US 11391585

I'll verify the details against live sources and check for any 2026 litigation activity.

Analyst Note — Identification and Scope of Search

I searched for the literal string 11391585 (and formatted variants "11,391,585" and "US11391585") against indexed USPTO/PTAB/Justia/Google Patents material and for any 2026 CAFC or district-court activity. Per your instruction I did not auto-correct the number and I did not roll in results for look-alike numbers.

Important caveat on the docket request: I found no evidence of any CAFC 2026 docket, appeal, IPR, or district-court action involving US 11,391,585. Every PayPal-related litigation hit the searches returned involves different patents and parties — e.g., Internet Payment Patents Ltd. v. PayPal (N.D. Cal. 5:25-cv-00380, §101 dismissal of the '858 patent), Fintiv v. PayPal (W.D. Tex. 6:22-cv-00288 / IPR2023-00744 on U.S. 8,538,845), IOENGINE v. PayPal, and a Delaware docket (PureWick v. Medline) citing U.S. 12,161,579 and others. Do not read any of those as pertaining to 11,391,585. I cannot confirm the absence of litigation with certainty — PACER/Docket Navigator are not fully indexed by open web search — but nothing surfaced that ties 11391585 to any 2026 Federal Circuit activity.

Two decoy ID matches worth flagging so they are not mistaken for the patent: (1) a Brazilian state corporate-registry filing (JUCIS-RS, ata of 18/12/2025) listing "11391585 ELITE ASSESSORIA E CONSULTORIA EM SEGUROS LTDA"; and (2) a UK Gazette/TM number list containing the bare string "11391585." Neither is a US patent reference.

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1. Patent Identification

Family continuity (from the fetched record): US 16/890,440 (this patent) → continuation U.S. 17/867,384, which issued as US 11,913,799 B2 (priority claim recorded 2022-07-18) → further continuation U.S. 18/425,472, published as US 2024/0247938 A1 (priority claim recorded 2024-01-29).

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2. Abstract (verbatim)

"There are provided systems and methods for load balancing for map application route selection and output. A user may utilize a device application to map or route between two or more endpoints, such as geo-locations entered or detected by the device. During calculation of a travel route between the endpoints, real-time data, user preferences, and requesting entities may provide criteria data that may cause determination of a particular travel route, where the travel route may be longer than a most efficient route but within a pre-defined variable time or distance allotment and match the criteria data. Use of the route may accrue a form of compensation for the user. The user may view an application interface displaying the route, which may further include one or more executable processes to cause recalculation of the route. Recalculation of the route may require the user to provide credits or compensation."

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3. Plain-Language Overview of the Independent Claims

The patent has three independent claims — claim 1 (system), claim 8 (method), and claim 15 (non-transitory machine-readable medium) — that recite materially the same six-step sequence. Dependent claims 2–7, 9–14, and 16 add limitations.

Independent claim 1 — System

A system with a memory and processor that:

1. Receives, over a network, a request for a travel route from a first location to a second location;
2. Accesses map data for a plurality of candidate travel routes between those locations, pulled from an application programming interface (API) of a "travel processing engine";
3. Retrieves route selection criteria from a database, where those criteria were established for each of the candidate routes using the map data;
4. Determines first travel route data for one of those routes for a vehicle, based on the route selection criteria;
5. Displays that route in a map application interface on a first user's device; and
6. Provides an option for the first user to enter a route selection preference for that route, where the option requires a compensation amount for entry of the first route selection option from at least one additional user.

Put simply: the system does not merely pick the fastest path. It picks a path under third-party/user-defined criteria (e.g., sponsored advertising, points of interest, avoidance preferences), shows it, and then gives the driver a mechanism to register a route preference — with money/credit flowing from another party attached to that election.

Independent claim 8 — Method

The same six steps as claim 1, cast as a method, with the terminal step phrased as: providing an option for a first user to enter a first route selection preference for one of the routes "accessible by the first user," wherein the option "further receives a compensation amount for entry of the first route selection option from at least one additional user."

Independent claim 15 — Non-transitory machine-readable medium

Instructions on a non-transitory CRM causing a machine to perform operations comprising the same pipeline, with the terminal step phrased as: providing the option, wherein the option "provides a compensation amount for entry of the first route selection option from a second user."

(Note the drafting drift across the three independent claims: claim 1 says the option "requires" a compensation amount from "at least one additional user"; claim 8 says it "receives" it; claim 15 says it "provides" it from "a second user." That variation is worth independent scrutiny in any invalidity/infringement analysis.)

Representative dependents (non-limiting)

• Claims 2 / 9 — route selection criteria include a payment preference and a second compensation amount.
• Claims 3 / 10 — tracking data for the candidate routes, with the displayed route determined based on that tracking data (this is the closest the granted claims come to the "load balancing" of the title).
• Claims 4 / 11 — determination of second travel route data, with the first travel route data further determined using both.
• Claims 5 / 12 — the option is offered to a second user based on that user's location and a proximity range to the first user.
• Claims 6 / 13 — the compensation amount is based in part on a credit/funds balance in the first user's account.
• Claims 7 / 14 — the API / map interface belongs to a ride service application (hail/ride-hailing).

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4. Specification Highlights Relevant to Claim Construction

• Core commercial mechanic: the selected route may be longer/slower/more expensive than the best route, but must fall within a maximum variation (set time, cost, or distance) from the shortest route. Selection is driven by advertisements/points of interest (POIs) visible along the route — billboards, digital displays, storefronts, "for sale" homes, vehicles, political messages, social gatherings.
• Two-sided compensation: advertisers/entities pay in to influence routing; the driver earns credits, loyalty points, discounts, or ad-revenue shares for taking the sponsored route. Users or neighborhood groups may pay to have areas de-emphasized/avoided ("route avoidance preferences"), and drivers who insist on traversing such an area may owe compensation to those residents.
• User data inputs: search history, social media, calendar, financial/payment bills, account balances, political preferences, planned purchases, driving record/age/experience, and attention level (eye movement, device usage, in-cabin audio, number of occupants).
• Rerouting gate: an executable rerouting option (FIGS. 2B, 3A–3B) that reveals the hidden unsponsored/fastest route may itself cost credits or money, and may be gated on loyalty tier — the unsponsored route can be withheld from display unless the user pays or has accrued value.
• Payment layer: FIG. 1 shows a transaction processor server 140, expressly described as possibly PAYPAL®, Inc. of San Jose, Calif., handling the credits/compensation.

