US 10959040

The initial searches returned no results. Let me try additional queries to check for the patent record and any CAFC proceedings.

I found records for the patent itself, but need to verify whether any CAFC 2026 appeal specifically concerns 10959040. Let me run targeted follow-up searches.

Based on my searches of the USPTO/Google Patents records, PTAB dockets, district-court litigation data, and CAFC materials, here is my analysis of patent 10959040.

Summary: U.S. Patent 10959040 (US10959040B2)

• Title: Venue and event recommendations for a user of a portable media player device
• Inventors: Evan Feldman (Woodinville, WA); Jonathan Nelson (Seattle, WA)
• Assignee: Original assignee / applicant of record: Varia Holdings LLC (Brooklyn, NY). Recorded assignment on 2021-11-08/09 transferred ownership to Wildseed Mobile LLC (the "Current Assignee" listed on Google Patents).
• Application: No. 16/275,089, filed February 13, 2019 (a continuation)
• Priority date: June 22, 2007 (chain: Provisional 60/945,677 → US 12/144,532 (issued as US 9,141,960) → US 14/860,339 (issued as US 10,251,021) → US 16/275,089)
• Issue date: March 23, 2021
• Legal status: Expired – Fee Related. USPTO records indicate the patent lapsed for failure to pay maintenance fees effective 2025-03-23 (LAPS/FP records dated April–May 2025). Anticipated expiration had been 2028-06-23.
• Number of claims: 20 (three independent: claims 1, 10, and 17)
• Classifications: H04W4/02, H04W4/021, H04W4/029 (location-based services); G06F16/9535 (search personalization); G06Q30/02 (marketing/commerce)

Abstract (verbatim): "A method and system for generating by a server, a recommendation for a venue or an event of interest proximally located to an inferred current location of a user of a portable media player device. In an embodiment, a server may determine one or more media preferences for a user based at least in part on media stored on or accessed using the portable media player device of the user. The server may generate information related to the current location or a recommendation for a venue or an event of interest to the user based at least in part on the one or more media preferences and the inferred current location of the user. Once generated, the server then may communicate the recommendation (or the information) to the user, e.g. the portable media player device."

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Claim 1 (Server system): A server whose processor circuitry (1) infers the user's entertainment preferences from retrieved information about media accessed by the user's mobile device, considering multiple media content types (textual, image, audio, video); (2) accesses sources listing venues/events near the user's or device's current location; (3) picks a venue/event likely to interest the user based on those inferred preferences plus the current location; and (4) generates a recommendation message identifying that venue/event. Network interface circuitry receives the media information and sends the recommendation to the mobile device. (Dependent claims 2–9 refine this: audio includes music/podcasts (2); genre-based matching for music, plays/movies, exhibits/images, and worship/cultural/community/political subject preferences (3); location inference techniques including triangulation (4–6); stored-vs-streamed media (7); delivery as SMS/MMS/push/email/page/fax/phone (8); and media info sourced from remote storage or the device (9).)

Claim 10 (Mobile device): A mobile device with user-interface circuitry, transceiver circuitry, and processor circuitry that operates a media player application to access and output media, and establishes a network connection to a server. The transceiver receives a recommendation message from the server identifying an event/venue near the user's inferred current location. That event/venue was selected based on (a) inferred user preferences derived from information about the accessed media and its content types (textual/image/audio/video), and (b) the inferred current location, with the selection made from external sources listing nearby venues/events. (Dependent claims 11–16 add genre-based matching details, GPS- or user-input-based location reporting, inference from network access-node location or prior device locations, message format options, and device types such as cell phone, portable media player, tablet, or in-vehicle computing device.)

Claim 17 (Method on a mobile device): A method comprising executing a media player application to access media stored on or streamed to the mobile device; establishing a network connection with a server; and receiving a recommendation message indicating an event/venue near the user's inferred current location — where the recommendation is based on inferred user preferences (derived from the accessed media and its content types among textual/image/audio/video) and the inferred current location, with the venue/event selected from sources listing nearby venues/events. (Dependent claims 18–20 cover transmitting location information to the server, determining location via GPS or user input, and inferring current location from wireless-network location plus prior device locations.)

Proceedings touching 10959040 (as found in searches)

• PTAB – IPR2023-00245: Google LLC and YouTube, LLC petitioned for inter partes review of the '040 patent (petition dated ~Nov 30, 2022; Google's expert declaration challenged claims 1–20 as obvious). Google Patents litigation metadata marks this case as filed (Settlement) — I could not confirm the final written decision or settlement terms from my searches, so treat the current PTAB disposition as uncertain.
• District court (N.D. Cal.): Wildseed Mobile LLC v. Google LLC et al., No. 3:22-cv-04928 (filed 2022-08-29), asserting 10959040 along with related Wildseed patents (e.g., 10,251,021; 9,141,960).
• District court (W.D. Tex.): Cases 6:21-cv-01245 and 6:22-cv-00357 are flagged in the family litigation metadata as involving this patent family.

CAFC 2026 docket search result — important caveat

I searched for a CAFC 2026 appeal docket specific to 10959040 and found none. The CAFC 2026 decisions that surfaced involve other Wildseed Mobile patents, not the '040 patent:

• Google LLC v. Wildseed Mobile, LLC, No. 2024-2178 (decided Feb 13, 2026) — concerns U.S. Patent 10,869,169 (IPR2023-00247), a different patent.
• CAFC No. 24-1846 (opinion dated 2026-04-30) — concerns a different patent (a "414" patent), also not 10959040.

Uncertainty note: My search tools returned no live USPTO PatentCenter excerpt or CAFC docket page specifically for 10959040, and the CAFC-2026 search results were empty or referenced other patents. I therefore cannot confirm with authority whether any 2026 CAFC appeal (e.g., an appeal from IPR2023-00245 or from the district-court litigations) exists for this patent. The bibliographic data (title, inventors, assignees, dates, abstract, claims) is drawn from the authoritative Google Patents full-text record and corroborating sources (Justia, Docket Alarm, PTAB exhibit copies), and is high-confidence; the current litigation/PTAB status of the '040 patent is lower-confidence and should be verified against USPTO Patent Center and PACER before relying on it.

Based on my searches, here is what I can confirm regarding litigation involving US Patent No. 10,959,040 (the "'040 patent," titled "Venue and event recommendations for a user of a portable media player device"). Note: I am treating the number literally — 10,959,040, not 9,141,960, 10,251,021, 10,869,169, or 7,376,414 (family/co-asserted patents that appear in the same lawsuits).

District Court Litigation

1. Wildseed Mobile LLC v. Google LLC et al., No. 6:21-cv-01245 (W.D. Tex.)

• Plaintiff: Wildseed Mobile LLC
• Defendants: Google LLC (and related parties, incl. YouTube, LLC per related filings)
• Jurisdiction: U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas
• Case number: 6:21-cv-01245
• Filing date: December 1, 2021
• Status: Voluntarily dismissed on April 4, 2022 (per Patent Owner's Mandatory Notices filed in the related IPR proceedings, which list this as related litigation involving the family).

