US 11219022

I'll search for authoritative information on this specific patent number, then cross-reference with the full patent text provided.

Let me verify the claim set and check for any litigation/appeal specifically naming this patent.

US 11,219,022 B2 — Analyst Summary

Important scope note up front: I searched for the exact identifier 11219022 and obtained the Google Patents record plus third-party patent aggregators. I did not find any CAFC 2026 docket (or any Federal Circuit docket) that names U.S. Patent 11,219,022. I also could not open USPTO PatentCenter/Patent Assignment records directly. Details below, with uncertainty flagged explicitly rather than filled in.

---

1. Bibliographic data (from the Google Patents record)

Note on priority/term: The record shows the priority chain running back to a 2007-01-05 non-provisional (US 11/620,600, now US 9,113,464) and a 2006-01-06 provisional. That is why the "anticipated expiration" is listed as 2027-01-05 rather than 20 years from the 2020 filing. Treat this as an assumption-and-not-a-legal-conclusion value, per the source's own disclaimer.

Family context: A sibling in the same family is US 11,206,664 B2 ("Wireless network synchronization of cells and client devices on a network," Brown et al., app. 16/858,300, filed 2020-04-24, issued 2021-12-21), which carries a terminal disclaimer and shares the 2006/2007 priority chain. Related family members cited in the docket literature include US 8,219,129; US 8,340,672; US 8,457,672; US 9,037,140; US 9,265,043; US 9,113,464; US 10,334,541; and US 10,455,533. Do not conflate these numbers with US 11,219,022.

---

2. Abstract

Uncertainty flag: The fetched Google Patents page rendered the "Definitions" block rather than exposing the Abstract field cleanly, and the Abstract text I can confirm belongs to the sibling US 11,206,664 B2, not necessarily to the '022. I therefore cannot reproduce the verbatim '022 abstract with confidence.

What the record does show as the operative summary disclosure of the '022 is the following (Summary-of-Invention style language, not a verbatim abstract):

"A system includes: a first wireless device having a first range of wireless coverage; a second wireless device having a second range of wireless coverage; and a synchronization device having a third range of wireless coverage and configured for wireless communication with the first wireless device, the second wireless device and a portable wireless device, the synchronization device configured to wirelessly transmit a superframe that includes system information, where an operation of the first fixed wireless device and an operation of the second fixed wireless device are coordinated based on synchronization information wirelessly broadcast by the synchronization device."

The distinguishing element implied by the title ("with dynamic adjustment") maps to the specification's teaching on dynamically varying cell size via adjustable RF transmission power and/or receiver sensitivity — see the description sections discussing a "scheme to dynamically adjust a transmission power and/or reception sensitivity of a wireless reader device" and commanding the client device (PDK) to do likewise, using RF attenuators and monitored signal strength / bit-error-rate to decide the magnitude of the power reduction.

If you require the verbatim granted abstract, pull the front page of the granted PDF directly from USPTO PatentCenter or the Google Patents "Download PDF" link — I could not confirm it from the sources I reached.

---

3. Independent-claim overview (plain language)

Uncertainty flag: I could not retrieve the verbatim claim text of US 11,219,022 from the sources available. Growth in the record shows 36 total claims. The overview below is reconstructed from the patent's summary section — where the recurring independent-claim archetypes are a system claim, an apparatus claim, and a method claim — and is my best interpretation rather than a quotation. If a limitation-level analysis is needed, verify against the issued claims.

Independent claim type A — System.
A wireless system comprising (i) a first wireless device with a first coverage range, (ii) a second wireless device with a second coverage range (the two ranges at least partially overlapping in described embodiments), and (iii) a synchronization device with a third coverage range that wirelessly transmits a superframe containing system information. The first and second fixed devices have their operations coordinated using synchronization information wirelessly broadcast by the synchronization device. A portable wireless device (the "PDK") communicates with the synchronization device and locates any of the first device, second device, or synchronization device, enabling wireless tracking and letting the associated user access an application, asset, or service. Related dependent features include dual-transceiver vs. single-transceiver reader designs, security updates pushed by the synchronization device, a central server gathering information (optionally wired), IEEE 802.15.4-2003 dependence, simultaneous detection/differentiation of multiple portable devices, and the synchronization device as a standalone device.

Independent claim type B — Apparatus (portable key device).
A physical, portable key device comprising a wireless transceiver adapted to wirelessly receive synchronization information from a network device, and processing circuitry adapted to synchronize its operation based on a superframe that includes system information and a timing of a framing structure, received from any of a first wireless device, a second wireless device, or a synchronization device — thereby facilitating wireless tracking and enabling the associated user to access an application, asset, or service.

Independent claim type C — Method for facilitating data exchange.
Receiving, at a first wireless transceiver, a superframe (system information + framing timing) from a network device; receiving, at a second wireless transceiver, the same superframe; coordinating, with the network device, synchronization of the first and second transceivers based on that superframe; transmitting the superframe to a portable wireless device, which synchronizes its operations on it to facilitate wireless tracking; and locating any of the first device, second device, or network device via the portable device so the user can access an application, asset, or service.

Caveat on "dynamic adjustment": Because the title emphasizes dynamic adjustment and the specification devotes substantial text to dynamic cell-size control (adjusting RDC/PDK transmit power and/or receive sensitivity, e.g., via a step/variable/programmable RF attenuator, to "draw in" an associating PDK while leaving the full-power tracking cell intact), it is plausible that at least one independent claim recites power/sensitivity adjustment or cell-size variation as a positive limitation. I could not confirm whether that limitation sits in an independent claim or only in the dependent claims/specification. Verify before relying on it.

---

4. USPTO / PTAB / district court / CAFC status

• CAFC 2026 dockets naming 11,219,022: none found. My targeted searches for a Federal Circuit 2026 appeal tied to this number returned no results. I cannot rule out a docket that is not publicly indexed by the sources I reached, but I have no evidence of one.
• PTAB: The Proxense IPR activity I located concerns different patents — e.g., IPR2025-00328 (Intel, U.S. 8,219,129), IPR2024-00783 / IPR2024-00782 (Google, U.S. 9,679,289), and IPR2024-00573 (Microsoft). A September 2026 Bloomberg Law item reports a PTAB obviousness holding against a Proxense patent directed to a "hybrid device having a personal digital key and receiver-decoder circuit for biometric authentication" (the '289/'042/'188 family) — not the '022.
• District court: Proxense's active campaigns I could see involve Proxense v. Apple (W.D. Tex. 6:24-cv-00143), Proxense v. Intel (6:24-cv-00283), Proxense v. Google (6:23-cv-00320), Proxense v. Microsoft (6:23-cv-00319), and Proxense v. Hyundai/KIA/Genesis (Jan. 2025). The asserted patent numbers surfaced in those pleadings are '042, '188, '289, '129, '672, '152, '332, '956, '640 — none of which is 11,219,022.
• One Federal Circuit item does exist for Proxense — an appeal concerning an alleged APA breach in a PTAB stay of a reexamination — but the snippet does not identify the patent, so I cannot attribute it to the '022.

Bottom line: US 11,219,022 appears to be an active, unexpired Proxense continuation in the Brown/Hirt wireless-synchronization family, with no confirmed 2026 Federal Circuit activity and no confirmed PTAB or district-court matter naming it as of my searches. If your objective is litigation/valuation diligence, the specific gaps to close are (a) the verbatim granted abstract and claim set, and (b) a PatentCenter assignment/reassignment and reexamination-certificate check, neither of which I could complete with the tools available here.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 11219022 across patent litigation databases.

Let me search more specifically for this patent number in litigation databases.

Let me search for the specific patent in the wireless synchronization family and its related patents.

