US 10999635

I'll verify the current status of US 10,999,635 against live sources, including any 2026 appellate activity, before summarizing.

Let me check the specific litigation dockets referenced and whether any 2026 appellate activity exists.

Let me pin down the remaining docket and any 2026 appellate activity.

Verification note before the summary

I searched public patent and litigation sources for the literal identifier 10999635 and did not auto-correct it. Findings on docket status:

• No 2026 CAFC (Federal Circuit) docket involving US 10,999,635 was found. I could not locate any Federal Circuit appeal naming this patent. I am flagging this as an absence of evidence, not proof of absence — I do not have authoritative PACER/CM-ECF access here.
• The 2026 litigation activity I did find concerns different patents in NEC's portfolio, not the '635 patent: the E.D. Tex. § 101 ruling of June 4, 2026 in NEC Corp. v. Anker Innovations Technology Co., Ltd., No. 2:24-cv-00720-JRG, addressed U.S. Pat. Nos. 9,953,240, 10,037,467, 11,210,526, and 11,537,814 (VitalLaw summary); a Markman order of June 26, 2026 in the same case construed the '814 patent (Justia, Doc. 214).
• The Google Patents record for US 10,999,635 carries a "family has litigation" flag listing three 2024 filings: E.D. Tex. 2:24-cv-00720, E.D. Tex. 2:24-cv-00881, and E.D. Va. 1:24-cv-01870. The E.D. Va. case is Power Mobile Life, LLC et al. v. NEC Corporation, a declaratory-judgment non-infringement action filed 2024-10-24, which was transferred to E.D. Tex. as 2:24-cv-00881 on 2024-11-01 (Justia docket). Whether the '635 patent itself is an asserted patent in that DJ action is not something I can confirm with high confidence.

US 10,999,635 B2 — Summary

Identification (per the patent text)

Prosecution lineage: continuation of US 14/416,716 (issued as US 10,841,528 B2), itself the national-stage entry of PCT/JP2013/066565 (WO 2014021004 A1). Sibling continuations include US 10,778,931 B2, US 10,750,113 B2, and US 11,343,575 B2.

Representative classification: H04N21/47; H04N7/181 (CCTV receiving images from plural remote sources); G06V40/103; H04N21/4316; plus G06T2207 indices for video and human subjects.

Abstract (as issued): An image processing system, method, and program capable of suppressing confusion in identifying a target person when tracking a person. The system includes a camera control unit that accepts input video images captured by a plurality of video cameras; a tracked person registering unit capable of registering one or more persons appearing in those video images; and a display screen generating unit that displays switchable windows of the video images from the video cameras for each registered person.

Specification context: The Background cites JP-A-2008-219570 (Matsushita, inter-camera link relation information) and notes that automatic re-identification by similarity is error-prone, motivating human-in-the-loop re-identification — which in turn risks confusing an observer when multiple persons are under monitoring. The description adds a similarity calculating unit (posture-aware matching), a tracked person registering unit, a next camera predicting unit, and a display screen generating unit that highlights a tab (color change/blink) or can forcibly switch windows when another monitored person appears or is predicted to appear.

Independent claims in plain language

The patent has 12 claims: three independent claims — claim 1 (system), claim 5 (method), claim 9 (non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing a program) — with claims 2–4, 6–8, and 10–12 as parallel dependents.

Claim 1 (display control system). At least one memory and one or more processors execute instructions to:

1. accept a plurality of videos from a plurality of video cameras;
2. register a plurality of persons appearing in those videos;
3. control a display device to show a first window and a plurality of tabs; and
4. assign the tabs to respective registered persons.

The first window contains three things: (a) a first set of the videos associated with a first assigned person; (b) a first diagram showing time ranges when each of the video cameras captured that first person, presented with camera identifiers and a time axis; and (c) a first tab bearing an image of the first person. The first window is switchable by operation of the tabs to a second window containing the analogous trio for a second assigned person — a second video set, a second diagram (which is different from the first) for that second person, and a second tab with the second person's image.

In short: per-tracked-person windows, tabbed like browser tabs and keyed to face thumbnails, each holding (i) live multi-camera video for that person and (ii) a per-person camera-by-time capture chart.

Claim 5 (display control method). The same set of steps and window contents, recited as a method: accept videos, register persons, control the display to show a first window and tabs, assign tabs to registered persons, with the window contents and tab-switchability to a second, person-specific window as in claim 1.

Claim 9 (storage medium). A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing a program that causes a computer to perform the same accept / register / display-control / tab-assign steps, with the same first-window and second-window content requirements.

Dependent claims in plain language

• Claim 2 (and 6, 10): additionally display, for each camera identifier, video information indicating whether a video image from the video camera identified by that identifier is currently being displayed (corresponding to the T4 selection buttons in Fig. 8).
• Claim 3 (and 7, 11): the diagrams comprise cells, each corresponding to a pair of one video camera and one time range; the time-range information is displayed by coloring the cells.
• Claim 4 (and 8, 12): the time axis range includes a future time range, and the diagram is displayed so that cells for the pair of (future time range, video camera predicted to capture the person in that future range) are colored — i.e., the next-camera prediction is rendered on the time chart.

