US 10966015

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Let me verify the litigation and post-grant proceedings for this specific patent.

Let me confirm the outcome of the IPR2022-00388 proceeding on this specific patent.

US Patent 10,966,015 B2 — Analyst Summary

Scoping note: All identifiers below are reproduced literally from the sources. I searched for the exact string 10966015 and excluded the sibling family members (10,405,082; 11,432,065; 12,621,598) except where they are legally relevant (patent family / priority chain).

Bibliographic data

Assignee note / uncertainty: the Google Patents record shows a chain of reassignments — Staton Techiya, LLC → ST Portfolio Holdings, LLC (June 21, 2024) → Cases2Tech, LLC (June 21, 2024). The "current assignee" field is explicitly flagged by Google as an assumption, so treat the present owner as the 2024 assignee chain rather than as an authoritative chain-of-title conclusion. (patents.google.com/patent/US10966015/en)

Abstract (as issued)

"At least one embodiment is directed to a method for automatically activating ambient sound pass-through in an earphone in response to a detected keyword in the ambient sound field of the earphone user, the steps of the method comprising at least receiving at least one ambient sound microphone (ASM) signal; receiving at least one audio content (AC) signal; and comparing the ASM signal to a keyword and if the ASM signal matches a keyword then an AC gain is created."

Plain-language overview of the invention

The patent addresses sound-isolating (SI) earphones that "acoustically detach" a wearer from their surroundings. An ambient sound microphone (ASM) signal is fed to a Keyword Detection System (KDS). When a keyword (e.g., the wearer's name/nickname, or an emergency word such as "help") is detected, the earphone automatically passes ambient sound through to the ear canal receiver (ECR) by raising ASM gain and, optionally, lowering the audio-content (AC) gain — so the wearer hears the person addressing them. In a further embodiment, the detected keyword is mapped to a stored phone number that is automatically dialed.

Independent claims (3), in plain language

Claim 1 — Method for activating ambient sound pass-through. Receive an ASM signal and an AC signal; determine whether a keyword is matched to a portion of the ASM signal (match occurs when temporal or spectral patterns of the keyword and the signal portion match within a threshold average value); generate an ASM gain when matched; and apply the ASM gain to the ASM signal until a new keyword is detected or manually adjusted (i.e., the pass-through persists rather than being momentary).

Claim 9 — Method using a detected set of keywords, with controlled fade rates. Receive ASM and AC signals; compare the ASM signal to a set of keywords; if matched, create both an AC gain and an ASM gain; compare each new gain to the prior gain to determine whether it is rising or falling; apply the AC gain gradually at 5–30 dB/sec when increasing and −5 to −30 dB/sec when decreasing; apply the ASM gain over the same rate ranges; mix the modified AC and ASM signals; and send the mixed signal to a speaker.

Claim 12 — Device capable of receiving and identifying acoustic keywords. Comprises an ambient microphone, an ear-canal microphone, a speaker, a processor, and processor-readable memory storing acoustic characteristics of at least five verbal keywords. The processor identifies a keyword in the ambient signal when temporal/spectral patterns match within a threshold average value, and initiates one of: increase ambient gain, decrease gain of the acoustic signal sent to the speaker, decrease ambient gain, or increase gain of the speaker signal — the gain change being applied until a new keyword is identified or manually changed.

Dependent claims add: generating/applying a modified ASM signal (2, 6); generating/applying an AC gain and modified AC signal (3–5); mixing to a speaker (6–7); the category list of keywords (first name, surname, familiar/truncated form, nickname, phrase, emergency keyword) (8); ASM gain inverted against AC gain (10–11); wireless earphone (13); processor in a wirelessly connected phone (14); RAM on the earphone or phone respectively (15, 16); an occluding portion providing sound isolation (17); an eartip yielding at least 10 dB isolation (18).

Litigation and post-grant status (important for this patent specifically)

1. District court — Staton Techiya, LLC et al. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. et al., Nos. 2:21-cv-00413-JRG-RSP / 2:22-cv-00053-JRG-RSP (E.D. Tex.). Filed Nov. 5, 2021. The '015 patent was one of 14 asserted patents; accused products were described as Bixby-enabled smartphones and earphones. The claim-construction order expressly discusses the '082 and '015 patents together. (claim construction order)

2. IPR2022-00388 (Samsung v. Staton Techiya) — the '015 patent was cancelled as challenged. Final Written Decision dated Aug. 11, 2023, captioned "Determining All Challenged Claims Unpatentable, 35 U.S.C. § 318(a)." The Board held claims 1–13, 15, 17, and 18 unpatentable over Goldstein (US 8,150,044), Rothschild (US 8,594,341), Usher (US 2015/0215701), and Keady (US 8,522,916). Claims 14 and 16 were not among the challenged set. An inter partes review certificate (kind code K1) issued Oct. 31, 2023 (docketed Nov. 7, 2023). (FWD; Google Patents legal events.)

3. Unenforceability ruling. In the consolidated E.D. Tex. case, Judge J. Rodney Gilstrap's May 9, 2024 Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law found Techiya's asserted patents unenforceable under the unclean-hands doctrine, and a final judgment of June 21, 2024 dismissed the action with prejudice. (KIPO/IP-NAVI summary; Kirkland profile)

4. Federal Circuit appeal 24-1917. Techiya appealed the June 21, 2024 final judgment. On Dec. 20, 2024, the Federal Circuit issued a nonprecedential order dismissing appeal 24-1917 upon the parties' joint stipulation of voluntary dismissal under FRAP 42(b). (CAFC order PDF; CourtListener)

On your specific request for "CAFC 2026 dockets"

I did not locate any 2026 Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit docket naming patent 10,966,015 as the patent on appeal. The only CAFC matter I can tie directly to this patent is appeal 24-1917, which was dismissed in December 2024. The Techiya Federal Circuit activity that remains active in 2025–2026 concerns different patents in the same portfolio (e.g., Nos. 23-2290/23-2294/23-2305, dealing with the '400, '839, '982 patents). I therefore cannot confirm — and am explicitly flagging as unverified — any 2026 CAFC proceeding specific to the '015 patent. If a 2026 appeal exists, it did not surface in my searches, so I would not assert it.

I also want to be transparent about one limitation: my searches reached USPTO PTAB documents, E.D. Tex. filings, and Federal Circuit orders via secondary aggregators (Docket Alarm, CourtListener, the CAFC opinion server), not a direct live query of the USPTO PatentCenter or the CAFC docket system. The bibliographic data above matches the authoritative full text you supplied, so it is well-grounded; the litigation details are grounded in the cited documents but should be re-confirmed against PACER/PatentCenter if used for a legal conclusion.

I'll research this specific patent number across litigation databases and PTAB records.

Let me search for the specific litigation and PTAB records.

Litigation Summary — U.S. Patent No. 10,966,015 B2

Patent: US 10,966,015 B2 ("Automatic keyword pass-through system"), application 16/555,824, filed Aug. 29, 2019, granted Mar. 30, 2021, priority Oct. 23, 2017. Patent originally assigned to Staton Techiya, LLC; now shown as Cases2tech LLC / Strategic Portfolio Holdings LLC.

Based on my searches, the '015 patent has been the subject of two known proceedings (one district-court case and one IPR), plus an appeal of the district-court judgment. Here is what I found, grounded in the sources.

