US 11015952

I'll run several searches to ground this against authoritative sources.

Let me check for litigation and any CAFC activity specifically naming this patent.

Let me confirm the full claim set and the continuation family.

Summary: US Patent 11,015,952 B1

Scope note on identifiers: Interpreting "11015952" literally, this maps to US 11,015,952 B1 (7-digit grant number). This is not to be confused with similarly-numbered patents that do appear in USAA-related litigation (e.g., U.S. 10,192,369; 9,311,271; 12,236,728; 10,402,638 — all different patents entirely).

Source caveat: I was able to retrieve the full patent text (Google Patents), the claim set (Justia), and secondary aggregator records. I did not obtain a direct authenticated query of USPTO PatentCenter/Patent Public Search or the CAFC docket system (both are behind interfaces my searches did not return). Statements below are grounded in the retrieved sources; where I could not verify, I say so.

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Bibliographic data

Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/US11015952/en ; https://patents.justia.com/patent/11015952 ; https://www.patentleaderboard.com/united-services-automobile-association-usaa/jason-w-lindley/[141111](/patent/141111)

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Abstract (as granted)

Systems and methods for transportation management described herein are capable of providing a recommendation to a user on a mode of transportation to travel from a start location to a destination location. The systems and methods may the determine a recommended mode of transportation based on user preferences obtained from a user profile and energy cost associated with each of available modes of transportation to travel from the start location to the destination location. The systems and methods then transmits a recommended mode of transportation along with a recommended route to travel from the start location to the destination location on a graphical user interface of a user device of the user.

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Independent claims — plain language

The granted claim set appears to be 14 claims with two independent claims (claim 1, a method; claim 11, a system); dependent claims 2–10 and 12–14 add limitations. (Note: I confirmed claims 1–14 via Justia but did not independently pull the complete certified claim listing from the USPTO, so treat the total count as high-confidence but not source-verified.)

Claim 1 — Method for displaying multiple modes of transportation on a user's device UI
A server dynamically drives a user interface of a user's electronic device to show routes from point A to point B, and to show each route's energy-efficiency value:

• First indicators = one per route, determined from topographical data between the two geographic locations; each route corresponds to a mode of transportation and is adjusted dynamically using real-time traffic data.
• Second indicators = an energy-efficiency value for each route + mode pairing.
• On user selection of a route: (a) the selected route's indicator is re-rendered to be visually distinct from the others; and (b) if the mode of transportation for that route is tied to a transportation application already installed on the device, the server invokes that app and brings it to the foreground (per the specification, e.g., surfacing a commercial taxi app so the user can order the ride, while the transport-management app moves to the background).

Claim 11 — System
The same functionality expressed as an apparatus claim: a server (configured to determine multiple modes of transportation between two locations) plus a user electronic device whose user interface is configured to dynamically display the first indicators (routes from topographical data, adjusted with real-time traffic) and second indicators (energy-efficiency values), and to perform the same select → visually-distinguish → invoke-transportation-app-in-foreground sequence.

Representative dependent claims: energy-efficiency based on energy consumption (cl. 2/12); based on energy cost (cl. 3/13); energy cost based on the cost of fuel (cl. 4/14); device identifier for the electronic device (cl. 5–6); stored user profile with preferred modes / health data / owned-vehicle data (cl. 7–8); mode selection based on weather data at destinations within the route, with routes dynamically adjusted on real-time weather (cl. 9–10).

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Practical character of the disclosure

The specification describes a server (102) that: receives a device-identifier-bearing request; resolves the start location from sensor/cell/Wi-Fi data; builds a user profile (preferred modes, health data such as heart rate/blood pressure, owned-vehicle fuel mileage); computes energy consumption, energy-efficiency values, and energy cost per route/mode; factors in weather, traffic, events, elevation/topography, road physical characteristics, tolls, and a user-set budget; ranks and recommends modes; and dynamically refreshes the GUI. Notably, indicator sets are described as including routes (302), time/distance (306), energy-efficiency (308), and mode-of-transportation icons (304), with FIG. 3B showing the selected route rendered in bolder color.

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Litigation / CAFC check — no confirming results

• I found no evidence that US 11,015,952 has been asserted in litigation or has appeared on a CAFC 2026 docket.
• The USAA-related PTAB/Federal Circuit activity that surfaced in searches concerns other patents: the USAA-v.-Auto Telematics IPRs (e.g., IPR2023-00768/00769/00770/00911 over U.S. 10,192,369 and 9,311,271) and an IPR over U.S. 12,236,728. One source notes an Auto Telematics appeal (from IPR2023-00518) was dismissed by the Federal Circuit, but that is unrelated to the '952 patent.
• Uncertainty statement: This is a negative finding from the searches available to me, not a certified docket clearance. A definitive answer would require an authenticated query of the USPTO Patent Public Search "Patent Litigation" view and the CAFC docket (PACER/CM-ECF) for "11,015,952," which I could not execute directly.

I'll research litigation involving US Patent 11015952.

Let me search more specific litigation databases.

Let me verify with more targeted database searches.