Notable observations

• The granted claims are markedly narrower than the originally filed Supplementary notes reproduced in the description. The Supplementary notes recite broad "input means / registering means / display control means" language (Supplementary notes 1, 6, 7), plus a mobile-terminal/touch-panel variant (Supplementary note 8). The issued independent claims instead require the specific combination of per-person video sets plus a camera-identifier/time-axis diagram per person plus image-bearing tabs.
• The time chart of the "third embodiment" (Fig. 7/8) and the map-trace of the "fourth embodiment" (Fig. 9) appear to have been channeled into the claims selectively: the time chart (T1–T4) is claimed (claims 1, 3, 4), whereas the map/trace subject matter (and the mobile touch-panel subject matter of the fifth embodiment) is not recited in the issued claims.
• Claim 1 recites "assign the plurality of tabs to respective registered persons" while also placing a tab inside the window — a drafting detail worth noting if claim-scope or indefiniteness is at issue.

Confidence and uncertainty

• Title, dates, inventor, assignee, abstract, and claim text are taken directly from the authoritative full patent text supplied for US 10,999,635 and are stated with high confidence.
• The litigation mapping (which patents are actually asserted in 2:24-cv-00720, 2:24-cv-00881, and the transferred 1:24-cv-01870) is drawn from third-party aggregators and one legal news service; I would not treat the '635 patent's participation in those suits as confirmed without reading the complaints themselves.
• I found no 2026 Federal Circuit docket for US 10,999,635. If a 2026 appeal exists, I do not have it, and I would rather say so than infer one.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 10999635 across patent litigation databases.

The general search didn't surface results for this specific patent number. Let me search the specific case numbers from the litigation records and the assignee.

I found relevant cases. Let me dig deeper to confirm which patents are asserted and the case details.

Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. 10,999,635

Important caveats up front: I was not able to open the Unified Patents litigation portal or the Darts‑IP family page directly (my searches returned only snippets/links). The most reliable patent‑level source I could retrieve is the Google Patents litigation record for US 10,999,635, which lists three U.S. district‑court cases. I then corroborated the parties, courts, case numbers, and statuses through Justia, Dockets.Justia (PACER‑derived), and the Ex Parte AI litigation database. I have not auto‑corrected any numbers, and I flag where a detail is inferred rather than confirmed.

Cases identified

Relationship between the cases

• Cases 2 and 3 are the same action — a declaratory‑judgment/non‑infringement‑type complaint originally filed by the Anker‑affiliated entities (Power Mobile Life, LLC and Fantasia Trading, LLC d/b/a AnkerDirect) against NEC in Virginia, then transferred to Texas and reassigned 2:24-cv-00881, and voluntarily dismissed within about a month.
• Case 1 (2:24-cv-00720) is NEC's affirmative infringement action against the Anker entities, and is the substantive, still‑pending case.

Which patents are at issue

• The Google Patents record for US 10,999,635 lists all three docket numbers above under "litigation," i.e., it treats the '635 patent as implicated across NEC v. Anker (2:24-cv-00720) and the Power Mobile Life / Fantasia actions (1:24-cv-01870 → 2:24-cv-00881).
• The Ex Parte AI complaint analysis for 2:24-cv-00881 expressly discusses a "'635 Patent" tied to "surveillance products with cross-camera tracking functionality," and identifies its independent claims 1, 5, and 9 (Compl. ¶53). That independent‑claim set (system claim 1, method claim 5, storage‑medium claim 9) matches US 10,999,635 exactly, and the described subject matter ("a window … a 'diagram' or time chart that visualizes which cameras detected the person and at what times") matches the '635 specification. This supports, but does not by itself conclusively prove, that US 10,999,635 is the patent in suit.
• Caveat: The six patents asserted in NEC's affirmative case (2:24-cv-00720) are not fully enumerated in the sources I could retrieve; only U.S. Patent No. 11,537,814 was explicitly confirmed. I therefore cannot independently verify from a single authoritative docket that US 10,999,635 is one of the six asserted patents, only that the aggregator record and the claim/spec correspondence point that way.

Appellate activity

I found no Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit appeal and no PTAB (IPR/PGR) proceeding specifically identified by me for US 10,999,635. I cannot rule these out — I simply did not locate them in the sources retrieved.

Sources

• Google Patents litigation record for US 10,999,635: https://patents.google.com/patent/US10999635/en (lists E.D. Tex. 2:24-cv-00720, 2:24-cv-00881; E.D. Va. 1:24-cv-01870; and a Darts‑IP family‑litigation link, family 50027694).
• NEC Corp. v. Anker Innovations Tech. Co., Ltd., No. 2:24-cv-00720 (E.D. Tex.), Doc. 214 (2026), via Justia: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/texas/txedce/2:2024cv00720/[232678/214](https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/search/patent/reelFrameDetail?reelFrame=232678-0214)/
• Power Mobile Life, LLC v. NEC Corp. docket, No. 2:24-cv-00881 (E.D. Tex.), Dockets.Justia: https://dockets.justia.com/docket/texas/txedce/2:2024cv00881/[233852](/patent/233852) (shows transfer from E.D. Va. 1:24-cv-01870, voluntary dismissal Nov. 8, 2024, dismissal order Dec. 5, 2024).
• Ex Parte AI complaint analysis, 2:24-cv-00881 (discussing the "'635 Patent," claims 1, 5, 9): https://ai-lab.exparte.com/case/dct/txed/2:24-cv-00881/doc/analysis/1

Bottom line: Three docket entries are recorded against US 10,999,635, but they reduce to two distinct disputes — NEC's pending infringement suit against Anker (E.D. Tex. 2:24-cv-00720) and the Anker side's declaratory action filed in E.D. Va. (1:24-cv-01870) that was transferred to E.D. Tex. (2:24-cv-00881) and then voluntarily dismissed in December 2024. If you need docket‑certified confirmation of the full list of asserted patents or any CAFC/PTAB filings, that would require pulling the complaints and the PACER/PTAB dockets directly, which I could not fully access here.