1. District Court — Staton Techiya, LLC et al. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. et al.

Details/status: The '015 patent was one of 14 asserted patents (U.S. Pat. Nos. 8,111,839; 8,254,591; 8,315,400; 9,124,982; 9,270,244; 9,491,542; 9,609,424; 10,405,082; 10,966,015; 10,979,836; 11,039,259; 11,057,701; 11,217,237; and 11,244,666). Plaintiffs accused Samsung's Bixby‑enabled smartphones and earphones (Galaxy S20, Galaxy Buds+, etc.) of infringement and sought enhanced damages for willful infringement.

On May 9, 2024 (opinion unsealed May 23, 2024), Judge Gilstrap found the asserted patents unenforceable under the unclean‑hands doctrine, concluding that former Samsung attorneys Seungho Ahn and Sungil Cho (founders of Synergy IP) improperly used confidential/privileged Samsung documents to formulate the suit. The court described the scheme as "dishonest, unfair, deceitful and repugnant to the rule of law." A final judgment issued June 21, 2024, dismissing Samsung's patent counterclaims and naming Samsung the prevailing party entitled to recover costs (a later order awarded Samsung substantial costs, with the '015 patent listed among the asserted patents in the cost dispute).

• Unified Patents case page: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/Texas%20Eastern%20District%20Court/case/2:21-cv-00413
• AO 120 / case documents: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/Texas_Eastern_District_Court/2--21-cv-00413/...
• ABA Journal summary: https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/scheme-by-former-samsung-lawyers-was-dishonest-unfair-deceitful-and-repugnant-judge-says

2. PTAB — Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. et al. v. Staton Techiya, LLC (IPR)

Priority art cited by Petitioner: Goldstein (US 8,150,044 B2), Rothschild (US 8,594,341 B2), Usher (US 2015/0215701 A1), and Keady (US 8,522,916 B2).

The Board stated: "Petitioner has proven by a preponderance of the evidence that claims 1‑13, 15, 17, and 18 are unpatentable." The proceeding was tied to the E.D. Tex. litigation (the FWD notes the '015 patent was asserted in Case No. 2:21-cv-00413).

• Unified Patents PTAB page: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/ptab/case/IPR2022-00388
• Final Written Decision (docketalarm): https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2022-00388/Samsung_Electronics_Co._Ltd._v._Staton_Techiya_LLC/

Note: The Google Patents legal-events record for the '015 patent specifically lists "PTAB case IPR2022-00388 filed (Final Written Decision)" and "Trial and appeal board: inter partes review certificate … issued Oct. 31, 2023." The patent's own litigation metadata also flags an IPR2022‑00388 Final Written Decision as "Critical."

3. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (appeal of the district-court judgment)

The Google Patents record for US 10,966,015 lists a "US case filed in Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit" with case number 24‑1917. Correspondingly, in the district court, Staton Techiya filed a Notice of Appeal to the Federal Circuit on June 3, 2024 (E.D. Tex. Dkt. No. 936), appealing the May 9, 2024 findings of fact/conclusions of law and earlier orders (including the order disqualifying Ahn and Cho). I did not retrieve the specific Federal Circuit docket outcome for 24-1917 in these searches, so I cannot state its current disposition with confidence — it should be verified directly on the CAFC docket.

• CAFC case referenced in patent metadata: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/Court%20of%20Appeals%20for%20the%20Federal%20Circuit/case/24-1917
• Notice of Appeal (Dkt. 936): https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/Texas_Eastern_District_Court/2--21-cv-00413/.../docs/936.pdf

Important caveats

• Same-family/sibling patents vs. the '015 patent: Samsung also filed many other IPRs against related but different Techiya patents (e.g., IPR2022‑00410 on the '836 patent; IPR2022‑01098 on the '237 patent; IPR2022‑01099 on the '666 patent; IPR2022‑00234, ‑00243, and ‑00302 on the '982/'839/'424 patents; and IPR2024‑01015 on US 11,665,493). Those proceedings do not involve U.S. Patent 10,966,015 and are noted only to avoid confusion — the only IPR specifically directed to the '015 patent that I found is IPR2022‑00388.
• The Federal Circuit opinions I retrieved (Nos. 23‑2294 and 23‑2305) concern the '839 and '982 patents — not the '015 patent — and should not be attributed to '015.
• There was also a later, separate Staton Techiya v. Samsung action (E.D. Tex. 2:23-cv-00319-JRG-RSP) that did not involve Synergy/Ahn/Cho; I did not find the '015 patent identified among its asserted patents.
• Filing-date conventions differ across sources (Nov. 4 vs. Nov. 5 vs. Nov. 8, 2021); I have listed the specific values each source gave rather than harmonizing them, per your instruction not to auto-correct identifiers.

If you need the current disposition of Federal Circuit appeal 24-1917 or the exact dollar amounts taxed in the cost orders, those should be pulled from the live CAFC and E.D. Tex. dockets, which I could not fully retrieve here.

I'll reconcile the structured "no PTAB activity" block against what the patent text and prior sections already establish, and backfill claim-level detail.

Let me pin down the institution decision date, the claim-level FWD table, and whether the FWD was appealed.

Let me confirm the institution date and whether the '015 FWD was appealed.

⚠️ Source conflict — flagged up front. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block in this prompt states: "The USPTO ODP API returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent as of the most recent ingest… the default should be 'no PTAB activity on file.'" That is contradicted by the patent record itself. The authoritative Google Patents full text supplied in this prompt lists, under Legal Events, "2022-03-15 IPR — Aia trial proceeding filed before the patent and appeal board: inter partes review… TRIAL NO: IPR2022-00388 — Opponent name: SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD., AND SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS AMERICA, INC." and "2023-11-07 IPRC — Trial and appeal board: inter partes review certificate… INTER PARTES REVIEW CERTIFICATE; TRIAL NO. IPR2022-00388." The prior generated sections likewise establish IPR2022-00388. I therefore treat IPR2022-00388 as the canonical proceeding and treat the ODP block as an incomplete/default ingest, not as evidence of absence. I also flag a second internal inconsistency: the Google legal-events entry dates the AIA filing 2022-03-15 (effective 2022-01-04), whereas PTAB-derived listings cite the petition as filed 2022-02-18; both are reported below rather than harmonized.

Proceedings overview

One proceeding exists for US 10,966,015 — IPR2022-00388 — and it is a total, unappealed wipeout: the Board found all challenged claims (1–13, 15, 17, and 18) unpatentable, an IPR certificate (kind code K1) issued effective 2023-10-31 cancelling those claims, and the only claims never challenged (14 and 16) depend from cancelled claim 13 — so a demand letter citing this patent today has no live statutory claim to stand on.

Status breakdown (n = 1): claims invalidated: 1 · active: 0 · claims sustained: 0 · settled: 0 · institution denied: 0.

IPR2022-00388 — Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. and [Samsung Electronics America, Inc.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Samsung%20Electronics%20America%2C%20Inc.) v. Staton Techiya, LLC

• Type: Inter Partes Review (35 U.S.C. §§ 311–319)

• Filed: 2022-02-18 (petition; per PTAB-derived listings — IPR2022-00369, -00388, and -00410 all share the 2022-02-18 filing cluster). Conflicting record: the '015 patent's Google Patents legal-events feed records the AIA trial filing at 2022-03-15, effective 2022-01-04. Reported as-is; do not treat either date as authoritative without a PatentCenter check.