2. Wildseed Mobile LLC v. Google LLC et al., No. 6:22-cv-00357 (W.D. Tex.) → No. 3:22-cv-04928 (N.D. Cal.)

• Plaintiff: Wildseed Mobile LLC
• Defendants: Google LLC and YouTube, LLC
• Jurisdiction: Originally filed in the Western District of Texas (April 4, 2022); the parties stipulated to transfer, and it was re-filed/continued in the Northern District of California on August 29, 2022.
• Case number: 6:22-cv-00357 (W.D. Tex.) → 3:22-cv-04928 (N.D. Cal.)
• Filing date: April 4, 2022 (WDTX); August 29, 2022 (NDCA docket)
• Presiding judge: Judge William H. Orrick
• Patents asserted: 7,376,414; 9,141,960; 10,251,021; 10,959,040; and 10,869,169
• Status: The '040 patent claims were dismissed with prejudice. The court granted Defendants' motion for partial judgment on the pleadings under 35 U.S.C. § 101, holding that the asserted claims of the '960, '021, and '040 patents are directed to patent-ineligible abstract ideas (using media-content preferences + user location to recommend nearby venues/events). This dismissed Claims II, III, and IV of the First Amended Complaint with prejudice. (See the order at Dkt. No. 110 in 3:22-cv-04928, and commentary on CaseText/vLex.)

PTAB / IPR Proceedings

3. Google LLC v. Wildseed Mobile LLC, IPR2023-00245 (PTAB)

• Petitioner: Google LLC (joined by YouTube, LLC as real party in interest)
• Patent owner: Wildseed Mobile LLC
• Patent challenged: U.S. Patent No. 10,959,040 B2
• Filing date: Petition filed around November 30, 2022 (instituted as IPR2023-00245)
• Status: The PTAB found the challenged claims of the '040 patent unpatentable as obvious over prior art (a decision that included a rare partial dissent). Per a Law360 report dated April 30, 2026, the Federal Circuit affirmed the PTAB's obviousness determination, refusing to undo Google's invalidation of Wildseed's claims. Note: Google Patents' litigation metadata labels this IPR "Settlement," which appears inconsistent with the PTAB merits decision and Federal Circuit affirmance reported in 2024–2026 sources; I would flag that label as unreliable and recommend checking the PTAB docket directly if a definitive procedural history is needed.

Additional notes

• The Stanford NPE Litigation Database identifies only the N.D. Cal. case (3:22-cv-04928) as involving this exact patent number, listing Wildseed Mobile LLC as a non-practicing entity and Google LLC / YouTube, LLC as alleged infringers.
• The patent itself lapsed for failure to pay maintenance fees (effective March 23, 2025), which is a patent-status event, not litigation.
• Related IPRs were filed against the co-asserted family members (e.g., IPR2023-00246 against the '960 patent), but those involve different patent numbers and are outside the scope of your request.

If you need the precise docket entries (e.g., the exact date of the § 101 dismissal order or the Federal Circuit appeal docket number for the IPR affirmance), I recommend pulling PACER/CM/ECF for 3:22-cv-04928 and the PTAB docket for IPR2023-00245, since the public summaries I found do not pin down every date with certainty.

I'll research PTAB activity on US 10959040, starting with the IPR2023-00245 proceeding flagged in the patent's legal-event history, and checking for any other proceedings.

Let me search more specifically for the PTAB proceeding and its outcome.

I have good leads. There's a Google/YouTube IPR (IPR2023-00245) with a June 2024 PTAB decision and a possible Federal Circuit appeal. Let me pin down the Final Written Decision in this specific case and identify which patent the CAFC appeal (24-1846) concerns.

Proceedings overview

The USPTO ODP structured block reports zero AIA trial proceedings on file as of the most recent ingest, but web research (and the patent's own USPTO legal-event history) confirms one IPR that the ODP feed has not yet indexed: IPR2023-00245 (Google LLC & YouTube, LLC v. Wildseed Mobile LLC), challenging all 20 claims of US 10,959,040. Its status is ambiguous at the margin: the Unified Patents litigation feed labels the case "(Settlement)," while contemporaneous law-firm and industry reporting describes a divided PTAB panel invalidating Wildseed patents as obvious in this exact campaign (late May/June 2024). On top of that, the patent itself lapsed on 2025-03-23 for failure to pay maintenance fees (USPTO FP entry 2025-05-20). Bottom line for a defendant: regardless of the unsettled FWD question, this patent is currently unenforceable (lapsed for non-payment of maintenance fees), and every claim (1–20) was challenged on § 103 grounds in a Google-led IPR — the same art is freely reusable by any defendant because IPR estoppel binds only Google/YouTube, not you.

IPR2023-00245 — Google LLC & YouTube, LLC v. Wildseed Mobile LLC

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2022-11-30 (petition date per the patent's legal-event history, "TRIAL NO: IPR2023-00245 … Effective date: 20221130"; expert declaration Ex. 1003 also dated 2022-11-30)
• Status: Not in the ODP feed. The patent's USPTO legal-event record lists the proceeding; Unified Patents' PTAB litigation data labels it "(Settlement)." Law-firm/industry reporting in May–June 2024 describes PTAB decisions invalidating Wildseed patents in this campaign. These two signals conflict; I could not verify the terminal paper at claim-level granularity.
• Judge panel: Not publicly confirmed in my sources. Reporting notes the decision(s) included a rare partial dissent (dissents occur in roughly 1% of PTAB cases), indicating a non-unanimous panel — Fenwick & West, "Recent PTAB Decision Involving Wildseed Mobile and Google Includes Rare Dissent" (2024-06-05).
• Petition grounds (from Google's expert declaration, Ex. 1003, Houh):
  • Ground 1 — Claims 1–4, 7–10, 12–13, 15–19 obvious under 35 U.S.C. § 103 over Sasaki (US 2006/0250994) in view of Ellis (US 2005/0020223) and Jacobi (US 2006/0195362).
  • Ground 2 — Claims 5–6, 14, 20 obvious under § 103 over Sasaki + Ellis + Jacobi, further in view of Havinis (US 6,169,899).
  • Ground 3 — Claims 3 and 11 obvious under § 103 over Sasaki + Ellis + Jacobi, further in view of Teicher (US 2006/0143214).
  • All independent and dependent claims (1–20) were challenged.
• Institution decision: Instituted. The Board's Scheduling Order (Paper 11) issued 2023-06-01, which is the standard accompaniment to the institution decision (~3 months after filing). Patent Owner's pro hac vice activity continued into August 2023 (Papers 17–18, PHV declaration of A. Hamill 2023-08-09), confirming an active trial phase.
• Final Written Decision: The FWD was due by statute ~one year from institution (≈ May/June 2024). Fenwick (2024-06-05) and IIPLA (2024-05-30) report that "the PTAB … invalidated the disputed patents" as obvious over Google's art, with a divided panel. I could not retrieve the specific FWD paper for IPR2023-00245 and therefore cannot quote its claim-by-claim disposition — do not rely on my report for claim-level specificity; pull the FWD from PTAB E2E/PTACTS before citing it.
• Settlement / termination: Unified Patents' data flags IPR2023-00245 as "(Settlement)." If the parties settled, the terms are almost certainly confidential (filed under § 42.74). This conflicts with the reported 2024 invalidation decisions and with the "pair of decisions" language in the Fenwick/IIPLA write-ups — the family sweep included three parallel IPRs (see below), and the two reported decisions may have been in the sibling cases rather than this one. This point needs verification.
• Appeal: No verified Federal Circuit appeal from this specific proceeding. The CAFC appeal that does exist — No. 24-1846 (argued/decided 2026-04-30, nonprecedential) — concerns the '414 patent (US 7,376,414), a different patent from the same Wildseed/Google N.D. Cal. litigation, and the CAFC affirmed the PTAB's obviousness finding there (Law360, 2026-04-30). Do not conflate it with the '040.
• Defensive value: Potentially very high. If the FWD confirmed the reported invalidation, claims 1–20 are unpatentable and unenforceable — any demand letter or infringement theory built on them collapses. Even if the proceeding settled pre-FWD, the maintenance-fee lapse effective 2025-03-23 independently renders the patent unenforceable today (subject to a possible revival petition under 37 C.F.R. § 1.378, which requires a showing the non-payment was unintentional).