I'll research this patent's assignment record and litigation history. Let me run several searches.

Let me dig into the specific litigation and assignment records.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US 10,999,635 B2

Patent: "Image Processing System, Image Processing Method, and Program" — granted 2021‑05‑04
App. No.: 16/286,449 (continuation of 14/416,716, national stage of PCT/JP2013/066565)
Verification links: USPTO Assignment Center · legacy Assignment Search · Google Patents US10999635B2

Evidence caveat up front: I could not establish a live session against the USPTO Assignment Center to pull reel/frame numbers, so I have not fabricated any. What follows distinguishes (a) what the patent record and NEC's own pleadings state, from (b) what I could not verify. Google Patents' legal‑events pane for this patent shows no ownership‑change events after issuance (only "Application filed by NEC Corp," priority, publication, and grant) — which is itself a finding.

Inventors

• Yusuke Takahashi (Tokyo, JP) — sole named inventor on the issued US 10,999,635. He is a longtime NEC Corporation researcher; the same name appears across many NEC image‑processing filings (e.g., WO2006059436, the clothing‑feature extraction family CN102687171, and later NEC surveillance patents such as US11082634 with co‑inventor Hiroo Ikeda). This is a career NEC inventor, not an inventor who assigned to a third party.

Unusual-pattern check: No evidence of inventors departing the original assignee within 12 months of filing, and no inventor‑held (non‑assigned) interest. The inventor is embedded at NEC, and all downstream family members (US 10,841,528 / 10,778,931 / 10,750,113 / 11,343,575) remain NEC‑owned. Pattern not present.

Original assignee

NEC Corporation (Nippon Electric Company), Tokyo, Japan — named as both original and current assignee on the face of the patent and in Google Patents.

• Primary line of business: diversified electronics/IT — communications, computing, biometrics, AI, and video‑surveillance systems. Founded 1899; roughly 120‑year operating history.
• Product embodying the claims: Yes. NEC states in its own complaint that it has deployed "over 1,000 biometric systems in over seventy countries and regions" and that its face/iris‑recognition technology has repeatedly ranked first in NIST benchmarks (source: NEC v. Anker complaint, ¶¶ 17–20). The claimed subject matter (multi‑camera person tracking / surveillance UI) is directly within NEC's shipping surveillance product line.
• Current status: Operating, active, publicly traded Japanese multinational — not acquired, dissolved, or in bankruptcy. No Chapter 7/11 events found.

Assignment timeline

Plainly stated: I found no recorded post‑issuance assignment for US 10,999,635 in any source I could reach. The chain is a single‑owner chain:

The only conveyance that must exist as a matter of record is the standard inventor→employer employment assignment taken at prosecution (NEC's complaint asserts it holds the patent "owner by assignment … including the exclusive right to recover for past and future infringement," Dkt. 1, ¶ 14, E.D. Tex. 2:24‑cv‑00720). I could not retrieve its reel/frame or the recording correspondent from the Assignment Center in this session, so I am not inventing one. If you need the exact reel/frame, that is the single record to pull, and it should show NEC Corporation as assignee with a routine corporate correspondent (likely NEC's in‑house IP group or its prosecution firm of record).

No shell transfer, no NPE purchase, and no securitization instrument appears anywhere in the chain.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10999635
    2012 : Priority application filed by NEC
    2013 : PCT application filed by NEC
    2015 : US national stage filed by NEC
    2019 : Continuation filed by NEC
    2021 : Patent issued to NEC Corporation
    2024 : NEC asserts patent against Anker

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. No transfer to any "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" LLC. Current assignee remains NEC Corporation (Google Patents legal events; NEC complaint ¶ 14).

2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. NEC is not on any public NPE list (Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi‑LAN, Conversant/Mosaid, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, etc.). It is a Fortune Global 500 operating company asserting in its own name.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Unclear / not assessable. No post‑issuance recordings exist to compare correspondents against. Because I could not query Assignment Center, I cannot confirm whether the single inventor→NEC assignment shares a correspondent with other NEC recordations. No repeat‑player NPE correspondent is evident.

4. Cascading transfers — Not present. There is no chain of LLCs; the asset has been continuously NEC‑owned since the 2012 priority date.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present. NEC sued Anker on ~2024‑09‑03 (E.D. Tex. 2:24‑cv‑00720); there is no assignment within the preceding six months — or ever — that "cleaned up" standing. NEC has held title since filing.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. NEC is solvent and operating; no Chapter 7/11 proceeding involving NEC or this patent family.

7. Privateering — Not present. NEC sues in its own name against a competitor; no NPE front is interposed, and no SEC‑filing evidence of a proxy‑assertion arrangement exists.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN; it terminates at an asserting operating company.