Bottom Line

I could not identify any litigation in which U.S. Patent No. 11,219,022 ("the '022 patent") is specifically identified as an asserted patent-in-suit. My searches of patent-litigation sources — including Justia Dockets, CourtListener/RECAP, Docket Alarm (district-court and PTAB), Unified Patents' portal, RPX Insight, Law360, and ip fray — returned extensive litigation activity by the patent's owner, Proxense, LLC, but in none of the results I reviewed was the '022 patent named as a patent-in-suit (or as the subject of an IPR, PGR, or reexamination). Because patent-in-suit identification is not always exposed in search snippets, I flag this as a no litigation found in the sources searched answer rather than an absolute negative.

Per your instruction, I treated the identifier literally as 11,219,022 and did not substitute any look-alike numbers (e.g., 11,206,664, 11,219,022 siblings, or the commonly asserted Proxense patents ending in 730 / 954 / 905 / 042 / 289 / 960 / 152).

---

What the '022 patent is

• Title: Wireless network synchronization of cells and client devices on a network with dynamic adjustment
• Assignee: Proxense, LLC; Inventors: David L. Brown, Fred S. Hirt
• Application: US 16/887,984, filed 2020-05-29; granted 2022-01-04
• Priority: claimed to 2006-01-06 (via US 11/620,600 → US 9,113,464)
• Status: Active; anticipated expiration 2027-01-05 (per the Google Patents record)
• It is a continuation in the Proxense "wireless network synchronization" family, which also includes US 11,206,664 ("…with Masking") and US 11,800,502.

---

The Proxense enforcement campaign (context — none expressly recite the '022 patent in the sources I found)

Proxense is a non-practicing entity (formerly an operating company) asserting biometric-authentication and wireless-communication patents, almost entirely before Judge Alan D. Albright in the Western District of Texas, through Hecht Partners (with Susman Godfrey co-counsel). The cases I confirmed are:

Additionally, Proxense appellate activity is pending at the Federal Circuit (opening brief filed ~April 2026) concerning PTAB vs. Central Reexamination Unit conflicts over U.S. 8,886,954 — not the '022 patent.

---

Important caveats

1. No source I retrieved listed US 11,219,022 by number as a patent-in-suit. If the '022 patent is being asserted, it would most plausibly be in one of the pending, more recent vehicle digital-key cases (LG / Hyundai) that draw on the wireless-transceiver/timing family — but I have no confirmation of that, and I will not attribute a case number to it without evidence. Two of the patents-in-suit in the LG/Hyundai matters are identified in my sources only by short forms ending in "152," "332," "456," and "979," which do not match the '022 number.

2. Given the patent's anticipated expiration of 2027-01-05, any assertion window is short, which is consistent with the possibility that it has not (or not yet) been litigated.

3. Recommended verification steps (which I could not complete within the tool limits):

   • Unified Patents litigation portal: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist and the patent page https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-11219022-B2
   • PACER / CourtListener party search for "Proxense" (all W.D. Tex. dockets) and full-text search for "11,219,022"
   • USPTO PTAB (PTAB E2E / PTAB Center) for any IPR/PGR naming the '022 patent
   • USPTO Patent Assignment / litigation (AO 120) records for the '022 patent

If you require a definitive "asserted or not" determination, this needs a PACER full-text/party and docket review rather than open-web search — I cannot certify a negative from the sources available to me.

I'll search for AIA trial proceedings involving US 11,219,022, then verify against the structured ODP data.

Let me run targeted searches to confirm whether the '022 patent itself has ever been challenged at the PTAB.

Let me confirm with two final targeted searches for any PTAB proceeding naming the '022 patent specifically.

Proceedings overview

Zero (0) AIA trial proceedings are on file for U.S. Patent No. 11,219,022. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block — sourced from the USPTO Open Data Portal (ODP) API and designated canonical for this analysis — returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM naming the '022 patent, and my web searches across Docket Alarm, Justia, Law360 PTAB coverage, Unified Patents, and ip fray surfaced no proceeding in which the '022 patent appears as the challenged patent. There is therefore no breakdown by "active / claims invalidated / claims sustained / settled / institution denied" to report — every category is empty.

Bottom-line defensive posture: the '022 patent is untested at the PTAB — not hardened, but also not wounded. No claim of the '022 has ever been canceled, and no petitioner has ever obtained a merits ruling on it. Critically for a defendant: the patent's claims have not been held patentable either — the family it belongs to contains heavily-litigated siblings, but the '022's own claims, specification, and priority chain remain unexamined in an AIA trial. A defendant cannot point to a prior FWD to argue the claims are dead, and — as developed below — the practical window to file a new IPR on this patent is closing rapidly.

Sourcing caveat. This is a no-proceeding-found answer, not a certified universal negative. PTAB proceeding–to–patent linkages are not always exposed in open-web snippets. Verify against PTAB E2E / PTAB Center before relying on it. I also did not find the '022 patent named as a district-court patent-in-suit anywhere (consistent with the prior "Litigation summary" section), which is material because § 315(b)'s one-year bar has not begun to run for any party.

---

No proceeding to analyze — and I will not fabricate one

There is no ### {PROCEEDING_NUMBER} block to write for the '022 patent. The instruction "do not invent proceeding numbers" controls, and I have no proceeding data to present. Below, instead, is the related-Proxense PTAB landscape, which is not about the '022 patent but is the only valid context for a defendant to reason from. I flag each entry's target patent explicitly.

Important family distinction (flagging a possible cross-section confusion)

The prior "Litigation summary" section correctly noted that Proxense's asserted patents end in '730 / '954 / '905 / '042 / '289 / '960 / '152. Those patents are in Proxense's Giobbi "biometric PDK authentication" line (see, e.g., IPR2024-00233, Pet. at 2, describing the '954 patent as "Biometric personal data key (PDK) authentication," inventor Giobbi). The '022 patent is a different line: inventor Brown / Hirt, titled "Wireless network synchronization…," in the "Wireless network synchronization of cells and client devices" family (parents US 10,229,294; US 11,206,664; siblings US 11,212,797 ("…with Masking"), US 11,553,481, US 11,800,502, US 12,446,014, all claiming 2006-01-06 priority).

This distinction matters: all of the PTAB fireworks around Proxense are in the Giobbi biometric line. I found no IPR/PGR on any member of the Brown/Hirt synchronization line, including the '022. Do not assume that the outcome of an IPR on the '954 or '042 patent tells you anything about the '022's validity — different claims, different disclosure emphasis (superframe/timeslot/CDRC synchronization and dynamic cell-size variation vs. biometric code transmission).

Related Proxense PTAB activity (context only — none of these is the '022 patent)

Federal Circuit: consolidated appeal from IPR2024-00233, IPR2024-01334, and IPR2024-00846 (all '954). Proxense filed its opening brief 2026-04-03, arguing (i) the PTAB abused discretion by staying a parallel ex parte reexamination (Reexam 90/015,052 on '730) that was trending toward patentability, and (ii) the Board misconstrued "a third party that operates a trusted authority." None of this appellate activity concerns the '022 patent.

---

Strategic summary

Claim-level status of the '022 patent. Every claim of the '022 patent is UNTESTED at the PTAB. The patent issued 2022-01-04 with 20 claims (per the '664 sibling's abstract structure and the '022 record). No claim has been canceled; no claim has been confirmed. Any statement that the '022 is "hardened" or "wounded" by an AIA trial would be unsupported — there has been no trial.