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5. Uncertainty and Verification Gaps (stated explicitly)

1. Claim text source. The verbatim claim language above comes from Justia's page for patent 11391585 and from the patent-family record; I could not open USPTO Patent Center's official claims page in this session. The rendering of dependent claims 3–7 in the Justia extract is stylistically uneven (some dependents read as restatements rather than "The system of claim 1, wherein…" form). Verify all claim text against the USPTO Patent Center / the granted patent PDF before relying on it.
2. Claim 15 preamble/body is partially truncated in the retrieved text — I have its final limitation but not its full intermediate operation list. Treat claim 15 as unverified in full; based on the pattern it mirrors claims 1 and 8.
3. Prosecution history / claim amendment. The parent publication US 2019/0120654 A1 (Apr. 25, 2019, the 15/789,886 publication) uses the term "route priority information" and its FIG. 4 flowchart steps 402–410 recite "route priority information," whereas the granted claims use "route selection criteria." The pre-grant publication US 2020/0370910 A1 also shows a differently numbered/written claim set (e.g., a "system" claim numbered 2 in that listing) than the granted claims. This strongly suggests claim amendments during prosecution, but I have not retrieved the file wrapper/amendment papers. Do not assume the granted scope equals the published scope.
4. Legal status. "Active," "Adjusted expiration 2037-11-30," and the assignee listing are Google Patents assumptions with the source's own disclaimer. I have not confirmed maintenance-fee payment, current ownership, or whether any terminal disclaimer applies.
5. No litigation located. As noted in the analyst note above, no CAFC 2026 docket or other 2026 proceeding involving 11,391,585 was found; this is a negative search result, not an affirmative clearance.

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Sources consulted: the authoritative full text and bibliographic data at https://patents.google.com/patent/US11391585/en; claim text at https://patents.justia.com/patent/11391585; the pre-grant publication record at https://patents.justia.com/patent/20200370910; and inventor/award data at patentleaderboard.com (Todasco/Madaan/Resudek/Ericson/Tian/Medlen, all listing 11391585 with date 2022-07-19).

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 11391585 across patent litigation databases.

Let me search more specifically in litigation databases.

Let me check more specialized litigation databases.

Litigation Search Results: U.S. Patent No. 11,391,585

Bottom line

I found no litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 11,391,585 in the results returned by my searches of publicly indexed patent-litigation content (Unified Patents caselist pages, Docket Alarm, CourtListener/RECAP, PACER-derived dockets, PTAB filings, and general web results).

To be precise about what I did and did not verify:

• I ran multiple targeted queries for the exact number ("11391585", "11,391,585"), for the patent title ("Load balancing for map application route selection and output"), and for the assignee/inventor combinations (PayPal / Todasco / Madaan / Resudek / Ericson / Tian / Medlen).
• Every hit that matched the number either resolved to the patent's own bibliographic record (Google Patents, PatentGuru, Patent Leaderboard) or was a false positive for a different identifier (e.g., an unrelated Brazilian corporate registry number, an unrelated UK Gazette listing, or other patents/serial numbers).
• I did not obtain a direct, structured query against the Unified Patents litigation caselist API or PACER itself; those results are not fully indexed by general web search. So this is a "no litigation found in available sources" finding, not a certified negative.

Patent identity (for disambiguation)

Related family members seen (context only, no litigation surfaced for any of them either)

The search results show an active continuation family, all PayPal-owned:

• US 10,670,414 B2 — same title (earlier family member)
• US 11,913,799 B2 — priority link from US 17/867,384
• US 2023/0009813 A1 and US 2024/0247938 A1 — published applications
• US 12,656,138 B2 — later continuation from US 18/425,472 (filed 2024-01-29)

Caveats and recommended verification steps

Because I cannot confirm a negative from general search alone, I recommend the following authoritative checks before stating "no litigation" in any filing:

1. Unified Patents litigation portal — search the exact patent number in the caselist; this is the most likely place a district-court case would surface.
2. PACER / Docket Alarm / CourtListener — search the patent number as a text term within complaints ("Patents-in-Suit") rather than by docket metadata, since a case caption typically names the parties, not the patent.
3. USPTO Patent Center / Global Dossier — check for any "Patent/Trademark Number(s)" report or assignment/reassignment activity that would accompany a suit.
4. PTAB — check for any IPR/PGR/CBM against US 11,391,585 or its family members (none appeared in my search).
5. PayPal SEC filings (10-K/10-Q) — PayPal's own risk disclosures sometimes identify material patent litigation involving specific numbers.

If you'd like, I can run the Unified Patents caselist and PTAB searches specifically if you can provide access or confirm those sources are reachable — but based strictly on the results available to me, no litigation for US 11,391,585 is known.

I'll verify the structured data against live sources before drafting anything.

The two initial searches returned unrelated proceedings. Let me run targeted queries against the actual patent number in multiple citation formats, plus check for any parallel litigation that would typically precede an IPR.

No hits on the patent specifically. Let me run a final round of checks against litigation dockets and defensive-aggregator activity, which are the two most common sources of a not-yet-indexed IPR.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file for US 11,391,585: 0. Breakdown: 0 active / 0 with claims invalidated / 0 with claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denials.

The USPTO Open Data Portal structured block supplied with this task returned no AIA trial proceedings as of the most recent ingest, and my independent web searches (run 2026-09-30 against the patent number in both 11,391,585 and US11391585 formats, plus petitioner/assignee and family queries) surfaced no IPR, PGR, or CBM naming this patent as the challenged patent. I could not do an exhaustive docket-level sweep of PTAB E2E or CourtListener before hitting my search limit, so treat this as "no proceedings found," not "proven-absent." The ODP block remains the canonical list.

Bottom line for a defendant: neither of the usual postures applies. There is no claim-level cancellation to hand a plaintiff (nothing to say "if your demand letter cites claim X, that claim is dead"), and equally no PTAB decision validating the claims that you would have to overcome. This patent has never been PTAB-tested, so its claims are not hardened by survival — that framing would be wrong here. What you have is a clean slate: every invalidity ground a district court will hear is still available, and no § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches to anyone.

⚠️ Citation trap — two false positives you should not cite as this patent:

• US 10,137,915 (Hum Industrial Technology, Inc. v. Amsted Rail Co., IPR2023-00540) — a nearly identical five-digit tail (137,915 vs. 391,585). Digit transposition is easy here. Different patent, different art (rail accelerometer filtering).
• US 8,538,845 (PayPal Holdings, Inc. v. Fintiv, Inc., IPR2023-00744) — a PayPal matter, but a different patent and PayPal is the petitioner there, not the owner.
• Also note: this patent's "load balancing" refers to balancing routing loads across map-application users and advertisers, not server/network load balancing. Most "load balancing" IPR hits are unrelated (e.g., US 9,300,733; US 10,839,116).

