flag

1. Priority date drift: Google Patents states the '044 priority as 2006-05-05; the Unified Patents record for the family publications (US 2007/0260888 A1 and US 10,374,795 B1) states 2006-05-04. I have not resolved which is correct; per your rule I did not "correct" either.
2. Filing-date drift: Google gives US 2007/0260888 A1 as filed 2007-05-05; Unified Patents shows 2007-05-04.
3. Citation-list provenance: The (56) list reproduced in §1 is from US 10,374,795 B1, a same-family sibling — not confirmed as the verbatim '044 list. This is a limitation of this answer, not a finding.
4. Kelly identifier: the ISR cites the publication US 2003/0127511 A1, while the PTAB excerpt refers to the patent U.S. 7,090,126 for "Kelly et al." I report both as they appear in the respective records.

5. Recommended verification steps (not yet completed here)

1. Pull the '044 PDF (patentimages/Patent Public Search) and copy the verbatim (56) "References Cited" pane — do not rely on the '795 list as a substitute.
2. For each (56) item, retrieve the reference full text and re-run the §102 single-reference test against the actual '044 claim 1 / independent apparatus claim.
3. Cross-check the family ISR (PCT/US07/11102) and the Proxense IPR petitions (e.g., the Microsoft/Google/Apple IPRs identified in your litigation section) for the art actually used against sibling claims — that art (e.g., Kelly + Iwamura) is the highest-signal §102/§103 material for this family.
4. Resolve the 2006-05-04 vs. 2006-05-05 priority discrepancy before relying on any §102(b) "more than one year before" boundary.

Strict-identifier note: I have used the number exactly as 10764044 / US 10,764,044 B1 and did not auto-correct it. The (56) items above are reported with the numbers and dates as they appear in the source snippets; inventor attributions and subject-matter descriptions are flagged where unverified.

I'll research the granted claims and the prior-art references cited on this patent's page before analyzing.

Let me try to obtain the granted claim text directly.

§ 103 Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 10,764,044 B1

0. Threshold caveats (read before relying on anything below)

Three gaps materially limit the precision of this analysis, and I am flagging them rather than papering over them.

1. The granted claim text of the '044 is still not available to me. The authoritative full text supplied for this task reproduces the abstract, the description, the "Definitions" block, and the figure list — but truncates before the claims. My searches for the granted claims of 16/503,066 returned the specification family repeatedly (US 10,374,795 B1, US 2007/0260888 A1, WO 2007/133542 A3) but never the '044's own claim set. Everything below is therefore framed at the level of the disclosed initialization/registration steps, formatted so you can drop in the actual claim elements when you obtain them from USPTO PatentCenter for application 16/503,066.

2. The "Prior Art" section of the Google Patents page was not included in the material provided to me, and I could not render it via search. I have therefore reconstructed the prior-art landscape from three verifiable proxies: (a) the (56) "References Cited" block printed on the face of US 10,374,795 B1 — the immediately parenting application (Ser. No. 14/986,306), which shares this specification verbatim; (b) the International Search Report for PCT/US07/11104, which bears the identical title ("Personal Digital Key Initialization and Registration for Secure Transactions") and the identical provisional priority chain; and (c) references actually applied against Proxense family patents in PTAB proceedings. The '044's own (56) list may include additional art.

3. Date contradiction. This task states the current date is April 26, 2026. One search result I relied on — Bloomberg Law's report that the PTAB held Proxense's '960 patent claims unpatentable as obvious over prior art including "a PDK that stores biometric profiles in a tamper-proof memory that is acquired in a secure trusted process," in an IPR by Apple — is dated September 21, 2026, i.e. after the stated current date. The prior sections of this analysis were generated against a page fetched 2026-09-29. I am treating the search result as ground truth per the operating rules, but the chronology does not reconcile.

1. Legal framework and the critical-date question

1.1 Which § 103 applies

The '044 (application 16/503,066, filed July 3, 2019) is a straight continuation: 16/503,066 ← 14/986,306 (Dec. 31, 2015, now US 10,374,795) ← 14/448,891 (Jul. 31, 2014, now US 9,251,326) ← 13/791,553 (Mar. 8, 2013, now US 8,838,993) ← 11/744,832 (May 5, 2007, now US 8,412,949) ← provisionals 60/798,172 (May 5, 2006) et seq.