Answer: No litigation identified involving U.S. Patent No. 11015952

I searched litigation-focused sources (Unified Patents litigation case list, CourtListener/Recap documents, Docket Alarm docket excerpts, CAFC opinions, and general web search) for the literal patent number 11015952. I found no record of any district court action, ITC investigation, or Federal Circuit appeal in which U.S. Patent No. 11015952 was asserted, challenged, or at issue.

What the searches did and did not return

• No case hits on "11015952." The only precise matches for the number 11015952 were the patent's own bibliographic records (Google Patents; Golden wiki entry "US Patent 11015952 Systems and methods for transportation management," assignee USAA, granted May 25, 2021, Application No. 16/144,749, filed Sept. 27, 2018) and unrelated hits (a Czech public-contracts registry ID; UK Gazette company-number strings; a Brazilian JUCI RS filing list). None is a patent case.
• No PTAB proceeding referencing the patent appeared in the results (no IPR, PGR, or CBM identified against 11015952).
• "Prior art" style citations to "11015952 — May 25, 2021 — Lyle et al." appear in the References Cited tables of later Apple patents (e.g., US 11,740,096 and US 11,768,083, "User interfaces for customized navigation routes" / "User interfaces for providing navigation directions"). That is examiner citation of the patent as prior art — not litigation.

Important distinction — USAA's actual litigation campaigns do not include this patent

USAA (the assignee of 11015952) has been a prolific patent plaintiff, but its campaigns have involved remote deposit capture / check-imaging patents, not the transportation-management patent here. Identified from the dockets and SEC filings surfaced in the searches:

None of these identifies U.S. Patent No. 11015952 as an asserted patent. (For completeness: USAA's check-imaging family is unrelated to the '952 disclosure, which concerns dynamically updating a GUI with routes/modes of transportation and energy-efficiency indicators.)

Confidence and caveats

• I have moderate-to-high confidence that no publicly docketed litigation asserting 11015952 exists as of the search date: the number is distinctive, and multiple independent litigation databases would surface it if it had been pleaded.
• I cannot certify a negative. My tools are web search, and I did not directly query fee-based dockets (Lex Machina, RPX, Docket Navigator) or run a live PACER full-text search. Litigation filed but not yet indexed publicly, sealed pleadings, ITC Section 337 complaints, or foreign proceedings would not appear.
• Note also that Google Patents' own reassignment record for this patent shows a chain — USAA → UIPCO, LLC (assignments recorded Oct. 25, 2018 and Feb. 9, 2021) → back to United Services Automobile Association (recorded Apr. 26, 2021). That is an ownership record, not litigation, but it is relevant if you are checking standing/chain-of-title before asserting the patent.

Suggested verification steps if you need a certified negative

1. Unified Patents litigation case list — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist (search patent number 11015952).
2. PACER full-text search in the districts where USAA litigates (E.D. Tex., W.D. Tex., W.D. Pa., N.D. Cal.) for "11015952."
3. USPTO Patent Center / PTAB PTAB Center for any IPR/PGR/CBM naming 11,015,952 as the challenged patent.
4. Confirm whether the continuation US 11,774,262 B1 (from App. No. 17/315,839 per the Google Patents priority record) has itself been asserted — if the family were being monetized, that is the more likely vehicle for later-filed cases.

I'll start by verifying the structured data against live sources.

PTAB proceedings overview

Total: 0 AIA trial proceedings on file for U.S. Patent No. 11,015,952 ("Systems and methods for transportation management"). The structured USPTO Open Data Portal block in my instructions returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceedings, and my independent web searches surfaced none. Breakout is therefore: 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution-denied. Bottom-line defensive posture: there is no PTAB record to work from — this patent's claims are entirely UNTESTED, and every validity ground is still on the table for a defendant (subject to the § 315(b) one-year clock once you are served). Treat the template framing about "the troll has no case" as inapplicable here: the patent owner is USAA, an operating company and an active patent enforcer, not an NPE whose patents have been shredded.

Verification detail (what I checked)

Caveat I want on the record: absence of results from search-engine indexing is weaker evidence than the ODP block, and the ODP block itself lags recent filings. If you need a belt-and-suspenders answer, run the party-name search for United Services Automobile Association and the patent-number search directly in PTAB E2E and Docket Alarm's PTAB docket before relying on the "zero" in a brief or an opinion letter. I will not manufacture a proceeding number to fill the gap.

No proceedings to report

Because there are no proceedings, I cannot supply — and will not invent — petitioner names, APJ panels, institution dates, FWDs, settlements, or Federal Circuit dockets for this patent. None of those exist to my knowledge for US 11,015,952.

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Strategic summary

Claim status: everything is UNTESTED. No claim of US 11,015,952 has been canceled, confirmed, or construed by the Board. I do not have the issued claim set text in front of me, so I am not going to state claim numbers or which claims are independent; pull the granted claims from the patent's Google Patents page or PatentCenter before building any chart. What I can say from the specification and abstract: the disclosure is directed to dynamically updating a GUI with multiple transportation-mode indicators and energy-efficiency values, with a "invoke the third-party transportation application into the foreground" hook (e.g., a commercial taxi app) — i.e., a § 101-adjacent software/GUI patent in class G01C 21/34 (multimodal routing, dynamic re-routing, energy/emissions cost functions).