• Status: Final Written Decision — "Determining All Challenged Claims Unpatentable" (35 U.S.C. § 318(a), Paper 31, 2023-08-11). IPR certificate (kind code K1) issued with effective date 2023-10-31 (recorded 2023-11-07), cancelling the challenged claims. Plain English: the trial ran to judgment, Patent Owner did not get claims back, and the cancellation has been certified.

• Judge panel: George R. Hoskins, Nathan A. Engels, and Russell E. Cass, Administrative Patent Judges; Cass, A.P.J., authored the opinion. (FWD, Paper 31)

• Real parties in interest: Petitioner — Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. and Samsung Electronics America, Inc.; Patent Owner — Staton Techiya, LLC. The FWD expressly notes the '015 patent "was asserted in Staton Techiya, LLC v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., Case No. 2:21-cv-00413 (E.D. Tex.)."

• Petition grounds (all § 103 obviousness; no § 102 or § 112 grounds were pursued):

  • Ground 1 — Goldstein (US 8,150,044) + Rothschild (US 8,594,341): claims 1–8, 12, 13, 15, 17
  • Ground 2 — Goldstein + Rothschild + Keady (US 8,522,916): claims 17, 18
  • Ground 3 — Goldstein + Usher (US 2015/0215701) + Rothschild: claims 1–8, 12, 13, 15, 17
  • Ground 4 — Goldstein + Usher + Rothschild + Keady: claim 18
  • Ground 5 — Goldstein + Usher: claims 9–11

  Petitioner's expert: Dr. Richard M. Stern (Ex. 1002). Patent Owner's expert: Dr. Marshall Buck (Exs. 2001, 2008). (Ground list per Patent Owner's Demonstratives, Ex. 2012.)

• Institution decision: Instituted on all grounds of unpatentability — "We instituted trial on all grounds of unpatentability. Paper 13 ('Inst. Dec.'), 41." The FWD does not restate the institution date; the exact date was not confirmed in the sources retrieved. It is inferable as on or about 2022-08-11, because the FWD issued 2023-08-11 exactly one year later, consistent with the statutory § 316(a)(11) one-year trial clock. Patent Owner had argued discretionary denial under Fintiv (Preliminary Response, Paper 8, 2022-05-18); the Board declined and instituted. Notably, the panel permitted a Petitioner reply and Patent Owner sur-reply on the preliminary-response issues (Papers 9–10) before deciding.

• Final Written Decision (2023-08-11) — claim-level verdict:

  "For the reasons discussed below, Petitioner has proven by a preponderance of the evidence that claims 1–13, 15, 17, and 18 are unpatentable."

  • Independent claim 1 (method for activating ambient sound pass-through) — unpatentable.
  • Independent claim 9 (method using a set of keywords with the 5–30 dB/sec / −5 to −30 dB/sec fade rates) — unpatentable.
  • Independent claim 12 (device with memory storing ≥5 verbal keywords) — unpatentable.
  • Dependent claims 2–8, 10, 11, 13, 15, 17, 18 — unpatentable.
  • Claims 14 and 16 — not challenged and therefore not addressed by the FWD. See the dependency caveat below; do not read the FWD as sustaining them.

• Settlement / termination: None in the IPR. The proceeding was not settled or terminated early — it ran to a § 318(a) FWD. (The district court action was separately resolved: the Korean press reporting and prior sections describe the parties' later settlement of the E.D. Tex. infringement case; that is a different forum and does not affect the IPR outcome.)

• Appeal: No appeal of the '015 FWD surfaced. The IPR certificate issued effective 2023-10-31 — within/near the 35 U.S.C. § 142 / Fed. Cir. R. 4 window — which is consistent with no timely notice of appeal having been filed, making the FWD final and non-appealable agency action. Caveat: I could not retrieve a CAFC docket for IPR2022-00388 either way. Techiya's Federal Circuit activity is real but involves different patents — appeals 23-2294 / 23-2305 / 23-2388 concern the '839, '982, and '424 patents (the nonprecedential 2025-10-09 opinion, 23-2305, affirms PTAB cancellations and, with 23-2294, forms the "3 件 모두 PTAB 손" affirmance reported in Korean media). None of those appellate dockets is the '015 IPR. Do not attribute them to this patent.

• Defensive value: Maximal. Every claim asserted in the E.D. Tex. case against Samsung's Bixby-enabled phones/earbuds has been cancelled by certificate. A defendant receiving an '015 demand today can point to the FWD's dispositional order and the K1 certificate and, in practical terms, there is no infringed claim left to litigate. Because the FWD was not appealed, there is no live reversal risk.

Strategic summary

Claim status — CANCELED vs. SUSTAINED vs. UNTESTED.

• CANCELED (certified): claims 1–13, 15, 17, and 18 — including all three independent claims (1, 9, 12). This is the entire commercially meaningful claim set.
• Never challenged / UNTESTED: claims 14 and 16 only. Both depend from claim 13 ("The device according to claim 12 where the device is a wireless earphone"), which was itself cancelled. A dependent claim incorporates every limitation of the claims from which it depends, so claims 14 and 16 cannot be practiced without also practicing cancelled claims 12 and 13 — which means there is no standalone, assertable infringement theory left. Treat them as residual paper, not as surviving scope, but do not say the FWD "held them patentable" — it did not address them at all.

Estoppel landscape (§ 315(e)(2)). Samsung and its privies are estopped from raising in district court any ground they raised or reasonably could have raised in IPR2022-00388. Because the FWD was not appealed and the claims are cancelled, estoppel is largely academic for the '015 patent — but the same § 315(e)(2) calculus is worth carrying into the sibling family members, where the same Samsung/Arnold & Porter IPR campaign produced mixed results. For a new defendant there is no estoppel bar (estoppel runs against the petitioner, not the world); the practical bar is simply that the claims no longer exist.

Pattern signals.

• Same petitioner, a coordinated multi-IPR campaign against one patent owner. Samsung filed a wave of IPRs on the Techiya/Staton family — IPR2022-00234, -00242, -00243 (Dec 2021), -00253, -00281, -00302, -00324 (Jan 2022), -00369, -00388, -00410 (2022-02-18 cluster), and later -01078, -01098, -01099, -01106 (Jun 2022). The '015 patent drew exactly one IPR: -00388.
• The patent owner did not appeal this FWD (certificate effective 2023-10-31), even though Techiya appealed other adverse FWDs (23-2294, -2305, and 23-2388). The asymmetry suggests the '015 record was viewed as unrecoverable.
• No defensive aggregator in the chain. The petitioner here was an operating company (Samsung) defending litigation, not Unified Patents. (Unified Patents appears in this patent's metadata only as the source of the litigation data feed and as a case page, not as an IPR petitioner.) The 2024 assignee chain — Staton Techiya → ST Portfolio Holdings, LLC → Cases2Tech, LLC — is an intra-family shell re-assignment, which does not reset claim scope.
• Collateral estoppel across the family. The district court found the asserted patents unenforceable under the unclean-hands doctrine (2024-05-09 findings; 2024-06-21 final judgment; appeal 24-1917 dismissed 2024-12-20 under FRAP 42(b)). That is independent of validity and, like the IPR, cuts against assertion, though it binds only the parties/privies to that case.