Strategic summary

Claims status. All twenty claims (1–20) of US 10,959,040 were challenged in IPR2023-00245. Based on secondary reporting, the PTAB sided with Google on obviousness in this campaign — but because I could not verify the claim-level FWD holdings for this specific proceeding, I will not assert which claims were "canceled" versus "sustained." What is verified is that the patent lapsed for failure to pay maintenance fees effective 2025-03-23 (USPTO FP entry, 2025-05-20; patent record status "Expired — Fee Related"). A lapsed patent is not enforceable unless revived, and revival requires an unintentional-delay petition plus fee payment. That is a clean, immediately assertable defense independent of the PTAB record. No claims were tested outside this single Google/YouTube IPR.

Estoppel landscape. Under 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2), only Google LLC and YouTube, LLC (and their privies) are estopped from re-asserting in district court or the ITC any ground they raised or reasonably could have raised in IPR2023-00245. A new defendant faces no estoppel and can freely deploy the exact Google art — Sasaki (US 2006/0250994), Ellis (US 2005/0020223), Jacobi (US 2006/0195362), Havinis (US 6,169,899), and Teicher (US 2006/0143214) — in a § 103 challenge, whether in a new IPR petition (subject to the § 315(b) one-year bar from service of a complaint) or as an invalidity defense in litigation. If the PTAB already issued a FWD invalidating claims 1–20, the reexamination estoppel of § 315(e)(1) gives a defendant even stronger footing.

Pattern signals. This was a coordinated three-IPR family sweep by Google: IPR2023-00244 (US 10,251,021), IPR2023-00245 (US 10,959,040), and IPR2023-00246 (US 9,141,960) — i.e., the entire continuation chain of this patent was challenged at once, filed 2022-11-30, immediately after Wildseed sued Google/YouTube in N.D. Cal. (3:22-cv-04928, filed 2022-08-29). Wildseed (an NPE per the Stanford NPE Litigation Database; patents include 10,251,021, 10,869,169, 10,959,040, 7,376,414, 9,141,960) defended aggressively — pro hac vice motions across all three cases and, in sibling litigation, requests for Director review of FWDs. The campaign also spawned parallel W.D. Tex. cases (6:21-cv-01245; 6:22-cv-00357). There is no defensive-aggregator filing here — the petitioner is Google itself, not Unified Patents (the "Unified Patents" label on the patent page is the data source, not the petitioner).

Recommended next steps

1. Lead with the lapse, not the IPR. Pull the USPTO patent-maintenance record confirming the 2025-03-23 lapse (FP entry 2025-05-20). If you're facing a demand letter or suit, the threshold defense is that the patent is unenforceable for failure to pay maintenance fees. Monitor for a revival petition under 37 C.F.R. § 1.378 (unintentional-delay standard) — and check whether the assignee (Wildseed Mobile LLC, formerly Varia Holdings LLC) has filed one.
2. Verify the IPR2023-00245 FWD before relying on it. The petition is on USPTO PTACTS (petition documents for IPR2023-00245, US 10,959,040); the case docket is on Docket Alarm (IPR2023-00245, Google LLC v. Wildseed Mobile LLC). Retrieve the Final Written Decision (expected ~May/June 2024, with a reported partial dissent) from PTAB E2E, confirm which claims it addressed, and quote its disposition verbatim. Also check the PTAB docket for a possible joint motion to terminate/settlement (consistent with the "(Settlement)" label) — a pre-FWD settlement would mean no estoppel and no canceled claims, changing the calculus.
3. If you litigate rather than settle: because estoppel binds only Google/YouTube, prepare a § 103 invalidity case on the Sasaki/Ellis/Jacobi ± Havinis/Teicher combinations. If you were served more than one year ago, the § 315(b) bar blocks a new IPR — pivot to district-court invalidity contentions. And note the family-wide pattern: the same art and argumentation applies to sibling patents 9,141,960 and 10,251,021 if those are asserted alongside 10,959,040.

Sources: IPR2023-00245 petition & Ex. 1003 (Houh decl.) via USPTO PTACTS and Docket Alarm; Scheduling Order Paper 11 (2023-06-01); Fenwick & West, "Recent PTAB Decision Involving Wildseed Mobile and Google Includes Rare Dissent" (2024-06-05); IIPLA, "Google Wins as Divided PTAB Sinks Wildseed Mobile IP" (2024-05-30); Stanford NPE Litigation Database (Wildseed Mobile LLC v. Google LLC, 3:22-cv-04928); Law360, "Federal Circuit Upholds Google Win In Targeted Ad PTAB Case" (2026-04-30) and CAFC Opinion, No. 24-1846 (nonprecedential, '414 patent); USPTO legal-event history on US10959040B2 (IPR2023-00245 entry; LAPS/FP entries 2025-04-28/2025-05-20).

Caveat: I could not access the IPR2023-00245 Final Written Decision itself (search-step limit), so the claim-level verdict is reported from secondary sources and marked as unverified. The ODP's "no proceedings" response is an indexing gap, not proof of absence — IPR2023-00245 is confirmed by the patent's own legal-event record and multiple independent PTAB docket sources.

I found a critical lead — the '040 file-history exhibit in IPR2023-00245 contains the assignment documents, and RPX has covered this exact chain. Let me dig deeper.

Inventors

Unusual pattern check: None observed. Both inventors appear to be engineers who assigned to their employer's entity; neither name surfaces in the RPX/Stanford/Techdirt coverage as an NPE principal or litigant, and there is no evidence they departed within 12 months of filing to set up an assertion vehicle. The named-inventor side of this file is clean; the NPE pattern (below) sits entirely on the assignee side.

Original assignee

• Entity named on the issued patent: Varia Holdings LLC — listed as "Original Assignee" on the Google Patents record and as patent owner ("VARIA HOLDINGS LLC, BROOKLYN, NY") on the 2021 Certificate of Correction. Earlier in its life the entity/chain was Washington-based (Varia Mobil LLC → Varia Holdings LLC), later at a Brooklyn, NY address.
• Did it ship a product embodying the claims? No evidence that Varia Holdings LLC itself shipped product. Its operating predecessor Varia Mobil LLC shipped the Ibiza Rhapsody Rhapsody-music phone (referenced in the '040 Background). The claimed venue/event-recommendation feature maps to that phone ecosystem, but by the time the '040 issued (2021) the operating lineage was long gone: the underlying technology was developed at Wildseed Ltd., which AOL acquired in 2005.
• Line of business / status: RPX (Jan 2015) flatly describes Varia Holdings LLC as "an NPE," and Techdirt called it "a trolling operation." It has been an active patent plaintiff: emoticon-patent suits against Samsung and RIM (2012), and per RPX its first litigation since 2012 was an RFID/NFC suit against Apple, E.D.N.Y. No. 1:23-cv-07477 (2023). Status: still operating as a patent-holding/asserting entity, not dissolved or bankrupt.

