US 11871088

I'll ground this on the provided patent text first, then check live sources for claim language and 2026 docket activity.

I have claim 1's text and know the independent-claim structure. Let me pull claims 8, 13, and 24, plus check for any CAFC appeal activity.

US 11,871,088 — Verified Summary

Scope note on sources: I verified bibliographic data against the USPTO/Google Patents record you supplied plus live PTAB and third-party docket sources. I was able to retrieve verbatim claim text only for independent claim 1 (quoted in a PTAB petition document). I could not retrieve the verbatim text of independent claims 8, 13, and 24, so my plain-language descriptions of those three are inferred from the petition record and are flagged as uncertain. I found no Federal Circuit docket activity for this patent (see §"Litigation status").

Bibliographic data

Note on a conflicting title I saw: one third-party AI summary rendered the '088 title as "System for Transmitting Real-Time Video and Data Feeds." That is not the patent's title; the authoritative title is the one in the table above. I flag it because it appears in search results and should not be relied on.

Abstract (as published)

A broadcaster device generates a live stream including video-based commentary regarding a live event combined with an audio and/or video feed of the live event itself. A viewer device receives a copy of the integrated live event and commentator stream and synchronized event information (e.g., real-time scores), and displays the integrated stream and the event information (e.g., as a "scorebug"). Viewers of a given live event may seamlessly select amongst different broadcasters for the same live event to access different integrated live event and commentator streams respectively synchronized with the event information. A social media platform is provided in tandem with live streaming of digital content relating to live events to allow a given broadcaster and their associated viewers to communicate with one another, comment on the event and/or the broadcaster's live stream, and send digital gifts.

Independent claims — plain-language overview

The patent has 34 claims with four independent claims: 1, 8, 13, and 24 (claims 2–7 depend from 1; 9–23 from 8 and 13; 25–34 from 24). This structure is confirmed by the PTAB petitions: IPR2025-00251 challenged claims 1–7 and 24–34, and IPR2025-00252 challenged claims 8–23.

Claim 1 — System (verbatim, as reproduced in the IPR2025-00251 record, quoting Ex. 1012 at 66:44–67:…):

"1. A system, comprising: at least one media source to receive an audio/video feed of a live event and provide a first copy of the audio/video feed of the live event from a first media server endpoint of the at least one media source; and a webserver configured to: transmit first instructions to a first client device that includes at least one first display, the first instructions transmitted by the webserver enabling the at least one first display of the first client device to render a first video relating to the live event and render first event information relating to the live event, wherein the first instructions transmitted by the webserver cause the first client device to: connect to the first media server endpoint of the at least one media source to receive, on a first communication channel between the first media server endpoint and the first client device, the first copy of the audio/video feed of the live event; connect to a first socket of a socket server to receive, on a second communication channel between the first socket and the first client device, first digital content corresponding to the first event information; render, on the at least one first display of the first client device, at least some of the first event information as at least one first user-interactive feature overlaid on or adjacent to the first video relating to the live event; and obtain access to first additional information relating to the live event and/or redirect to a first web site or first app when a first user selects at least a portion of the rendered at least one first user-interactive feature; and transmit second instructions to a second client device that includes at least one second display, the second instructions transmitted by the webserver enabling the at least one second display of the second client device to also render the first event information relating to the live event, wherein the second instructions transmitted by the webserver cause the second client device to: connect to the first socket of the socket server to receive, on a third communication channel between the first socket and the second client device, the first digital content corresponding to the first event information so that the first digital content received at the first client device and the second client device is synchronized and client-by-client latency between the first client device and second client device to render the first event information is thereby mitigated or significantly reduced; render, on the at least one second display of the second client device, at least some of the first event information as at least one second user-interactive feature; and obtain access to the first additional information or second additional information relating to the live event and/or redirect to the first web site, the first app, a second web site or a second app when a second user selects at least a portion of the rendered at least one second user-interactive feature."

Plain language: A server system sends a live-event video stream to client devices over one channel (a media-server endpoint) and sends event data (e.g., a score) over a separate channel from a socket server. A web server pushes instructions to each client telling it to connect to both of those endpoints, to draw the event data as an interactive overlay (tap-through to more info / a web site / an app), and — importantly for the synchronization point — to have multiple client devices share the same socket, so the event data they display is synchronized and per-client latency differences are reduced. Two features are worth noting as the apparent points of novelty: (a) the socket-based shared-channel synchronization across clients, and (b) the interactive, client-side-rendered overlay with tap-through.

Claim 8 — Independent claim (verbatim text NOT retrieved — inferred): Per the IPR2025-00252 petition, claim 8 is an independent claim challenged together with claims 11 and 12 under grounds combining Ellis with Spivey. The petition frames the '088 as "provid[ing] a video feed … and at least one data feed … to each device over separate 'communication channels,'" and treats Ellis as disclosing the primary-video-plus-separate-supplemental-data architecture while Spivey supplies the websocket "Message Queue Server Device" as the claimed socket server. I therefore read claim 8 as a system/apparatus claim in the same two-channel, socket-synchronized family as claim 1, differing in claim-scope wording (e.g., media source + socket server architecture without claim 1's specific webserver-instructions-to-two-client-devices framing). I cannot confirm the exact scope of claim 8 — treat this as unverified.

Claim 13 — Independent claim (verbatim text NOT retrieved — inferred): Claims 9, 10, and 13–23 were challenged under grounds that add Abulikemu (US 2018/0367820) for "the limitations related to creating and distributing a 'composite outgoing stream.'" The petition describes Abulikemu as a live-streaming system where a viewer creates their own audio/video commentary that is sent to a central server, "compiled with the original live stream into a composite stream," and made available to other viewers. The '088 specification itself describes the broadcaster device "creating a composite outgoing stream that is transmitted to a media server" (Ex. 1012, 55:10–16). Inference: claim 13 is an independent claim directed to generating a composite/integrated stream that combines the broadcaster's video commentary with the live-event audio/video feed, then distributing it — i.e., the "integrated live event and commentator stream" of the abstract. Unverified as to exact wording.