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Per-proceeding detail

None to report. There is no proceeding number, petitioner, panel, institution decision, FWD, settlement, or appeal to describe, and I will not invent one. Per your instruction, the absence is the finding.

For completeness on why the absence is what it is:

• The patent issued 2022-07-19 from Application No. 16/890,440 (filed 2020-06-02), a continuation of 15/789,886 (filed 2017-10-20). Original and current assignee: PayPal, Inc. Inventors: Todasco, Madaan, Resudek, Ericson, Tian, Medlen.
• The PGR window closed 2023-01-19 (nine months post-grant) with no PGR filed.
• The CBM program expired 2020-09-16, so CBM was never available against this patent.
• IPR remains available indefinitely for anyone not time-barred — which makes the zero count a live fact, not a historical accident.
• Source document: https://patents.google.com/patent/US11391585/en · PTAB E2E: https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/ · Patent Center: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov/

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Strategic summary

Canceled vs. sustained vs. untested. All claims are UNTESTED. Because no FWD exists, no claim has been canceled, and no claim has been confirmed. There is also no adverse judgment or disclaimer narrowing the claims. I note the patent text available to me was truncated before the claim set, so I am not opining on claim count or on which claims are independent versus dependent — that must be read off the face of the patent itself (see the Google Patents link above) rather than inferred.

Family exposure is the real story, not the empty PTAB docket. The '585 patent sits in an active, still-growing family:

• US 11,913,799 B2 — granted 2024-02-27, same title, same specification lineage (priority to US 17/867,384, itself claiming priority back through this chain) — https://patents.google.com/patent/[US11913799B2](/patent/US11913799B2)/en
• US 2024/0247938 A1 — published from US 18/425,472 (priority date listed 2024-01-29) — https://patents.google.com/patent/US20240247938A1/en

Same inventors and assignee throughout. Practically, this means (a) a plaintiff has multiple continuation bites at coverage, and (b) a validity win against '585 does not dispose of the family. Any serious clearance or invalidity analysis should be run across all three, and a prior-art search should be scoped to the 2017-10-20 effective filing date as the presumptive § 102 critical date.

Estoppel landscape — wide open. Section 315(e)(2) estoppel is triggered only by a final written decision under § 318(a). There is none, so no petitioner, real party in interest, or privy is estopped from anything. Every § 102 and § 103 ground based on patents and printed publications is available to a defendant today, in the PTAB and in district court. Conversely — and this cuts the other way — you cannot borrow any PTAB work product, institution-stage claim constructions, or expert testimony, because none exists. You would be financing the first-ever validity challenge to this patent from scratch.

The § 101 gap is the most important strategic point. IPR jurisdiction reaches only § 102 and § 103 over patents and printed publications. The claims here are directed to selecting a travel route based on advertisement campaigns, points of interest, and user data, with compensation accruing for taking the "sponsored" route — quintessential economic/business-logic subject matter. A § 101 Alice attack is unavailable at the PTAB and must be run in district court. Notably, PayPal itself recently won a § 101 dismissal as a defendant — Internet Payments Patents Ltd. v. PayPal Inc., No. 25-cv-00380-SVK (N.D. Cal.), final judgment entering 2026-01-27 on the '858 patent (https://cases.justia.com/federal/district-courts/california/candce/5:2025cv00380/[442683/128](https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/search/patent/reelFrameDetail?reelFrame=442683-0128)/0.pdf) — which shows the § 101 road is well-trodden in this technology space. Likewise, § 112 written-description/enablement attacks tied to the continuation chain are district-court only.

Pattern signals. No petitioner has filed against this patent, so there is no serial-filing signal and no General Plastic / § 325(d) history to weigh. No patent owner appeals exist because there is nothing to appeal. I found no evidence of a defensive aggregator (e.g., Unified Patents) in the chain for this patent — treat that as a null finding, not a confirmation. Worth knowing the mirror-image fact: PayPal is itself an aggressive IPR petitioner (IPR2023-00744 against Fintiv's '845 patent, all challenged claims held unpatentable in an FWD dated 2024-10-02, https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2023-00744/). So the sophistication is present on the ownership side; an empty PTAB docket here most likely reflects that the patent has not been broadly asserted, rather than that it is unusually strong. That makes the absence a weak signal — I would not read "no IPRs" as "hardened."

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Recommended next steps

Because there are no proceedings, the clock — not the docket — is your governing risk.

1. Preserve your IPR rights: § 315(b) one-year bar. If you have been served with a complaint alleging infringement of this patent, you have one year from service to petition. That deadline is jurisdictional and cannot be waived. Given the empty docket, this is the single most time-critical item on the list. File within the window or forfeit IPR entirely — after which your only invalidity forum is district court.
2. Do not expect a stay or a shortcut. With no IPR on file, a stay motion has nothing to attach to. If you file, the statutory cadence is: institution decision within 6 months of the petition's filing date under § 314(b); FWD within 12 months of institution under § 316(a)(11) (extendable to 18 months for good cause). Total realistic runway from filing to FWD is roughly 18 months.
3. Split your invalidity theory by forum — this is not optional.
   • PTAB: § 102/§ 103 on patents and printed publications. Anchored to a 2017-10-20 critical date. Expect the panel to apply Advanced Bionics / § 325(d) only lightly, since this art has likely never been before the examiner in this form.
   • District court: § 101 (heavily favored — run it as an early Rule 12 motion, as PayPal did in the IPPL matter), § 112 (written description/enablement across the 15/789,886 → 16/890,440 continuation chain), plus any system/on-sale/public-use art, which IPR cannot reach. On the interplay, note Ingenico Inc. v. IOENGINE, LLC, No. 23-1367 (Fed. Cir. May 7, 2025), confirming that IPR estoppel does not bar a petitioner from relying on the same patents and printed publications to prove a non-publication ground that could not have been raised in the IPR.
4. Scope the search to the whole family. Run the prior-art search against US 11,391,585, US 11,913,799, and US 2024/0247938 A1 together. A ground that kills only '585 leaves live continuations.
5. If you are evaluating a demand letter, do not accept any representation that claims are "already invalidated" or "PTAB-confirmed." Neither is true. Verify the asserted claim numbers against the '585 claim set directly, and independently confirm the file history in Patent Center before responding.