Estoppel landscape. Because no IPR/PGR has ever been filed against the '022, no § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches to anyone on this patent. Conversely, no prior petitioner has "used up" any art. A defendant today would face no IPR estoppel and, because the '022 has not been identified as an asserted patent-in-suit, § 315(b)'s one-year bar has not started running for any accused party — meaning a would-be petitioner retains the full § 315(b) window. The flip side: because nothing has been litigated, there is also no PTAB record, no adopted claim construction, and no FWD reasoning to leverage in a district-court invalidity case.

Pattern signals. The pattern is stark and family-specific. Proxense's Giobbi biometric line has drawn a multi-front, multi-petitioner attack — Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Intel all filed IPRs; Microsoft alone filed at least five ('405, '573, '775, '846, and a '954-related petition); Apple filed copycat/joinder petitions. Yet the entire Brown/Hirt synchronization line — including the '022 — has attracted zero petitions. That is consistent with the '022 never having been put in suit (per the prior section), since IPRs follow assertions. It also means no defensive aggregator (Unified Patents et al.) has targeted the '022; Unified does not appear as a petitioner against Proxense anywhere in the retrieved results.

The timing problem is now the dominant fact. The '022 patent's anticipated expiration is 2027-01-05 (Google Patents record). Today is 2026-09-29. A petition filed now would, even if instituted, run to a final written decision on the PTAB's statutory one-year clock (35 U.S.C. § 316(a)(11)) — landing roughly Q1–Q2 2028, after the patent has already expired. Combine that with Acting Director Stewart's "settled expectations" discretionary-denial line of cases (Intel Corp. v. Proxense, IPR2025-00327/328/329, Paper 12, denying institution on similar Proxense patents), and an IPR against the '022 is a low-value, high-friction play.

---

Recommended next steps

• If you are a defendant and want an invalidity defense: you cannot "link to the FWD" — there is none for the '022. Build invalidity from the ground up (prior-art search + § 102/§ 103 expert analysis), not from a PTAB record. The '022's 2006-01-06 priority chain is long (US 11/620,600 → the 14/675,433 / 16/657,879 / 16/858,300 / 16/887,984 continuation line), so priority/written-description attacks on the earliest claimed disclosure are worth developing — a lever the asserted Giobbi family did not have.
• Before filing any IPR, do the economics first. With expiration on 2027-01-05, an FWD cannot realistically issue before the patent lapses. Expect a § 314(a) "settled expectations"/workload-management discretionary denial for the same reasons the Intel petitions on other Proxense patents were denied (~2025-06-26). An IPR may still have value purely as leverage, but it will likely not produce a pre-expiration merits ruling.
• Verify the negative. Confirm the absence of proceedings directly at the USPTO PTAB Center / PTAB E2E for US 11,219,022 and by petitioner-name search, and confirm no district court has named the '022 in an infringement complaint (which is what would start the § 315(b) clock). Recommended checks: https://ptacts.uspto.gov (PTAB Center) and the patent page https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-11219022-B2.
• Do not attribute sibling outcomes to this patent. If a demand letter or damages theory rests on the '022, remember: the Giobbi-family cancellations (e.g., '954 claims 1, 2, 4–7, 10, 12, 13, 15, 16, 18, 19, 22–27 unpatentable in IPR2024-00233; '954 claims 1, 2, 4, 5, 7–13, 15, 16, 18–24, 26–29 unpatentable in IPR2024-00846; '042 FWD unpatentable in IPR2024-00405) say nothing about the validity of the '022's Brown/Hirt synchronization claims — and, equally, do not stand as any endorsement of them.

Blunt answer to the assignment: there is no PTAB activity to report on US 11,219,022. The absence is itself the signal — this patent sits in a family Proxense has not pushed through enforcement, and it is now so close to expiration (~15 months out) that the AIA-trial window is effectively closed.

I'll research the assignment record for US 11,219,022 from USPTO sources and cross-reference.

Let me look for the specific assignment record and Proxense ownership history.

Let me try to pin down the specific assignment reel/frame and correspondent of record.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US 11,219,022 B2

Critical sourcing caveat up front: I could not open the USPTO Assignment Center directly (no direct HTTP/portal access in this session), and the mirrored assignment index (assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html) returned no machine-readable record for 11219022 in the searches I ran. I therefore cannot report the reel/frame numbers or the correspondent-of-record for any conveyance on this patent. I will not invent them. What I can report is the assignment event that the patent's own front-page legal-events record exposes (reproduced verbatim in the full text supplied above), which I reproduce without embellishment. Every reel/frame field below is marked [NOT RETRIEVABLE], and the verification link is given at the end.

---

Inventors

Pattern observations:

• The '022 application (US 16/887,984) is a continuation, not an original filing. The named inventive entity belongs to the 2007-01-05 priority application US 11/620,600 chain, so "employer at time of filing" strictly means Proxense as of the 2007 filing, not the 2020 continuation filing. Proxense states it was founded in 2001 and "formally incorporated in 2005 as an LLC" (per the Proxense v. Hyundai/KIA/Genesis complaint, W.D. Tex. 6:25-cv-00016, ¶32), so Proxense-as-employer in 2007 is chronologically consistent.
• Neither named inventor is the company's public founder. Proxense's founder/CEO is John Giobbi (Hyundai complaint ¶34: "John Giobbi is the founder and CEO of Proxense… a named inventor on approximately 200 patents"). Giobbi is not a named inventor on the '022. That is a mild-but-real signal that Brown/Hirt were rank-and-file engineering employees rather than the principal, and it means the '022's inventorship sits outside the company's headline inventor.
• Departure pattern: unclear. I found no evidence of Brown or Hirt leaving Proxense within 12 months of filing, and equally no evidence they stayed. I will not call this either way. (The 2020 assignment executed by both men six weeks after the continuation was filed suggests they were still reachable by the company in 2020, which argues against a simultaneous departure.)

---

Original assignee

Proxense, LLC (also recorded in the USPTO reassignment entry as "PROXENSE, LLC").

• Entity type / status: An LLC. Proxense describes itself as founded 2001, incorporated 2005, and — per its own litigation narrative — it "developed… mobile payment technologies and commercial products, employing over thirty engineers," from roughly 2004–2012 (Hyundai complaint ¶32). So during the relevant period it is best characterized as a former operating company.
• Did it ship a product embodying the claims? Proxense claims commercialization in the 2004–2012 window, but I found no evidence of a currently marketed product and no product identified in any source. What I did find is the opposite: a 2016 "Offer to Sell Patents and Notice of U.S. Patents" letter (filed as an exhibit to Proxense, LLC v. Apple, Inc., No. 6:24-cv-00143, Dkt. 1-39) in which counsel states: "Our client has asked us to inform you… of their intent to sell their entire patent portfolio… Proxense intends to sell the entire portfolio in a single transaction to a single purchaser." The same letter represents that "Proxense has never engaged in any patent enforcement litigation" and that "there are no current licenses granted under the Proxense patents," adding that "the ultimate purchaser will be able [to] use the Proxense patents offensively against others." That is a 2016 statement of intent to exit the patent-holding business.
• Current status: Proxense remains active and solvent as a litigating patent owner — it has brought a sustained series of infringement suits in W.D. Tex. (Google, Microsoft, Apple, Intel, LG, Hyundai/KIA/Genesis, Samsung), principally through Hecht Partners LLP (David L. Hecht) with Susman Godfrey co-counsel. No bankruptcy, receivership, or dissolution was identified. Its current business is, on the face of the public record, patent assertion, not product sales.

Bottom line on ownership: the '022 was never transferred away from Proxense. Proxense is both the original and the current assignee.

---

Assignment timeline

The Assignment Center record for this patent, as visible through the patent's own front-page legal events, contains exactly ONE post-filing conveyance — an inventor-to-original-assignee (confirmatory/employment) assignment. There is no post-issuance transfer of the '022 to any third party.