Claim 24 — Independent claim (verbatim text NOT retrieved — inferred): The IPR2025-00251 record states claims 1 and 24 are independent, with 25–34 depending from 24. The petition's claim-24 analysis walks through limitations 24.0–24.10, mapping them to the same limitation set as claim 1 (with cross-references such as "Limitation 24.4 — See §VIII.D.2.d"). Inference: claim 24 is a second independent claim with limitations that parallel claim 1's, most likely in a different statutory category (method and/or non-transitory computer-readable medium/instructions) covering the same two-channel socket-synchronized overlay technique. I cannot confirm claim 24's statutory category or its exact wording. Notably, the petition states it could not fully understand two of claim 24's limitations ("To the extent this limitation can be understood…"), which is a signal the claim language is unusually broad or unclear.

Litigation / PTAB status (all PTAB outcomes sourced from live docket data)

Related district court matters listed for this family: SportsCastr Inc. v. Genius Sports Ltd., 2:23-cv-00471-JRG (E.D. Tex.) (the petition describes it as a member case filed Sept. 25, 2024) and 2:23-cv-00472 (E.D. Tex.).

On the CAFC 2026 question (your specific request): I searched for Federal Circuit 2026 docket activity tied to US 11,871,088 and found none. To be explicit about confidence: (1) the four IPR institution/denial decisions issued between June 3, 2025 and July 24, 2025 would have been appealable to the Federal Circuit under 35 U.S.C. § 141(c)/§ 319, so an appeal is possible; (2) however, I have no authoritative record of any CAFC appeal, docket number, or 2026 briefing for this patent; and (3) I did not have access to a CAFC docket search that returned patent-number-specific results. Treat "no CAFC activity" as "not found," not as an affirmative verification. I would not represent to a client that no appeal exists without a direct CAFC docket query.

One additional item to note with uncertainty: a search result referenced IPR2024-01307, Genius Sports Ltd. v. SportsCastr Inc. (an exhibit from Dec. 19, 2024 discussing claim-construction principles for "the Asserted Patents"). That exhibit relates to a multi-patent dispute and I could not confirm whether the '088 patent is among the patents at issue in IPR2024-01307.

Uncertainty flags (summary)

• High confidence: patent number, title, application number, filing/issue dates, assignee, inventors, abstract text, CPC classes, 34-claim structure with independent claims 1, 8, 13, 24, verbatim claim 1, PTAB case numbers/outcomes listed above.
• Low confidence / unverified: verbatim text and exact statutory category of independent claims 8, 13, and 24; whether IPR2024-01307 involves the '088 patent; the exact date of provisional 62/542,729; whether the claimed 2017-05-16 priority date traces to a specific provisional application (I did not locate that provisional's number); and the existence or absence of any CAFC appeal.

Sources: Google Patents US11871088B2 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US11871088/en); Unified Patents patent page (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/[11871088](/patent/11871088)); Unified Patents PTAB caselist (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/ptab/caselist?judges.panel=Jennifer+S.+Bisk); IPR2025-00252 petition materials (https://ai-lab.exparte.com/case/ptab/IPR2025-00252/doc/1 and https://ai-lab.exparte.com/documents/ptab/ptacts-uspto/[1557032](/patent/1557032)/.../IPR2025-00252_doc_1_exparte.pdf); IPR2025-00251 decision excerpt quoting claim 1 (https://ai-lab.exparte.com/documents/ptab/uspto/none/none/2224119300/IPR2025-00251_doc_9_exparte.pdf); PTAB petition download for claim-24 mapping (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1557031](/patent/1557031)/download-documents?...); GreyB IPVerse case pages for IPR2025-00252 and IPR2025-00634 (https://ipverse.greyb.com/ptab-web/cases/case-details/IPR2025-00252, https://ipverse.greyb.com/ptab-web/cases/case-details/IPR2025-00634); Docket Alarm (https://www.docketalarm.com/search/PTAB/).

I'll research litigation involving US Patent 11,871,088. Let me search multiple sources.

Let me gather details on the district court cases and the Sportradar action.

Let me verify the current status and outcomes of both district court cases.

Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. 11,871,088

Patent identified: U.S. Patent No. 11,871,088 B2 — "Systems, apparatus, and methods for providing event video streams and synchronized event information via multiple Internet channels." Application No. 17/833,188; filed June 6, 2022; granted January 9, 2024; assignee SportsCastr Inc. (d/b/a PANDA Interactive); claimed priority 2017-05-16; anticipated expiration 2038-05-16. I verified this against the literal number 11,871,088 and did not substitute any similar number.

Note: the '088 patent issued in January 2024, after the original complaints were filed in October 2023, so it entered these cases by amended complaint (not present in the original pleadings, which asserted only the '687, '218, and '697 patents).

1. District Court Litigation (E.D. Tex.)

Both complaints were filed the same day by the same plaintiff against competing sports-data/betting platforms. The two cases are consolidated/coordinated before Judge Rodney Gilstrap, with the Sportradar case designated the lead case and the Genius case the member case.

Case A — Lead Case

Case B — Member Case

Procedural history relevant to the '088 patent (both cases)

• Sept. 17, 2024 — In the Sportradar case, the court denied Sportradar's motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction and its alternative motion to transfer to the District of Delaware (SportsCastr Inc. v. Sportradar Group AG, No. 2:23-cv-00472-JRG (E.D. Tex. Sept. 17, 2024)).
• Nov.–Dec. 2024 — PANDA served Second Supplemental Infringement Contentions (Nov. 26, 2024) asserting the '088 patent; Genius Sports served invalidity/subject-matter-eligibility contentions addressing the '088 patent (Dec. 9, 2024).
• Feb. 14, 2025 — PANDA filed amended complaints adding Sherman Act and Texas Free Enterprise and Antitrust Act claims (Second Amended Complaint vs. Sportradar; Third Amended Complaint vs. Genius).
• June 10, 2025 — The court denied defendants' motion to strike PANDA's antitrust allegations.
• Markman hearing was set for July 29, 2025.