Recommended next steps

1. If you are a defendant and the demand cites claims 1–13, 15, 17, or 18 — quote the disposition. The FWD states: "Petitioner has proven by a preponderance of the evidence that claims 1–13, 15, 17, and 18 are unpatentable," and the § 318(a) judgment line reads "Determining All Challenged Claims Unpatentable, 35 U.S.C. § 318(a)." Link the panel's decision directly: Final Written Decision, IPR2022-00388, Paper 31 (2023-08-11). Confirm current cancellation status on the USPTO Patent Center / PTAB E2E docket and on Unified Patents' PTAB page for IPR2022-00388 before filing anything that calls the claims "cancelled."
2. If the demand relies on the never-challenged claims 14 or 16, attack on dependency grounds: they depend from claim 13, which was cancelled, so any infringement theory would have to prove practice of the cancelled claims 12 and 13. Depending on posture, that may be a standing/non-infringement argument rather than an invalidity one.
3. Do not file a new IPR on the '015 patent. It would be a waste of fees — the challenged claims are already cancelled, and the three independent claims cannot be revived. If anything, verify the K1 certificate's scope on PatentCenter.
4. Verify the appellate record before asserting finality. I could not retrieve a CAFC docket for IPR2022-00388 in either direction; the certificate's effective date (2023-10-31) is strong circumstantial evidence of no appeal, but the only CAFC dockets I could tie to this portfolio by name are 23-2294/23-2305/23-2388 (other patents) and 24-1917 (the district-court appeal, dismissed). Pull the CAFC docket and PatentCenter directly if you need a statement of finality for a brief.
5. Mine the IPR record for the sibling patents. Because IPR2022-00369 ('082 patent, the direct parent) and IPR2022-00388 ('015 patent) shared Petitioner's expert (Dr. Stern) and nearly identical grounds (Goldstein-based), the '015 FWD's reasoning on the "temporal or spectral patterns … within a threshold average value" limitation is directly reusable in any dispute over the '082 patent. Same for the district-court claim-construction record (Dr. Anderson declaration covering the '400, '542, and '015 patents).

Confidence / caveats. Panel composition, grounds, RPI statements, FWD date, and the verbatim dispositional holding are grounded in the primary FWD text and Patent Owner's demonstratives. The petition filing date, the institution date, and the "no appeal" conclusion are inferred or sourced from secondary aggregators and should be re-confirmed against PTAB E2E / PatentCenter. The ODP block's "no proceedings" statement is, on this record, wrong — do not rely on it.

I'll research the assignment records for this patent across USPTO Assignment Center, Google Patents legal events, and related sources.

Let me dig for the 2024 assignment records and correspondent details.

Let me search for the correspondent of record and the Synergy license records.

Assignment & Ownership Reconstruction — US 10,966,015 B2

Sourcing caveat (read first): My searches hit the tool-call limit before I could pull a live page from assignmentcenter.uspto.gov. The reel/frame entries below are reproduced from the Google Patents legal-events record for this patent, which mirrors the USPTO assignment database, and are consistent with the assignment documents surfaced in the E.D. Tex. / PTAB record. I was not able to retrieve the "correspondent of record" field for any link in this chain — that field is populated only on the face of the recorded assignment cover sheet, which my searches did not return. I flag that explicitly rather than guessing.

Inventors

No co-inventors are named. No "inventor departure" pattern: Usher did not walk away after filing. He is a named inventor across the Staton Techiya portfolio and is still being listed on Techiya applications filed as late as December 2023 (published Oct. 3, 2024), indicating a long-running inventor-for-hire / consulting relationship rather than an employee who left and triggered a fire-sale.

Unusual pattern worth noting (not an NPE signal by itself): the provisional (62/575,713, filed Oct. 23, 2017) was signed by John P. Keady, Reg. No. 56,389, docket "TECHIYA-0001-PR," and Keady is also the named fee-address contact on the '015's file (Customer No. 154598, "Staton Techiya, LLC, John Keady"). In other words, the family's in-house patent attorney is a repeat player across the portfolio's prosecution — relevant to the repeat-player analysis below, though I have no evidence he filed the assignment recordings.

Original assignee

Staton Techiya, LLC — a Delaware LLC, 16193 Bridlewood Circle, Delray Beach, FL 33445 (later fee address: 2500 NE 35th Street, Lighthouse Point, FL 33064). Named as assignee on the issued face of the patent and on the AO-120 litigation form.

• Line of business: IP holding and monetization in ear-worn / personal-audio technology. It is not an operating manufacturer of the claimed earphone. Techiya's own pleadings describe "ongoing research and development efforts" and prototypes sent to Harman, but I found no evidence of a commercial product embodying the '015 claims, and its revenue model in the record is licensing/litigation (it sued Samsung in Nov. 2021 and Harman in 2023, and granted an exclusive assertion license to Synergy IP Corp.).
• Chain of title above the patent: the portfolio reached Staton Techiya via DM Staton Family Limited Partnership (a Wyoming partnership, assignee of Staton Family Investments, Ltd.), which assigned the former Personics Holdings, Inc./LLC IP to Staton Techiya — recorded at Reel 043393/0001 (recorded ~2017-06-21; see the 37 CFR 3.73(c) statement in IPR2022-00388 papers). This is a portfolio-level conveyance; I could not confirm that the '015 patent (which did not then exist) is itemized on its Schedule 1.
• Current status: operating as an IP-holding entity, but its assertion campaign collapsed — its E.D. Tex. suit was dismissed with prejudice and the asserted patents held unenforceable (unclean hands) on May 9, 2024. Its patents have since been pushed down into ST-named special-purpose LLCs. Google Patents flags the "current assignee" (Cases2tech LLC / Strategic Portfolio Holdings LLC) as an assumption.

Assignment timeline

• 2019-01-03 (executed) / recorded 2019-08-29 — Reel 050216/0246

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: John Usher (individual inventor)
  • Assignee: Staton Techiya, LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrievable from the sources I reached. Flagged: the prosecution/issue-fee correspondent for the same application was Akerman LLP (Peter A. Chiabotti, Reg. No. 54,603; 777 South Flagler Dr., Suite 1100 West Tower, West Palm Beach, FL 33401), and the fee-address contact was John P. Keady (Customer No. 154598). I cannot confirm which of these corresponds to the assignment recording — treat as an open item.
  • Context: standard inventor-to-employer acquisition — executed between the Oct. 2018 filing of the parent (16/168,752) and the Aug. 2019 filing of the '015 continuation, i.e., before this application existed.

• 2024-06-12 (executed) / recorded 2024-06-21 — Reel 067803/0129

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Staton Techiya, LLC
  • Assignee: ST Portfolio Holdings, LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrievable.
  • Context: internal reorg / portfolio-holding step-down — first hop of a same-day, back-to-back conveyance.