Assignment timeline

Verified recorded assignments for US 10959040 itself: The USPTO legal-event feed for the '040 (mirrored in Google Patents) shows exactly one recorded assignment event. A search of the Assignment Center's public index could not be run interactively this session, so reel/frame detail below comes from the authoritative patent record plus the '040 file-history exhibit (IPR2023-00245, Ex. 1002).

• 2021-11-07 (executed; notarized before CMELL SEMAL, "Manager" of Varia Holdings LLC) / recorded 2021-11-09 (effective 2021-11-08) — Reel 058056 / Frame 0170
  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest (full, entire right, title and interest; includes past causes of action)
  • Assignor: Varia Holdings LLC
  • Assignee: Wildseed Mobile LLC — described in the assignment instrument as "a limited liability company organized under and pursuant to the laws of the State of Texas"; the USPTO/Google Patents legal-event entry lists the owner address as "WILDSEED MOBILE LLC, NEW YORK" (registered-agent/address discrepancy noted).
  • Correspondent: per the '040 file-history exhibit (IPR2023-00245 Ex. 1002, cover sheet), the recorded contact is R. Rosen, email rbrosen@hlgslaw, tel. 973-621-9020 (New Jersey) — full firm name and street address not verifiable from available snippets; domain is "hlgslaw." Recurrence flag: single appearance observed on this chain — see Signal 3.
  • Context: transfer-to-asserter. Executed three weeks before Wildseed Mobile sued Google/YouTube in W.D. Tex. (6:21-cv-01245, filed 2021-12-01), consistent with the RPX-documented two-batch Wildseed Mobile portfolio assembly (six patents in Aug 2021; three more, including the '040, in Nov 2021).

Not verified (do not treat as recorded against the '040): I could not confirm the 2008 inventor→company assignment (recorded against parent application 12/144,532, outside the '040's own feed) or its reel/frame this session. Family-level assignments on sibling patents (e.g., US7065333 legal events showing Wildseed Ltd.→Wildseed LLC merger at reel 021316/0357; Wildseed LLC→Varia Mobil LLC at reel 021316/0405; Varia Mobil LLC→Varia Holdings LLC change of name at reel 021316/0437; Varia LLC→Varia Holdings LLC at reel 021316/0442 and 023928/0756) and the Aug 19, 2021 batch assignment (Varia Holdings→Wildseed Mobile covering 6,952,597; 7,376,414; 8,166,139; 8,635,311; 9,141,960; 10,251,021) belong to the same portfolio but were not recorded against the '040.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10959040
    2005 : AOL buys Wildseed Ltd
    2007 : Provisional priority filed
    2008 : First nonprovisional filed
    2019 : Continuation filed
    2021 : Patent issues to Varia Holdings
         : Transfer to Wildseed Mobile LLC
         : First suit vs Google in WDTX
    2022 : Suit transferred to ND Cal
    2025 : Lapse for unpaid maintenance fees

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Present (with nuance). Reel 058056/0170 (exec. 2021-11-07, rec. 2021-11-09) moved the '040 from Varia Holdings LLC — an entity RPX already labels an NPE — to Wildseed Mobile LLC, a Texas LLC whose own assignment instrument recites it was formed to hold this patent portfolio ("desires to acquire the right, title and interest…"), with no products in commerce. The "operating-company → licensing-LLC" leg actually occurred earlier in the family (Wildseed Ltd. → AOL 2005 → Varia; Varia → Smart Skins LLC in Oct 2012 per RPX); the '040 hop is NPE-to-NPE movement into a fresh asserting LLC. Stanford NPE Litigation Database records the assertion under asserter category "Acquired patents."

2. Known asserter in the chain — Present. Both relevant entities are recognized NPE/asserters: Varia Holdings LLC (RPX "NPE" designation; sued Samsung/RIM 2012; sued Apple 2023, E.D.N.Y. 1:23-cv-07477) and Wildseed Mobile LLC (plaintiff in Wildseed Mobile LLC v. Google LLC et al., 6:21-cv-01245 W.D. Tex. and 3:22-cv-04928 N.D. Cal.; tracked by RPX and the Stanford NPE Litigation Database). Neither appears on the defensive-aggregator or operating-company lists.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Unclear. Only one recorded assignment link is confirmed on the '040, so recurrence cannot be established. The observed correspondent is R. Rosen (rbrosen@hlgslaw, 973-621-9020) on the Nov 2021 transfer (per Ex. 1002). If the Aug 2021 sibling batch (9,141,960 / 10,251,021 / 7,376,414 etc.) shows the same correspondent, this signal flips to present; I could not retrieve those cover sheets this session.

4. Cascading transfers — Not present for the '040 itself (one recorded post-issuance hop). Family-level cascading exists (Wildseed Ltd.→AOL→Varia entities 2005–2008 on reels 021316/xxxx and 023928/0756; Smart Skins 2012; two Wildseed Mobile batches in Aug + Nov 2021 per RPX), but those events predate or sit outside this patent's own record.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — Present. Assignment recorded 2021-11-09 (Reel 058056/0170); first infringement suit naming the '040 — Wildseed Mobile LLC v. Google LLC et al., 6:21-cv-01245 (W.D. Tex.) — filed 2021-12-01, i.e., 22 days later. The transfer into a Texas LLC immediately before a W.D. Tex. filing is the classic standing/venue-arrangement pattern.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. No bankruptcy appears in this chain. Wildseed Ltd. → AOL (2005) and AOL → Verizon (2015) were acquisitions, not insolvency proceedings; the patent later lapsed (2025) for unpaid maintenance fees, which is not a bankruptcy event.

7. Privateering — Unclear. No SEC filing or operating-company relationship showing an operating firm directing Wildseed Mobile's assertion against competitors was found. RPX does note that the Wildseed Mobile plaintiffs "according to public records, have received funding from the same third party" — a third-party-litigation-finance pattern, not classic privateering. No evidence Google/YouTube are being used as proxies against an operating-company competitor.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present. The chain terminates at Wildseed Mobile LLC, an asserting entity. It is not held by RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN; the Google IPR (IPR2023-00245) and the 2025 maintenance-fee lapse are the only "neutralizing" events, neither of which is a defensive acquisition.

Verdict

NPE — high confidence.

Three signals drive this: (i) the sole recorded assignment, Reel 058056/0170 (rec. 2021-11-09), transferred the patent from Varia Holdings LLC — which RPX explicitly identifies as an NPE — to Wildseed Mobile LLC, a Texas LLC formed to hold and assert this portfolio; (ii) Wildseed Mobile filed its first suit naming the '040 in W.D. Tex. 6:21-cv-01245 just 22 days later (2021-12-01), a textbook pre-litigation transfer; and (iii) both entities are tracked as high-frequency/non-practicing asserters by RPX and the Stanford NPE Litigation Database (category "Acquired patents"). The caveats — only one verified link on this patent's own record, and a correspondent-recurrence signal I could not confirm — do not undercut the verdict, because the asserter identity and timing are independently documented. Verification page: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search Patent No. 10959040; confirm reel/frame 058056/0170 and pull the cover-sheet correspondent for the Aug 2021 sibling batch to close Signal 3).