Inverse note (context, not a signal against NEC): The Google Patents litigation panel links this patent to cases where NEC is the defendant — e.g., Power Mobile Life, LLC et al v. NEC Corporation, 1:24‑cv‑01870 (E.D. Va., filed 2024‑10‑24), and e‑Beacon LLC v. NEC Corporation, 2:24‑cv‑00891 (E.D. Tex., filed 2024‑11‑03). Those are NPEs suing NEC, not NEC transferring this patent. They should not be read as a change of ownership of US 10,999,635.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

NEC Corporation is the original and still‑current assignee of US 10,999,635 (patent face; Google Patents legal events; NEC complaint ¶ 14 in E.D. Tex. 2:24‑cv‑00720). NEC ships products embodying the surveillance/image‑processing claims and is asserting the patent in its own name against a direct competitor — Anker Innovations (eufy), accused over smart‑doorbell/home‑security products, in a six‑patent suit filed ~2024‑09‑03. There is no shell transfer, no NPE assignee, no pre‑litigation assignment, and no defensive‑aggregator termination anywhere in the chain; every NPE‑pattern signal above is absent. The one gap in this report — the exact reel/frame and correspondent of the original inventor→NEC employment assignment — should be confirmed directly at the USPTO Assignment Center, but nothing in the available record suggests any ownership event other than the routine employer assignment.

Caveat on completeness: Because I could not reach Assignment Center directly, this analysis rests on the patent document, Google Patents legal events, and NEC's filed pleadings. If a post‑issuance recording exists that is not surfaced in those sources, it would be the exception rather than the rule for a continuously NEC‑branded, in‑house‑asserted patent.

I'll verify the patent and its cited references before analyzing. Let me run several targeted searches.

Let me look up the key cited references to confirm their content and dates.

Prior-Art Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 10,999,635 (US10999635B2)

1. Identification of the patent and the controlling date

Controlling date for §102. Because every claim of US10999635 traces to the JP 2012-170406 priority of 2012-07-31 (a straight continuation chain), the pre-AIA version of 35 U.S.C. §102 governs, and the effective critical date is 31 July 2012. Practically that means:

• References published before 2012-07-31 are available under §102(a)/(b).
• U.S. patents/applications filed before the invention date (here ≤2012-07-31) but published later are available under §102(e) (e.g., the 2011-priority U.S. publications below).
• Anything with an effective U.S. filing date after 2012-07-31 is not §102 art against these claims (though it may be cited as background).

Important caveat on the reference list. The documents below are the "References Cited" printed on the face of the patent (Google Patents: https://patents.google.com/patent/US10999635/en). Note two things:

1. Being on the face of the patent is not a finding that a reference anticipates; the examiner allowed these 12 claims over this art.
2. Several of the "cited" documents were cited as technological background (category "A"), not as anticipatory art.
   I do not have the full USPTO file-wrapper/IDS in this session, so the §102 mapping below is a screening opinion, not a reconstruction of the actual examiner rejections.

2. What the granted claims actually require (the anticipation yardstick)

Claim 1 (system) requires, in substance:

• (a) accept a plurality of videos from a plurality of video cameras;
• (b) register a plurality of persons appearing in the videos;
• (c) display a first window and a plurality of tabs, the tabs assigned to respective registered persons;
• (d) the first window contains (i) a first set of videos associated with a first assigned person, (ii) a "first diagram" showing time ranges when the plurality of cameras each captured the first person, with camera identifiers and a time axis, and (iii) a first tab including an image of the first person;
• (e) the window is switchable by tab operation to a second, analogous window for a second person (with a different diagram).

Dependent claims add: (cl. 2) a per-camera indicator of whether that camera's video is currently displayed; (cl. 3) the diagram is a cell matrix of camera × time-range, colored to show capture; (cl. 4) the time axis includes a future range and predicted-capture cells are colored. Claims 5–8 and 9–12 are the method and CRM counterparts.

The novel core is therefore the person-centric tabbed window whose body contains a per-person multi-camera "time chart" (FIG. 8, T1/T2) plus the person's thumbnail on the tab.

3. Reference-by-reference assessment

Below, each face-cited reference is given with citation, dates, a brief description, and the claim(s) it could potentially bear on under §102 (with the honest caveat that most are §103/background rather than true anticipatory art).

Group A — Person-indexing / multi-camera timeline displays (most relevant to the "diagram" element, cl. 1(d)(ii), 3, 4)

1. JP 2001236514 A — "Automatic person index generator," Nippon Hoso Kyokai (NHK); priority 2000-02-24, published 2001-08-31 (JP4270703B2 granted 2009-06-03).

   • Generates, for each participant, an index of which camera captured that person and when, across multiple cameras, using camera parameters (pan/tilt/zoom/focus) to decide whether a person's position falls inside a given camera's shooting range.
   • §102 relevance: This is the closest listed art to claim 1(d)(ii)/(cl. 3) — a per-person, per-camera, time-based capture diagram. It could arguably anticipate the diagram sub-element, but appears not to disclose the tabbed per-person window (1(c)), the videos-in-window feature (1(d)(i)), or the thumbnail-on-tab (1(d)(iii)). Best characterized as §102(b) art directed at the timeline sub-feature; unlikely to anticipate claim 1 as a whole.

2. US 20060221184 A1 — "Monitoring and presenting video surveillance data," Vallone, Robert P. (3VR Security); priority 2005-04-05, published 2006-10-05 (granted as US7843491B2).

   • Multi-camera surveillance UI using "event cards" placed on a timeline, plus a camera-selection grid.
   • §102 relevance: Could bear on claim 1(d)(ii) (timeline representation) and claim 2 (per-camera indicator of what is displayed — the camera-selection grid). It is not a per-registered-person tabbed window with a person thumbnail. §102(b) art; principal value is as §103 background/combination material.

Group B — Person-specific multi-feed / multi-camera video presentation (cl. 1(a),(b),(d)(i)-(iii), 2)

1. US 20120113264 A1 — "Multi-feed event viewing," Verizon Patent and Licensing Inc.; priority 2010-11-10, published 2012-05-10 (granted US9252897B2).