• 2024-06-12 (executed) / recorded 2024-06-21 — Reel 067803/0141

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: ST Portfolio Holdings, LLC
  • Assignee: Cases2Tech, LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrievable.
  • Context: entity-segmentation transfer to the asserting vehicle — second hop, recorded the same day in the same reel block, 12 frames after the first hop. Cases2Tech, LLC is the entity that litigated the sibling '400 patent (Cases2Tech, LLC v. Squires, Fed. Cir. No. 23-2290) and appears as patent owner in Harman/Samsung IPRs (e.g., IPR2024-01300).

No other recorded assignment touches this patent. In particular, the Synergy IP Corp. arrangement asserted in the litigation was adjudicated to be a license, not an assignment (the Magistrate Judge's summary-judgment conclusion that the Techiya–Synergy License Agreement "is a license and not an assignment" was adopted by the district court), so it does not appear as a conveyance on the patent's assignment record.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10966015
    2017 : Provisional filed 23 Oct
         : Portfolio assigned to Staton Techiya
    2018 : Parent application filed 23 Oct
    2019 : Usher assigns to Staton Techiya
         : Continuation filed 29 Aug
    2021 : Patent issued 30 Mar
         : Suit filed against Samsung
    2023 : Claims cancelled in IPR
    2024 : Staton Techiya to ST Portfolio Holdings
         : ST Portfolio Holdings to Cases2Tech
         : Suit dismissed with prejudice

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — PRESENT. The patent moved from the operating/licensing-adjacent assignee into a name-suffixed holding shell and then into a case-specific vehicle: Staton Techiya, LLC → ST Portfolio Holdings, LLC (Reel 067803/0129) → Cases2Tech, LLC (Reel 067803/0141), both executed 2024-06-12. "Holdings" and the per-case naming convention ("Cases2Tech," "ST Case1Tech," "ST FamTech," "ST R&DTech," "ST VRTech" across the family) are the segmentation tell. Caveat: the underlying addresses trace to the Staton family (DM Staton Family LP, 6800 Broken Sound Parkway, Boca Raton, FL), i.e., this is an owner-family restructuring rather than an arm's-length sale to an unrelated shell — still a shell-entity transfer, but not evidence of a third-party acquisition.

2. Known asserter in the chain — PRESENT. Staton Techiya, LLC is listed as the holder on KIPO IP-NAVI's NPE patent list for US10966015 (owner field "Staton Techiya, LLC"). The current assignee, Cases2Tech, LLC, is an active plaintiff (Fed. Cir. No. 23-2290) and appears as patent owner in multiple Samsung/Harman IPRs (IPR2024-01300, IPR2024-01032, IPR2024-01034, IPR2024-01015). Staton Techiya asserted this patent in Staton Techiya v. Samsung, No. 2:21-cv-00413 (E.D. Tex.).

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR. I could not retrieve the recorded correspondent on any of the three assignments, so I cannot make the recurrence finding. What I can document: a single repeat player appears in the family's prosecution and fee correspondence — John P. Keady (Customer No. 154598; Reg. No. 56,389; also the attorney who signed the 2017 provisional), alongside outside counsel Akerman LLP / Peter A. Chiabotti. Because I have no reel/frame attribution for those names on the assignment covers, this stays unclear, not present.

4. Cascading transfers — PRESENT. Two consecutive assignments through chained LLCs executed on the same date (2024-06-12), recorded the same day (2024-06-21), in the same reel block and adjacent frames (067803/0129 then 067803/0141). The two assignees share a common owner family (Staton) and a common address of record.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT. The operative transfers (2024-06-12) post-date the Nov. 2021 infringement suit by roughly 2.5 years. The only pre-suit conveyance is the inventor→Staton Techiya assignment of 2019-01-03, nearly three years before the suit — normal employment practice, not venue- or standing-arranging. (The pre-suit Synergy arrangement was a license, not a recorded assignment.)

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. No Chapter 7/11 of any assignor in this chain; the 2024 movement follows a lost litigation and an unclean-hands unenforceability judgment, not an insolvency sale.

7. Privateering — UNCLEAR. Staton Techiya is not an operating company handing patents to a proxy; it is the monetizer. However, the record shows a related assertion-for-hire arrangement with Synergy IP Corporation (founded by former Samsung in-house attorneys Seung-Ho Ahn and Sungil Cho), which the district court found created an agency relationship with a nearly 50% recovery split. That is a monetization-agent pattern; it is documented but does not fit the classic "operating company → NPE" privateering template.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT. The chain terminates at Cases2Tech, LLC, an active asserter. It does not end at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN; no neutralizing transfer appears.

Materiality caveat that any buyer/analyst must fold into the ownership picture: per the previously-generated sections, the challenged claims of this patent — claims 1–13, 15, 17, and 18 — were held unpatentable in Samsung v. Staton Techiya, IPR2022-00388 (FWD Aug. 11, 2023; certificate effective Oct. 31, 2023). The 2024 cascading transfers therefore conveyed a patent whose asserted claim set is largely cancelled, with only claims 14 and 16 (never challenged) arguably intact. The "asset" transferred in 2024 is thin.

Verdict

NPE — high confidence. Three strong signals converge: (i) the chain terminates at a known asserter (Staton Techiya, LLC on KIPO's NPE list; Cases2Tech, LLC actively litigating sibling patents and the owner of record per Reel 067803/0141); (ii) cascading same-day transfers through chained shells at Reel 067803/0129 and 067803/0141 (executed 2024-06-12, recorded 2024-06-21); and (iii) a shell/vehicle segmentation transfer into a per-case LLC carrying the "ST/…Tech" naming convention. The only mitigating fact is that the chain stays within the Staton owner family (DM Staton Family Limited Partnership lineage, Reel 043393/0001) rather than being sold to an unrelated third-party acquirer — but that does not change the fact that the patent is held and has been asserted by non-practicing entities, not by a product company.

Verify the raw records at the USPTO Assignment Center: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search 10966015 or application 16/555,824), and cross-check reels 050216/0246, 067803/0129, and 067803/0141. If you need the correspondent-of-record fields, that search page is the only place I could not reach — it is the one open gap in this reconstruction.

I'll research the prior art citations for this patent, focusing on the references that map to the claims and the ones the PTAB actually relied on.

Let me pin down the two references I couldn't yet confirm — the '341 Rothschild patent and the Usher '701 application — plus the IPR grounds mapping.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 10,966,015 B2 ("Automatic keyword pass-through system")

Scope discipline: I searched for the exact string 10966015. Every identifier below is reproduced literally from the patent's own text or from the retrieved source; I did not normalize or "fix" any number, date, or assignee. Where I could not independently verify a reference's front matter in this session, I say so rather than filling the gap.

Cross-reference note (no contradiction found): This builds on the earlier sections. One item to flag: the earlier section lists the IPR2022-00388 grounds as Goldstein (US 8,150,044), Rothschild (US 8,594,341), Usher (US 2015/0215701), and Keady (US 8,522,916). In this session I verified the Goldstein and Keady front matter directly, but could not independently retrieve the front matter of US 8,594,341 or US 2015/0215701. That is an open verification item, not a contradiction.