• If every claim is entitled to the pre-March 16, 2013 priority chain, pre-AIA § 102/§ 103(a) governs.
• If any claim contains matter not supported by the 2007 (or 2006) disclosure, that claim's effective filing date moves on or after March 16, 2013 and AIA § 102/§ 103 governs it. The claim-scope disclaimer paragraph carried in this family ("Applicants hereby notify the USPTO that the claims of the present application are different from those of the aforementioned related applications…") is a live invitation for an accused infringer to probe exactly this.

This is the single highest-value verification step for a real § 103 challenge, because it determines whether 2007–2013 art is § 102(a)/(e) art or not.

1.2 The critical date is unusually early and unusually clean

Because the earliest provisional (60/798,172, "Touch Pay") was filed May 5, 2006 and the first non-provisional (11/744,832) was filed May 5, 2007 — exactly one year later — the pre-AIA § 102(b) critical date for this family is effectively May 5, 2006.

The practical consequence: every reference published before May 5, 2006 is § 102(b) prior art, combined with other § 102(b) art under § 103(a). That sweeps in the entire 1988–2005 authentication literature — including every reference named on the face of the parent and in the ISR of the sibling PCT — with no § 102(e) date gamesmanship required.

1.3 The Graham/KSR framework

Under Graham v. John Deere, 383 U.S. 1 (1966), and KSR Int'l v. Teleflex, 550 U.S. 398 (2007), the inquiry is: scope and content of the prior art; differences between the prior art and the claims; level of ordinary skill; and secondary considerations. Under KSR, "if a technique has been used to improve one device, and a person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that it would improve similar devices in the same way, using the technique is obvious unless its actual application is beyond his or her skill." Where the art discloses "a finite number of identified, predictable solutions," KSR's "obvious to try" rationale applies — as applied in Perfect Web Techs. v. InfoUSA, 587 F.3d 1324 (Fed. Cir. 2009).

The level of ordinary skill here is modest: a person with a bachelor's degree in EE/CS or equivalent, plus ~2 years of experience in authentication, access control, or secure transaction systems as of 2006. The problem space — portable biometric token + point-of-transaction reader + enrollment station + registry — was crowded and mature by 2006.

2. The disclosed (and presumptively claimed) invention, decomposed

Based on the specification's own framing and the FIG. 10–14 flow, the initialization/registration subject matter decomposes into these functional elements. These are my labels, not claim language.

The specification contains three admissions that materially weaken any attempt to treat E2/E8 as inventive:

• "In another embodiment, the Notary comprises trusted hardware that administers the initialization process by an automated system."
• "not all types of initialization and registration require a Notary."
• "a user can add information to the PDK 102 using a Programmer without a Notary through self-authentication."

So the claims cannot, without more, rest on the bare presence of a witness; the witness step is disclosed as an optional, automatable trust control.

3. The prior-art landscape actually evidenced in this session

Confidence noted explicitly. Where I could not verify a reference's substantive content, I say so rather than paraphrase from memory.

Also relevant: the Google Patents page's own prior-art keyword set for the '044 is "user, pdk, portable electronic, electronic device, reader" — an admission that the art unit treated the field as portable electronic devices carrying a PDK and communicating with a reader, i.e., a crowded field.

4. Grounds of obviousness

Ground 1 (primary): Piosenka + Burger (Pocket Vault) + De La Huerga

Why a POSITA would combine. Piosenka supplies the central technical insight the '044 claims as its benefit — "personal biometric information need not be stored in any local or remote storage database and is only stored on the user's own PDK" (specification, FIG. 1 discussion). That is precisely the architecture Piosenka already taught in 1991, and it is the reason to move biometric templates onto a portable token. Burger/Pocket Vault supplies the commercial miniaturization of that idea into a carried, sensor-equipped personal device used for transactions. De La Huerga supplies the well-known provision-per-user and logging conventions of managed security systems. All three sit in the same field of use (authentication for access/transactions), present no teaching away, and combine with predictable results. The remaining elements — a standing check against a registry, and a registry create/update at enrollment — are routine database operations applied to a known record-keeping step. Under KSR, "[a] person of ordinary skill is also a person of ordinary creativity, not an automaton."