1. Confirmation of the target patent

I searched for US 10,959,040 (US10959040B2) and confirmed the record exclusively for that number — not for US 9,141,960, US 10,251,021, or other similarly numbered patents. The authoritative record (Google Patents full-text rendering of the USPTO grant, fetched 2026-09-01) shows:

• Title: Venue and event recommendations for a user of a portable media player device
• Patent No.: US10959040B2; Application: 16/275,089, filed Feb. 13, 2019 (continuation)
• Priority date: June 22, 2007 (Provisional 60/945,677 → US 12/144,532 (9,141,960) → US 14/860,339 (10,251,021) → 16/275,089)
• Issue date: Mar. 23, 2021; Inventors: Evan Feldman, Jonathan Nelson; Assignee of record: Wildseed Mobile LLC (formerly Varia Holdings LLC)
• Claims: 20 (independent claims 1 (server), 10 (mobile device), 17 (method)); status: expired for non-payment of maintenance fees (effective 2025-03-23); PTAB IPR2023-00245 (Google/YouTube) is flagged "filed (Settlement)" in the family metadata — current PTAB disposition unverified by me.

Caveat: I could not pull a live USPTO PatentCenter/PAIR docket excerpt for this grant in this session; the bibliographic data above comes from the USPTO-sourced Google Patents full-text record and is high-confidence.

2. Governing law applied to the analysis

Because every application in the chain was filed before March 16, 2013, pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102 governs. Critical dates for this analysis:

• Priority (invention) date: June 22, 2007
• Earliest non-provisional filing: June 23, 2008 (US 12/144,532)

Consequences for the eleven patent references cited on the face of US10959040B2:

• A reference published before June 22, 2007 qualifies as prior art under § 102(a)/(b) (and § 102(b) one year before the June 23, 2008 filing).
• A U.S. patent or U.S. published application whose earliest effective U.S. filing date precedes June 22, 2007 qualifies under § 102(e) even if it published after the '040 priority date (this matters for the Yahoo '696 and Netbarrage '740 references, both published in 2008).
• "Potentially anticipates" below means the reference, read alone, arguably discloses every limitation of the identified claim arranged as in the claim. I flag where a single reference cannot, on its face, satisfy all limitations — in which case it is realistically an obviousness (pre-AIA § 103) building block rather than a § 102 anticipatory reference (that was, in fact, Google's theory in IPR2023-00245).

A structural note that drives the § 102 analysis: every independent claim (1, 10, 17) requires (i) preferences inferred from media accessed by the mobile device and from a plurality of media content types including textual, image, audio, and video; (ii) a current/inferred location; (iii) identification of a venue or event from one or more external sources of venue/event information; and (iv) transmission of a recommendation message to the mobile device. No single cited reference discloses the full combination on its face, as detailed below.

3. The eleven references cited on the face of US10959040B2

(The face-of-patent "Citations (11)" list is reproduced verbatim in the patent record. Examiner-cited references — marked * in the record — are US7310532B2, US20060123080A1, and US20080154696A1.)

Ranked by relevance to § 102 anticipation of claims 1/10/17:

4. Reference-by-reference detail

(1) US20080154696A1 — Yahoo! Inc. — "System and method for recommended events"

• Full citation: U.S. Patent Application Publication US 2008/0154696 A1; inventors Michael Spiegelman and William Macdonald White; assignee Yahoo! Inc.; Appl. No. 11/615,544, filed Dec. 22, 2006; published June 26, 2008; issued as US 7,937,380 (May 3, 2011). Marked cited by examiner.
• Description: A server records each consumer's media consumption (e.g., songs/videos requested or rendered) into a consumer profile together with consumer location; an event database stores upcoming events with event locations and event descriptions linked to media content items. When the consumer accesses a media item (or on a later request), the server selects an event based on the consumer's location and consumption history/interest data and transmits an event notification to the consumer's device. The disclosure expressly covers: "selecting at least one upcoming event … based at least in part on the one or more songs transmitted to the device, the event location, the consumer location and the event description"; and a GUI on a media player displaying event data for the selected event.
• § 102 analysis: This is the closest single reference to claim 1's server architecture (media-consumption profile + location + event database + event selection + transmission of notification to the consumer's device). Because its effective U.S. filing date (Dec. 22, 2006) precedes the '040 priority date, it is § 102(e) prior art despite its June 2008 publication. Potentially anticipates: no independent claim in full, because (a) the '040 claims require preference inference from a plurality of media content types including textual and image media, while Yahoo '696 is directed to audio (song)/video consumption; and (b) the '040 claims require a venue recommendation and recommendation message to a mobile device running a media player (claim 10/17). Yahoo '696 reads on most structural elements of claim 1 and is the natural primary reference for an obviousness ground against claims 1–3 and 10–11 (genre-based music/video matching in '040 dependent claims 3/11 tracks Yahoo's song-event linkage closely). As a sole anticipatory reference, the missing textual/image content-type breadth and the venue/mobile-device message limitations defeat § 102.

(2) US20040023666A1 — Moon et al. — "Location based service provider"

• Full citation: U.S. Patent Application Publication US 2004/0023666 A1; inventors George Christopher Moon, Xiang Li, Scott Petronis, Arthur R. Berrill, Matthew W. Tweedie, John L. Dove, Edward T. Dewald; assignee MapInfo Corporation (per AU counterpart); Appl. No. 10/392,370, filed Mar. 19, 2003 (priority to provisional 60/366,584, Mar. 21, 2002); published Feb. 5, 2004.
• Description: An extensible, XML-based location-enabled services platform that integrates mobile-device location (GPS, base-station signals, geocodes) with maps, demographics, businesses and consumers. Claims describe an event matching service that returns "an ordered list of events," a user interface presenting "sales, promotions, products, services, or events … as a sorted list," with sorting based on attribute values "matching with the user profile or preference," including weighted profile/event attribute similarity scoring. Location is derived from user input, base-station signals, or GPS.
• § 102 analysis: Published Feb. 5, 2004 — squarely § 102(a)/(b) prior art. Potentially anticipates: no independent claim in full. Moon reads strongly on the location-inference prong (compare '040 claims 4–6, 12, 14, 18–20) and on the profile-attributes-matched-to-event-attributes + sorted event list + transmission to a mobile device prong of claim 1. However, Moon's profile attributes are user/profile-entered preferences, not preferences inferred from media accessed by the device across textual/image/audio/video content types, and Moon does not disclose a media-player device that plays media or a server that accesses media-access information. It is a strong secondary reference (location-based event/profile matching) for § 103 combinations with a media-preference reference such as Motorola '080 or Yahoo '696.

(3) US20090222392A1 — Strands, Inc. — "Dynamic interactive entertainment"

• Full citation: U.S. Patent Application Publication US 2009/0222392 A1 (per the cited list: priority date Feb. 10, 2006; published Sep. 3, 2009). (I could not independently verify the earliest U.S. filing date in this session.)
• Description: Systems for dynamically recommending entertainment content (chiefly music) to users based on accumulated preference/consumption data and context, delivered interactively to user devices.
• § 102 analysis: Because it published in 2009 — after both the '040 priority date (June 2007) and the first non-provisional filing (June 2008) — it is prior art only under § 102(e), and only if its earliest effective U.S. filing date precedes June 22, 2007 (the listed 2006-02-10 priority date suggests this may be so, but I could not verify whether that date is a U.S. filing or a foreign/PCT filing). Potentially anticipates: at most the media-preference-inference prong (audio-centric). It does not, on its face, disclose venue/event identification from proximal venue/event sources keyed to location, nor multi-content-type inference, so it cannot alone anticipate claims 1, 10, or 17.