A structural point that matters for your question: there are two different prior-art sets for this patent, and they should not be conflated:

1. Art on the face of the patent — the examiner-cited list on Google Patents ("Citations (57)" / "Patent Citations (59)"). This is the set your instruction literally asks about ("each patent citation for 10966015").
2. Art the PTAB actually relied on — the IPR2022-00388 references, which the earlier section reports as the basis for cancelling claims 1–13, 15, 17, 18. Notably, none of the four IPR references appear in the face-of-patent citation list in the text you supplied. The IPR references are therefore the most relevant art in the operative sense, even though they are not "patent citations" of the '015 patent.

I treat both, with #2 first because it is dispositive.

Tier 1 — The operative art (IPR2022-00388). Highest relevance.

Caveat on items 3–4: The earlier section is authoritative on the composition of the ground (Goldstein + Rothschild + Usher + Keady). I am not vouching for the title, assignee, or claim mapping of US 8,594,341 or US 2015/0215701, because my searches returned Rothschild-family and Usher-family material that I could not tie to those exact numbers. If you need those rows filled, pull the IPR2022-00388 Final Written Decision and Exhibit list directly (Unified Patents PTAB page; Keady Ex. 1010).

Bottom line on Tier 1: The **PTAB's operative finding was unpatentability of claims 1–13, 15, 17, and 18, with claims 14 and 16 not challenged (per the earlier-generated section). Critical §102 caveat: I could not confirm the ground-by-ground allocation (which claims fell under §102 anticipation versus §103 obviousness) — the earlier section describes the outcome as "unpatentable over" the four references, which reads as a combination (§103) disposition rather than pure anticipation. Treat §102 attribution to a single reference as provisional until the FWD is read line-by-line. (FWD via Docket Alarm)

Tier 2 — References the specification itself discusses (face-of-patent background). High relevance.

These four are named in the '015 Background of the Invention, and one is expressly adopted as an exemplary KDS implementation. Under §102 they are the references the applicant treated as the closest art.

Tier 3 — Other face-of-patent citations that read on specific limitations

Selected from the examiner-cited list because they map to a claim element of the '015 patent. (Dates are as printed in the citation table.)

Tier 4 — Cumulative / background citations (grouped; low individual relevance)

The balance of the examiner-cited list is signal-processing and hardware background that the '015 specification cites for its beam-forming/SNR and earpiece-hardware discussion. These are cumulative and, on their face, do not individually reach the keyword-detection + automatic passthrough combination:

• Beam-forming / directional enhancement / VAD: US 7,174,022 B1; US 8,098,844 B2; US 8,401,206 B2; US 8,601,571 B1; US 8,583,428 B2; US 7,158,933 B2; US 8,467,543 B2; US 2011/0135107 A1; US 2007/0076898 A1; US 2007/0076854-type art.
• Dual-microphone / noise reduction: US 2005/0175189 A1; US 2006/0133621 A1; US 2008/0037801 A1; US 2008/0317259 A1; US 2007/0237341 A1; US 2007/0230712 A1.
• Earphone hardware / occlusion / ear-canal sensing: US 6,754,359 B1 (Nacre — "Ear terminal with microphone for voice pickup"); US 2005/0058313 A1 (Victorian — external ear canal voice detection); US 2007/0291953 A1 (Think-A-Move ear sensor); US 7,853,031 B2 (own-voice detection); US 7,346,176 B1 (Plantronics noise-canceling mic); US 6,614,073 B1 (video-conference camera positioning — cited but not directed to the claims, per its own title).
• Personics family (same corporate ancestor as the '015 assignee): US 2008/0137873 A1 (personalized hearing); US 2008/0181419 A1 (acute sound detection and reproduction); US 2008/0187163 A1 (audio recording); US 2008/0260180 A1 and US 2009/0010444 A1 (voice-operated control); US 2009/0016541 A1 (acoustic management control of multiple microphones). These are relevant to the device architecture (ASM/ECR/ECM) but were the applicant's own family, so their status as art would need a common-ownership / §102 analysis.
• "Ambient sound" generic / delay-and-ambience: US 4,237,343 A (Kurtin — digital delay/ambience processor); US 6,098,448 A (NEC hearing aid); US 5,852,804 A (Fujitsu speech recognition); US 8,509,704 B2 (Cochlear localization); US 2012/078670 A1 (UT System intelligibility); US 7,072,476 B2 (Matech audio headset); US 2007/0088544 A1 (Microsoft calibration-based beamforming); US 2007/0086600 A1 (Boesen dual-ear voice communication); US 2007/006330-type art; US 2007/0098192 A1 (spectacle hearing aid).

These are not presented as §102 anticipatory references for claims 1, 9, or 12.

§102 assessment — my conclusions, with limits stated

1. No single face-of-patent reference is a clean §102 anticipation of independent claim 1, 9, or 12 as issued. Anticipation requires every limitation in one reference. Every candidate fails on at least one element:
   • IBM '845 discloses keyword detection but no earphone, no ASM/AC gains, no passthrough.
   • Goldstein '044 discloses ASM/ECR target-sound detection and audio adjustment, but its triggering vocabulary is "target/warning sound" and "sound signature / signature models" rather than the claimed "keyword … matched to a portion of the ASM signal," and it does not disclose the claim-1 persistence limitation — "applying the ASM gain to the ASM signal until a new keyword is detected or manually adjusted."
   • GN Netcom '217 discloses electronic ambient passthrough to an earphone receiver, but is not keyword-triggered and in fact disables passthrough during a call.
   • Keady '916 reaches only the isolation/eartip limitations (claims 17–18).
2. The distinguishing limitations are the persistence/fade ones. Claim 1's "apply the ASM gain until a new keyword is detected or manually adjusted" and claim 9's express slew rates (5–30 dB/sec increasing; −5 to −30 dB/sec decreasing, and the compare-to-previous-gain step) are the features least likely to be met by any single reference — which is exactly why the outcome at the PTAB reads as a combination disposition.
3. The dispositive event is IPR2022-00388, which (per the earlier section) cancelled claims 1–13, 15, 17, 18; claims 14 and 16 were not challenged and are not addressed by these grounds. The IPR certificate (kind code K1) recorded 2023-10-31. (Google Patents legal events; Unified Patents)
4. I could not retrieve the FWD's per-claim, per-reference §102-vs-§103 allocation in this session. Do not use the right-hand columns above as a substitute for reading the FWD. The claim-column entries are my element-level mapping of disclosure to claim language, offered as a screening aid.

Open verification items

• Front matter (title, inventor, assignee, dates) of US 8,594,341 and US 2015/0215701 — not confirmed.
• The exact ground-by-ground §102/§103 allocation and claim-by-claim mapping in the IPR2022-00388 Final Written Decision (Aug. 11, 2023).
• Whether US 2015/0215701 shares an inventive entity with the '015 patent (inventor John Usher) — relevant to its §102 status.
• Effective filing dates of the Bragi and Audio Analytic references relative to the '015 2017-10-23 priority, since several published after that date.

Primary source for the patent text and citation list: patents.google.com/patent/US10966015/en. Goldstein '044 front matter: Unified Patents US-8150044-B2. Keady '916 text: patentimages PDF. '180 Personics publication: FreePatentsOnline US 2008/0260180.

I'll ground the prior-art teachings before building the § 103 analysis. Let me verify the key references from this patent's citation record and the IPR grounds.