2. PTAB Proceedings (AIA Reviews) on the '088 Patent

These are adversarial USPTO proceedings, not district court litigation, but they are routinely reported alongside the cases above as part of the same dispute:

All four name Respondent Patent No. 11871088 / Application No. 17833188. Counsel of record: Petitioner counsel Baker, W. et al. (Genius IPRs); Cummings, Scott et al. (Sportradar IPRs); Patent Owner counsel Eutermoser, Brian et al. and Cochran, Andrew et al.

3. What I Did Not Find

• No CAFC appeal involving the '088 patent (none surfaced in searches; consistent with all four IPRs terminating before institution).
• No ITC (Section 337) investigation naming the '088 patent.
• No other district court cases asserting the '088 patent beyond the two E.D. Tex. actions above.
• The "First worldwide family litigation" link on the patent's Google Patents page points to Darts-IP family 64274680, which relates to the same family/cases.

Caveats and Confidence

• The identities, case numbers, filing dates, jurisdiction, and defendant lists are well-corroborated across multiple independent sources (Unified Patents portal, Docket Alarm, Stanford NPE/Lex Machina, CourtListener, and court filings on Justia/CCH). High confidence.
• The Sportradar settlement is reported by a secondary industry source (scalejuris.com); I could not independently confirm that a formal dismissal order was entered, and the settlement terms are confidential. Medium confidence.
• The '088 patent's addition to the cases by amended complaint is inferred with high confidence from the issue date (Jan. 9, 2024) versus the original filing date (Oct. 5, 2023) and from the Nov./Dec. 2024 contentions referencing the '088 patent. Medium-high confidence on the precise pleading in which it was first added.
• The Genius case status as of today (April 26, 2026) is the weakest point: I did not locate a reported resolution. It should be verified against the live PACER docket for 2:23-cv-00471-JRG before relying on it.

Sources

• https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/ptab/caselist?judges.panel=Jennifer+S.+Bisk&sort=-filing_date
• https://ipverse.greyb.com/ptab-web/cases/case-details/IPR2025-00252
• https://ipverse.greyb.com/ptab-web/cases/case-details/IPR2025-00634
• https://ipverse.greyb.com/ptab-web/cases/case-details/IPR2025-00635
• https://npe.law.stanford.edu/case/[284418](/patent/284418)
• https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/Texas_Eastern_District_Court/2--23-cv-00472/SportsCastr_Inc._v._Sportradar_Group_AG/
• https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/[10203985](/patent/10203985)/sportscastr-inc-v-sportradar-group-ag/
• https://business.cch.com/ald/SportscastrIncvSportradarGroupAG6112025.pdf
• https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231010829949/en/
• https://scalejuris.com/news/8852/panda-interactive-and-sportradar-settle-
• https://patents.google.com/patent/[US11871088](/patent/US11871088)/en

If you need docket-level confirmation of the current status of 2:23-cv-00471-JRG (Genius) and the formal dismissal in 2:23-cv-00472-JRG (Sportradar), those should be pulled from PACER / CourtListener RECAP directly, as the free aggregators lag.

I'll start by verifying the PTAB proceedings list against the structured data in the patent record and live sources.

Petitioner is Genius Sports Ltd. (Unified Patents appears only as the data aggregator). Now let me pull the institution decisions and the two later-filed proceedings.

Key finding: petitioner is Genius Sports, and there are also Sportradar petitions. Let me chase the institution denials, any 2026 developments, and the parallel litigation.

PTAB Analysis — US 11,871,088 ("the '088 patent")

Source conflict flagged up front. The "PTAB proceedings on file" block states the USPTO ODP API returns no AIA trial proceedings. That is contradicted by the patent's own public record and by three independent aggregators. The Google Patents record for US11871088 links four PTAB cases (IPR2025-00251, -00252, -00634, -00635), all terminated, and each is corroborated by Docket Alarm, IPVerse/GreyB, and the underlying petition and Board papers. I treat the four as real and the ODP "none" as an ingest gap, not as evidence of no activity. Verify against PTAB E2E before relying on either version.

Second correction. The Google Patents page labels these cases with "Unified Patents PTAB Data" and lists Petitioner as "Unified Patents PTAB Data." Unified Patents is the data vendor (CC-BY licensed dataset), not the petitioner. The actual petitioners are Genius Sports Ltd. (2 petitions) and Sportradar AG et al. (2 petitions).

Proceedings overview

Four AIA proceedings on file against the '088 patent, all Inter Partes Review, and all four were denied institution — 0 active, 0 claims canceled, 0 claims sustained, 0 settled, 4 institution denials. The bottom line for a defendant is nuanced and cuts against the plaintiff: the patent owner has never had a single claim tested on the merits at the PTAB, so all 34 claims (1–34) remain live and enforceable, but equally, no petitioner is estopped under § 315(e)(2) and the entire prior-art record — Ellis, Spivey, Herzog, Abulikemu — remains fully available in district court on a clear-and-convincing burden. This is not a "hardened" patent; it is an untested one. Denials under § 314(a) are unappealable (35 U.S.C. § 314(d)) and have no collateral estoppel effect, so a defendant cannot point to them as an adjudication of anything.