Verification note: The zero count rests on (i) the USPTO ODP structured block, which is authoritative, and (ii) my web searches, which found nothing. I did not complete a direct query of PTAB E2E or a full CourtListener docket pull before hitting my tooling limit. Before relying on this in a filing or a client memo, run the patent number directly in PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/) and CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com/) to close that gap — the result should be the same, but it should be your own confirmation, not mine.

I'll reconstruct this from the authoritative patent text first, then try to corroborate the assignment record against live sources.

The first search confirms the patent family; the second was noise. Let me try to pin down the actual recorded assignment detail (reel/frame and correspondent).

Let me check for any litigation/assertion activity involving this patent and try once more for the reel/frame.

Ownership & Assignment Reconstruction — US 11,391,585 B2

Patent: US 11,391,585 B2 — Load balancing for map application route selection and output
Application: 16/890,440 · filed 2020-06-02 · granted 2022-07-19 · priority 2017-10-20
Statutory basis: Continuation of application 15/789,886 (filed 2017-10-20); adjusted expiration 2037-11-30.

Data-availability caveat up front: the Assignment Center UI at assignmentcenter.uspto.gov is a JavaScript application that is effectively not indexed by the search tools available to me, and the USPTO Assignment Search API endpoint did not return a machine-read record for this patent number in my queries. I could therefore not retrieve reel/frame numbers or the correspondent of record for the one recorded conveyance. Everything below that is stated as fact comes from the patent front matter and the Google Patents legal-events ledger (which is itself populated from USPTO assignment data). I have marked the reel/frame and correspondent fields as not retrieved rather than inventing them. A human should confirm against USPTO directly before relying on this for a chain-of-title opinion.

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Inventors

Pattern notes (no adverse finding):

• All six are members of the same in-house PayPal invention cluster and recur together across a long list of PayPal filings sharing subject matter — e.g. US 10,670,414 (same title/family), US 10,709,473, US 10,750,015, US 10,755,582, US 10,810,571. This is the signature of a standing corporate innovation team, not of a founder/employee group that left a startup.
• No evidence any inventor departed PayPal within 12 months of the 2017-10-20 priority filing. The inventors continue to appear on PayPal filings issued well after 2022 (e.g. Todasco-co-invented US 11,710,162 issued 2023-07-25; US 12,282,943 issued 2025-04-22). I found no departure signal.

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Original assignee

PayPal, Inc. (Delaware corporation; part of PayPal Holdings, Inc., NASDAQ: PYPL). Named as both original assignee and current assignee on the face of US 11,391,585.

• Primary line of business: online/digital payments, money transfer, merchant processing, fintech, plus a mobile consumer app (PayPal / Venmo) and associated services. The patent's own specification contemplates the map/routing application being paired with a ride-service app and a transaction processor server 140 "provided by PAYPAL®, Inc. of San Jose, Calif., USA."
• Product embodying the claims: This is a routing/ad-serving invention, not a standalone product. Its "practice" would be a map application that selects a sponsored route subject to a max time/distance deviation and pays the driver in credits — a monetization feature rather than a shipped SKU. I found no public evidence that PayPal commercialized the claimed sponsored-routing feature; I also found no evidence it was ever asserted.
• Current status: Operating, publicly traded, solvent. Not acquired, dissolved, or in bankruptcy. Note the direction of litigation traffic: PayPal appears as a defendant in patent suits (e.g. Fintiv, Inc. v. PayPal Holdings, Inc., W.D. Tex., concerning unrelated patents), not as a plaintiff asserting this one.

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Assignment timeline

Chronological record. There is effectively one recorded conveyance in this chain, and it is an original inventor-to-company assignment, not a post-issuance transfer.

• Executed: not stated in retrievable record / recorded 2020-09-02 — Reel not retrieved / frame not retrieved
  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest ("ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)")
  • Assignor: TIAN, Cheng; RESUDEK, Timothy; MADAAN, Gautam; ERICSON, Braden Christopher; MEDLEN, Jiri; TODASCO, Michael Charles (all six named inventors)
  • Assignee: PAYPAL, INC.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved — I could not access the assignment document to extract the filing attorney/agent. Because there is only a single link in this chain, the "repeat correspondent" signal (see §3) is untestable here; I am recording that as a data gap, not as a negative finding.
  • Context: Ordinary confirmatory inventor-to-corporate-employer assignment, recorded approximately three months after the 2020-06-02 continuation filing and following the 2020-09-02 PAYPAL, INC. reassignment entry. No consideration flow, no LLC intermediary, no securitization.

No further assignments are recorded. No post-issuance transfer, no security agreement, no merger, no change of name, no license recordation, no release. The chain is flat: inventors → PayPal, and stops there.

Related-family context (not separate assignments to this patent): the same specification spawns further PayPal continuation filings cited in the legal-events ledger — 17/867,384 (filed 2022-07-18 → US 11,913,799 B2) and 18/425,472 (filed 2024-01-29 → US 2024/0247938 A1). These are intra-family continuations by the same assignee, i.e. portfolio prosecution activity, not ownership transfers.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11391585
    2017 : Parent application filed by PayPal inventors
    2020 : Continuation filed as 16 890 440 by PayPal
         : Inventors assign rights to PayPal Inc
    2022 : Patent granted to PayPal Inc
    2024 : Further continuation filed by PayPal Inc

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

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Verdict

Insufficient data (only the original assignment).

The sole recorded conveyance is the 2020-09-02 inventor-to-PayPal, Inc. assignment of assignors' interest covering all six named inventors (Todasco, Madaan, Resudek, Ericson, Tian, Medlen); there is no post-issuance transfer of any kind, no LLC intermediary, no security interest, and no assertion activity involving US 11,391,585. On the evidence, the patent remains with the original operating-company assignee, PayPal, Inc., and every NPE signal on the checklist that is testable returns "not present." I selected Insufficient data rather than a clean "Operating-company / non-asserting" characterization only because the USPTO record available to me is limited to that single assignment and I could not extract the reel/frame numbers or the correspondent of record — a gap that should be closed by a direct Assignment Center pull before this is relied upon.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number 11391585) — and the parallel index at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html

Recommended follow-up to close the gap: pull the recorded assignment document for the 2020-09-02 PayPal entry to obtain (a) reel/frame, (b) execution date, and (c) the correspondent attorney/firm. Because the correspondent on a flat inventor→PayPal chain is almost always PayPal's own outside IP counsel of record, that field is the one remaining unexamined tell — though on a single-link chain it cannot by itself establish the "repeat correspondent" NPE signal.

I'll research US 11,391,585's citation records, focusing on "References Cited" (prior art cited during prosecution) and the "Cited By" (forward citations) listings.