Patent-term and family posture. Filed 2018-09-27, priority to provisional 62/564,106 (2017-09-27), granted 2021-05-25, with an adjusted expiration of 2039-08-14. That is a long runway, which raises the stakes on getting an early invalidity posture right. Note also the recorded assignments: USAA → UIPCO, LLC → back to USAA. USAA is the real party in interest; a defendant should expect USAA (through its litigation counsel) to defend, not to fold.

Estoppel landscape — there is none yet, which is the whole point. With no petition ever filed, § 315(e)(2) estops nobody. A defendant today has the full menu: § 102/§ 103 on any pre-2017-09-27 art, § 112 grounds, and — because this is a post-AIA patent — PGR-eligible § 101 challenges only if filed within 9 months of grant (that window closed 2022-02-25, so § 101 now lives in the district court, and in Alice motions) and CBM is unavailable for patents with a priority date after 2017-09-16. Practically: § 103 obviousness art is the live IPR pathway. Because no earlier petitioner exists, there is no privity trap and no General Plastic / follow-on-petition risk from a prior challenger.

Pattern signals — the chain points the other way. USAA's PTAB history in my search results is mostly USAA defending its check-deposit/remote-deposit-capture family against banks (IPO/CBM2019-00002, -00004, -00005; IPR2019-00815, -00882, -01082, -01083; IPR2020-00092, -01593; IPR2021-01070, -01073; IPR2022-01593 — identified by USAA as related matters in a later filing, none pending), and USAA attacking Auto Telematics' patents (e.g., IPR2023-00770 against U.S. Pat. No. 10,192,369). I found no Unified Patents or other defensive-aggregator involvement anywhere in the '952 chain. The Federal Circuit activity I found involving USAA (Mitek v. USAA, No. 2023-1687, op. 2025-06-12) concerns USAA's check-image patents and a declaratory-judgment standing fight — not the '952 patent, and I am flagging that expressly so it is not mistaken for an appeal of this patent.

Institutional-environment warning. The absence of filings also reflects the current climate: per the BSA's 2026-09-02 submission to the USPTO on fee-setting authority, IPR filings have collapsed from ~110/month in 2024 to ~15 in April 2026, and the institution rate has fallen to roughly 38% fiscal-year-to-date, with ~14% for the first cohort under the Director's October 2025 bifurcated procedure. Combined with the Director's "settled expectations" discretionary-denial doctrine (a patent with a 2017 priority date may now draw a discretionary denial argument), a defendant's IPR route to this patent is materially harder than the historical baseline.

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Recommended next steps

If you are a defendant facing assertion of US 11,015,952:

1. Confirm count zero before you rely on it. Search PTAB E2E by patent number and by "United Services Automobile Association"; cross-check Docket Alarm and CourtListener for any USAA v. [you or a customer] suit or any declaratory-judgment action touching the '952 family. There is nothing for me to link to because there is no decision, order, or FWD.
2. Derive the § 315(b) deadline from your own service date. With zero prior petitions, there is no time bar inherited from anyone else; the one-year clock starts with service of a complaint on you (or a privy/RPI). Calendar it immediately and file inside it — you get exactly one clean shot.
3. Build the § 103 record now, and thread the § 101 needle in the district court. Since the claim set is untested, spend your early budget on: (a) pre-2017-09-27 printed publications on multimodal routing with energy/fuel-consumption cost functions (the '952 specification's own cited classification is G01C 21/3469 "fuel consumption; energy use; emission aspects" — that subclass is a target-rich prior-art neighborhood); and (b) the "invoke the installed transportation application into the foreground" limitation, which is a software-integration hook with a well-developed mobile-OS prior-art universe. Pair the IPR with a parallel Alice motion; the post-grant PGR window for § 101 closed on 2022-02-25 and CBM is unavailable on this post-AIA priority date.
4. Consider the stipulation calculus. If the Director's post-October-2025 practice still requires a Sotera-style stipulation to defeat a Fintiv-style discretionary denial, decide early whether you are willing to give up all § 282 invalidity grounds you raised or reasonably could have raised in the district court. That election drives your petition scope more than the merits do.
5. Check the continuation. US 11,774,262 B1 claims priority through this family. If USAA asserts the '262 instead of (or alongside) the '952, your IPR analysis must be repeated for that claim set — nothing about the '952 transfers automatically, and no estoppel from the '952 exists to help or hurt you.
6. If you instead want leverage against USAA in a broader dispute (USAA's deposit-capture family has been IPR'd repeatedly, and USAA itself petitions against Auto Telematics), understand that this '952/AI-navigation family is armed but has never been fired at the Board. That is a signal of either a patent USAA is holding for future assertion or one it has not yet found a target worth using it on.

I'll verify the assignment record and ownership chain before writing. Let me pull what I can from live sources.

Good — this already confirms UIPCO, LLC is USAA's captive IP vehicle (same San Antonio address). Let me pin down the specific reel/frame records and correspondence for this patent.

Let me try to pin the reel/frame records for this specific patent and confirm the correspondent firm.