• Executed date: not stated in the record I could reach / recorded 2020-07-14 — Reel [NOT RETRIEVABLE] / Frame [NOT RETRIEVABLE]
  • Conveyance: Assignment ("ASSIGNMENT OF INTEREST")
  • Assignor: BROWN, DAVID L.; HIRT, FRED S.
  • Assignee: PROXENSE, LLC
  • Correspondent: [NOT RETRIEVABLE — could not be confirmed]. Recurrence flag: cannot be run, because I could not obtain the correspondent field for even the single entry, let alone compare it across the Proxense family. This should be the first item checked manually in Assignment Center.
  • Context: Internal/confirmatory — the two named inventors assigning their rights to their (inferred) employer, Proxense. Recorded ~6 weeks after the 2020-05-29 filing of the continuation (US 16/887,984). Not a fire-sale, securitization, or transfer-to-asserter.

Pre-dating that record, the ownership context is: a 2006-01-06 provisional → 2007-01-05 non-provisional (US 11/620,600) → the '022 continuation, with the 2016 portfolio-sale attempt as the only other ownership-relevant event I confirmed.

Honest statement of the gap: because I could not load the Assignment Center, I cannot rule out (a) a security agreement recorded against Proxense's portfolio (NPEs frequently encumber portfolios with lenders), (b) a corrective/confirmatory assignment recorded in 2020 for the parent case and not separately surfaced for the '022, or (c) a name-change/merger filing. None of these appear as front-page legal events on the '022, which normally mirror the assignment record, but absence from the front page is not proof of absence from Assignment Center.

---

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11219022
    2006 : Provisional application filed
    2007 : Priority application filed by Proxense
    2016 : Entire portfolio offered for sale
    2020 : Continuation application filed
         : Inventors assign to Proxense LLC
    2022 : Patent granted to Proxense
    2024 : Enforcement campaign continues

(Note on the diagram: the 2016 and 2024 lines are contextual ownership-posture events, not recorded assignments. The only recorded assignment in the chain is the 2020 line.)

---

NPE / troll-pattern signals

---

Verdict

INSUFFICIENT DATA — the ownership chain for US 11,219,022 consists of a single recorded conveyance: inventors David L. Brown and Fred S. Hirt to PROXENSE, LLC, recorded 2020-07-14, with no post-issuance transfer (reel/frame not retrievable). Per the rubric, a chain containing only the original assignment is classified as insufficient data, and none of the eight classic troll-pattern signals can be affirmatively marked "present" on this record.

That said, the contextual picture is not neutral and should be carried forward as a qualitative caveat: Proxense is the original assignee, is not on the classic NPE lists, and has never sold the '022 — but it is a serial litigant that in 2016 offered its entire portfolio for sale while representing that it had "never engaged in any patent enforcement litigation," and that now asserts its patents (though, on the evidence I found, not this one) against large technology companies. That is the profile of a former operating company turned self-asserting patent owner — closer on the spectrum to "operating-company assertion" than to a shell-entity chain, but without the currently-shipping-products element the rubric requires for that verdict. NPE status cannot be established from the assignment record alone; it would have to be evidenced by the enforcement record, in which the '022 does not appear.

Verify at: USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search by patent number 11219022), or the assignment index at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html. The specific fields to capture that I could not: reel/frame, execution date, and correspondent of record for the 2020-07-14 conveyance — plus a check for any security agreement or name-change filings that do not surface as front-page legal events.

I'll research the prior art citations for US 11,219,022 B2.

I need the actual cited-references ("Patent Citations") list from the '022 patent. Let me search several targeted angles.

Let me try patent databases that expose the "References Cited" / citation tables directly.

US 11,219,022 B2 — Prior-Art / Citation Analysis

Scoping note (read first). My tool budget was exhausted after three rounds of searches, and the specific artifact you asked for — the face-of-the-patent "References Cited" (U.S. Patent Documents / Foreign Patent Documents / Other Publications) table of US 11,219,022 B2 — was not exposed by any source I reached. Google Patents renders that table client-side and the fetches returned the Info/Classification/Description blocks instead. I therefore cannot give you a verified line-by-line reproduction of the '022's own citation list. Below I (a) state exactly what I did and did not retrieve, (b) give the legally-gating date analysis, which is the most reliable part of the answer, and (c) give a reference-by-reference candidate table with explicit confidence flags. I have not invented citations to fill the table.

---

1. What the searches actually returned

Verdict: the '022's examiner-applicant citation record is unretrieved. Do not treat anything below as a substitute for it.

---

2. The gating question: what eligible § 102 art even looks like

This is the part I can state with confidence, and it is decisive for most of the references that surfaced.

• US 11,219,022 B2, application 16/887,984, was filed 2020-05-29 but claims benefit back through US 11/620,600 (filed 2007-01-05) to a 2006-01-06 priority date. The AIA §§ 102/103 apply (post-2013-03-16 filing), but the "effective filing date" is 2006-01-06 so long as the benefit chain holds.
• Consequence: a reference is only § 102(a)(1)/(a)(2) art against the '022 if it was published, or effectively filed, before 2006-01-06. A reference that postdates that date cannot anticipate the '022 unless the priority claim is broken (which is the single highest-value diligence question for this patent).
• Second consequence (important, and it cuts against a lot of what search engines surface): the many 2007-dated documents that appear in the '022's citation neighborhood — US 2007/0256120 A1 (Cisco, 2007-11-01), US 8,356,171 B2 (Cisco, 2013-01-15), US 2007/0261100 A1 (Greeson, 2007-11-08), US 2007/0178882 A1 / US 8,041,339 B2 (Alcatel-Lucent, 2007-08-02), US 2007/0197163 A1 (RIM, 2007-08-23), and the whole Proxense 2007/0260xxx cluster — lag the 2006-01-06 effective filing date. If they appear on the '022's face, they are there as background/§ 102(e)-type context or as relatives of a later-filed claim set, not as anticipating art. I would not build a § 102 case on any of them.

---

3. Candidate prior art — reference by reference

Confidence key: [A] verified existence + dates from my searches and independently known; [B] verified existence, but I could not verify it is on the '022's citation list; [C] strong candidate by subject matter, list-membership unverified.

3.1 The single most material reference

IEEE Std 802.15.4-2003 (IEEE Standard for Information Technology — Telecommunications and Information Exchange Between Systems — Local and Metropolitan Area Networks — Specific Requirements — Part 15.4: Wireless Medium Access Control (MAC) and Physical Layer (PHY) Specifications for Low-Rate Wireless Personal Area Networks (LR-WPANs)) — published October 2003. [A] (its primacy here is conceded by the patent itself).

• Why it is the strongest § 102 candidate: the '022 specification repeatedly and expressly ties the claimed framing to this standard — "a system in accordance with one or more embodiments may rely, or at least partly be based, on an IEEE 802.15.4 protocol"; "a wireless communication in the system is dependent on an IEEE 802.15.4—2003 protocol"; "the 'superframe_len' field may be governed by an IEEE 802.15.4 protocol." The beacon-enabled 802.15.4 PAN contains, natively, everything the independent claims recite at the framing level: a PAN coordinator that broadcasts a beacon in the first slot of each superframe, a superframe structure carrying system/network information and timing of the framing structure, assigned (GTS) and contention (CAP) slots, CSMA-CA channel access, periodic wake/sleep duty cycling for battery-powered endpoints, and frame sync via SHR (preamble + SFD) — the '022 describes each of these as its own embodiment ("the frame is broken down into a sync header (SHR), a physical header (PHR), and a physical service data unit (PSDU)"; "a PDK may immediately respond provided it follows the rules of … 'CSMA-CA'").
• Anticipation mapping (hypothetical, pending verbatim claims): it is the natural § 102(a)(1) reference against independent claim type C (method — receiving a superframe containing system information and framing timing; synchronizing transceivers to it) and against the superframe/beacon-limitation portions of type A (system) and type B (portable key device). It would not, standing alone, disclose the Proxense-specific overlay (PDK/RDC/CRDC nomenclature, secure-key storage on a portable device, location-response tracking of a client by multiple readers, dynamic cell-size variation by power/sensitivity adjustment) — those would be § 103 combinations.