Let me verify the remaining key references — the IBM keyword-detection patent, the GN Netcom ambient-pass-through publication, and the IPR2022-00388 ground mapping.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 10,966,015 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Scope note: This builds on the earlier bibliographic, claim, and litigation sections. I do not repeat them. All identifiers are reproduced literally. Two things I flag up front:

1. Contradiction between my prior sections. The "Patent summary" section states that CAFC appeal 24-1917 was dismissed on Dec. 20, 2024 by joint stipulation (FRAP 42(b)). The "Litigation summary" section says the same appeal is "Status: Appeal pending." These cannot both be correct. The dismissal evidence (the CAFC order PDF) is stronger than the pending-status label, so I treat the dismissal as the better-supported account — but the earlier contradiction is real and should be resolved against the live CAFC docket before it is relied on.
2. Critical status point for this task. Per IPR2022-00388, the IPR certificate (K1, effective Oct. 31, 2023) cancelled claims 1–13, 15, 17 and 18. Only claims 14 and 16 were not among the challenged set. A § 103 analysis of this patent is therefore, in practical terms, dispositive only as to what happened already — the obviousness of claims 1–13/15/17/18 was adjudicated, not just argued. I analyze the full claim set, but I lead with the ground the Board actually adopted and then address the two survivors.

1. Legal framework applied

• Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966): scope/content of the prior art; differences between prior art and claims; level of ordinary skill; secondary considerations.
• KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007): a combination is obvious where the improvement is "the predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions"; a motivation may be found in "design incentives and other market forces"; and where there is "a finite number of identified, predictable solutions," obviousness follows. A specific numeric range is obvious where it is a result-effective variable and the range is within the ordinary skill of the artisan.
• 35 U.S.C. § 103; AIA § 102(a)(1)/(a)(2) timing applies (effective filing date Oct. 23, 2017, on which the '015's priority rests via provisional 62/575,713).

Level of ordinary skill (POSITA). A bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, acoustics, or computer science (or equivalent), with roughly 2–5 years of experience in electro-acoustic transducer systems, hearing-aid/earphone signal processing, or speech/audio signal processing — including embedded DSP and gain-mixing/dynamic-range control. The claimed subject matter is in a predictable, mature, well-documented art (earphone DSP, ASM/ECR pass-through, and speech keyword spotting were all commercially deployed by the priority date).

2. Key claim constructions that drive the § 103 result

Note a specification/claim mismatch relevant to scope: the abstract says "then an AC gain is created," while claim 1 requires "generating an ASM gain." The claims control, and the written description supports both, so the mismatch does not defeat the obviousness analysis but does confirm the gains are functionally interchangeable design choices.

3. The prior-art references (verified teachings)

I verified the following against primary documents in the page's citation record and the IPR exhibits:

• Goldstein, US 8,150,044 B2 ("Method and Device Configured for Sound Signature Detection," Personics Holdings; granted Apr. 3, 2012). Teaches an earpiece partially or fully occluding the ear canal with an ASM, an ECR, and an ECM; monitors the ambient sound for a target sound by generating a sound signature and comparing it to a plurality of learned signature models; adjusts audio delivered to the ear canal based on the detected target sound; adjusts a volume of audio content upon detection of a target sound; and includes a "Signature Sound Pass Through Mode (SSP™)" and a user button. Figure 7 discloses buffer data → extract features → compare models → classify target sound.
• Usher, US 2015/0215701 A1 ("Automatic Sound Pass-through Method and System for Earphones," Personics Holdings; published Jul. 30, 2015). Teaches capturing an ASM signal, receiving an AC signal from a remote device, and mixing them so that an ASM gain is increased and an AC gain is decreased upon a detection event, with the mixed signal directed to the ECR. FIG. 3 discloses VAD 302, AC gain stage 304, ASM gain stage 306, ASM gain stage, mixer 308, smoothed level generator 314, VAD timer system 310. FIG. 4's flow includes the literal steps "SET VAD TO ON STATE / DECREASE AC GAIN / INCREASE ASM GAIN" and the converse. (The same inventor, John Usher, is the sole named inventor of the '015.)
• IBM, US 7,672,845 B2 ("Method and system for keyword detection using voice-recognition"; granted Mar. 2, 2010). Predefines keywords, associates information/rules with keywords, monitors speech, continuously compares detected words to a stored library of keywords/phrases, and triggers an action on a match (including a rule that a keyword's incident count must exceed a threshold). The '015 specification itself cites this reference as an exemplary KDS.
• Keady, US 8,522,916 B2 ("Occlusion Effect Mitigation and Sound Isolation Device for Orifice Inserted Systems," Personics Holdings; granted Sep. 3, 2013). Teaches an expandable element whose sound isolation across the element is varied, and graphs occlusion effect vs. sound isolation (FIGS. 2–3).
• GN Netcom, US 2011/0206217 A1 — per the '015 background: "a system to electronically direct ambient sound to a loudspeaker in an earphone, and to disable this ambient sound pass-through during a phone call."
• Sony Ericsson, WO 2007/085307 A1 — non-electronic pass-through channel with a switch (admitted prior art).
• Personics, US 2008/0260180 A1 — earphone with ECM and ASM to detect user voice activity (admitted prior art; related family).
• Outland Research, US 2007/0189544 A1 — "Ambient sound responsive media player" (2007; § 102(a)(1)).
• TV Ears, US 2017/0142511 A1 — "Headphone audio and ambient sound mixer" (published May 18, 2017; § 102(a)(1)).
• Bragi, US 10,045,117 B2; US 10,045,112 B2; US 10,063,957 B2 ("modified ambient environment," "added ambient environment," "source selection within ambient environment"). These grants post-date Oct. 23, 2017, but claim priority to Nov. 4, 2016 — so they are available only as § 102(a)(2) prior art (patents effectively filed before the critical date, naming another inventor).
• Amazon, US 9,961,435 B1 ("Smart earphones") — filed Dec. 10, 2015; § 102(a)(2).
• Audio Analytic, US 2018/0233125 A1 ("Wearable audio device") — priority Feb. 10, 2017; § 102(a)(2).

Unverified, flagged: the IPR ground relied on Rothschild, US 8,594,341 B2. My searches did not return the content of that specific patent (the hits were unrelated Rothschild patents, e.g. a vehicle-speed patent and a heat-sink patent). I therefore cannot independently state its teaching and will not fabricate one. I note it because the Board relied on it; it should be confirmed from the FWD/Exhibit 1008 before being used.

4. The ground the Board actually adopted (and why it worked)

IPR2022-00388 — Goldstein '044 + Rothschild '341 + Usher '701 + Keady '916 ⇒ claims 1–13, 15, 17, 18 unpatentable (§ 318(a), Aug. 11, 2023; certificate effective Oct. 31, 2023).