Ownership & Assignment Analysis — US 11,015,952 B1

Source note / limitation up front: I could reach Google Patents' legal-events record (embedded in the authoritative full text you supplied) and secondary mirrors (PlainSite, Justia, Golden, Unified Patents portal), but I could not directly query the USPTO Assignment Center (https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ or https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html) for this patent before my retrieval budget ran out. The execution dates, reel/frame identifiers, and correspondents of record for this specific patent are therefore not confirmed by me, and I will not invent them. Dates below are the recording/assignment dates surfaced in Google Patents legal events. Where I cite a reel/frame, I say explicitly that it is from a related USAA/UIPCO record, not this patent.

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Inventors

Pattern notes:

• All three appear to be captive USAA inventors, not outside founders. Their assignments run to UIPCO, LLC, USAA's IP-holding affiliate at 9800 Fredericksburg Road, San Antonio, TX 78288 — the same address as USAA headquarters.
• Unusual split in inventor paperwork: the Lyle + Lindley → UIPCO recording is dated 2018-10-25, while the Billman → UIPCO recording is dated 2021-02-09, ~2.4 years later (Google Patents legal events). This is a housekeeping/docketing artifact, not evidence of inventors departing. I found no evidence of any inventor leaving USAA within 12 months of filing, and no evidence of a portfolio fire-sale.

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Original assignee

United Services Automobile Association (USAA) — listed as original and current assignee on the face of US 11,015,952. Some databases (Justia, Unified Patents portal) also list UIPCO, LLC as a co-assignee.

• Primary line of business: member-owned Fortune 100 financial-services and insurance group (auto/home/life insurance, banking, investing), HQ San Antonio, TX, founded 1922.
• Product embodying the claims: USAA ships a large consumer mobile app, but I found no evidence of a standalone commercial navigation/route-recommendation product embodying these claims. The disclosure (multimodal route UI, energy-efficiency scoring, invoking a third-party ride-hailing app) reads as an incremental/defensive portfolio filing rather than a shipped product line.
• Current status: operating, financially strong, never in bankruptcy. No litigation over this patent was surfaced in my searches.

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Assignment timeline

Chronological, from Google Patents legal events. Reel/frame not confirmed for this patent — stated as such rather than fabricated.

1. 2018-10-25 (recorded) — Reel not confirmed for this patent

   • Conveyance: Assignment (assignors' interest)
   • Assignor: Jason W. Lindley; Ruthie Lyle
   • Assignee: UIPCO, LLC (Texas LLC, 9800 Fredericksburg Rd, San Antonio, TX 78288)
   • Correspondent: not confirmed for this patent. Related USAA/UIPCO recordings share a recurring Houston correspondent at P.O. Box 692289, Houston, TX 77269 (submitter "Jim Thomas"; emails at fyjplaw.com) — see reel 041694/0894 for USAA app 15/365,706. Treat as related-family evidence only.
   • Context: internal reorg / captive-IP capture — inventors assign into USAA's own holding LLC.

2. 2021-02-09 (recorded) — Reel not confirmed for this patent

   • Conveyance: Assignment
   • Assignor: Bradly Jay Billman
   • Assignee: UIPCO, LLC
   • Correspondent: not confirmed.
   • Context: completion of the same internal transfer (delayed inventor paperwork), not a new commercial event.

3. 2021-04-26 (recorded) — Reel not confirmed for this patent

   • Conveyance: Assignment
   • Assignor: UIPCO, LLC
   • Assignee: United Services Automobile Association (USAA)
   • Correspondent: not confirmed.
   • Context: internal reorg — captive holding company assigns back to the operating parent, normalizing title ahead of issuance. (Comparable UIPCO→USAA recordings exist for sibling patents, e.g. 57352/791 and 58616/210.)

Family follow-on (not an assignment): on 2021-05-10 priority was claimed to US 17/315,839, which issued as US 11,774,262 B1 — a continuation in the same family, still USAA.

If the Assignment Center returns additional entries I could not reach (e.g., a security-interest/Release, or a Change of Name for UIPCO), they would appear between the entries above; I am not asserting their existence.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11015952
    2017 : Provisional filed
    2018 : Non provisional filed by USAA
         : Lyle and Lindley assign to UIPCO LLC
    2021 : Billman assigns to UIPCO LLC
         : UIPCO LLC assigns back to USAA
         : Patent issued
         : Continuation filed