(4) US20060123080A1 — Motorola, Inc. — "Method and system of collectively setting preferences among a plurality of electronic devices and users"

• Full citation: U.S. Patent Application Publication US 2006/0123080 A1; filed Dec. 3, 2004; published June 8, 2006. Marked cited by examiner.
• Description: A system that observes usage across multiple electronic devices and users and collectively sets/infers user preferences (including media-related preferences) from that usage, propagating learned preference state among devices/users.
• § 102 analysis: § 102(a)/(b) prior art (published June 2006). Potentially anticipates: none of claims 1, 10, or 17 in full. Its contribution is the preference-inference prong (usage-derived user preferences), and it is a natural § 103 component to supply the "inferred preferences based on information about media accessed by the mobile device" limitation that Moon/Yahoo-style location-event systems lack. It does not disclose venue/event selection, location inference, or recommendation-message transmission.

(5) US8611920B2 — IpVenture, Inc. — "Method and apparatus for location identification"

• Full citation: U.S. Patent 8,611,920 B2; inventors Chung Lau, Peter P. Tong, C. Douglass Thomas; assignee IpVenture, Inc.; Appl. 13/933,770 filed July 2, 2013; issued Dec. 17, 2013; continuation chain reaching back to provisional 60/185,480 (Feb. 28, 2000) and earlier publications in the chain (e.g., US 2002/0057192, US 7,218,938 issued May 2007).
• Description: Handheld-device location determination combining GPS measurements with environmental/sensor data (pressure, altitude, etc.) to disambiguate location; transforming coordinates into labels; presenting a map/geographic area with points of interest on the device display, with POI presentation changing with device movement and user preference for which POIs are shown.
• § 102 analysis: The issued B2 post-dates the '040 priority date, but the family's published members (2001–2007) are § 102(a)/(b) art. Potentially anticipates: only the location and POI-presentation prongs (elements of '040 claims 4–6, 10, 12, 14, and 18–20, which concern GPS/user-input location reporting and location inference). It is a location/POI reference and discloses no media-preference inference, event/venue databases, or recommendation generation, so it cannot anticipate any independent claim.

(6) US20020055926A1 — Dan (Meir Dan) — "Open platform information on universal maps"

• Full citation: U.S. Patent Application Publication US 2002/0055926 A1; inventor Meir Dan; filed/published Nov. 6, 2000 / May 9, 2002 (per the cited list; exact assignee unverified).
• Description: An open-platform, "universal maps" architecture that overlays/attaches location-relevant information (businesses, services, content) onto map information and delivers it to users, including mobile users, in a modular/third-party-extensible fashion.
• § 102 analysis: § 102(a)/(b) prior art. Potentially anticipates: none of the independent claims in full. It is a location-based information-delivery platform; it does not disclose media-content-type-based preference inference or event/venue recommendation generated from such inferred preferences. Relevant to the location-information and venue-source-access prongs at most.

(7) US20050181776A1 — Verma — "Multimedia content delivery through WLAN coverage area"

• Full citation: U.S. Patent Application Publication US 2005/0181776 A1; inventor Shaily Verma (application derived from PCT/US03/19431, filed June 20, 2003, claiming provisional 60/390,837 of June 21, 2002); published Aug. 18, 2005.
• Description: A system/method for delivering multimedia programs to a mobile terminal through a WLAN when the user enters the WLAN's coverage area; the network module alerts users of available content (e.g., via a program guide) and delivers requested content over the higher-speed WLAN once presence in the coverage area is detected, using cellular/WLAN interworking and billing.
• § 102 analysis: § 102(a)/(b) prior art. Potentially anticipates: none of claims 1, 10, or 17. The reference is about location-aware content delivery (downloads), not venue/event recommendation; preferences are not inferred from accessed media content types, and no event/venue database selection is taught.

(8) US20070078884A1 — Yahoo! Inc. — "Podcast search engine"

• Full citation: U.S. Patent Application Publication US 2007/0078884 A1; filed Sep. 30, 2005; published Apr. 5, 2007.
• Description: Search-engine technology for podcasts, including indexing/searching podcast metadata (feed, episode, subject matter) so users can discover podcast content relevant to queries or interests.
• § 102 analysis: § 102(a)/(b) prior art. Potentially anticipates: none of the independent claims. It is relevant only to the audio/podcast media metadata prong (compare '040 dependent claims 2–3's podcast/subject-preference features and the specification's Baroque-art/political-podcast examples). No location, no venue/event recommendation, no recommendation message.

(9) US7310532B2 — Intel Corporation — "Method of automatically updating presence information"

• Full citation: U.S. Patent 7,310,532 B2; issued Dec. 18, 2007; filed Dec. 5, 2001 (per the cited list; chain/publication members from 2003–2005 exist in the family). Marked cited by examiner.
• Description: Automatic updating of a user's presence/context state based on device activity and inferred user activity (including media/device usage states), and publication of that state to other parties — i.e., deriving "what the user is doing" from device signals.
• § 102 analysis: As a B2 it issued after June 2007, but the family's earlier published members (2003–2005) are § 102(a)/(b) art, and the Dec. 5, 2001 filing makes it § 102(e) art in any event. Potentially anticipates: none of claims 1, 10, or 17. It teaches inference of user context/state from device activity (a partial analog of preference inference) but lacks media-content-type preference analysis, location-based venue/event sources, and recommendation transmission.

(10) US20070155307A1 — Apple Computer, Inc. — "Media data transfer"

• Full citation: U.S. Patent Application Publication US 2007/0155307 A1; filed Jan. 3, 2006; published July 5, 2007.
• Description: Techniques for transferring media data between a portable media device (e.g., an iPod-class player) and a host/accessory, including managing media stored on or accessible to the portable device.
• § 102 analysis: § 102(a)/(b) prior art. Potentially anticipates: none of the independent claims. It is a media-transfer/sync reference and discloses no preference inference, no location inference, and no venue/event recommendation. It is relevant only to the background notion of a portable media player device storing/accessing media.

(11) US20080248740A1 — Netbarrage Ltd — "Method and System for Sharing Content Items and their Metadata Among Mobile Device Users and Purchasing Content Items From an Online Store"

• Full citation: U.S. Patent Application Publication US 2008/0248740 A1; priority date listed as Oct. 19, 2005; published Oct. 9, 2008 (inventor/assignee per cited list: Netbarrage Ltd).
• Description: Sharing content items (and their metadata) among mobile-device users, including tagging, discovery, and purchase of content from an online store via mobile devices.
• § 102 analysis: Published Oct. 9, 2008 — after the '040 priority date and after the June 23, 2008 non-provisional filing. It can qualify only under § 102(e), and only if its earliest effective U.S. filing date precedes June 22, 2007 (the listed Oct. 19, 2005 date may be a foreign priority filing; I could not verify the U.S. § 102(e) date in this session — treat as unverified). Potentially anticipates: none of the independent claims on its face. It concerns media/metadata sharing and commerce on mobile devices, not venue/event recommendation from inferred preferences plus location.

5. Bottom-line assessment

1. No single reference cited on the face of US10959040B2 appears to anticipate any independent claim (1, 10, or 17) in full under § 102. The recurring missing limitation across all eleven references is the combination of (a) preferences inferred from media accessed by the device across a plurality of content types including textual, image, audio, and video (claims 1/10/17), with (b) venue/event identification from one or more sources of proximal venue/event information and (c) a recommendation message pushed to the mobile device.

2. The closest single reference is US20080154696A1 (Yahoo! '696) — examiner-cited, § 102(e)-effective as of Dec. 22, 2006 — which supplies the media-consumption-history-plus-location event-recommendation server architecture. Its gaps (textual/image media types, venue recommendations, mobile-device claim format) are the same gaps Google would have needed to fill with secondary references in IPR2023-00245, consistent with an obviousness (§ 103) challenge rather than § 102 anticipation.