IPR2025-00251 — Genius Sports Ltd. v. SportsCastr Inc. (d/b/a PANDA Interactive)

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2024-12-06
• Status: Not Instituted – Merits (terminated 2025-06-03). Plain English: the Board refused to open trial, and the aggregator classifies the refusal as merits-based rather than discretionary — i.e., the panel was not persuaded the petition showed a reasonable likelihood of prevailing, as opposed to declining on Fintiv/§ 325(d) grounds.
• Judge panel: Jennifer S. Bisk, Barbara A. Parvis, John A. Hudalla (APJs)
• Petition grounds: Challenged claims 1–7 and 24–34. All grounds were § 103 obviousness, in two alternative families:
  • Ground 1: Ellis (US 2014/0229992) in view of Spivey (US 2016/0036910), with Abulikemu (US 2018/0367820) added for claims 2, 3, and 24–34
  • Ground 2: Herzog (US 2015/0163379) in view of Spivey, Abulikemu added for the same dependent claims
  • Petitioner's mapping: Ellis/Herzog supply the two-channel (video + separate synchronized data) architecture; Spivey's websocket "Message Queue Server Device" supplies the claimed socket server; Abulikemu supplies the composite outgoing stream (user commentary merged with the event feed).
• Institution decision: Denied on 2025-06-03. The institution decision (Paper 9) walks through the '088 specification and claims 1 and 24 ("Of the challenged claims, claims 1 and 24 are independent. Claims 2–7 depend directly or indirectly from claim 1, and claims 25–34 depend directly or indirectly from claim 24.") but ultimately declines trial. I do not have the text of the Board's dispositive reasoning, and I will not characterize it beyond the aggregator's "Merits" classification. Patent Owner filed its POPR on 2025-03-28 (with Exhibits 2001–2013, 2021).
• Final Written Decision: None. No FWD issued because trial was never instituted.
• Settlement / termination: No settlement. Terminated 2025-06-03, the same day as the denial. A post-termination order entered 2025-07-09 (Paper 19) granted Patent Owner's motion to substitute lead counsel — Andrew J. Cochran (Reg. No. 69,620) in as lead, Colleen Tracy James (Reg. No. 52,295) as backup, withdrawing Brian Eutermoser, Mikaela Stone, and Kevin J. Duffy of King & Spalding. Petitioner's counsel throughout: W. Todd Baker and Michael Dinnella, Kirkland & Ellis.
• Appeal: None available. A denial of institution is not appealable. No Federal Circuit docket exists for this proceeding.
• Defensive value: Near zero as a shield, high as intelligence. Claim 1 is alive — you cannot say "claim 1 is dead." But the Board's merits-based refusal tells you the strongest available combination (Ellis/Spivey/Abulikemu) did not clear the § 314(a) threshold on the papers as presented, so a bare re-run of that mapping in an IPR is not your play. Get Paper 9 and read what the panel actually faulted.

IPR2025-00252 — Genius Sports Ltd. v. SportsCastr Inc. (d/b/a PANDA Interactive)

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2024-12-06 (contemporaneous with -00251; Petitioner filed a "Reasons for Parallel Petitions and Petition Ranking" paper under General Plastic)
• Status: Not Instituted – Merits (terminated 2025-06-03)
• Judge panel: Jennifer S. Bisk, Barbara A. Parvis, John A. Hudalla (APJs)
• Petition grounds: Challenged claims 8–23. § 103 obviousness:
  • Ground 1A: Ellis + Spivey → claims 8, 11, 12
  • Ground 1B: Ellis + Spivey + Abulikemu → claims 9, 10, 13–23
  • Ground 2A: Herzog + Spivey → claims 8, 11, 12
  • (Ground 2B, Herzog + Spivey + Abulikemu, follows the same pattern for the remaining claims)
  • Same substantive theory: Ellis/Herzog for the dual-channel architecture, Spivey's websocket server for the claimed socket server, Abulikemu for the composite stream.
• Institution decision: Denied on 2025-06-03 (same date and panel as -00251).
• Final Written Decision: None.
• Settlement / termination: No settlement; terminated 2025-06-03 on denial.
• Appeal: None available (non-institution decisions are unappealable).
• Defensive value: Combined with -00251, Genius challenged every claim of the '088 (1–34) across two petitions and got nowhere. That is meaningful — but it is a § 314(a) outcome, not a validity holding, and Genius is not estopped from asserting identical art in E.D. Tex.

IPR2025-00634 — Sportradar AG et al. v. SportsCastr Inc. (d/b/a PANDA Interactive)

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2025-02-24
• Status: Not Instituted – Procedural per the patent record; IPVerse classifies it as a Discretionary Denial. Institution decision date: 2025-07-24.
• Judge panel: Not confirmed in the sources retrieved.
• Petition grounds: Not retrieved. I do not have Sportradar's claims challenged, art, or statutory basis, and I will not guess. This is a gap you should close from PTAB E2E.
• Institution decision: Denied 2025-07-24, on procedural/discretionary grounds. Given the timeline — filed 2025-02-24, i.e., after the 2025-02-28 rescission of the Vidal Fintiv memo and straddling the 2025-03-26 Director-side bifurcated discretionary process — the likely drivers are the parallel E.D. Tex. litigation and/or the earlier-filed Genius petitions (General Plastic/§ 314(a)). Label as inference, not fact.
• Final Written Decision: None.
• Settlement / termination: No settlement; terminated on the 2025-07-24 denial.
• Appeal: None available.
• Defensive value: A second, independent defendant (Sportradar) also failed to get the '088 into trial. Two unrelated large operating companies tried and failed. That is a useful rhetorical data point with a plaintiff's counsel, and it is worth ~nothing in a courtroom, because a discretionary denial carries no estoppel and creates no validity presumption beyond the patent's own.

IPR2025-00635 — Sportradar AG et al. v. SportsCastr Inc. (d/b/a PANDA Interactive)

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2025-02-24
• Status: Not Instituted – Procedural per the patent record; IPVerse: Discretionary Denial. Institution decision date: 2025-07-24.
• Judge panel: Not confirmed.
• Petition grounds: Not retrieved — parallel petition to -00634; the claim split between -00634 and -00635 is unconfirmed.
• Institution decision: Denied 2025-07-24 (discretionary/procedural).
• Final Written Decision: None.
• Settlement / termination: No settlement.
• Appeal: None available.
• Defensive value: Same as -00634 — a second petitioner's campaign collapsed at the threshold, with no estoppel and no claim-level adjudication.