Let me pull the specific citation records for US 11,391,585 itself from multiple patent databases.

Let me directly target the citation tables on the patent's own record pages.

Prior-Art Analysis: US 11,391,585 B2

1. Target confirmation (literal identifier)

Similar-number warning (do not cross-map): several search hits for "…91585" resolved to an unrelated patent US 10,137,915 (a railcar/accelerometer monitoring patent that was the subject of PTAB petitions, e.g., IPR2023-00540) and to non-patent identifiers (a Brazilian corporate registry entry, an unrelated UK Gazette listing). Those are not US 11,391,585 and were not used below.

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2. Important provenance caveat on the citation list

I was not able to retrieve the "References Cited" (56) table of US 11,391,585 itself within my search budget. The authoritative citation table I did retrieve is the one published on the Justia record for US 11,913,799 (same title, same family — a continuation sharing the same specification, inventors and assignee). Because continuations of one specification typically traverse substantially the same examiner art, that list is a reasonable proxy, but it is not certified to be the 11,391,585 list. Treat every row below as "candidate prior art appearing in this family's prosecution record — verify against the 11,391,585 file wrapper (USPTO Patent Center) before relying on it."

I also could not retrieve the full reference texts, so item-level titles/subject matter and the §102 claim maps below are my analytical assessment and must be verified against each reference and against the as-issued claims (I did not receive the claims section in the provided text — only the abstract/description/FIG. 4 flow).

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3. The cited references (U.S. Patent Documents)

Granted patents

Published applications

(Source for the list: patents.justia.com record for US 11,913,799, "Referenced Cited → U.S. Patent Documents." Note the list contains post-2017-10-20 items, e.g., Kimura 2021 and Borgyos 2023, which cannot be §102 prior art against the 2017-10-20 priority date; they are 2021/2023 filings cited for other reasons, e.g., later-added or IDS-cited material — flag for verification.)

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4. Claim-category framework used for the §102 mapping

Because the as-issued claims were not in the material supplied to me, I map references to the claimed concepts evident from the FIG. 4 flow (steps 402–412) and the specification:

• C1 — route request/pair of map points (Fig. 4 step 402)
• C2 — determining map data for the route (step 404)
• C3 — accessing a route-priority option / route-selection criteria based on user data (step 406)
• C4 — determining a travel route using map data + route priority (step 408)
• C5 — maximum variation (time/cost/distance) from the shortest route
• C6 — advertisements / points of interest along the route (billboard, house, vehicle, sales location, etc.)
• C7 — outputting the route in a map interface (step 412)
• C8 — sponsored route vs. unsponsored route + selectable re-route option / compensation
• C9 — compensation / credit / payment preference (payment-app, transaction processor)
• C10 — route-selection preference set by an "additional user"/entity to de-select a route, with compensation
• C11 — attention level of the user (eye movement, device usage, occupants in vehicle)
• C12 — ride-service application with fare discount for sponsored route

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5. Relevance assessment (tentative; verify reference text)

Standard practice: these references were cited during prosecution and were almost certainly applied as anticipatory (§102) and/or obviousness (§103) art. Where a reference appears to be examiner-applied §102 art, so indicate; otherwise indicate “cited for context / possible §103.”

Routing / turn-by-turn and route-request fundamentals (map points, map data, outputting a route):

• US 2005/0107951 A1 (Brulle-Drews, 2005-05-19) — vehicle navigation generation; potentially §102 against C1/C2/C7.
• US 2007/0239348 A1 (Cheung, 2007-10-11) — navigation/routing; C1/C2/C7.
• US 2008/0091341 A1 (Panabaker, 2008-04-17) — location/route services; C1/C2/C3.
• US 2009/0287408 A1 (Gerdes, 2009-11-19); US 2013/0013204 A1 (Kazama, 2013-01-10); US 2013/0262222 A1 (Gibson, 2013-10-03); US 2014/0006163 A1 (Sengupta, 2014-01-02) — likely C1/C2/C4/C7.
• US 8,234,063 B2 (Dhanani, 2012-07-31) — route/travel planning; C1–C2.

Route selection by criteria other than shortest (preferences, POIs, sponsored content):

• US 9,261,374 B2 (Mundinger, 2016-02-16) — route/path recommendation with user-related criteria; candidate C3/C4/C5.
• US 9,488,485 B2 (Letz, 2016-11-08) — navigation assistance/route presentation; C3/C4/C7.
• US 9,927,252 B2 (Chokshi, 2018-03-27) — route determination with route-selection factors; candidate C3/C4/C5.
• US 10,274,328 B2 (Grochocki, Jr., 2019-04-30) and US 2018/0094943 A1 (Grochocki, Jr., 2018-04-05) — route planning / waypoint selection; candidate C3/C4/C6.
• US 2015/0149078 A1 (Profous et al., 2015-05-28) — route selection incorporating non-shortest factors; candidate C3/C4/C5.
• US 2016/0109251 A1 (Thakur, 2016-04-21); US 2016/0245663 A1 (van Dok, 2016-08-25); US 2016/0328745 A1 (Martin, 2016-11-10) — candidate C4/C5/C7.

Advertising / points-of-interest along a route (core to this patent):

• US 2010/0027527 A1 (Higgins, 2010-02-04); US 2010/0036606 A1 (Jones, 2010-02-11); US 2010/0280853 A1 (Petralia, 2010-11-04) — location-based advertisements tied to travel; candidates C6/C8/C9.
• US 2011/0087430 A1 (Boss, 2011-04-14); US 2011/0166958 A1 (Hamilton, II, 2011-07-07); US 2015/0330799 A1 (Boss, 2015-11-19); US 2018/0073878 A1 (Boss, 2018-03-15) — IBM routing/advertising/cognitive-route art; candidates C3/C6/C8.
• US 2010/0332315 A1 (Kamar, 2010-12-30) — route-dependent content advertising; strong candidate C6/C8.
• US 2017/0069001 A1 (Scofield, 2017-03-09) — advertising/POI along navigation; candidate C6/C8.

Vehicle/autonomous routing and driver state:

• US 10,324,463 B2 (Konrardy et al., 2019-06-18) — autonomous-vehicle monitoring/operation (State Farm-type art); candidate C11 (attention/driver-state as routing input), possibly C4.
• US 2021/0110434 A1 (Kimura, 2021-04-15) — post-dates the 2017-10-20 priority date; cannot be §102/§103 art against the priority claim; likely cited as later-developed art or for other reasons. Flag for verification.
• US 2023/0008742 A1 (Borgyos, 2023-01-12) — likewise post-dates priority; not §102 art. Flag for verification.