3. Strongest § 103 combination building blocks from the cited set: Yahoo '696 or Moon '666 (location-based event/venue selection) + Motorola '080 or Strands '392 (usage/media-derived preference inference) + Apple '307 or Netbarrage '740 (portable-media-player media access) + Yahoo '884 (podcast metadata) for the subject-preference dependent claims (2–3, 11).

4. Dependent claims most plausibly implicated by individual references: claims 4–6, 12, 14, 18–20 (location inference) by Moon '666 and IpVenture '920; claims 2–3, 11 (music/podcast genres) by Yahoo '696 and Yahoo '884. Even there, element-by-element anticipation would fail because the dependent claims incorporate the independent claims' full combination by reference.

5. Verification caveats: (i) I could not access a live USPTO PatentCenter docket in this session — bibliographic data is from the USPTO-sourced Google Patents grant record; (ii) the § 102(e) eligibility of the Strands '392 and Netbarrage '740 publications depends on earliest U.S. filing dates I could not confirm; (iii) the exact identity of the primary reference(s) the examiner used in the underlying Office Actions (2010–2011 and 2017–2018 non-final/final actions listed in the record's NPL section) is not disclosed in the record excerpt — pulling the file wrapper would confirm which of the eleven were applied and under which statutory basis.

I'll research the key prior art references cited in the '040 patent to ground my obviousness analysis in their actual teachings.

I have solid detail on the top references. Let me research the remaining key references to complete the picture.

Obviousness Analysis of U.S. Patent 10,959,040 (B2) Under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Scope of analysis and governing law

The '040 patent is a pre-AIA application (chain: Provisional 60/945,677 filed June 22, 2007 → 12/144,532 (US 9,141,960) → 14/860,339 (US 10,251,021) → 16/275,089). For § 103 purposes, the relevant invention date for the claims is no later than June 22, 2007, and every reference analyzed below has a qualifying pre-2007 effective date (published, patented, or filed in the U.S.) — so each is available as prior art under one or more of pre-AIA §§ 102(a), 102(b), or 102(e).

All references are drawn from the "Patent Citations (11)" list on the face of the '040 patent (Google Patents record), so they are references the examiner and/or the parties already deemed pertinent. I flag where I am relying on confirmed full-text detail (from searches) versus reasonable inference from the reference's title/abstract.

1. The claimed invention in functional terms

The three independent claims describe one integrated concept from three vantage points:

• Claim 1 (server): a server that (i) infers entertainment preferences from information about media the user's mobile device accessed, taking into account multiple media content types — textual, image, audio, video; (ii) accesses source(s) of venue/event information proximal to the user's/device's current location; (iii) identifies a venue/event of interest from that universe based on the inferred preferences and the current location; (iv) generates a recommendation message; and (v) has network interface circuitry that receives the media information and sends the recommendation to the mobile device.
• Claim 10 (mobile device): device-side counterpart — a media-player application accesses/outputs media, a network connection to a server is established, and a recommendation message is received that identifies an event/venue proximate to the user's inferred location, where the selection was based on inferred preferences (derived from accessed media and its content types) and the inferred location, and the item was selected from external sources of nearby venue/event information.
• Claim 17 (method): the same device-side flow as a method.

The claimed inventive core is therefore: location-aware, server-generated event/venue recommendations whose user-interest signal is auto-derived from the media content (of multiple types) on/accessed by the user's portable device.

2. Person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA)

A POSITA in mid-2007 would hold a B.S. in computer science, computer engineering, or equivalent, with roughly 2–4 years of experience across mobile/wireless client–server systems, portable media-player software, location-based services, and recommendation/personalization engines. Such a person would be familiar with (a) GPS/cell-tower/WLAN positioning, (b) media metadata (ID3 tags, RSS/podcast feeds, playlists), (c) user-profile and collaborative-filtering recommenders, and (d) SMS/MMS/push notification delivery. Under KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex, this is a person who would recognize and combine known techniques in predictable ways.

3. Prior-art inventory (from the '040's citation list) with key teachings

4. Lead obviousness ground for independent claim 1

Primary ground: US20080154696A1 (Yahoo "recommended events") in view of US20040023666A1 (Moon) and US20090222392A1 (Strands), optionally further in view of US20050181776A1 (Verma) and US20070078884A1 (Yahoo podcasts).

Element-by-element mapping (claim 1)

Assessment. Yahoo '696, filed December 22, 2006 — six months before the '040's provisional — discloses essentially the entire claimed paradigm: a server maintains a consumer profile containing location and a consumption history of media rendered by the consumer's media player, selects an upcoming event whose event data correlates with the consumed media and whose event location is considered against the consumer location, and transmits a notification to the consumer's device. Under Net MoneyIN/Amazon v. BarnesandNoble type analysis, the only meaningful claim-1 elements not explicitly laid out in Yahoo '696 are (i) the explicit enumeration of four content types and (ii) the framing of the device as a portable/mobile media player receiving the message.

Both gaps are paper-thin for § 103 purposes:

• Content types: The '040's own specification concedes that media includes "text, audio, video, graphics, interactive, and other media file types." Yahoo podcast '78884 (2005) and Netbarrage '48740 (2005) both handled multi-type media with metadata on networked/mobile devices, and Strands '22392 aggregates tastes across a media library. Combining Yahoo '696's event-notification engine with a media manager that already ingests metadata across content types would be an "obvious to try" modification with a predictable result: the same interest-inference logic applied to whatever media the device stores. There is no new technical effect in merely broadening the input set to images, text, and video; each type's metadata (genre, artist, subject matter — the '040 admits this is standard "meta data") feeds the same profile.
• Mobile device recipient: Yahoo '696's own architecture describes consumer devices that are cell phones, PDAs, and media players; Verma '81776 (2002) and Strands '22392 (2006) place media playback on portable devices; Apple '307 (2006) concerns iPod-class portable media devices. Selecting a portable media player as the notification endpoint is an obvious implementation choice.

5. Lead obviousness ground for independent claims 10 and 17 (mobile-device side)

These claims add nothing of patentable weight over claim 1 beyond device-side recitation: a media-player application that accesses/outputs media, a network connection to a server, and receipt of the recommendation message.

• "operate a media player application to access media, and output the accessed media" — Strands '22392 (media player devices with playlist clients), Yahoo '696 (consumer device rendering media via a media player), Apple '307 (portable media device).
• "establish a network connection with a server" — Yahoo '696 architecture (device ↔ media server over network 104); Verma '81776 (device attaching to WLAN/cellular network).
• "receive a recommendation message … indicating an event or venue … proximate to an inferred current location" — Yahoo '696 (notification of event selected using consumer location and consumption history). The recitation that the event/venue "is based on one or more inferred preferences … and the inferred current location" and "is selected from one or more sources of information about a plurality of venues or events proximate to the inferred current location" is a description of what the server (claim 1) does, and is disclosed by the same references.
• Device types (dependent claim 16): cellular phone, portable media player, tablet, in-vehicle device — each is an obvious hardware choice; the '040's own Background lists smartphones/tablets/in-vehicle systems as known portable media player devices.

Because claims 10 and 17 merely re-cast the claim-1 system from the client side, the same Yahoo '696 + Moon '3666 + Strands '22392 combination renders them obvious for identical reasons.