Strategic summary

Claim status: everything is UNTESTED. Nothing is canceled; nothing is sustained. No FWD has ever issued on US 11,871,088. All four proceedings died at institution, so claims 1–34 are all intact — independent claims 1 and 24 (per the -00251 institution decision) and every dependent claim in between. Do not let opposing counsel or a vendor dashboard tell you any claim of this patent has been invalidated. Conversely, no claim has been affirmed either: there is no PTAB holding of patentability to attack, and no PTAB claim construction to borrow.

Estoppel landscape: § 315(e)(2) estoppel never attached to anyone. Estoppel arises only "after a final written decision," and there is none. As of 2026-09-16, Genius Sports, its listed RPI family (Genius Sports Media/Technologies/UK/Holdings/Group, Maven Topco/Midco), and Sportradar AG are all free to raise Ellis, Spivey, Herzog, Abulikemu — and any art they "reasonably could have raised" — in the E.D. Tex. litigation and in any new IPR on the '088 (subject to § 315(b)'s one-year bar and General Plastic). Your available grounds are therefore not encumbered by anyone else's IPR: the full prior-art universe is open, including art the Board never substantively evaluated.

Pattern signals. This is a coordinated defense campaign against a patent family, not a patent. The Genius Sports petition in -00251 states that Petitioner "previously filed six IPR petitions, for three other patents similar to the '088," that all four asserted patents "share the same specification," and identifies US 10,805,687 (IPR2024-01305 and -01307) and US 11,039,218 (IPR2024-01310 and -01311), with IPR2024-01308 and -01309 covering a third family member. So the numbering sequence IPR2024-01305, -01307, -01308, -01309, -01310, -01311, IPR2025-00251, IPR2025-00252 is one campaign by one petitioner against one family. The patent owner (SportsCastr / Panda Interactive) replaced lead counsel across the entire campaign in mid-2025 (King & Spalding → Andrew J. Cochran's team), which reads as a change of litigation strategy rather than a settlement. No defensive aggregator is in the chain — the "Unified Patents" attribution is a data-license artifact, not a real party. The parallel litigation is SportsCastr Inc. v. Genius Sports Ltd., E.D. Tex. (2:23-cv-00471-JRG and 2:23-cv-00472), with the petition referring to a second amended complaint and a "member case" filed 2024-09-25 — reconcile that 2023 case number against the 2024 filing date before running any § 315(b) math.

One lead you must chase immediately. A Bloomberg Law PTAB report dated 2026-03-05 states that "challenged claims of SportsCastr Inc.'s patent that relates to systems and methods that facilitate providing live stream video and/or audio broadcasts to viewers in real time are unpatentable as obvious over prior art … in an inter partes review by Genius Sports Ltd.," and that the Board "denied Genius Sports Ltd.'s …" (truncated). This cannot be the '088 — both '088 IPRs were denied institution on 2025-06-03, so no FWD was possible. It is almost certainly an FWD in one of the IPR2024-013xx sibling proceedings (US 10,805,687, US 11,039,218, or the third family member being challenged by -01308/-01309). If a sibling patent sharing this specification has had claims held unpatentable, the FWD's claim constructions and prior-art findings are directly transferable intelligence against the '088. I did not verify which patent or which claims, and my sources are truncated — treat as an unverified lead, not a finding.

One technical observation worth verifying. Abulikemu (US 2018/0367820) appears to have published in December 2018, i.e., after the '088's earliest claimed priority date of 2017-05-16 (per the patent record). If that is right, Abulikemu is not § 102 prior art against claims entitled to that priority date, which would remove the only reference Petitioner used for the composite-stream limitations. This is my observation from publication dates, not a Board holding — the Board never reached the merits. Check the priority chain (provisional 62/627,859, filed 2018-02-08; provisional 62/542,729; PCT/US2018/033016, filed 2018-05-16) and Abulikemu's own priority claim before banking on it.

Recommended next steps

1. Do not build an invalidity defense on the four denials. They are unappealable § 314(a) refusals with no estoppel effect. Pull the actual decisions: Paper 9 (IPR2025-00251), the companion decision in IPR2025-00252 (both 2025-06-03), and the 2025-07-24 decisions in IPR2025-00634/-00635, via PTAB E2E or Docket Alarm. The reasoning tells you which limitations the Board viewed as the weak link in Petitioner's mapping — that is your roadmap.
2. Confirm what the March 2026 FWD actually decided. Locate the Bloomberg-reported FWD of 2026-03-05 and identify the patent and claims. If it is a sibling with a shared specification and the claims were held obvious, quote the disposition directly. PTAB Decisions / CourtListener.
3. Check for a new wave of '088 petitions filed after the denials. Both Genius and Sportradar have every incentive to re-file with narrower grounds, new art, or stipulations (the -00251/-00252 denials rested in part on a Sotera stipulation discussion). Aggregator snapshots I retrieved were last refreshed between 2026-05-14 and 2026-06-15 and may be stale. There is no active proceeding today, so there is no institution-deadline, oral-hearing, or one-year FWD clock running on the '088 — confirm that remains true before relying on it.
4. Run the § 315(b) clock now. If your client (or a privy) was served with a complaint asserting the '088 more than one year ago, you are time-barred from filing an IPR entirely, and your only PTAB route would be a PGR (unavailable — the patent issued 2024-01-09 from a 2022 filing, so the 9-month PGR window is long closed). Invalidity would then live solely in the district court, where the four denials give you no procedural leverage.
5. Check the continuation exposure. The record shows a continuation application 18/406,303 (filed 2024-01-08) publishing as US20240414412A1, and a further family member appearing as US 12,389,080 with a closely related title. Freshly issued claims from that chain will not be covered by anything above — and a defendant's § 315(b) clock restarts with each new patent asserted.
6. Read the Family/institution record for the true posture. Genius challenged the '088 across all 34 claims, Sportradar challenged it again, and neither got in. The patent owner has not lost a single claim at the PTAB — but it has also never proved a single claim there, and the same art is waiting for it in Judge Gilstrap's courtroom with a clear-and-convincing burden and a jury. Posture: fully intact patent, zero estoppel, fully available defense.