   • Unified GUI presenting multiple concurrent camera feeds, with dynamic presence detection of an event participant in each feed and display of an indication of that participant's presence in the GUI; user selects/emphasizes a feed.
   • §102 relevance: Directly touches claim 1(a), 1(b), 1(d)(i) and claim 2 (per-feed presence/status indication). It is §102(e)-eligible (U.S. filing 2010-11-10, before the 2012 priority). However, it does not appear to teach the tabbed per-registered-person window or the per-person camera × time diagram; the participant-presence indication is feed-oriented, not a time-chart. Strong §103 combination reference; weak standalone §102.

2. US 20100002082 A1 — "Intelligent camera selection and object tracking," Buehler, Christopher J.; priority 2005-03-25, published 2010-01-07.

   • Automatically selects the "best" camera view of a tracked object/person and manages object tracking across cameras.
   • §102 relevance: Bears on claim 1(a),(b),(d)(i) (tracked person → associated camera video). No tabbed windows, no time diagram. §102(b)/§103 background.

3. US 20070182818 A1 — "Object tracking and alerts," Buehler, Christopher J.; priority 2005-09-02, published 2007-08-09.

   • Object tracking with alert generation across camera systems.
   • §102 relevance: General tracking background for claim 1(a),(b); not anticipatory. §102(b)/§103.

4. US 20090153654 A1 — "Video customized to include person-of-interest," Enge, Amy D.; priority 2007-12-18, published 2009-06-18.

   • Produces a video feed customized to a designated person-of-interest.
   • §102 relevance: Peripheral to claim 1(b)/(d)(i). §102(b) background.

Group C — General multi-camera surveillance / tracking infrastructure (claim 1(a),(b) only)

1. US 7304662 B1 — "Video surveillance system and method," Visilinx Inc.; priority 1996-07-10, published 2007-12-04. — General networked surveillance; §102(b) background only.

2. US 6061055 A — "Method of tracking objects with an imaging device," Autodesk, Inc.; priority 1997-03-21, published 2000-05-09. — Object tracking with an imaging device; background for claim 1(a),(b).

3. EP 1150510 A2 — "Digital recording/reproducing apparatus for surveillance," Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.; priority 2000-04-26, published 2001-10-31. — Surveillance recording/reproduction; background.

4. US 20030025599 A1 — "Method and apparatus for collecting, sending, archiving and retrieving motion video and still images and notification of detected events," Monroe, David A.; priority 2001-05-11, published 2003-02-06. — Remote video collection and event notification; background.

5. CN 1574961 A — "Video surveillance system, surveillance video composition apparatus, and video surveillance server," Matsushita; priority 2003-06-18, published 2005-02-02. — Multi-camera composition/serving; background.

6. US 20060225114 A1 — "Internet surveillance system and method," Walker, Jay S.; priority 1998-12-28, published 2006-10-05. — Networked surveillance; background.

7. US 20120120241 A1 — "Video surveillance," Sony Corporation; priority 2010-11-12, published 2012-05-17. — Surveillance presentation; §102(e)-eligible but only general background for claim 1(a).

8. US 20120188370 A1 — "Surveillance systems and methods to monitor, recognize, track objects and unusual activities in real time within user defined boundaries," Bordonaro, James; priority 2011-01-23, published 2012-07-26 (five days before the priority date). — Real-time object recognition/tracking in defined zones; §102(e)-eligible general background for claim 1(a),(b).

9. US 20130050502 A1 — "Moving object tracking system and moving object tracking method," Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba; priority 2010-02-19, published 2013-02-28. — Moving-object tracking; §102(e)-eligible background.

10. US 8390684 B2 — "Method and system for video collection and analysis thereof," On-Net Surveillance Systems, Inc.; priority 2008-03-28, published 2013-03-05. — Video collection/analysis; §102(e)-eligible background.

11. US 20090183177 A1 — "Multi-event type monitoring and searching," Brown, Lisa M.; priority 2008-01-14, published 2009-07-16. — Multi-event monitoring/search; background.

12. US 20070206834 A1 — "Search system, image-capturing apparatus, data storage apparatus, information processing apparatus, captured-image processing method, information processing method, and program," Shinkai, Mitsutoshi (Sony); priority 2006-03-06, published 2007-09-06. — Image search/indexing across storage; background for the indexing aspects of claim 1(d)(ii).

13. JPH 08221592 A — "Interactive information providing device," Matsushita Electric Ind Co Ltd; priority 1995-02-16, published 1996-08-30. — Interactive/windowed information GUI; possible generic windowing background (no person tracking).

14. CN 101321271 A — "Information processing device and information processing method," Canon; priority 2007-06-08, published 2008-12-10. — Generic information processing/GUI; background.

15. JP 2010049349 A — "Vision support device of vehicle," Honda Motor Co Ltd; priority 2008-08-19, published 2010-03-04. — Vehicle vision/camera display; generally not relevant to the person-tracking claims; background.

16. CN 102170560 A — "RFID-based closed circuit television system and monitoring method," Li Zhaoquan; priority 2011-02-25, published 2011-08-31. — RFID-assisted CCTV; background.

Group D — The reference the applicant itself distinguished in the specification

1. JP 2008219570 A — "Inter-camera link relation information generation device," Matsushita Electric Ind Co Ltd; priority 2007-03-06, published 2008-09-18.