3.2 Pre-2006 references that are eligible art

3.3 The Proxense family — not prior art, but the operative citation universe

The searches confirm the '022 sits in an interlocking continuation web. These are § 102-ineligible against the '022 (same inventors/assignee, same 2006 disclosure — they are the priority chain, not art), but they are where the examiner's real citations are most likely to be duplicated:

• US 11,219,022 B2 ← US 2007/0159301 A1 (Hirt et al.) → US 9,113,464 B2 ("Dynamic cell size variation via wireless link parameter adjustment," Proxense/Hirt, granted 2015-08-18). This is the direct parent and is the source of the "with dynamic adjustment" subject matter in the '022 title. Any art that was § 102 against the '464's cell-size-variation claims is the same art that matters for the '022's dynamic-adjustment dependent claims.
• Sibling continuation US 11,206,664 B2 ("…with Masking") and US 11,800,502; plus US 11,279,797 and US 11,580,052 observed citing the '022.
• Proxense continuations observed in the same forward-citation cluster: US 10,374,795 B1; US 11,157,909; US 11,182,792 B2; US 11,551,222 B2; US 12,014,369 B2; US 8,412,949 B2; US 7,904,718 B2; US 8,838,993 B2; US 10,764,044 B1.

Cross-reference to the earlier sections: the Patent-summary section flagged that the verbatim granted abstract and claim set were not obtained and that all claim descriptions are reconstructions from the Summary-of-Invention text. That limitation now compounds: I can neither reproduce the examiner's citation list nor the claim language it maps to, so § 102 mapping here is twice-conditional. That is a genuine, load-bearing gap — flag it explicitly rather than papering over it.

---

4. § 102 element-by-element working hypothesis (for the reconstructed independent claims)

Using the claim archetypes from the Patent-summary section, and gating on the 2006-01-06 effective filing date:

---

5. Strongest diligence questions raised

1. Does the 2006-01-06 priority chain hold for all claims? If any claim in the '022 recites subject matter whose first written description appears only in the 2007 '600 application or later, the critical date shifts to 2007-01-05 (or later), which re-activates the entire 2007 Cisco / Alcatel-Lucent / RIM cluster and US 2007/0218921 A1 as eligible § 102/§ 103 art. This is the highest-leverage question and I could not resolve it.
2. Is the "dynamic adjustment" limitation in an independent claim? The title ("with dynamic adjustment") and the specification's cell-size-variation passage imply it is claimed; the earlier summary could not confirm. If it is independent and the pre-2006 art on programmable RF attenuators / adaptive transmit-power control (not identified here) is combinable with 802.15.4, the '022's oldest claims are the exposed ones.
3. What exactly is on the PTO-892? For a § 120 continuation the face list is usually short, and the controlling art is inherited by reference to the parent's file wrapper.

---

6. Verification steps I could not complete

• USPTO Patent Public Search / PatentCenter → open app. 16/887,984 → "References Cited" and the PTO-892 / IDS in the file wrapper (Image File Wrapper), plus the parent US 11/620,600 file wrapper for the inherited art.
• Google Patents "Patent Citations" section on https://patents.google.com/patent/US11219022B2/en (loads client-side; needs a rendered session) — and the sibling US11206664B2.
• Global Dossier / Espacenet "Cited documents" for app. 16/887,984.
• PATENTSCOPE / Espacenet for the prior art date 2006-01-06 field-keyword set actually printed on the '022: pdk, rdc, predetermined time, time periods, beacon — these four-to-five terms are the examiner's own search concept and are the best guide to the art-of-record class (i.e., 802.15.4-family superframe/beacon art plus Proxense-style portable-key/reader art), even where the individual references eluded me.

---

7. Bottom line

• I could not retrieve the '022's own citation list, and I will not fabricate one. The verified outputs of my searches were bibliographic, classification, and forward-citation data only.
• The most relevant prior art on the merits is the IEEE 802.15.4-2003 standard, which the '022's own specification admits is the basis of its superframe/beacon/timing scheme and which therefore supplies the framing limitations of all three reconstructed independent claims.
• The most relevant date-eligible secondary references I could identify are US 2005/0105734 A1 / EP 1 536 306 A1 (proximity token + reader access control) and US 6,898,822 B2 (coordinated wireless network with repeating beacon/slot structure).
• Nearly everything else that surfaces in the '022's citation neighborhood (Cisco 2007, Alcatel-Lucent 2007, RIM 2007, US 2007/0218921, US 8,446,893) is post-2006-01-06 and therefore ineligible as § 102 art unless the priority claim fails — which makes priority-chain integrity the single determinative issue for any validity analysis of this patent.

I'll first attempt to close the two load-bearing gaps the Prior Art section flagged (verbatim claims; the '022's own citation list) before building the § 103 analysis.

Good — the first search returned the sibling's citation table and the PCT unity-of-invention breakdown (which explicitly names Group V = coverage-range adjustment). Let me try to pull the '022's own claim text and its cited-reference table.

Two more targeted checks: the '022's own claim text (Justia renders claims), and verification of the slot-monitoring / active-badge references that appear on the family's face.

Obviousness Analysis — US 11,219,022 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Analyst: Senior patent analyst
Date of analysis: April 26, 2026 (per task instruction)
Patent: US 11,219,022 B2, Wireless network synchronization of cells and client devices on a network with dynamic adjustment
App. no.: 16/887,984 · Filed: 2020-05-29 · Granted: 2022-01-04 · Expiration (listed): 2027-01-05
Inventors: Brown, Hirt · Assignee/PO: Proxense, LLC · Primary Examiner of record: Lonnie V. Sweet

---

0. Preliminary notes: what changed, and what is still missing

This analysis builds on the previous "Patent summary," "Prior art," "Litigation," "PTAB challenges," and "Assignment history" sections and does not repeat them.

Three flags before anything else.

(a) A date contradiction between the sections. The previously generated sections run on a stated present date of 2026-09-29. This task states April 26, 2026. I use April 26, 2026 for the procedural posture in § 9 and note that the difference does not change any § 103 conclusion. Where the two matter (the ~15-month vs. ~9-month remaining term), I say so.

(b) A claim-count contradiction between the sections. The "Patent summary" section states the '022 has 36 claims; the "PTAB challenges" section states it "issued… with 20 claims." Both cannot be right. The Google Patents scrape's "36" is a term-frequency statistic line, not a claim count, and is the likely source of the error; the '664 sibling is confirmed at 20 claims (Justia/FPO front page: "20 Claims, 42 Drawing Sheets"), and the '541 sibling at 18 claims. I treat the '022 claim count as unresolved.

(c) Partial retrieval of the artifacts the "Prior art" section listed as missing. That section correctly reported it could not retrieve (i) the verbatim '022 claims, or (ii) the '022's own citation table. This session partially closed (ii) and did not close (i):

This upgrades confidence on US 6,898,822 and on the 802.15.4/Zigbee art-of-record from the "[B]" level assigned previously, and it validates the previous section's instinct that the art-of-record class is "802.15.4-family superframe/beacon art plus Proxense-style portable-key/reader art."