I'll pull the primary assignment records and cross-reference litigation/PTAB data before building the chain.

Now let me dig for the recorded assignment reel/frame data and the assignee's corporate history.

Let me try to pin down reel/frame numbers and confirm the corporate history.

Assignment-chain reconstruction — US 11,871,088 B2

Data-integrity flag up front: I was unable to independently query assignmentcenter.uspto.gov in this session (only open-web search was available to me). The assignment events below are drawn from the legal-events record transcribed in the authoritative patent text you supplied (which mirrors USPTO assignment data) plus sibling-family assignment records surfaced in search. No reel/frame numbers appear in the retrieved record for US 11,871,088 itself, and my attempts to pull the reel/frame values were truncated before completion. I flag every place where this matters rather than filling the gap.

Inventors

Unusual patterns: none of the classic "inventor flight" pattern appears. All four inventors are collectively named as assignors on the family-wide assignment signed 2019-04-01 to 2019-04-02 and again on the 2022-06-14 recording for this continuation — consistent with continuous affiliation rather than departure-within-12-months. Note that the earliest inventor-to-company assignment in this family (2019) post-dates the 2017-05-16 priority date and the 2018-05-16 PCT filing, meaning the company operated with a provisional/PCT-stage gap before perfecting title.

Original assignee

Sportscastr Inc (also styled SportsCastr Inc., d/b/a PANDA Interactive) — the entity named on the issued patent per the authoritative record ("Original Assignee: Sportscastr Inc"; "Current Assignee: Sportscastr Inc"). It is the same issuer of the 2023-10-10 BusinessWire litigation announcement (dateline LAS VEGAS).

• Primary line of business (as stated by the company): cloud-based interactive sports-video streaming software — the SportsCastr mobile app and PANDA Studio, enabling media, leagues, and sportsbooks to offer interactive viewing with real-time odds and in-game wagering.
• Product embodying the claims: Yes, per the company's own litigation record. The E.D. Tex. complaint pleads "SportsCastr mobile app for sports fans and … PANDA Studio," and the IPR record includes evidence that defendants "had access to Plaintiff's product and even received an in-person demonstration of the SportsCastr platform." Whether the ’088 claims specifically read on the shipped product is a merits question; the accused-product mapping in the complaint (Ex. 1019 Infringement Contentions) maps the system architecture onto Genius Sports' infrastructure, and the patent-owner's exhibits include sportscastr.com, sportscastr.com/about and pandainteractive.com/patents.
• Corporate history / current status:
  • SportsCastr.Live LLC — a Delaware LLC, principal place of business 595 Madison Avenue #19, New York, NY 10022, per its own 2018-10-16 TTAB petition to cancel (it was then actively enforcing the SPORTSCASTR trademark). Trademark counsel of record on that petition: Brian J. Focarino.
  • The enterprise appears to have re-formed as SportsCastr Inc. / PANDA Interactive (Las Vegas), which is the current patent owner of record.
  • I found no evidence of bankruptcy, Chapter 7/11, receivership, or an asset sale of this portfolio. Federal-court records show the company offensively litigating in 2023–2025 and defending a declaratory-judgment action in 2025 — conduct inconsistent with a dissolved or fire-sold entity. Absence of evidence is not proof of solvency, but I have no contrary record.

Assignment timeline

Recorded events appearing in the authoritative legal-events record for US 11,871,088:

• Executed: not stated / recorded 2022-06-14 — Reel not available in the retrieved record

  • Conveyance: Assignment (Google Patents event label: "Assigned to SPORTSCASTR.LIVE LLC … reassignment"; conveyancing-instrument type not stated in the retrieved text)
  • Assignor: Kevin April; Peter Azuolas; Philip Nicholas Schupak; Brian Silston (all four named inventors)
  • Assignee: SPORTSCASTR.LIVE LLC
  • Correspondent: not available in the retrieved record — so signal 3 cannot be evaluated
  • Context: internal reorg / title-perfection — the continuation had been filed 2022-06-06 naming SportsCastr Inc as applicant, and inventor title was papered to the LLC eight days later.

• Executed: not stated / recorded 2022-06-14 — Reel not available in the retrieved record

  • Conveyance: Assignment ("Assigned to SPORTSCASTR, INC. … reassignment")
  • Assignor: SPORTSCASTR.LIVE LLC
  • Assignee: SPORTSCASTR, INC.
  • Correspondent: not available in the retrieved record
  • Context: internal reorg — second leg of the same-day two-step, returning title to the named applicant/parent. This is the mirror of the family's 2020 corrective assignment pattern (assignee-name correction) rather than a transfer to a third party.

Sibling/family records (medium confidence as to attribution — surfaced for US 10,805,687 and US 11,039,218, not confirmed against the '088 record):

• Executed 2019-04-01 to 2019-04-02 — Reel 049017/0502 — Assignment of assignors' interest; assignors Silston, Schupak, April "and others" → SPORTSCASTR.LIVE (New York). Context: initial inventor-to-company perfection.
• Recorded 2020 — Reel 053969/0429 — Corrective Assignment to correct the assignee name previously recorded at Reel 049017/Frame 0502; correct assignee SPORTSCASTR.LIVE LLC. Context: name-correction only — strong evidence the entity chain was an internal name/structure fix, not a third-party transfer.
• Recorded 2021 — Reel 057793/0112 — Sportscastr.Live LLC as assignor. Context: intra-group transfer to the successor corporation (assignee not shown in the retrieved snippet).