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT.
UIPCO, LLC is a Texas LLC whose recorded address (9800 Fredericksburg Road, San Antonio, TX 78288) is identical to USAA's headquarters — confirmed across multiple UIPCO assignment PDFs and PlainSite records. It is a captive IP-holding affiliate of an operating insurer, not a licensing-only shell: there is no registered-agent-service address, no evidence of licensing-only activity, and the chain returns to the operating parent (UIPCO → USAA, recorded 2021-04-26). The "LLC" suffix alone is not a finding.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT.
No assignee in the chain matches Acacia, Marathon Patent Group, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, or any Spangenberg entity. The chain is USAA ↔ UIPCO only.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — PRESENT (recurrence) / NOT PRESENT (as an NPE tell).
The same Houston outside-counsel office recurs across USAA/UIPCO recordings — P.O. Box 692289, Houston, TX 77269, submitter Jim Thomas, emails at fyjplaw.com, e.g. reel 041694/0894 (USAA app 15/365,706) and the UIPCO inventor-assignment templates (reel 049044/0317). However, recurrence here reflects a single operating-company filer using one outside prosecution firm consistently, which is ordinary prosecution practice — the opposite of the shell-LLC-plus-one-lawyer pattern. No match to any Unified Patents / RPX / Patent Progress NPE-correspondent list. Net: benign.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT.
Only two recorded transfers over ~2.5 years (2018 → 2021), both through USAA's own captive and terminating back at USAA. Not the <24-month chain-of-unrelated-LLCs pattern.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT / N/A.
No infringement suit naming US 11,015,952 was surfaced. The 2021-04-26 UIPCO→USAA transfer coincides with issuance (2021-05-25), i.e. title normalization, not assertion prep.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT.
USAA is a member-owned, financially sound insurer; no Chapter 7/11, no patent auction.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT.
No operating-company-to-NPE transfer and no evidence USAA is asserting through a proxy.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT.
Chain ends at USAA, not RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. (USAA patents appear in the Unified Patents portal database, but that is indexing, not a defensive-aggregator acquisition.)

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Verdict

Defensive / non-asserting.

Justification: The chain is a clean two-step captive-holding pattern — inventors → UIPCO, LLC (recorded 2018-10-25 and 2021-02-09) → back to United Services Automobile Association (USAA) (recorded 2021-04-26) — with UIPCO sharing USAA's exact HQ address, so there is no shell-entity transfer, no known asserter, and no cascading unrelated-LLC chain. Zero of the eight NPE signals are present, and the current holder is an operating insurer not asserting the patent. Caveat: the strict category definition requires termination at a defensive aggregator, which is not the case here — this is the closest-fitting category, and the substantive finding is non-NPE, non-asserting operating-company ownership. I could not retrieve reel/frame identifiers for this specific patent; verify at the USPTO Assignment Center (https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/) or the indexed search (https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html) by patent number 11015952.

Confidence: High that no NPE/asserter is in the chain. Moderate on the completeness of the record, because I could not confirm the reel/frame-level detail directly.

I'll research US Patent 11015952 and its cited prior art references.

Let me access the actual patent page to identify its specific cited prior art references.

Let me find the specific "Patent Citations" (references cited during prosecution) for US11015952.

Prior Art Analysis — US Patent 11,015,952 B1

⚠️ Important methodology note up front

Before giving you the analysis, I need to be transparent about a limitation, per my operating rules: I was not able to retrieve the authoritative "References Cited / Patent Citations" (USPTO Form PTO-892) list directly from the USPTO PatentCenter or the Google Patents "Patent Citations" table within the search steps available. The searches I ran returned citation tables belonging to other patents, not the prosecution citation list of US 11,015,952. I will not fabricate citation entries to fill that gap.

Below I (1) confirm what the patent is, (2) list the references I could actually surface that are linked to 11,015,952's citation graph, clearly labeled by confidence level, and (3) assess § 102 potential for each. Treat the reference list as candidate/partially verified, not as the certified PTO-892.

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1. The patent under analysis (verified from the full text provided)

Critical date for § 102: the effective prior-art cutoff is the priority date of September 27, 2017. Only references publicly available before that date can anticipate under § 102(a)/(b); references between 2017-09-27 and 2018-09-27 fall under § 102(a)(2)/102(e) (patent-application prior art) if properly perfected.

Independent claims to be anticipated or rendered obvious:

• Claim 1 — method: dynamically displaying first indicators (routes from topographical data, mode-dependent, adjusted on real-time traffic) + second indicators (energy-efficiency values) + on user selection: (a) visually distinguish the selected route indicator, and (b) invoke a transportation application installed on the device and display it in the foreground.
• Claim 11 — the system counterpart.
• Claims 2–10, 12–14 — dependent (energy-consumption/energy-cost/fuel-cost bases; device identifier; user profile data; weather-based mode/route adjustment).

The single most distinctive element (the likely point of novelty) is the claim 1/11 step of detecting a transportation app installed on the device and invoking it to the foreground on selection — this is the feature a § 102 reference must teach to anticipate outright.

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2. Candidate cited/related references found

I must flag each item's evidentiary status. The relationships below come from Google Patents citation-graph snippets, which are ambiguous between "cited by this patent" and "citing this patent."

(a) US 10,215,576 B2 — "Energy-optimized vehicle route selection"

• Status of my evidence: Moderate. Surfaced on a Google Patents page in a table that also lists US 11,015,952 B1. Appears to be in the citation graph of 11,015,952.
• Subject matter (from snippet): "Step S106 includes computing the expected energy efficiency for each segment … based on the expected travel speeds," energy-optimized route selection.
• § 102 relevance: This is the most threatening potential reference to claims 2–4 and 9–10 and to the energy-efficiency route-selection concept of claim 1. If it teaches computing energy efficiency per route segment, it anticipates the "energy efficiency value" limitation. However, it is a single-mode (vehicle route) optimization reference and is unlikely to teach the multi-mode indicator set or the "invoke the transportation app to foreground" step — so it would at most be a § 103 combination reference for claims 2–4, not a clean § 102 anticipation of claim 1.
• I could not verify its filing/priority/publication dates within the steps available; that date check is essential before asserting it as § 102 art.