Family / self references (not prior art in the §102 sense):

• US 10,670,414 B2 (Todasco, 2020-06-02) — the parent patent of the same family (same inventors/assignee). Citing a family member does not make it §102 art against this patent; if it shares the same priority chain it is at most a double-patenting / obviousness-type reference, not anticipation.
• US 11,391,585 B2 (self-entry) — the patent itself, appearing because the later continuation (11,913,799) lists it.

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6. Bottom-line §102 opinion (as far as the record supports it)

• No single retrieved reference appears to be a clean §102 anticipator of the full claimed combination, because the independent claim as evidenced by FIG. 4 requires the conjunction of: a route request between two map points + map data + a route-priority option keyed to user data + route determination from that + output in a map interface — with the dependent claims layering on maximum-variation limits, advertisements/POIs, sponsored vs. unsponsored route + re-route option, and compensation/credits.
• The references that are the most plausible §102 or §103 candidates for that combination are the route-selection + advertising group (Kamar US 2010/0332315; Profous US 2015/0149078; Chokshi US 9,927,252; Grochocki US 10,274,328 / US 2018/0094943; Scofield US 2017/0069001) and the Boss/Hamilton IBM group for the criteria-based routing aspects. These are the references I would prioritize for a validity/knock-out study.
• The distinguishing limitations most likely sustained over this art are the specific "maximum variation from the shortest route" constraint tied to a sponsored route, the hidden unsponsored route / selectable re-route for compensation, and the compensation-accrual payment mechanics — which is where an invalidity challenge would need a secondary reference.

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7. What I could NOT verify (be explicit)

1. The exact "References Cited" table of US 11,391,585 — only the same-family US 11,913,799 list was retrievable. Confirm via USPTO Patent Center / Global Dossier for US 16/890,440.
2. The as-issued claim text of US 11,391,585 — not present in the material provided (only abstract/description/FIG. 4). The §102 claim maps above are therefore keyed to claim categories, not literal claim language.
3. Individual reference titles and technical descriptions — I did not open each reference's full text; the characterizations above are analytical and must be verified against the documents themselves before being stated as fact in any filing.
4. Which references were actually applied (rejected/allowance) vs. merely listed in an IDS — determines whether the §102/§103 designation is correct. Check the file wrapper office actions.
5. Non-patent literature and foreign patent documents cited on the 11,391,585 face — none surfaced in my retrieval; check the printed patent's front page directly.

Recommended next queries: (a) USPTO Patent Center for application 16/890,440 → "References Cited" and the examiner's citations/office actions; (b) Google Patents / FPO page for US 11,391,585 → "Cited By" and "References Cited" tables; (c) the printed PDF front page (56) listings, including any foreign/NPL entries.

If you can confirm reachability of the Google Patents or USPTO Patent Center page for US 11,391,585 specifically, I can retrieve the patent's own (56) table and the literal claim text and convert the tentative category maps above into exact claim-by-claim §102/§103 citations.

I'll verify the subject matter of the key candidate references before building the §103 combinations, since the prior-art section flagged that individual reference texts were not opened.

Excellent — I found a highly relevant non-listed reference. Let me verify the remaining key cited references before building combinations.

I have verified enough of the reference disclosures to build the §103 grounds. Note one material finding: my searches surfaced a reference that appears more on‑point than anything on the prosecution citation list — I flag it separately in §7 below, because it changes the risk picture.

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Obviousness Analysis — US 11,391,585 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Patent: US 11,391,585 B2 — Load balancing for map application route selection and output (PayPal, Inc.)
Critical date: 2017‑10‑20 (presumptive § 102/§ 103 effective filing date; continuation of Ser. No. 15/789,886)
Basis: "Use the results from the Prior Art section of this page," supplemented by live verification of reference disclosures (search conducted 2026‑09‑30).

Two inherited caveats that carry forward and constrain this analysis. (1) The Prior‑Art section was built from the US 11,913,799 citation table (a same‑family continuation), not the '585 (56) table — so the art set is a strong proxy but unconfirmed. (2) The literal claim text was not retrieved; the element analysis below keys to the claim structure set out in the Patent Summary section (claims 1/8/15 independent; 2–7, 9–14, 16 dependent). Every mapping below must be re‑keyed to the literal claim language before filing.

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1. The person having ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA)

A POSITA at 2017‑10‑20 would have: (a) a bachelor's degree in computer science, electrical engineering, or geographic information systems, and 2–3 years of experience building turn‑by‑turn navigation and route‑computation systems; or equivalent industry experience; and would additionally be familiar with (b) location‑based/geo‑targeted advertising systems and auction‑based ad delivery, and (c) mobile payment/credit‑account mechanics. Route computation (Dijkstra/A* over road‑segment graphs with attribute costs), map APIs, location‑based ad serving, and sponsor‑paid incentives were all mature, well‑documented engineering fields by 2017.

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2. Why the claims are § 103 candidates rather than § 102

The independent claims require a conjunction of six operations (per the Patent Summary section):

No single retrieved reference teaches all six in one disclosure — hence the earlier § 102 conclusion stands. But A, B, D, E are admitted conventional, and C and F were each independently known and well developed in the same field by 2010–2016. That is the classic § 103 posture under KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007).

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3. Verified reference disclosures

I opened the disclosures of the following cited references. These are the load‑bearing findings:

US 2011/0087430 A1 (Boss et al., IBM, pub. 2011‑04‑14) — "Determining a travel route … as a result of a real‑time auction." Verified FIG. 2 flow: a Route Calculation Service (RCS) receives vendor locations; receives the user's request for a route "from point A to point B"; optionally retrieves the user's profile data including past behavior; selects locations "that can be included along routes from point A to point B"; runs an auction in which winning bids ensure the presented route includes the winning vendor's location; determines the route to include that location; designates it as the recommended route. Verified FIG. 4: GPS in the user's vehicle tracks the actual route taken, and a surcharge is charged to the winning vendor whose location is along the actual route. Verified FIG. 5‑6: a received and stored "rule indicating that the length of a recommended route is not permitted to exceed the length of an optimal (i.e., shortest) route by more than X%", with the route discarded as non‑recommended if it exceeds X%.
— This is the single most damaging piece of art on the cited list.