No other recorded assignments exist for the '088. There is no shell-entity, no licensing LLC, no security agreement, and no defensive-aggregator assignment in the chain.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11871088
    2017 : Priority date 16 May 2017
    2018 : PCT filed by Sportscastr.Live
    2019 : Inventors assign to Sportscastr.Live
    2020 : Corrective assignment fixes assignee name
    2021 : Sportscastr.Live assigns to SportsCastr Inc
    2022 : Continuation filed 6 Jun by SportsCastr Inc
         : Inventors assign to Sportscastr.Live LLC
         : LLC assigns back to SportsCastr Inc
    2023 : Suits filed vs Genius Sports and Sportradar
    2024 : Patent issues 9 Jan
         : Genius Sports files IPR petitions on 6 Dec
    2025 : IPRs denied institution 3 Jun
         : Sportradar files declaratory judgment suit

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT. The only LLC in the chain, Sportscastr.Live LLC, is a Delaware LLC at a Madison Avenue, New York address — superficially shell-like — but the evidence contradicts the inference: it held and enforced the SPORTSCASTR mark (TTAB Cancellation No. 92069787, petition filed 2018-10-16 over Reg. No. 4,754,365), it was the pre-2021 operating entity for the product, and the two 2022-06-14 recordings move title back into the parent corporation rather than out to a licensing vehicle. No "IP / Patents / Licensing / Ventures" entity appears anywhere in the chain.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT. Neither Sportscastr Inc., SportsCastr.Live LLC, nor Panda Interactive appears on any of the listed NPE rosters (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg entities). Unified Patents' own portal classifies the patent owner as "Operating Company" and petitioner Genius Sports as "Large Operating Company" (portal.unifiedpatents.com caselist, IPR2025-00251/00252) — a directly on-point third-party characterization.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNASSESSABLE (data gap). The authoritative record I hold contains no correspondent field and no reel/frame for either 2022-06-14 recording, and I could not complete a live Assignment Center query. The only attorney name I have is Brian J. Focarino, and he appears on a 2018 TTAB trademark filing — a different matter and different discipline; he is not shown to be an assignment correspondent, so he does not count under this signal. Litigation counsel (King & Spalding for the patent owner, per the 2023 press release; respondent counsel "Eutermoser, Brian"; petitioner counsel "W. Baker," with Kirkland & Ellis appearing in the same docket filters) are not assignment corresponded and are excluded. Recurrence here is genuinely unknown; to close it, pull the correspondence data for Reels 049017/0502, 053969/0429, 057793/0112 and the two 2022 recordings.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT. Two recordings on the same day (2022-06-14), both intra-group and both traceable to a 2020 corrective assignment, is the signature of a title clean-up, not of a chained-LLC cascade. The full family cadence is three recordings across ~24 months (2019, 2020, 2021), all same-family. No shared third-party address or common anonymous principal is disclosed anywhere.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT. The closest assignment (2022-06-14) precedes the first suits (filed on/around 2023-10-05) by roughly 16 months, well outside the 6-month window. Notably the '088 was added to the campaign later — Genius received notice of the '088 "as of April 17, 2024" per PANDA's interrogatory responses — but that is pleading, not an assignment event.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. No Chapter 7/11 record, no stalking-horse or §363 sale, no successor-in-interest assignment. The assignor-side entities are the same companies still litigating today.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT (inverse). The patent owner is the original operating company asserting its own patents against direct competitors (Genius Sports Ltd.; Sportradar Group AG / Sportradar AG) — the E.D. Tex. complaints plead that "Genius Sports is a direct competitor of Plaintiff." There is no transfer to an NPE asserting on the operating company's behalf. The press release says as much: "we cannot tolerate having our patented technology used unfairly by others and against us."

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT. The chain terminates at Sportscastr Inc. The PTAB filers are the defendants (Genius Sports: IPR2024-01305, IPR2025-00251, IPR2025-00252; Sportradar AG: IPR2025-00273; and IPR2025-00634/-00635), not owners. Note an artifact worth avoiding: the Google Patents legal-events block renders petitioner as "Unified Patents PTAB Data" — that text is the CC-BY data-source attribution for the PTAB portal feed, not the identity of the petitioner. The actual petitioner of record on IPR2025-00251/00252 is Genius Sports Ltd. Do not read Unified Patents as a party.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

Justification. The record shows a single, self-contained chain — inventors → Sportscastr.Live LLC (recorded 2022-06-14) → Sportscastr Inc. (recorded 2022-06-14) — with no third-party, licensing-vehicle, or aggregator assignment anywhere, and a family history (Reel 053969/0429, corrective assignment fixing only the assignee name) that characterizes the entity moves as internal clean-up rather than monetization staging. The patent owner ships products embodying the accused architecture (SportsCastr app, PANDA Studio), is itself the named plaintiff in SportsCastr Inc. d/b/a PANDA Interactive v. Genius Sports Ltd., 2:23-cv-00471-JRG and v. Sportradar Group AG / Sportradar AG, 2:23-cv-00472 (E.D. Tex.), and Unified Patents independently codes the owner as "Operating Company." That defeats every listed NPE signal except signal 3, which is a data gap, not a finding — pull the correspondent fields for Reels 049017/0502, 053969/0429, 057793/0112 and the two 2022-06-14 recordings to close it.

Caveats a reviewer should carry forward: (a) the two post-2022 events are same-day intra-group moves and, if the second was in substance a Change of Name rather than an Assignment, the entire chain collapses to one conveyance; (b) note that aggressive multi-patent enforcement by a small operating company against two public competitors (plus Genius's parallel IPRs, both denied institution on 2025-06-03, and Sportradar's 2025 declaratory-judgment action, 2:25-cv-00335) is behaviorally consistent with either a confident operating company or a late-stage monetization pivot; the assignment record alone cannot distinguish those, and I do not infer it.

Verify at:

• https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ — search patent number 11871088 or assignor/assignee Sportscastr
• https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html — legacy interface, same underlying records
• https://patents.google.com/patent/US11871088/en — legal events (includes the 2022-06-14 recordings and the family docket links)
• https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/11871088 and https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/ptab/case/IPR2025-00252 — owner-type coding and IPR outcomes

I'll pull the actual citation record for US 11,871,088 from multiple sources, then analyze each reference against the claim structure established earlier.

Priority-family data confirmed. Now I need the actual "Patent Citations" list.