(b) CN 109416878 A — "System and method for recommending E.T.A."

• Status of my evidence: Moderate; appeared in a Google Patents citation snippet alongside US 11,015,952 B1.
• Subject matter: Estimated-time-of-arrival recommendation.
• § 102 relevance: Potentially relevant to the time/distance indicator aspects described in the specification (the "third indicators"), but ETA recommendation alone does not anticipate claim 1's energy-efficiency + app-invocation combination. Low anticipation risk to the independent claims.

(c) WO 2014/112659 A1 — "Electronic device and control method for the electronic device"

• Status of my evidence: Low–moderate; appeared in a "Families Citing this family" table on the WO publication page that also lists US 11,015,952 B1.
• § 102 relevance: Appears to be a device/control-method reference with no evident link to energy-efficiency multi-modal transport. I cannot assess § 102 anticipation for the claimed subject matter on this record, and I will not assert it does. If it is genuinely cited, my expectation is that it addresses the GUI/electronic-device mechanics rather than the transportation logic.

(d) FR 3057951 B1 — "Method for determining a route minimizing the energy expenditure of a vehicle by means of an assistant graph"

• Status of my evidence: Moderate; appeared in a "Families Citing this family" table that also lists US 11,015,952 B1.
• § 102 relevance: Same family of ideas as (a) — energy-minimizing route calculation. Potentially relevant to claims 2–4 (energy consumption/cost basis). Like (a), it is vehicle-route-centric and does not appear to teach multi-modal indicators or app invocation. Note the publication date (2020-07-17 per snippet) is after the 2017 priority date, so it likely could not be § 102 prior art at all and may instead be a forward citation of 11,015,952. This is exactly the kind of ambiguity I flagged above.

(e) US 11,774,262 B1 — same title/assignee, filed 2021-05-10

• Not prior art. This is a continuation in 11,015,952's own family (same inventors, same assignee), claiming priority to the 2021-05-10 filing and to the earlier application. It cannot be used as § 102 art against 11,015,952. I include it only to prevent misidentification.

References I could NOT identify and am therefore not asserting: the full text of the PTO-892 forms, any non-patent literature, and any examiner-cited art beyond the above. The references I found for other patents (e.g., U.S. 8,612,082; US 2013/0073113; US 2013/0261914; US 2017/0176530; WO 2007/139491 — these appeared in unrelated International Search Reports) are not confirmed citations of 11,015,952 and I will not present them as such.

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3. § 102 assessment (based only on verifiable evidence)

Bottom line: On the evidence I could actually verify, no identified reference fully anticipates independent claim 1 or claim 11 under § 102. The strongest potential § 102/§ 103 threat sits against the dependent energy-efficiency claims (2–4) via the energy-optimized route-selection references. The claim 1/11 limitation that appears to be the true point of novelty — detecting an installed transportation application and invoking it into the foreground upon route selection — is not taught by any reference I could confirm.

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4. Recommendation to close the gap

To produce a defensible, complete prior-art analysis, the following primary sources must be pulled (I could not access them here):

1. USPTO PatentCenter → US 11,015,952 → "References Cited" / PTO-892 — the authoritative list of examiner- and applicant-cited references.
2. The patent's file wrapper (Image File Wrapper) for any § 102/§ 103 rejections and the art relied upon.
3. Google Patents "Patent Citations" table for US11015952B1 (distinct from "Cited By") — https://patents.google.com/patent/US11015952B1/en.

If you can supply the PTO-892 list (or grant me a step to fetch that exact page section), I will produce the full per-reference table you requested — full citation, publication/filing date, brief description, and specific § 102 claim mapping — with verified dates rather than the provisional assessment above.

Confidence: High on the patent's bibliographic data and claim set (from the authoritative full text provided). Low-to-moderate on the completeness of the cited-reference list, which is why I have declined to represent it as the official PTO-892.

I'll research the prior art references associated with this patent before performing the § 103 analysis.

Let me try to retrieve the specific prior-art references cited on the patent's page.

Let me look for the specific "Similar Documents" and citation lists associated with this patent.

Preliminary caveat about the prior-art record (important)

Before giving the § 103 analysis, I have to be candid about one thing so I don't hand you fabricated citations.

The "authoritative" full text of US 11,015,952 that you pasted is the Google Patents page, but the fetch is truncated: it ends inside the Detailed Description and does not include the References Cited table, the Similar Documents list, or the Cited By list. In other words, the page as supplied to me does not actually contain a populated "Prior Art" section with named of‑record references. I attempted targeted searches to recover that table and was unable to retrieve a clean of‑record citation list for this specific patent before hitting my tool limit.

One search result I did recover deserves an explicit warning: the large exhibit list from IPR2023-00770 (USAA v. Auto Telematics) — Curry, Tamir, Balachandran, Thompson2010, Willis, Berkobin, Cheng, Abramson, Rabu, Haynes, Rast, Golding, Doering, Christian, Mazur, Katayama, Peng, Riemer, etc. — pertains to a different patent (U.S. 10,192,369 to Wright), not to US 11,015,952. Those references must not be attributed to this patent. I flag this because the operating rules require literal interpretation and prohibition on auto-correction, and it would be easy to mis-import those references.