US 2015/0330799 A1 (Boss/Hamilton/Martino/Pickover/Sand, IBM) = US 9,909,885 B2, "Determining a travel route" (granted 2018‑03‑06). Verified abstract: a rule indicating the number of recommended routes passing through a constrained area is not permitted to exceed a threshold; after N route requests, N recommended routes through the constrained area are determined and presented; on receipt of the (N+1)th request, the route is checked against the rule and only designated as a recommended route if the threshold is not exceeded.
— This is, functionally and literally, the "load balancing" of the '585 title. The patent's stated purpose — distributing routing traffic across an area without over‑loading a neighborhood — is the express claim of Boss '885.

US 2010/0332315 A1 (Kamar et al., Microsoft, pub. 2010‑12‑30) — "Generation of impression plans for presenting and sequencing advertisement and sales opportunities along potential routes." Verified: identifies a set of potential routes based on travel history, day/time, GPS‑detected start location, and appointment book; identifies advertisement opportunities along each potential route; selects ads based on "attention availability of the user"; receives advertisement bids and selects ads that maximize advertisement payments; monitors the user to determine the selected route and arrival at the advertisement opportunity, then presents the ad.

US 9,927,252 B2 (Chokshi/Alon/Jeon, Uber, granted 2018‑03‑27) — "Safe routing for navigation systems." Verified: navigation module computes routes for requested trips using road‑segment data with safety scores per time of day; trip data includes the number of passengers in the vehicle, treated as a safety indicator; routing selection influenced by factors other than raw shortest time/distance.

US 2015/0149078 A1 (Profous et al., TomTom, pub. 2015‑05‑28). Verified: PND route calculation weighing routes "that include along their route the highest number of points of interest (POIs) tagged as being for example of scenic beauty"; the user "may prefer a scenic route to be calculated"; user‑intervened route selection specifying roads/locations to be avoided; and automatic or user‑triggered route re‑calculation, expressly including where "a user actively causes the device to perform route re‑calculation for any reason."

US 8,073,460 B1 (Scofield et al.) — the parent of cited US 2017/0069001 A1 (Scofield): verified as mobile‑device trail/travel‑pattern analysis driving delivery of location‑dependent advertising content and coupons tailored by demographic.

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4. Claim 1 — element‑by‑element mapping (representative independent claim)

Result for claim 1: Elements A–E are met by Boss '430 alone, with Kamar '315, Chokshi '252 and Profous '078 available as redundant support. Element F is the only genuine battleground, and it is met by the combination of Boss '430's vendor‑payment mechanic with Boss '885's area‑preference rule.

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5. Grounds of rejection

Ground 1 (primary): Boss '430 in view of Boss '885

Rejects: claims 1–4, 8–11, 15–16 (and, with the further references below, 5–7 and 12–14).

Boss '430 supplies elements A–E and the maximum‑variation limitation (its FIG. 5‑6 rule caps the recommended route at the shortest route + X%), and the compensation mechanic (vendor auction bid + post‑hoc surcharge for routes actually taken). Boss '885 supplies the missing element F and the "load balancing" rationale: a stored rule that limits how many recommended routes may pass through a given area, with each subsequent request checked against the rule before the route is designated recommended.

Motivation to combine (KSR, articulated):

1. Same field, same problem, same assignee. Both are IBM navigation‑routing disclosures addressing how to bias route selection away from pure shortest‑time optimization while containing the burden on real road infrastructure. Boss '885 and Boss '430 even share inventors (Gregory J. Boss et al.).
2. Art recognized the problem the '585 title names. '585's own background complains that "the map application may select pathways without regard to the local settings and/or nearby people or places." Boss '885 solves exactly that with a numeric threshold on recommended routes through a constrained area — the combination therefore addresses a known deficiency in the prior art using a known remedy.
3. Predictable, arithmetic combination. Boss '430 already discloses a stored rule restricting recommended routes relative to an optimum (the X% cap). Adding Boss '885's second stored rule (a cap on routes through a region) is the mere addition of a known constraint of the same kind, applied in the same data structure, to the same route‑designation step — no change in principle of operation.
4. Reasonable expectation of success. Both operate on the same server‑side route‑designation decision; neither requires new hardware, new sensing, or new network topology.
5. Design incentive / market pressure. Boss '430 puts an auction and a surcharge on route inclusion; a POSITA seeking to monetize and to avoid over‑concentrating traffic has an express incentive to add Boss '885's load‑cap rule so that the system can continue selling placements without degrading the constrained area.

Ground 2 (alternative): Kamar '315 in view of Boss '430 (and Chokshi '252)

Rejects: at minimum claims 1–4, 8–11, 15–16, and directly hits claims 11/… (attention level).

Kamar '315 supplies: potential routes generated from map data + user profile/appointment book (element C "established for each of the plurality"), advertisement opportunities along each route (element C content), bidding by advertisers (compensation from a party other than the driver), and attention availability of the user as a selection input — matching the '585 dependent limitation tying route determination to an "attention level" (eye movement, device usage, audio, occupants). Boss '430 supplies the route‑request/receive/determine/display pipeline for a vehicle and the maximum‑variation cap. Chokshi '252 supplies the vehicle/occupant‑count and road‑segment‑tracking inputs.

Motivation to combine: Kamar and Boss '430 are both pre‑2011 publications from major corporate labs in location‑based advertising and navigation respectively; Kamar explicitly contemplates that the route "may not be fixed, but may be under the control of the user," which is precisely the scenario Boss '430's route‑determination step resolves. A POSITA optimizing an ad‑funded navigation product would combine the ad‑plan engine with a route‑determination engine as a matter of routine design.

Ground 3 (dependent‑claim art): Profous '078 + Chokshi '252 + Scofield

Rejects: the "route selection preference / re‑route option" and non‑monetary‑criteria dependents.

• Profous '078 supplies a user‑selectable route and a re‑route/re‑calculation option ("a user actively causes the device to perform route re‑calculation for any reason"), plus POI‑density‑weighted route costing and avoid‑locations preferences. This maps onto the '585 rerouting‑option and route‑selection‑preference limitations.
• Chokshi '252 supplies passenger count in the vehicle as a routing input (very close to the '585 "number of users in the vehicle" attention parameter) and road‑segment tracking data used to determine routes (mapping onto dependent claims 3/10's "tracking data" language).
• Scofield (US 8,073,460 B1 / US 2017/0069001 A1) supplies demographic‑tailored, location‑dependent advertising delivery driven by tracked travel patterns — redundant support for the "user information/preferences → advertisement" linkage.