• Uses inter-camera coupling-relation information to re-identify a person between an appearing point in one camera and a vanishing point in another.
• §102 relevance: This is the closest art acknowledged in the patent's own Background section (it is the reference the applicant contrasts against). It supports claim 1(a),(b) (multi-camera person re-identification) but discloses neither the tabbed per-person window nor the per-person time diagram. §102(b) art; chiefly §103/background, and expressly distinguished in the spec.

Group E — "Family Cites Families" references (cited in the wider family, not the U.S. §102 core)

1. US 8570373 B2 — "Tracking an object utilizing location information associated with a wireless device," Cisco Technology, Inc.; priority 2007-06-08, published 2013-10-29. — Object tracking fused with wireless-device location; background for claim 1(a),(b).

2. US 10424342 B2 — "Facilitating people search in video surveillance," International Business Machines Corporation; priority 2010-07-28, published 2019-09-24. — People-search over surveillance video; background for person identification/registration (claim 1(b)), §102(e)-eligible.

4. Bottom line — most relevant prior art

No single reference on the face of US10999635 appears to anticipate claim 1 as a whole, because none of them combines (i) tabbed windows assigned to respective registered persons, (ii) each window containing that person's associated camera videos, and (iii) a per-person, multi-camera camera × time-axis capture diagram plus a person-image tab.

Ranked by proximity to the granted claims:

1. JP 2001236514 A (NHK) — closest to the "diagram … time ranges when the plurality of video cameras each captured the [person] … with camera identifiers and a time axis" element (claim 1(d)(ii), cl. 3) — but lacks the tabbed per-person window.
2. US 20120113264 A1 (Verizon, "Multi-feed event viewing") — closest to the person-associated multi-camera video presentation + per-camera status indication (claim 1(a),(b),(d)(i); cl. 2) — but lacks the per-person time diagram and the person-image tab.
3. US 20060221184 A1 (Vallone / 3VR) — closest to the timeline/event-card and camera-selection-grid presentation (claim 1(d)(ii); cl. 2) — but not person-tabbed and not a registered-person-centric diagram.
4. US 20100002082 A1 (Buehler, "Intelligent camera selection and object tracking") — best-view camera selection for a tracked person (claim 1(a),(b),(d)(i)) — infrastructure only for the claimed UI.
5. JP 2008219570 A (Matsushita) — the applicant-acknowledged closest art for cross-camera person re-identification; distinguished in the specification.

The remaining Group C/E references (US7304662, US6061055, EP1150510, US20030025599, CN1574961, US20060225114, US20120120241, US20120188370, US20130050502, US8390684, US20090183177, US20070206834, JPH08221592, CN101321271, JP2010049349, CN102170560, US8570373, US10424342) are background/§103 material — individually they show multi-camera surveillance, object/person tracking, event notification, or generic windowed GUIs, but each is missing at least the person-tabbed window with person thumbnail and/or the per-person camera × time-axis capture diagram.

5. Confidence and limitations

• High confidence in the patent identification, dates, and the claim language — these come from the authoritative full text supplied.
• Moderate confidence in the "closest art" ranking; based on the reference abstracts/first pages retrieved (Google Patents, patentimages, FreePatentsOnline).
• Lower confidence on any specific §102 anticipation assertion, because (a) I did not retrieve each reference's full text in this session, and (b) the true §102 rejections would be recorded in the USPTO file wrapper, which I could not pull here. I have therefore framed the mapping as "potentially bears on" rather than a definitive anticipation finding.
• Two references with 2013 publication dates (US 20130050502 A1, US 8390684 B2) are only §102(e)-eligible because their filing/priority predates 2012-07-31; a reference published after the critical date cannot be §102(a)/(b) art.

I'll research the key prior-art references cited on this patent's page to ground the obviousness analysis.

Let me research additional cited references relevant to the timeline/diagram and per-person selection features.

Obviousness Analysis — US 10,999,635 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Patent: US 10,999,635 B2, "Image processing system, image processing method, and program" — NEC Corp., inventor Yusuke Takahashi. Effective priority date 2012‑07‑31 (JP 2012‑170406); this continuation filed 2019‑02‑26, granted 2021‑05‑04.

Note on scope of my analysis: I worked exclusively from the references listed in the "Citations (23)" / "Patent Citations (24)" and "Family Cites Families" sections of the Google Patents page, supplemented by the abstracts and specification passages I was able to retrieve for the most material references. Where I could not independently verify a specific teaching, I say so. This is a technical § 103 analysis, not a legal opinion, and pinpoint citations to the references' paragraphs/figures should be verified against the originals before being relied upon in litigation or prosecution.

1. The claims at issue (granted claim set)

All 12 claims share the same substance in system (1–4), method (5–8) and CRM (9–12) form. The independent claim 1 requires:

Dependent claims add: 1/2 – video information indicating whether each camera's image is currently being displayed; 3 – the diagram is made of cells (camera × time‑range) that are colored; 4 – the time axis includes a future range, and the cell for the camera predicted to capture the person is colored.

The single distinguishing concept over the patent's own admitted background art (JP‑A‑2008‑219570) is therefore the per‑person tabbed window in which a camera-by-camera screenshot "time chart" (a Gantt-like camera/time grid) is displayed alongside the live multi-camera feeds, with the window switchable between persons.

2. Framework

• Graham v. John Deere (1966): scope/content of the prior art; differences between prior art and claims; level of ordinary skill; secondary considerations.
• KSR Int'l v. Teleflex (2007): prior art is not limited to references designed to solve the same problem; a combination is obvious where it is "the product of ordinary creativity," where elements are "known" and combined to yield "predictable results," where there is a "design incentive," or where a technique is used to improve a similar device.
• Motivation to combine may come from the references themselves, from the nature of the problem, or from the knowledge of a POSITA.