So what follows is a § 103 framework analysis built from (a) the claim elements actually recoverable from the supplied text, and (b) prior-art references I did surface in search that fall in the relevant field. I mark clearly which references are confirmed as appearing in search results versus which are representative categories where I could not confirm a specific of‑record citation I can stand behind.

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I. Effective filing / critical date

• Priority: Sept. 27, 2017 (provisional 62/564,106); non‑provisional filed Sept. 27, 2018; granted May 25, 2021.
• Under AIA § 102(a)(1)/(a)(2)/(b), the relevant window for prior art is publication/patenting before Sept. 27, 2017 (with the 102(b) grace-eligible window closing one year earlier, Sept. 27, 2016).
• The "prior art keywords" metadata on the page — transportation, user, route, server, location — is generic and, on its own, supports a broad field of search but no specific reference.

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II. Claim elements distilled from the supplied text

The Summary maps to at least four independent claim families. The recoverable limitations are:

Family A — Method for displaying multiple transportation modes (GUI-centric):

1. Dynamically display (by a server) a plurality of first indicators, each = a route from location A to location B;
2. Routes determined based on topographical data;
3. Each route is based upon a mode of transportation and dynamically adjusted based on real-time traffic data;
4. Dynamically display a plurality of second indicators, each = an energy-efficiency value associated with a route and its mode;
5. In response to selection of a route by the user, modify the corresponding first indicator to be visually distinct from the others;
6. When the server determines the mode of the selected route is associated with a transportation application installed on the device, invoke that application and display it in the foreground.

Family B — System mirroring Family A.

Family C — Server-implemented method (energy/attribute-centric):

• Receive request for a mode of transportation, including a device identifier;
• Determine start-location location data based on the device identifier;
• Determine a plurality of modes based on profile data + start location + destination location;
• Determine energy consumption for each mode;
• Identify a mode based on one or more attributes including at least energy consumption;
• Transmit a recommendation to a GUI.

Family D — System with profile database, mirroring Family C.

The specification supplies substantial supporting detail: profile data (preferred modes, health data, owned-vehicle data incl. fuel mileage/odometer), fuel-mileage→energy→cost calc, topography/elevation/gradient maps, weather, traffic (real-time + historical + forecast), events, road physical characteristics, weighted energy-efficiency calculation, dynamic re-ranking, and app re-order via a commercial taxi application.

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III. Representative prior art in the field

References I confirmed appearing in search results and that are topically on point (mapping is my analysis, not an of-record statement):

Representative categories (I could NOT confirm a specific of‑record citation in the supplied page, so treat as illustrative, not asserted):

• Multimodal journey planners (e.g., the class of art classified in G01C21/3423 – Multimodal routing, which is exactly where this patent sits) that show parallel routes for walking/bike/car/transit with separate indicators.
• Deep-linking / inter-application invocation art (URI schemes, intents) for "invoke the installed third-party app and bring it to the foreground."
• Profile-based personalized transit recommendation art.

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IV. § 103 obviousness analysis — proposed combinations

The claims here are functional and largely result-oriented ("determine," "display," "identify," "transmit"). Under KSR Int'l v. Teleflex, 550 U.S. 398 (2007), and In re Kubin, such a combination of known elements, each performing its known function, is obvious where the combination yields only predictable results. The patent's own specification confirms the components are conventional: GPS "well known," navigation apps "installed on a user mobile computing device," user devices "well known," SQL databases, TCP/IP, etc. That admission of conventionality strongly supports an obviousness posture.

Ground 1 — GUI/energy display claims (Family A/B, elements 1–4)

Combination: Route-comparison + energy/cost calculation art (WO 2017/172484) in view of multimodal/navigation GUI art (GUIs that already render multiple parallel route indicators, e.g., Hunt / Kadaba / Lewinson-type route-list art; and the conventional multimodal routing class G01C21/3423), further in view of real-time traffic/ETA art (CN 109416878 / US 10,948,301).

Why motivated:

1. WO 2017/172484 already computes and displays, per route, gallons of gas, fuel cost, distance and ETA, using traffic and weather databases and vehicle MPG, in a route-comparison GUI. Replacing that reference's "gallons/cost" scalar with an "energy-efficiency value" indicator for each route is a design choice and a predictable substitution (In re Harza; KSR).
2. Rendering the same per-route result as a map-based multi-route display with per-route indicators is nothing more than applying a known GUI convention to a known computation — a predictable result (KSR; In re Kerkhoven, "presentation of information" combined with a functional/technical result).
3. Dynamically adjusting each route based on real-time traffic data is exactly what CN 109416878 / US 10,948,301 (and the traffic DB of WO 2017/172484) teach; a POSITA would combine because the whole point of the energy-efficiency optimization is that traffic/weather change it — the specification itself says the energy-efficiency value "may not be a static value."
4. "Determined based on topographical data" (elevation/gradient) is inherent/known elevation-based routing; using elevation for eco-routing (uphill/downhill fuel effect) was a recognized technique, and adding a known data input (elevation) to a known optimization is obvious (KSR).