(d) The load-bearing caveat survives, unchanged. Because the verbatim claims were not obtained, every limitation-by-limitation mapping below is twice-conditional: conditional first on a reconstruction of the claim, and second on the reference. I have graded confidence per limitation and per combination rather than smoothing over the gap.

---

1. Legal framework and the gating dates that control the analysis

1.1 Framework

Section 103 asks whether the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time of the invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA). The inquiry follows Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966) (scope/content of the prior art; differences; PHOSITA level; objective indicia), and KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) (the analysis "should be flexible"; a claimed combination is obvious where the improvement is "the predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions"; a "finite number of identified, predictable solutions" is strong evidence of obviousness).

Critically for this patent, KSR expressly endorsed the rationales a petitioner will use here:

1.2 The gating date

Per the prior-art section, the AIA §§ 102/103 apply (the '022 was filed 2020-05-29), but the effective filing date is 2006-01-06, carrying the benefit chain US 60/760,362 (2006-01-06) → US 11/620,600 (2007-01-05) → US 9,113,464 → … → US 16/887,984.

Consequences that dominate this § 103 analysis:

1. Art must be publicly available before 2006-01-06 (§ 102(a)(1)), or be a U.S. patent/application effectively filed before 2006-01-06 (§ 102(a)(2)). The prior-art section's "date-fatal" cluster (Cisco 2007, Alcatel-Lucent 2007, RIM 2007, US 2007/0218921 A1) stays ineligible unless priority breaks.
2. Common-ownership / inventor-derivation exception, AIA § 102(b)(2)(C). This is the single most important structural point about this family and I want to state it plainly: the '022's own parent — US 2007/0159301 A1 (Hirt) → US 9,113,464 B2, "Dynamic cell size variation via wireless link parameter adjustment," priority 2006-01-05 — is NOT prior art to the '022. It shares the inventors, the assignee (Proxense), and the priority chain. The same is true of US 11,206,664, US 11,279,797, US 11,800,502, and the "Dynamic Real-time Tiered Client Access" member (US 2016/0205682 A1, Proxense, priority 2006-01-05). A defendant cannot reach the '022's "dynamic adjustment" subject matter by citing the family member that discloses it. This is developed in § 8.
3. Reverse-priority risk is the petitioner's highest-leverage issue. If any '022 claim is not supported by the 2006-01-06 disclosure, its effective date shifts and the entire 2007–2008 art cluster becomes eligible. As the prior-art section said, this is "the highest-leverage question."

---

2. Person having ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA)

Proposed definition (petitioner's position): a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering or computer science (or equivalent), plus 2–3 years' experience designing wireless personal-area/local-area network devices — including MAC-layer frame/superframe/slot scheduling and RF front-end power control — or, alternatively, 5+ years' practical experience in RFID/real-time location system (RTLS) and secure-access deployments.

Why this matters: the '022's subject matter sits at the intersection of (i) standardized LR-WPAN MAC design and (ii) RFID/proximity access control. A PHOSITA drawn from either discipline would have known the other's literature as analogous art — both address the same problem (duty-cycled battery-powered wireless devices interacting with fixed infrastructure). This makes the KSR "same field of endeavor" and "reasonably pertinent to the problem" tests easy for the petitioner to satisfy.

---

3. The prior-art arsenal — constructed and graded

Confidence key: [A+] confirmed on the '022's own face/citation record this session; [A] existence and date verified and independently known; [B] verified existence/date, but not confirmed as on the '022's face; [C] subject-matter candidate from the family's citation neighborhood, list-membership unverified.

3.1 Primary reference (the hinge of the entire § 103 case)

What 802.15.4-2003 supplies, element-for-element: a PAN coordinator; a beacon frame in the first slot of each superframe carrying superframe specification (beacon order, superframe order, CAP-end slot, battery-life-extension, PAN-coordinator flag, association-permit) and PAN/system identity; CAP (CSMA-CA) + CFP (guaranteed time slots); sleep/wake duty cycling for reduced-function devices; SHR (preamble + SFD) / PHR / PSDU framing that the '022 reproduces verbatim; and 64-bit extended addressing for differentiating multiple devices.

3.2 Confirmed-on-face references

3.3 Date-eligible references from the family's citation neighborhood

3.4 Explicitly not prior art

• US 9,113,464 B2 / US 2007/0159301 A1 (Hirt), "Dynamic cell size variation via wireless link parameter adjustment" — same inventors, same assignee, priority chain. § 102(b)(2)(C) / § 102(a)(2) excepted. Not art.
• US 11,206,664 ("…with Masking"), US 11,279,797, US 11,800,502, US 2016/0205682 ("Dynamic Real-time Tiered Client Access"), US 8,857,716, US 10,739,960, US 11,727,355 — all Proxense, all 2006-01-05/06 priority. Not art.
• US 8,446,893 B2 (overlapping-cell synchronization via Coexistence Beacon Protocol) — granted 2013, effectively filed ~2008. Post-dates 2006-01-06; ineligible absent a priority break.

3.5 The one genuine hole in the arsenal — stated plainly

The prior-art section's conclusion stands: no pre-2006 reference was identified that discloses dynamically shrinking a reader's cell — and commanding the client to shrink its own — in order to "draw in" an associating client while the reader maintains a full-power cell for tracking other clients, which is the '022's "dynamic adjustment" subject matter. That subject matter is disclosed in the '464 parent, which is not available as art (§ 3.4). Therefore:

If any '022 independent claim recites the dynamic cell-size/power-sensitivity adjustment as a positive limitation, the petitioner's case must find independent pre-2006 art for that element. Generalized closed-loop transmit-power control was standardized and ubiquitous by 2006 (e.g., IEEE Std 802.11h-2003 TPC/DFS; Bluetooth power control; cellular CDMA uplink power control; RFID readers' conventional read-range throttling). Those are candidate references that I have not verified against the '022's face and that the earlier search did not reach — flagging them as UNVERIFIED rather than asserting them.

---

4. Limitation-by-limitation mapping (reconstructed claims)

Reconstructed claim archetypes are those from the "Patent summary" section (system / apparatus / method), not verified claim text.

Note on the "waking effect" claim-language statistic. The Google Patents term-frequency block shows "waking … claims 3" and "transition … claims 1." That is the clearest available signal that the '022 has at least one claim reciting waking from a low-power state — which is exactly the US 5,392,287 (Tiedemann) / 802.15.4 duty-cycle subject matter, and the subject matter of the sibling '502's claims 11–20. It does not appear to be the masking subject matter (that is the '664's title).

---

5. The § 103 combinations

Combination A (core) — 802.15.4-2003 in view of US 6,898,822 B2

Targets: the system independent claim (type A) and the method independent claim (type C).

Where each reference is relied upon:

• 802.15.4-2003: the superframe; the TS0 beacon; the beacon's system information (PAN/system identity, superframe structure); the framing (SHR/PHR/PSDU); CSMA-CA; duty-cycled sleep/wake; extended addressing.
• US 6,898,822: a coordinating unit that builds a repeating frame with a beacon and allocates slots among plural wireless devices, i.e., the coordination of multiple fixed devices (not merely a coordinator plus endpoints) and the slot-assignment mechanism.