Level of ordinary skill (proposed): a bachelor's degree in EE/CS (or equivalent) plus ~2–3 years of experience in video surveillance / computer vision / GUI design, or equivalent. This is a mature, GUI-heavy art.

3. The material references and what they teach

A. US 2006/0221184 A1 — Vallone (3VR Security), pub. 2006‑10‑05 — strongest single reference.
Retrieved text confirms: multi‑camera video surveillance; segments of streams displayed as "event cards"; events "represented in a timeline"; events that "a user can organize … by time" or "organize or filter event cards by camera"; face event cards that carry "the image that contains the 'best' view of the person's face"; a camera selection grid (FIG. 7); and a playback panel with "Next/Prev/Live" controls. This discloses substantially all of 1b, 1f‑ii in substance (a time axis carrying camera‑identified events), 1f‑iii (per‑person face imagery as the identifying graphic), and the multi‑camera selection concept.

B. US 2009/0183177 A1 — Brown (IBM), pub. 2009‑07‑16.
Multiple event types monitored; surveillance data for a "primary" event presented in a first panel while related events appear in a second panel; a user adjusts relatedness criteria; the UI "enable[s] the user to simultaneously view the surveillance data." Teaches multi‑panel, per‑entity surveillance presentation with temporal/event structures.

C. US 2009/0153654 A1 — Enge (Kodak), pub. 2009‑06‑18.
Receives a plurality of input video sequences plus a set of person‑of‑interest (POI) information; identifies the video sequence(s) that prominently display the POI; generates a customized output video per POI, and expressly notes that "a plurality of different output videos of the same event [can be generated], each … customized to include its own set of persons‑of‑interest." This supplies the core idea of binding a selected sub‑set of multi‑camera video to a selected person (element 1f‑i / 1g‑i).

D. US 2012/0120241 A1 — Sony, pub. 2012‑05‑17 (before the 07‑31‑2012 priority date).
Two or more cameras at known locations plus a motion predictor that "predict[s] the physical motion of the object … to derive an expected time when the object may be observed in the field of view of another one of the video cameras," using routing data. Directly supplies the future‑time prediction at a specific other camera needed for claim 4.

E. US 2012/0113264 A1 — Verizon, pub. 2012‑05‑10 (before priority date).
"A number of concurrent feeds … presented to users via a unified interface"; the user selects a feed and it is "presented … in an enhanced or emphasized manner"; feeds are dynamically labeled. Supplies concurrent multi‑feed presentation with user selection/emphasis — the "currently displayed" indication of claim 2.

F. US 2010/0002082 A1 — Buehler (ObjectVideo), pub. 2010‑01‑07.
"Intelligent camera selection and object tracking." Supplies the rationale of automatically choosing which cameras to show based on a tracked object, which is exactly the per‑person camera selection implied by claims 1–2.

G. JP‑A‑2008‑219570 — Matsushita, pub. 2008‑09‑18.
The patent's own admitted background: inter‑camera link‑relation generation, matching a person by feature similarity between an appearing point and a vanishing point. Supplies registering/tracking persons across cameras (1c) and cross‑camera association.

H. Secondary/confirmatory: JP‑A‑2001‑236514 (NHK, "Automatic person index generator," 2001) — indexing video by person; US 2007/0206834 A1 (Shinkai, Sony) — search across captured images; US 2006/0221184's sibling US 7,847,820 (intelligent event determination/notification); US 2013/0050502 A1 (Toshiba, moving‑object tracking) — date caveat below.

Date caveat: US 2013/0050502 A1 (pub. 2013‑02‑28) and US 8,390,684 B2 (grant 2013‑03‑05) publish after the 2012‑07‑31 priority date; they are only available as § 102(e) art via their earlier effective filing dates (Toshiba priority 2010‑02‑19; On‑Net priority 2008‑03‑28). Their availability should be verified. All of References A–F above, and G, are squarely before the critical date.

4. Combination 1 (primary) — Vallone + Enge + Sony

A POSITA would combine these three:

• Vallone supplies the multi‑camera GUI skeleton: a window/timeline in which camera‑identified events are arranged along time, per‑person face imagery, camera selection, and event‑card scanning (1b, 1d, 1f‑ii basis, 1f‑iii, 1g basis).
• Enge supplies the person‑centric organization: associating a selected set of the available video with a designated person and generating per‑person outputs (1f‑i, 1g‑i, 1e).
• Sony supplies the predicted future time at a specific other camera (claim 4).

Motivation to combine: All three are in the same field (video surveillance / multi‑camera video presentation) and address the same recognized problem — that a human observer cannot meaningfully scan many camera feeds at once, and that person re‑identification is error‑prone (the latter expressly stated in the '635 specification itself, col. describing JP‑A‑2008‑219570). Vallone's own text states the goal of letting a user "scan event cards" to avoid scrutinizing many streams; Enge's goal is to let a user obtain video targeted to a person of interest; Sony's goal is to tell a surveillance operator where and when a subject of interest will next be observable. A POSITA seeking to reduce observer confusion when monitoring several targets thus has an explicit incentive to (i) partition the display by person, and (ii) present each person's camera‑by‑camera detection history/forecast on a time axis. That is a predictable, field‑known combination (KSR: "combination of familiar elements according to known methods"). The per‑person tab with a thumbnail of the person is a mere design choice for the tab affordance already disclosed by Vallone/Brown.