Note on element 4 framing: if "energy-efficiency value" is construed to cover cost-of-energy or fuel-consumption ordering, WO 2017/172484 is close to anticipatory for that element; under § 103 it is at minimum an obviousness anchor.

Ground 2 — Profile- and energy-based mode identification (Family C/D)

Combination: Personalized-transit-profile art (user preferences, owned vehicle data, historical travel patterns) + energy-consumption/cost optimization art (WO 2017/172484-style fuel-cost computation) + conventional navigation-personalization art.

Limitation-by-limitation:

• "Receive request including a device identifier" — conventional: device ID / phone number / IP are standard; the specification itself lists these as known identifiers.
• "Determine start location based on the device identifier" — routine cell-ID, GPS, or Wi-Fi-triangulation locating; the specification describes these as standard techniques. Known art (e.g., the general telematics/location art) discloses locating a device by its network identifier.
• "Determine modes based on profile data + start + destination" — combining a stored user profile (preferred modes, vehicle info) with origin/destination is a predictable application of personalization; the specification concedes profiles and preference-filtering are conventional.
• "Determine energy consumption for each mode" and "identify based on attributes including at least energy consumption" — directly taught/blessed by WO 2017/172484 (gallons of gas, cost) applied across modes; ranking modes by a computed metric is an obvious optimization.
• "Transmit recommendation to a GUI" — trivial display step.

Motivation: eco-routing and cost-minimization were a recognized design trend (reflected in the G01C21/3469 "Fuel consumption; Energy use; Emission aspects" and G01C21/3492 "employing speed data or traffic data" classifications assigned to this very patent). A POSITA seeking to reduce a user's travel cost/energy would predictably combine personalization with per-mode energy costing.

Ground 3 — Visual-distinct selection + app invocation (the two "mechanically distinguishable" steps)

These are the limitations that most resist an easy § 103 conclusion, and I want to be honest about the strength of each.

(a) "Modify the selected route's indicator to be visually distinct": This is near-perhaps-not literally, but strongly obvious as a mere display convention — highlighting a user-selected item is ubiquitous GUI practice (KSR: changing a known display to a known alternative). Absent a specific of-record reference, I'd characterize this as obvious over any route-selection GUI art, but I cannot cite a confirmed reference.

(b) "When the mode … is associated with a transportation application installed on the device, invoke the transportation application and display it in the foreground": This is the most defensible limitation. It is a specific inter-application hand-off / deep-link (detect installed app → launch it → bring to foreground → host app goes to background). Deep-linking and app-to-app invocation were well-known (custom URI schemes, Android Intents, iOS URL schemes) well before Sept. 2017, so a POSITA would predictably apply it to "order the car." But I could not confirm an of-record reference for this in the supplied page, so I present it as an obviousness theory grounded in the general state of the art rather than as a citation-backed ground. If the examiner/petitioner has a deep-link reference, this limitation likely falls; without one, this is where a patent owner would most plausibly argue non-obviousness (though KSR still disfavors a "known technique applied to a known device" argument).

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V. KSR motivation summary (why a POSITA would combine)

1. Same field, same problem: All references are in navigation/transportation routing; the classifications on this patent itself straddle eco-routing (G01C21/3469, G01C21/3492), multimodal routing (G01C21/3423), and dynamic re-routing (G01C21/3415).
2. Predictable combination of known techniques: energy/cost computation + traffic/weather data + multi-route GUI = each element performing its known function, aggregated result predictable (KSR).
3. Market/rationale: fuel-cost and energy-efficiency optimization was a known design incentive (the specification admits the desire for such a system and casts everything else as conventional).
4. Design incentives / substitution: swapping "gallons/cost" for "energy-efficiency value," and using elevation as an added input, are obvious design choices with predictable results.
5. No unexpected results: the specification claims none — the outputs (recommendation, ranked modes, indicator display) are precisely what the combined references produce.

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VI. Bottom line

• Family A/B (GUI + energy indicators + topography + real-time traffic): a strong § 103 case via WO 2017/172484 + real-time traffic/ETA art (CN 109416878 / US 10,948,301) + conventional multi-route GUI art.
• Family C/D (device-ID location, profile-based modes, per-mode energy consumption, ranked recommendation to GUI): a strong § 103 case via profile/personalization art + energy-cost computation art (WO 2017/172484-type), with locating-by-device-ID and GUI transmission being conventional.
• Visual-distinct selection: obvious as a GUI convention.
• App invocation/foreground hand-off: the most vulnerable limitation to a novelty argument absent a specific deep-link reference, but still likely obvious under KSR as a known technique applied to a known function.

What I could not do (stated honestly): I could not verify the actual, of-record prior-art references for US 11,015,952 from the page you supplied, because that section is not present in the fetched text and my searches did not recover it. The combinations above are therefore grounded in references I did surface (notably WO 2017/172484, CN 109416878, US 10,948,301, and the US 2015/0006428/US 5,835,716-type route art) plus the "conventional element" admissions in the patent's own specification — not in a citation list I can attribute to this patent. If you can provide the page's "References Cited"/"Similar Documents" table, I can re-run the analysis strictly against the of-record art and assign claim-by-claim (rather than family-level) grounds.