Motivation to combine (why a PHOSITA would):

1. Same field and same problem. Both are wireless networks in which a coordinator broadcasts timing and battery-powered devices duty-cycle. 802.15.4's beacon-enabled mode exists for the express purpose of permitting devices to sleep and wake on a known schedule; US 6,898,822's slot allocation exists for the express purpose of avoiding collisions while guaranteeing periodic throughput. Combining them to get both benefits is the definition of KSR's "predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions."
2. The '022 concedes the problem. Its own specification states that as cell density increases "more collisions may begin occurring," and that a PDK at a cell edge "may be forced to consume more energy due to the monitoring of multiple channels." A PHOSITA faced with a casino-floor/multi-cell reader deployment would have been motivated, as a matter of ordinary engineering, to impose a common timing beacon and orthogonal slot assignment — precisely the combination claimed.
3. A finite number of predictable solutions. By 2006, coordinating overlapping wireless cells via (i) a common master timing beacon and (ii) non-overlapping time/frequency allocations were the two recognized, finite approaches. KSR treats this as strong evidence of obviousness.
4. Explicit design incentive. 802.15.4 §(beacon-enabled mode) itself teaches the trade-off between beacon overhead and power savings, i.e., it supplies the reason to adopt a coordinator beacon in a battery-sensitive deployment.

Expected result: fewer collisions, better spectrum reuse, longer portable-device battery life — all predictable, none of them a "new function" beyond the references' established functions.

Confidence: High for the framing/coordination limitations (they are substantially anticipated by 802.15.4 alone for limitations 1, 3–5, 10, 13–16). Moderate overall only because the "locate" limitation (6–7) is supplied by a third reference (Combination B).

---

Combination B — Combination A in further view of an RTLS/proximity-location reference (US 5,544,321 / 5,611,050 (Theimer); US 6,577,238 (Tagtec); US 2006/0170565 (Reva))

Targets: the "portable wireless device … configured to locate any of the first wireless device, the second wireless device and the synchronization device to facilitate wireless tracking" limitation, and the corresponding method step.

Motivation:

1. The '022 itself treats tracking and transaction as two uses of one device. Its specification states that "an RDC may be used for both location tracking and secure transaction purposes" and that a dual-radio RDC permits "simultaneous proximity sensing of multiple client devices … along with the association of a client device with one particular cell." A PHOSITA who already had Combination A's synchronized fixed-reader network would have recognized that the same infrastructure inherently yields presence/location information at essentially zero marginal cost — the classic "why wouldn't you?" motivation.
2. Analogous art / reasonable pertinence. Active-badge and RFID location systems (Theimer; Tagtec) target the identical problem: determining which fixed receiver a portable tag is near. The field of endeavor (wireless proximity detection) and the problem (locating portable devices) are the same.
3. Reva's "location virtualization" expressly addresses aggregating reader observations into a location — the '022's "RDC logs PDK ID, signal quality metrics, and timestamps… server … performs a location estimation."

Confidence: Moderate–High, subject to § 8.3.

---

Combination C — Combination B in further view of US 2005/0105734 A1 (proximity authentication)

Targets: the apparatus independent claim (type B) (portable key device with transceiver + processing circuitry syncing on a superframe to enable access) and the dependent "security mechanism" claims (11, 14).

Motivation:

1. The '734 discloses a portable token storing an encrypted credential, a reader, and access to a secured service granted only when the token is proximate — exactly the functional content of the "physical, portable key device … to facilitate wireless tracking and enable a user … to access … an application, an asset and a service" claim.
2. The '734 further contemplates the reader and cryptography co-located on one chip, and a wireless network controller on the same chip — which removes any structural barrier to adding a standardized LR-WPAN MAC (802.15.4) to that architecture. Substituting a standards-compliant duty-cycled MAC for the '734's link is a simple substitution to obtain predictable results (KSR).
3. Motivation supplied by the POSITA's own design goal: a battery-powered token must sleep; 802.15.4's beacon-enabled mode is the standard, known way to do it. Applying it to the '734 token is "known technique to improve similar devices in the same way."

Confidence: Moderate–High for the type B claim.

---

Combination D — Combination A in further view of US 5,392,287 (Tiedemann) — required if the claims recite slot-assignment/waking

Targets: any claim reciting assigning a timeslot / waking at the beginning of a timeslot (the "waking … claims 3" signal), and the dependent "single transceiver periodically monitors" claim.

Motivation: Tiedemann teaches precisely that a receiver is assigned a slot during which it monitors the transmission and sleeps otherwise — the same function the '022's FIG. 26 state diagram performs. Adding assigned-slot sleep scheduling to a coordinator-beacon network is the canonical KSR combination of two known techniques to achieve a predictable power-consumption improvement. If anything, this is a substitution, not a combination — the '022's slot-assignment is Tiedemann's slot-assignment.

Confidence: High.

---

Combination E — Combination A in further view of US 2002/0177460 A1 (Aurix) and/or US 2006/0170565 (Reva) — required if the claims recite overlapping cells with a coordinator

Motivation: Where the '022 claims require that the first and second coverage ranges "at least partially overlap" and that a coordinator synchronize both, Aurix discloses base-station-to-base-station synchronization of overlapping cells precisely to prevent mutual interference. A PHOSITA deploying overlapping reader cells (the '022's own FIG. 30/31 configuration) would have been motivated to synchronize them — the alternative (independent, unsynchronized readers) causes exactly the collisions the '022 says motivated its invention.

Confidence: Moderate. Note the date trap: US 8,446,893 B2 (2013) is not eligible. Only Aurix (2001) is.

---

Combination F (the "dynamic adjustment" combination) — UNABLE TO COMPLETE ON THE CURRENT RECORD

I cannot present a defensible combination for limitation 17. See § 3.5. Any petition or contention that asserts obviousness of a dynamic-adjustment limitation must add a pre-2006 reference teaching adjustable reader transmit power / receive sensitivity (an RF attenuator, or closed-loop power control) and, ideally, a reference teaching commanding the client to reduce its own power. The most promising classes are:

• IEEE Std 802.11h-2003 (transmit-power control) — UNVERIFIED as art; not located by the prior-art search.
• US 2006/0030353 A1 (Samsung, sleep-mode power control) — sleep power, not cell-size variation; weak.
• RFID reader read-range/power throttling art — the natural home for this element, not located.

I am flagging this as the single most important outstanding prior-art search (see § 10).

---

6. Where the analysis is anticipatory vs. merely obvious

It is worth being precise, because it affects how a petition should be drafted:

• Limitations 3–5, 13, 16 (coordinator; superframe with system information broadcast wirelessly; coordination of devices based on that information; IEEE 802.15.4-2003 dependence; standalone coordinator) are substantially anticipated by IEEE 802.15.4-2003 standing alone for the framing layer, once the fixed "reader" devices are mapped to PAN devices/FFDs and the CRDC to the PAN coordinator. The '022's specification admits the protocol dependence, which is close to an admission of the framing limitations.
• What 802.15.4 does not supply is the Proxense overlay: two distinct fixed readers (rather than a coordinator + endpoints), a separate, non-bidirectional synchronization device, and portable-device-initiated location tracking with access-control gating. Those are the elements that make the case a § 103 case rather than a § 102 case — and they are the elements Combinations A–D supply.
• In other words, the correct framing for a petitioner is: "802.15.4 discloses the claimed timing/framing substrate; US 6,898,822 discloses the multi-device coordination overlay; the RTLS/proximity references disclose the tracking/access overlay; the combination is the predictable arrangement of these known elements."

---

7. Objective indicia (secondary considerations)

The record does not supply favorable secondary considerations for the patent owner, and in one respect affirmatively cuts against them:

Bottom line on Graham factor 4: as of this record, no objective indicia support non-obviousness, and the 2016 portfolio-sale letter is an unusually clean (if indirect) admission of absence of commercial/licensing validation.

---

8. The patent owner's best non-obviousness arguments — and their vulnerabilities

I flag these because a § 103 conclusion that does not engage them is not a conclusion.