The architecture of that ground maps onto the claim set as follows:

Motivation to combine (KSR):

1. Same field, same problem, overlapping ownership. Goldstein '044, Usher '701 and Keady '916 all trace to Personics Holdings/Personics Holdings, Inc., and the '015 itself is in the Staton Techiya family descending from Personics. A POSITA working on "sound-isolating earphone situation awareness" would naturally look to this body of work; the '015's named inventor (Usher) is himself the inventor of Usher '701.
2. Complementary, non-overlapping disclosures. Goldstein supplies detection of a target sound from the ambient field and adjustment of delivered audio; Usher supplies how to weight the ASM vs. AC paths (the gains) and how to smooth them. Combining them is the predictable assembly of two known functional blocks.
3. Express incorporation-type suggestion. The '015 specification states that keyword detection "is a process known to those skilled in the art and can be accomplished by various means, for example the system described by U.S. Pat. No. 7,672,845 B2." That is an applicant admission that the KDS block is prior art, which removes any "unexpected" character from the detection step.
4. Market forces / design incentives. Hands-free operation, situational awareness, and safety in loud environments were recognized, articulated goals (see the '015 and Usher '701 backgrounds alike). KSR squarely credits such "design incentives and other market forces."
5. Predictable result. Feeding a keyword/signature detector output into an existing ASM/AC gain-mixer to raise ambient pass-through is a predictable use of known elements for their established functions — no new principle of operation is required.

5. Independent-claim chart — § 103 combination on the verified references

Claim 1

Proposed ground: Goldstein '044 in view of Usher '701 (optionally further in view of IBM '845).

Conclusion: Claim 1 is obvious over Goldstein '044 + Usher '701 (+ IBM '845). This is also, in substance, the combination the Board adopted (with Rothschild '341 additionally cited) for claim 1.

Claim 9

Proposed ground: Usher '701 in view of Goldstein '044 (and IBM '845 for the "set of keywords").

Conclusion: Claim 9 is obvious over Usher '701 + Goldstein '044 (+ IBM '845). Under KSR, selecting a fade/slew rate within a known smoothing architecture to minimize clicks and preserve intelligibility is the predictable use of a known technique; a POSITA would arrive at a 5–30 dB/s ramp with a reasonable expectation of success.

Claim 12

Proposed ground: Goldstein '044 + Usher '701 + IBM '845 (optionally + Keady '916).

Conclusion: Claim 12 is obvious over Goldstein '044 + Usher '701 + IBM '845.

6. Dependent claims

Live-claim caveat: Claims 14 and 16 are the only claims not cancelled by the IPR certificate. Both depend, ultimately, on claim 13 (claim 14 depends on 13; claim 16 depends on 14). Because claim 13 was cancelled, claims 14 and 16 now depend from a non-existent claim — a § 112 dependency defect that is independent of, and arguably more immediately fatal than, any § 103 challenge. If one nonetheless reaches their § 103 merits, the "wireless earphone / phone-hosted processor / RAM" subject matter is squarely conventional (Bragi; Amazon '435; Usher '701 FIG. 2), and a POSITA would be motivated to distribute processing to the phone for power/size reasons — a classic predictable design choice.

7. Alternative § 103 grounds (independent of the IPR ground)

Because the Board's ground includes the unverified Rothschild '341, it is worth noting the outcome does not depend on it:

Ground A — GN Netcom '217 in view of IBM '845.

• GN Netcom '217 (per the '015's own background) teaches "electronically direct[ing] ambient sound to a loudspeaker in an earphone" with pass-through disabled during a phone call — i.e., a controllable ASM→ECR gain.
• IBM '845 teaches the complete keyword-detection machinery (predefine keywords; monitor speech; compare to a stored library; trigger an action).
• Motivation: The '015 specification itself identifies both mechanisms as known and states the KDS "is a process known to those skilled in the art." Substituting a keyword trigger for GN Netcom's call-state trigger to achieve the admitted goal ("hands-free operation … to detect when a second individual … wishes to communicate") is the predictable substitution of one known control input for another.

Ground B — WO 2007/085307 (Sony Ericsson) + Outland '544 + IBM '845.

• WO '85307 teaches a pass-through channel with a switch controlling open/closed; Outland '544 teaches ambient-sound-responsive media playback; IBM '845 teaches keyword detection.
• Motivation: Automating the manual switch of WO '85307 in response to a keyword event detected per IBM '845 (optionally using the ambient-responsive media control of Outland '544) yields the claimed automatic pass-through. Merely automating a known manual switch with a known sensor output is obvious under KSR.

Ground C — TV Ears '511 + IBM '845 + Audio Analytic '125.

• TV Ears '511 teaches a headphone audio/ambient mixer; Audio Analytic '125 teaches a wearable audio device with acoustic-event detection; IBM '845 teaches keyword detection.
• Motivation: Combining an ambient/AC mixer with an acoustic-event detector to drive the mix ratio is the same "known elements for their established functions" analysis.

These grounds do not require Rothschild '341 and reinforce that the result is not a function of any single reference.

8. Secondary considerations (§ 103 rebuttal factors)

• No nexus / no unexpected results identified in the record. The claimed gains, slew rates, keyword categories, and the 10 dB isolation figure are all result-effective variables tuned in the ordinary course. The 5–30 dB/s and −5 to −30 dB/s ranges appear in the specification as a "preferred embodiment" — i.e., disclosed as a tuning choice, not as a discovered criticality.
• No long-felt-but-unmet-need evidence was identified; the problem (situational awareness for SI-earphone wearers) was already framed and addressed by the Personics/Usher line (e.g., Usher '701; Goldstein '044; the related US 9,270,244 "detect close voice sources and automatically enhance situation awareness").
• Litigation posture undermines any secondary-consideration proffer. The E.D. Tex. court found the asserted patents unenforceable under the unclean-hands doctrine (May 9, 2024; final judgment June 21, 2024), and the IPR cancelled claims 1–13, 15, 17, 18. Commercial-success or licensing evidence would need a clean nexus to the claimed invention, and the adjudicated record cuts strongly the other way.

9. Bottom line

1. Claims 1–13, 15, 17, 18: Obvious under § 103 and, more fundamentally, already held unpatentable in IPR2022-00388 over Goldstein '044 + Rothschild '341 + Usher '701 + Keady '916, a conclusion the Board reached under the "preponderance" standard and which the IPR certificate (Oct. 31, 2023) implemented. The primary, independently verified combination — Goldstein '044 + Usher '701 (+ IBM '845, + Keady '916 for the isolation claims) — is sufficient on its own.
2. The strongest single motivation is the combination of common technical field, common origin (Personics Holdings/Staton Techiya), and the same inventor (Usher), reinforced by the '015's express admission that the keyword-detection block is prior art (IBM '845). Under KSR, feeding a known detector's output into a known ASM/AC gain-mixer is "the predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions."
3. Claims 14 and 16 (the only claims not cancelled) would, on their merits, be obvious over Amazon '435 / Bragi '117·'112·'957 / Usher '701 FIG. 2, but they suffer a § 112 dependency defect because they depend on the now-cancelled claim 13.

Explicit limitations of this analysis:

• I could not independently verify the disclosure of Rothschild, US 8,594,341 B2, one of the four references in the Board's ground. Its teaching should be confirmed from the FWD and Exhibit 1008 before being cited.
• My verification of the other references rests on the primary patent documents/exhibits surfaced via aggregator PDFs (Google Patents, PTAB exhibit PDFs, Docket Alarm), not a direct live query of the USPTO PatentCenter or the PTAB API. The bibliographic and claim text matches the authoritative full text supplied, but litigation/PTAB specifics should be re-confirmed against primary dockets if used for a legal conclusion.
• The CAFC 24-1917 status contradiction noted in § 0 remains unresolved here; it does not affect the § 103 analysis but should be corrected in the earlier sections.