Ground 2: Piosenka + Kelly (as applied by the ISR) + WO 00/62505 or WO 01/22724

The ISR for the sibling Proxense application PCT/US07/11102 expressly rejected claims 1–31 as obvious over US 2003/0127511 A1 (Kelly et al.) at ¶0037, category "Y". Kelly is therefore a reference the Examiner of a same-family, same-field application considered to teach the portable-token/reader authentication subject matter. Combined with Piosenka (biometric template on the token) and one of the pre-2001 international filings (credential issuance / personal identification infrastructure), a prima facie case of obviousness covers E1, E3, E5, E6, E7.

Caveat, stated plainly: Kelly was applied to the differentiation case (PCT/US07/11102), not to PCT/US07/11104. I could see the ISR for /11104 listed at least one "Y"-category citation, but the citation text was truncated and I could not read it. Do not represent Kelly as having been cited during the '044's own prosecution without pulling the file wrapper.

Ground 3: Ludtke, or Ludtke in view of Kon

These are the grounds Petitioner actually advanced in IPR2024-00232 against Proxense's U.S. 8,352,730 — a PDK patent. Their existence establishes (a) that a Ludtke reference exists that a sophisticated petitioner believed disclosed the Proxense PDK authentication architecture, and (b) that the Board was willing to consider it. They are not directly mapped to the '044's initialization steps, and I have not verified Ludtke's disclosures.

Ground 4: Dua in view of Giobbi '157; Buer; Buer in view of Giobbi '157

These are the grounds the Board instituted in IPR2024-00784 against U.S. 10,073,960. Their value here is confirmatory rather than directly probative of the '044: they show that the surrounding Proxense PDK architecture (secure memory, wireless interface, local secured information) is being read onto small combinations of ordinary references. Because the '044's claims are drawn from the same specification as the '960's, the same reference set is worth charting against the '044's initialization/registration limitations — but the pairing (a "device" reference plus a "Giobbi" reference) will not automatically supply E2/E4/E8.

Ground 5: Explicitly targeting the "Notary" limitation (E2, E4, E8)

The Notary is the only element that is arguably not squarely met by the references above, and it is where the analysis should concentrate. Four independent KSR rationales apply:

1. Known technique, known result. Witnessed/notarized execution of a consequential act is a millennia-old trust protocol. Applying a trusted third-party attestation to a biometric enrollment is the predictable use of a known technique according to its established function. KSR: "the combination of familiar elements according to known methods is likely to be obvious when it does no more than yield predictable results."
2. The specification's own admissions. The '044 states the Notary "comprises trusted hardware that administers the initialization process by an automated system," that "not all types of initialization and registration require a Notary," and that a user may initialize "without a Notary through self-authentication." These are admissions that the Notary is an optional, automatable control — the hallmark of an obvious design choice, not an inventive contribution.
3. Industry practice supplies the motivation. Supervised credential issuance — bank-branch account/credential issuance, passport and driver-license issuance, and the 2004–2005 federal smart-credential issuance model under HSPD-12 (adjudicated/sponsored enrollment) — was the standard model for enrolling a high-assurance credential. A POSITA seeking to prevent a user from self-enrolling someone else's biometric would look directly to supervised issuance. This is the classic "market pressure" / "known problem in the field" rationale from KSR.
4. Obvious to try with a finite solution set. Given the binary choice of supervised vs. unsupervised enrollment, and the known fraud risk of unsupervised enrollment of unchangeable biometric data (a risk the '044 itself recites in its Background), selecting supervised enrollment with logging is at most an obvious-to-try design decision.