Ground 4 (secondary dependents)

• Claims 2 / 9 (payment preference + second compensation amount): Boss '430 (vendor bids and surcharge settlement) plus the conventional payment‑account mechanics in the field (the '585 specification itself treats a "transaction processor server" as off‑the‑shelf — see the Patent Summary section, §4, "Payment layer"). A POSITA implementing credit accrual/redeem for sponsored routing would use an ordinary stored‑value/wallet account; no inventive contribution.
• Claims 5 / 12 (option offered to second user based on location + proximity range): geo‑fencing/proximity advertising was pervasive by 2017 (Kamar '315 route/opportunity location matching; Scofield; Boss '430 vendor locations). Combining a proximity criterion with the offer of a route‑related option is routine.
• Claims 7 / 14 (ride service application): Chokshi '252 is itself a ride‑service (Uber) navigation system with rider/driver client applications, fare/matching logic, and trip data. Adding the sponsored‑route mechanic of Boss '430 to a ride‑service app is the express commercial use case both references contemplate.

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6. Anticipated patent‑owner rebuttals — and why they likely fail on this record

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7. ⚠️ Material finding — a reference not on the cited prior‑art list

My verification searches surfaced US 2012/0253929 A1 (pub. 2012‑10‑04), which appears to be substantially closer to the '585 claims than any reference on the prosecution citation list. Its verified claims and disclosure recite:

• "requesting directions to a destination from a navigation application; and providing a primary route … and a secondary route …, the secondary route adding less than a threshold percentage of additional time or distance to the primary route, the secondary route includes the prioritized locations" (claim 1) → directly the '585 "maximum variation from the shortest route" + "advertisements along the route" limitations;
• "the advertising content is prioritized at least partially by fees paid" (claim 2) → compensation flowing from an advertiser;
• "displaying the secondary route only" (claim 9) → the '585 "hidden unsponsored route";
• "displaying the primary route if the user pays a fee" (claim 10) → the '585 rerouting option requiring compensation;
• "a user can opt out of being presented with a secondary route, by paying a fee" (spec.) → the compensation‑gated option of element F;
• "providing profile information … including at least one of a service tier, attributes and historical information of a user" (claim 4) → the '585 loyalty‑tier/user‑preference limitations.

Assessment: if this reference is confirmed to have an effective pre‑2017‑10‑20 filing date (it published 2012), it is a serious § 102/§ 103 threat to independent claims 1/8/15 and most dependents. Two immediate consequences: (a) the prosecution citation list is not a sufficient prior‑art universe for this family, and (b) any earlier "no clean § 102 anticipator" conclusion should be re‑run with this reference included.

Caveat: I verified the abstract/claims snippet and the publication number; I did not confirm the applicant, filing date, or full specification, nor whether it is a US patent application publication with a pre‑2017 US filing date (vs. a foreign‑priority application). Confirm before relying on it.

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8. Critical‑date screen (which cited art actually counts)

This table carries forward the Prior‑Art section's flag on Kimura and Borgyos and confirms it: those two cannot support a § 103 rejection against the 2017‑10‑20 priority claim.

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9. Verification gaps (stated explicitly)

1. Literal claim text still unverified (see Patent Summary §5.1–5.2 and Prior Art §7). All mappings above are keyed to claim categories and the summarized structure, not verbatim claim language. Re‑key to the granted PDF and USPTO Patent Center before any filing.
2. The '585 (56) table was never retrieved; the cited list is a same‑family proxy. Retrieve from Patent Center for App. No. 16/890,440.
3. Which references were actually applied (rejected) vs. merely IDS‑listed is unknown — this determines whether the § 102/§ 103 designations above are correct. Pull the file wrapper office actions.
4. Characterizations not opened in full: I did not open the full texts of Higgins (US 2010/0027527), Jones (US 2010/0036606), Petralia (US 2010/0280853), Grochocki (US 10,274,328 / US 2018/0094943), Thakur (US 2016/0109251), van Dok (US 2016/0245663), Martin (US 2016/0328745), Letz (US 9,488,485), Mundinger (US 9,261,374), Konrardy (US 10,324,463), Dhanani, Gerdes, Kazama, Gibson, Sengupta, Brulle‑Drews, Cheung, Panabaker, or Hamilton II. Those are characterized only as the Prior‑Art section summarized them; do not treat my mapping of them as verified. Konrardy in particular should be opened — the Prior‑Art section flagged it as candidate art for the "attention/driver‑state as routing input" limitation.
5. US 2012/0253929 A1 — number and content confirmed by search snippet; applicant, filing date, and full text not confirmed.
6. Priority/family risk (carried forward): US 11,913,799 B2 and US 2024/0247938 A1 are live continuations of the same specification. A ground that invalidates '585 does not dispose of the family; scope the search across all three.

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10. Bottom line

• No single cited reference anticipates claims 1/8/15 — that conclusion from the Prior‑Art section is confirmed and unchanged after opening the key references.
• Claims 1–16 are highly vulnerable to § 103 on the cited art. The strongest ground is Boss '430 in view of Boss '885: Boss '430 discloses the complete receive‑request → determine‑route‑by‑third‑party‑auction → display pipeline and the "maximum variation from the shortest route" cap (FIG. 5‑6, X% rule) and compensation for the route taken (vendor surcharge, FIG. 4); Boss '885 discloses the area‑load‑cap rule that is literally the "load balancing" of the title. The combination is between two IBM references sharing a common inventor, in the same field, addressing the same known deficiency the '585 background identifies — the KSR motivation is easy.
• The narrowest defensible point for the patent owner is element F of claim 1 — that the compensation must come "from at least one additional user" and is tied to an option to enter a route selection preference. Expect the battle to be fought there, and expect it to hinge on whether claim 1 is construed to require the payer to be a fellow map‑application user rather than an advertiser — a construction question the specification's own two‑sided compensation description does not cleanly resolve (note the drafting drift across claims 1/8/15 already flagged in the Patent Summary: "requires" / "receives" / "provides," and "at least one additional user" vs. "a second user").
• The most important actionable finding is § 7: there is apparent art (US 2012/0253929 A1) that reads on the claimed primary/secondary‑route‑within‑a‑threshold‑percentage structure, fee‑prioritized advertising, display‑secondary‑only, and pay‑a‑fee‑to‑see‑the‑primary‑route mechanic. This was not cited in the family's prosecution record as reflected in the retrieved citation list. Retain this reference and confirm its dates before anything else.

Immediate next steps: (1) pull the literal claims and the (56) table from USPTO Patent Center for App. 16/890,440; (2) confirm US 2012/0253929 A1's applicant and earliest US filing date; (3) open Konrardy '463 and Grochocki '328 in full; (4) build the Boss '430 + Boss '885 claim chart against the literal claim language before treating any of the above as a concluded opinion.