5. Combination 2 (alternative) — Brown + Vallone + Matsushita JP‑A‑2008‑219570 (+ Toshiba)

• Brown (US 2009/0183177) supplies the multi‑panel surveillance UI with a selected "primary" event/person and a concurrently displayed secondary panel, plus user‑adjustable criteria — a natural host for the per‑person window/switchable tabs.
• Vallone supplies the camera‑and‑time timeline and the face imagery.
• JP‑A‑2008‑219570 supplies cross‑camera person re‑identification (appearing/vanishing points) — needed for "registering persons" who persist across the diagram.
• Toshiba US 2013/0050502 (subject to the § 102(e) date caveat) supplies moving‑object tracking across cameras.

Motivation: Brown and Vallone are both surveillance GUI references solving the same multi‑stream overload problem; combining them is the combination of two known techniques each directed to the same end. JP‑A‑2008‑219570 is the very reference the '635 specification cites as the state of the art it sought to improve, so a POSITA starting from it and adding a display layer (Brown/Vallone) is the ordinary, non‑hindsight route — indeed, the stated object of the '635 patent ("suppressing confusion … when tracking a person") is precisely the problem the combination is designed to solve.

6. Dependent claims

• Claim 2 (indicate which camera's image is being displayed): Verizon US 2012/0113264 (selected feed presented in an "enhanced or emphasized manner"; dynamic feed labels) and Vallone (camera‑selection grid; "Live" button for the currently selected camera). Indication of the active feed is also a routine GUI convention (highlighted/active tab).
• Claim 3 (camera × time‑range cells that are colored): the cell grid is a Gantt‑chart/time‑chart — a ubiquitous, decades‑old visualization for "who/what was active when," and coloring cells to encode state is a conventional data‑display technique. Vallone's timeline of camera‑originated events, when laid out against camera IDs, yields exactly this grid; Brown's event timelines reinforce it. Colored‑cell encoding is at most an obvious design/implementation choice.
• Claim 4 (future time range; the cell for the predicted camera colored): Sony US 2012/0120241 expressly derives an "expected time when the object may be observed in the field of view of another one of the video cameras." A POSITA would place that predicted detection on the same time axis (as the '635 FIG. 8 does) because the time chart already has a future extent — a predictable extension of the same display.

7. Anticipated rebuttals and their weaknesses

1. "No single reference shows the per‑person tabbed window with a camera/time diagram." — Correct; the § 103 case must be a combination. Vallone + Enge + Sony, with Brown/Vallone as the GUI host, covers every element. The references are all in the same field and address the same problem, so the combination is not "hindsight‑only."
2. "The diagram (camera‑ID × time grid) is the point of novelty." — The grid is a conventional Gantt/timeline rendering; Vallone already places camera‑identified events on a time axis, and coloring cells to show active periods is a standard visualization step. No unexpected result is asserted in the specification for the grid itself.
3. Teaching away / incompatibility — No reference appears to teach away from per‑person partitioning; Vallone, Brown, Enge and Sony all push toward filtering/summarizing multi‑camera data by relevance or subject.
4. Secondary considerations — I found no evidence (in the materials available) of unexpected results, long‑felt need, industry praise, or copying tied to this specific continuation. The patent family, however, is in active litigation (Texas E.D. 2:24‑cv‑00720 and 2:24‑cv‑00881; Virginia E.D. 1:24‑cv‑01870, per the Google Patents page), which is exactly the posture in which a § 103 challenge would be mounted; any objective‑indicia evidence would come from the patent owner. This should be verified independently.
5. Priority / family nuance — Note that this patent is one of a large family (parent US 10,841,528; siblings US 10,778,931, US 10,750,113, US 11,343,575) sharing the 2012‑07‑31 priority and a common specification. The claims here were evidently drafted later to emphasize the camera‑ID/time‑axis diagram and per‑person tabs — narrowing relative to the original disclosure. That narrowing is a helpful fact for a challenger: the disclosure the references must be measured against is the 2012 specification, not the later‑drafted claim language.

8. Bottom line

Under Graham/KSR, claim 1 and its dependents are vulnerable to a § 103 challenge, most cleanly framed as:

US 2006/0221184 A1 (Vallone) in view of US 2009/0153654 A1 (Enge) and US 2012/0120241 A1 (Sony), optionally with US 2009/0183177 A1 (Brown) and JP‑A‑2008‑219570 (Matsushita),

with the motivation being (a) the shared field and shared problem of monitoring many camera streams for multiple persons, (b) Vallone's own stated goal of reducing the need to scrutinize numerous streams via a time‑organized, camera‑identified event display, (c) Enge's express teaching of person‑centered selection of multi‑source video, and (d) Sony's express teaching of the predicted future camera/time — each element producing no more than its expected function, so the whole is "the predictable result of combining familiar elements according to known methods."

Confidence and caveats: High confidence on the general mapping (each element is disclosed in the cited field); moderate confidence on the precise pinpoint disclosure of the combined camera‑ID × time‑axis grid in a single reference, since the strongest support for that specific rendering is Vallone's camera‑and‑time event organization plus the general Gantt‑chart practice rather than an express "camera‑ID/time‑axis grid." I was unable to fully retrieve the Toshiba (US 2013/0050502) and On‑Net (US 8,390,684) texts or the NHK JP‑A‑2001‑236514 abstract within this session, and the two references with post‑priority publication dates require § 102(e) verification. Those specific gaps should be confirmed against the full reference texts before any filing.