Ground 6: The dependent-claim subject matter is even weaker

If the '044's dependents resemble the '795's, they likely add: quality re-checking of the scan (routine tolerance logic); multiple biometric modalities (routine); PIN and picture profiles (routine — PIN and photo ID were ubiquitous); profile "samples" that are subsets transmitted over a public/reduced-encryption channel while full profiles go over a secure channel (a data-volume/encryption-engineering choice, not a new capability). Each of these is a predictable mechanical or architectural variation of the above grounds and should be charted as such.

5. Motivation to combine — consolidated

6. Anticipated Patent Owner (Proxense) responses, and how they fare

1. "The prior art does not teach a trusted Notary separate from the system operator." Likely the core battle. Counter: the '044 expressly contemplates automated trusted hardware as the Notary, and supervised-issuance practice supplies the human-witness analog. This is a factual dispute over the level of ordinary skill and the scope of the issuance art — not a legal barrier.
2. "Unexpected results / commercial success." Proxense can point to deployments (casino, hospitality, healthcare) and to licensing revenue. But nexus is the weakness: the commercial uptake of a Notary-witnessed PDK enrollment may reflect business relationships and regulatory posture rather than the technical merits. Expect a WBIP-style nexus fight.
3. "Long-felt but unmet need." Weakened by the fact that token-stored biometrics were known since at least the early 1990s; the need was not unmet for lack of a technical solution.
4. "The references are non-analogous art." Weak — all references are in authentication, portable credentials, or access control.
5. Prosecution-disclaimer estoppel. The family's boilerplate rescission notice cuts both ways and, more importantly, signals that claim scope across the continuation chain has shifted — something an accused infringer will exploit both under § 103 and § 112.

7. Independent corroboration that the art is crowded — and that the Board agrees

Two datapoints from this session show that Proxense's own family has repeatedly been held obvious over ordinary combinations:

• Bloomberg Law, Case: Patents/Obviousness (P.T.A.B.) — the PTAB held challenged claims of a Proxense "hybrid device having a personal digital key and receiver-decoder circuit" patent unpatentable as obvious, in an Apple IPR, over combinations including prior art disclosing "a PDK that stores biometric profiles in a tamper-proof memory that is acquired in a secure trusted process." https://news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/case-patents-obviousness-p-t-a-b-816 — (noting the date anomaly flagged in § 0.3 above; treat the reference as the current ground truth per instructions). The "secure trusted process of acquiring a biometric profile into tamper-proof memory" is precisely the '044's stated point of novelty (elements E6–E8).
• IPR2024-00784 institution decision — the Board instituted on Dua + Giobbi '157, Buer, and Buer + Giobbi '157 against U.S. 10,073,960. https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2024-00784/Google_LLC_v._Proxense_LLC/docs/11-18-2024-Board/Institution_Decision__Grant-12-Granting_Institution_of_Inter_Partes_Review_35_USC_%C2%A7_314.pdf

8. Bottom line

• A prima facie § 103 case against the '044's disclosure-level subject matter is strong, especially if the independent claims are method/apparatus claims covering "couple a Programmer to a user PDK (and Notary PDK); validate standing; acquire a biometric; write it to tamperproof PDK memory under Notary approval; record history; create/update a registry entry." Every element except the witnessed-enrollment step is met by ordinary 1990s–2003 authentication art, and the witnessed-enrollment step is supported by four independent KSR rationales plus the specification's own admissions that the Notary may be automated and is optional.
• The strongest evidenced combination is Piosenka (US 4,993,068) + Burger/Pocket Vault (US 2003/0220876) + De La Huerga, with Kelly (US 2003/0127511) as a same-field substitute/add-on for the token–reader wireless architecture. All predate the May 5, 2006 § 102(b) critical date, so no § 102(e) dating analysis is needed.
• The analysis is not claim-level-verified. Before filing anything, obtain (i) the granted claims of application 16/503,066 from USPTO PatentCenter, (ii) the '044's own (56) references and file-wrapper citations, and (iii) the "Prior Art" listing rendered on the Google Patents page. Then re-run this element map against the actual claim language — particularly to confirm whether the independent claims recite the Notary, the "Programmer does not store the biometric data" limitation, or the public-channel profile-sample transmission, any of which changes where the obviousness fight concentrates.