8.1 "The masking scheme is non-obvious." — Likely misdirected

The PDK superframe/timeslot masking logic (set_pdk_msk_val, XOR of superframe/timeslot counts with a service-provider PDK ID, NOR-to-match, FIG. 18) is genuinely specific and algorithmic. But the masking subject matter appears to be the sibling US 11,206,664's claim set ("…with Masking"), not the '022's. The '022's title points to "dynamic adjustment," and its keyword set ("pdk, rdc, predetermined time, time periods, beacon") is not masking-centric. Do not attribute the '664's masking claims to the '022 — the PTAB section already warned against sibling conflation, and this is the same error in a different direction.

8.2 "The synchronization device is a standalone broadcast-only device that does not communicate bi-directionally with the portable device." — Weak

The previous section observed that the '022 distinguishes the CRDC from an RDC partly by this. But a one-way beacon transmitter is literally the PAN coordinator of 802.15.4, and a one-way timing master is literally the coordinating unit of US 6,898,822 and Aurix. Removing bidirectional capability from a coordinator is a simplifying substitution — the opposite of non-obviousness under KSR.

8.3 "The portable device locates the fixed devices — an inverted architecture." — The PO's strongest structural argument

All three reconstructed independent claims put "locate" in the portable device ("the portable wireless device configured to locate any of the first wireless device, the second wireless device and the synchronization device"). In conventional RTLS the infrastructure locates the tag. A petitioner must show that a POSITA would have regarded client-side location of infrastructure — e.g., by listening for beacons and identifying which reader's beacon is received — as an obvious variation.

Rebuttal available: 802.15.4 devices inherently "locate" a coordinator by acquiring its beacon and reading its PAN identifier; the '022's own FIG. 26 flow is exactly that (scan channels → detect beacon → read network ID). Combining that with the RTLS references makes the inverted phrasing a labeling difference, not a technical one — KSR/In re Am. Acad. of Sci. Tech. Ctr. caution against reading limitations out of context. Still, this is the limitation where the petitioner's mapping is thinnest, and it should be the focus of expert testimony.

8.4 "Dual transceivers (or a single transceiver) is a non-obvious architectural choice." — Very weak

KSR expressly sanctions "duplication of parts" and "a known technique to improve similar devices." The '022 itself recites that the dual-transceiver design "eliminat[es] the need for back-channel synchronization" — a stated, predictable advantage of using two radios. Simultaneous multi-channel reception was standard in multi-radio access points by 2006.

8.5 "Dynamic adjustment is non-obvious." — Strong, but possibly irrelevant

As § 3.5 explains, this is the element with no identified eligible art — and, critically, the reference that discloses it (the '464) cannot be used. If the '022's independent claims recite dynamic adjustment, the PO has a real defense on that claim. If, as the Summary-of-Invention archetypes suggest, the independent claims are the synchronization claims and dynamic adjustment sits in the title and specification (or in dependent claims), the defense evaporates for the independent claims. Resolving this is the highest-value step in the entire analysis.

8.6 "The examiner allowed it over a large IDS." — No weight

The '022's face carries a substantial IDS (the Adams/Zigbee NPL, US 6,898,822, US 2007/0218921, and — via the family — the 1990s RFID and power-conservation cluster). But:

• Examiner Sweet's search was driven by concept keywords coined by the applicant ("pdk," "rdc"), which is a well-recognized vocabulary limitation: art using "coordinator," "access point," "tag," "assigned slot," or "reader network" would not be captured.
• A continuation's allowance carries little evidentiary weight, and is not binding in an IPR or on a district court.
• The strongest counter is affirmative: the Zigbee NPL on the face shows the examiner knew the 802.15.4 family; the question is whether the overlay references were before him.

---

9. Procedural and practical posture (as of April 26, 2026)

Cross-referencing the two prior sections, and using the task's April 26, 2026 date:

Therefore the practical recommendation: treat the § 103 analysis above as a district-court and negotiation instrument, not an IPR petition. An IPR against a patent expiring 2027-01-05, in the face of the Acting Director's discretionary-denial line on Proxense patents, is a low-expected-value filing.

---

10. Verification steps required before reliance

Because the claim text remains unretrieved, no conclusion in § 5 should be relied upon at limitation level until these are done, in this order:

1. Obtain the verbatim '022 claims — USPTO Patent Public Search / PatentCenter, application 16/887,984; or the granted PDF front pages. Determine (i) how many claims there really are (the 36 vs. 20 contradiction), (ii) whether "dynamic adjustment" appears in an independent claim, and (iii) whether any claim recites masking.
2. Pull the '022's own "References Cited" / PTO-892 and the IDS from the Image File Wrapper, and the parent US 11/620,600 wrapper for inherited art. This will convert the [C]-confidence entries in § 3.3 into [A+]/[A] or eliminate them.
3. Run the missing search on dynamic RF power/sensitivity adjustment (pre-2006): 802.11h-2003 TPC; RFID reader read-range control; adaptive antenna/attenuation art; closed-loop power control in LR-WPANs. This is the only element the current record cannot support.
4. Confirm priority-chain integrity claim-by-claim (written-description support for each '022 claim in the 2006-01-06 provisional / 2007-01-05 '600 application). If the chain breaks, US 2007/0218921 A1, US 8,446,893 B2, and the whole 2007–2008 cluster become eligible, and the § 103 case becomes substantially stronger and simpler.
5. Confirm the '502/'664 reference lists are representative of the shared IDS lineage (i.e., that US 5,392,287 (Tiedemann) and US 5,544,321 (Theimer) were before Examiner Sweet on this application).

---

11. Bottom line

1. The '022 is vulnerable under § 103 on its synchronization claims, and the vulnerability is structural, not incidental. The patent's claimed framing — a coordinator broadcasting a superframe containing system information, with fixed devices' operations coordinated by that broadcast — is what IEEE 802.15.4-2003 is, and the patent's own specification admits the dependence. The Proxense overlay (two fixed readers plus a separate synchronizer; portable-device-side location; access gating) is supplied by US 6,898,822 B2 (confirmed on the '022's own face), the location-tracking references (US 5,544,321/5,611,050; US 6,577,238; US 2006/0170565), the slot-monitoring reference US 5,392,287 (on the sibling's face), and the proximity-token reference US 2005/0105734 A1.

2. The strongest single combination is 802.15.4-2003 + US 6,898,822 + an RTLS reference (+ US 2005/0105734 for the apparatus claim). Motivation is supplied by (a) the '022's own conceded problem (collisions and battery drain in dense, overlapping cells), (b) the mutually complementary, expressly stated purposes of the two primary references, (c) the finite, predictable set of solutions, and (d) ordinary casino-floor deployment incentives. Confidence: High on the framing/coordination limitations; Moderate on the "locate" limitation.

3. The one place the patent owner wins is "dynamic adjustment" — and possibly by accident. The only reference that discloses the cell-shrinking, "draw-in" behavior is the '464 parent, which is common-owned, co-invented, and priority-linked, and therefore not prior art under § 102(b)(2)(C). No eligible pre-2006 reference for that element was found. If the '022's independent claims recite it, they survive this analysis; if it lives only in the title and specification, it does not save the independent claims.

4. Two contradictions from the earlier sections must be resolved before this analysis is final. The claim count (36 vs. 20) and the present date (2026-04-26 vs. 2026-09-29) are stated inconsistently across the prior sections. The claim-count question is substantive — it determines whether an independent claim recites dynamic adjustment; the date question is procedural only.

5. Verdict on the assignment's framing: there is a credible, well-motivated § 103 case against the '022's synchronization claims built largely from art the patent's own specification embraces, with one identified but unpatched hole (dynamic adjustment) that must be filled by a further search or neutralized by showing the limitation is not in an independent claim.