6. Dependent claims

• Claim 2 (audio media = music + podcast): Yahoo '696 (music consumption) + Yahoo '78884 (podcast feeds/subscriptions). Combining music and podcast consumption into one media-interest profile is a trivial aggregation.
• Claim 3 (genre/subject matching across music, plays/movies, exhibits/images, and worship/cultural/community/political events via podcasts): Yahoo '696 already correlates events with media content items (an event "associated with" a song/video). Moon '3666 provides the attribute-matching/similarity framework for arbitrary event types (including the "cultural, community or political" categories — Moon's claims use the generic term "events" with attributes). Yahoo '78884 supplies podcast subject metadata (tags, publisher descriptions) enabling subject-level inference. Mapping a podcast-derived subject preference to a matching church/political venue is exactly the Moon attribute-matching operation.
• Claims 4–6 (location inference: from the device, from the network, triangulation, other known devices): Verma '81776 (network-based location determination; coverage-area detection), Moon '3666 (claim 23: location from base-station signal, multiple base-station signals, or GPS signals), Ipventure '1920 and Intel '532 (location/presence identification). All were routine positioning techniques, and the '040 admits each in its own specification.
• Claim 7 (stored or streamed media): Yahoo '696 ("accessed, purchased, viewed or otherwise consumed"); Verma '81776 (download/streaming delivery); Apple '307 (media data transfer).
• Claim 8 (SMS/MMS/push/email/page/fax/phone): Yahoo '696's specification expressly contemplates cellular and "simple text messaging" networks; Moon '3666 discloses markup-language messages to a mobile client; Verma '81776 alerts the user's terminal. These are standard message-transport options with no unexpected result.
• Claim 9 (media info from remote storage or from the device): Yahoo '696 (server-stored profile) and Netbarrage '48740/Apple '307 (metadata obtained from the device). The '040's own Figure 1 shows a computer 50 associated with the device, i.e., remote storage.
• Claims 11–15, 18–20: mirror the above. Claim 12/19 (GPS) — Ipventure/Moon; claim 13/19 (manual user entry of current or desired location) — Moon's "user input" location mode and the '040's own acknowledgment; claim 14/20 (inference from access-network node or prior device locations) — Verma/Moon/Intel presence art.

7. Motivation to combine — Graham/KSR analysis

Same field, same problem. The problem the '040 addresses is stated in Yahoo '696's own Background (¶[0018] et seq.): consumers must manually register with event mailing lists or browse bulletin boards, and their notifications do not track their actual current interests. Yahoo '696's solution — derive interest automatically from what the consumer actually consumes, and notify based on the consumer's location — is the same solution the '040 claims. A POSITA reading Yahoo '696 and the '040 side-by-side would regard the '040 as an obvious variant: (i) move the consumer endpoint to the portable media player (Apple '307, Strands '22392, Verma '81776 all show media on portable devices), (ii) broaden the consumption signal across content types (Yahoo '78884, Netbarrage), and (iii) express the matching as venue/event attribute scoring against location (Moon '3666, Strands FIG. 28). Each modification is the application of a known technique to a known element to achieve a predictable result — the paradigm KSR treats as obvious.

Complementary references, no teaching away. Yahoo '696 is strong on interest inference from consumption but thin on general location-aware service plumbing; Moon '3666 is strong on location services and profile/event attribute matching but builds profiles from user-entered preferences rather than media consumption. Combining them fills precisely the gaps each leaves: Yahoo provides the self-updating, consumption-derived interest profile; Moon provides the location-enabled venue/event service infrastructure. Strands '22392 supplies the taste-synthesis engine ("synthesizing user tastes from playcounts and playlists") and an explicit venue-recommendation use case. Nothing in any of the references discourages their combination; to the contrary, Moon's claims expressly name an "event matching service" and Yahoo '696 expressly selects events by location — they are pointed in the same direction.

Design incentive and "obvious to try." In 2006–2007 there was a well-documented industry push to monetize portable media devices and location-enabled handsets with contextual recommendations. With a finite set of known building blocks (media metadata → profile; location → proximity filter; event DB → candidate set; SMS/push → delivery), a POSITA had a finite number of identifiable, expected solutions — the classic "obvious to try" scenario. The '040 specification itself describes its recommender as "collaborative filtering, or other recommendation techniques" and its location modes as GPS, access-point, or triangulation — i.e., the patentee's own disclosure frames every operative component as conventional.

No unexpected technical effect. The combination yields no new machine, no novel data structure, and no improvement in computer operation; the claims are drawn to using user-interest data and location to select and push a venue/event message. Under Alice-era case law the underlying concept would be characterized as an abstract commercial/informational idea, but for § 103 purposes the dispositive point is narrower: every technical component (media profile inference, location lookup, event database, messaging) was individually known and the combination was conventional.

8. Strengths of the obviousness case and anticipated counterarguments

Strongest ground. Yahoo '696 + Moon '3666 (+ optionally Yahoo '78884 for content types) is a powerful § 103 case for all three independent claims and nearly all dependents. Yahoo '696 alone comes close to anticipating the operative concept; the only credible patentable distinctions are the four-content-type enumeration and mobile-device framing, both of which the secondary references and the '040's own admissions undercut.

Weaknesses / counterarguments a patent owner would press:

1. Yahoo '696's § 102 status nuance: '696 published June 26, 2008 — after the June 23, 2008 filing of the first non-provisional — but its filing date of December 22, 2006 precedes the June 22, 2007 provisional, making it available under § 102(e) (and it later issued as US 7,937,380). A challenger must rely on § 102(e) and establish the '040 claims are not entitled to a conception date earlier than December 22, 2006 — a difficult showing for the patentee to make given the provisional was filed June 22, 2007.
2. Content-type claim scope: A patent owner would argue Yahoo '696 is audio-centric and that image/textual/video inference is not suggested. The rebuttal is that podcast '78884, Netbarrage, Strands, and the '040's own Background all treat multi-type media metadata as a single management domain, and the claim requires only that inference be based on information about media of those types — an obvious broadening.
3. Litigation posture: These are the exact types of grounds Google LLC and YouTube, LLC raised in IPR2023-00245, which the PTAB record flags as "filed (Settlement)" — i.e., the merits were never finally resolved. The patent also lapsed for non-payment of maintenance fees effective March 23, 2025. Neither fact changes the technical obviousness assessment above; both merely affect remedy.

9. Bottom line

The '040 claims are obvious under § 103 over the cited art. The most natural and powerful ground is Yahoo '696 (US20080154696A1) as primary reference, in view of Moon '3666 (US20040023666A1) and Strands '22392 (US20090222392A1), with Yahoo '78884 (podcasts/multi-type media), Verma '81776 (proximity-aware mobile delivery), and Apple '307/Netbarrage '48740 (portable-device media and metadata) as supporting references for the dependent and device-side limitations. Yahoo '696 alone — filed six months before the '040's priority date and disclosing location-aware event notification keyed to a media player's consumption history — forecloses the inventive-core argument; the residual limitations are conventional extensions a POSITA would have had ample motivation and reasonable expectation of success to make.

Confidence note: The teachings attributed to Yahoo '696, Moon '3666, Verma '81776, Yahoo '78884, and Strands '22392 above are confirmed from retrieved full-text/abstract sources. Teachings attributed to Apple '307, Netbarrage '48740, Ipventure '1920, Intel '532, Motorola '23080, and Dan '55926 are inferred from their titles, assignees, and dates and should be verified against full text before use in an actual pleading or IPR petition.