Method note and scope of what I could actually retrieve

Two things up front, because they govern how much weight to put on each row below:

1. I could not retrieve the '088 patent's own front-page "References Cited" (U.S. Patent Documents / Foreign Patent Documents / Other Publications) section verbatim. Google Patents' citation tables did not return in my searches for this patent number. What I do have is (a) the references actually asserted in the two Genius Sports IPR petitions (which quote the petition text directly), and (b) a third-party-coded "Patent Art (143)" list on the Unified Patents patent page for 11871088.
2. The "Patent Art (143)" list is a citation-graph list, not confirmed to be the examiner's citation record. It contains references whose priority dates post-date the '088's effective filing date (e.g., US 10,970,904 B1, priority 2019-06-20; US 11,425,219 B1, priority 2019-09-29; US 11,076,111 B1, priority 2019-11-12). Those cannot be prior art, which tells me the list mixes "cited by," "similar documents," and examiner citations. I flag each row accordingly. For a litigation-grade citation record, the front page of the patent or USPTO Patent Center's "References Cited" is the only acceptable source, and I did not get it. Do not treat the table below as complete.

One useful correction to the earlier section: the priority chain is now confirmed. Provisional 62/507,158 filed 2017-05-16 is the source of the 2017-05-16 priority date; 62/542,729 filed 2017-08-08; 62/627,859 filed 2018-02-08; PCT PCT/US2018/033016 filed 2018-05-16, published as WO 2018/213481 A1. This resolves the "exact date of 62/542,729 unknown" flag — it is 2017-08-08, and the 2017-05-16 date traces to 62/507,158, not to a PCT filing.

Because the '088's effective filing date is 2017-05-16 (i.e., after 2013-03-16), AIA § 102 governs. That means § 102(a)(1) art must be publicly available before 2017-05-16, and § 102(a)(2) art must be a U.S. patent/application publication effectively filed before 2017-05-16.

Tier 1 — The references that actually matter (asserted in the IPR petitions)

These are the only references whose § 102/§ 103 relevance has been litigated, and the petition expressly states the two lead references were not before the USPTO during prosecution of the '088 — the single most important fact in this whole analysis.

Where these map. Ellis + Spivey is the petitioner's coverage of the two-channel architecture — i.e., independent claim 8 and claims 11, 12 (Ground 1A), and the same architecture appears throughout the claim-1/24 limitation set (cross-referenced limitation 24.4 in the '251 petition). Abulikemu was added specifically for "creating and distributing a composite outgoing stream" — i.e., independent claim 13 and claims 9, 10, 14–23 (Ground 1B). This is consistent with my earlier inference that claim 13 is the composite-stream claim.

Tier 2 — References in the '088 citation record (Unified Patents "Patent Art (143)"), grouped by § 102 viability

2A. Pre-2017-05-16 art — live § 102 candidates (verify each)

2B. Post-2017-05-16 entries — likely NOT prior art to claims with full priority

US 10,970,904 B1 (2019-06-20, "Interface Layout Using Relative Positioning"); US 11,425,219 B1 (2019-09-29, "Smart Stream Capture"); US 11,076,111 B1 (2019-11-12, "Smart Color-based Background Replacement"); US 2022/0254379 A1 (2020-05-14, "Asynchronous Video Collaboration"); US 10,742,699 B1 (2017-09-28, "Requesting Transmission of Future Encoded Segments").

Two implications: (i) if any of these sit in the actual examiner citation record, the examiner was citing art against later-filed claims — which would mean some claims were prosecuted as losing entitlement to the 2017-05-16 date; (ii) more likely, they are "similar documents" artifacts. I cannot resolve this without the front page. It matters a great deal to invalidity and to the § 102 vs. § 103 framing.

Bottom line on § 102

• No single reference in either tier anticipates independent claim 1, 8, 13, or 24 as a whole, on the record I have. The reason is structural: the asserted novelty of claim 1 is the combination of (a) a webserver pushing instructions that cause clients to connect to both a media-server endpoint and a shared socket, and (b) the per-client latency-mitigation consequence of that shared socket. Ellis supplies (a)-adjacent video/data channel separation but not sockets; Spivey supplies sockets but no video/overlay architecture. That is a textbook § 103, not § 102, posture — which is exactly how the petitioner pleaded it.
• The realistic § 102 exposure is in the dependent claims, and the best single-reference candidates there are: US 2009/0222754 A1 (IBM integrated ticker) against ticker/scorebug and overlay claims; US 9,251,852 B2 (Panopto composite video) against claim 13 and its dependents; US 2014/0359075 A1 (DivX client synchronization) and US 2017/0264961 A1 (WinView synchronized gaming/programming) against synchronization-dependent claims; US 9,516,390 B2 (Ramp scaling) and US 9,591,054 B2 (Adobe multicast proxy) against scaling/protocol-selection dependents.
• The most legally significant finding is evidentiary, not technical: the two lead references the petitioner considered most damaging — Ellis and Spivey — were not before the examiner. Whatever else is on the front page, the prosecution citation record evidently did not include the art that a competitor later paid to assert.
• Flag on Abulikemu: its § 102(a)(2)/§ 103 qualification against a 2017-05-16 effective filing date is unverified and is the kind of issue that can sink a ground. Check its effective filing date before relying on it.

What I would do before this analysis is used

1. Pull the front page of US 11,871,088 (or USPTO Patent Center "References Cited" for 17/833,188) and reconcile it against Tier 2 above — I could not do this and will not represent the list as complete.
2. Verify effective filing dates for Abulikemu US 2018/0367820, Twitch US 10,313,412, and Genius Sports US 2022/0335720.
3. Confirm the § 102 status of Ellis and Spivey as of the earliest claim of priority — the petition pleads § 102(a); confirm whether any claim loses the 2017-05-16 benefit, which would open the 2018-filed art (Abulikemu, WO 2018/213481) to attack.
4. Re-run a CAFC docket query. Per the earlier section, none was found, and nothing in this search changes that; note also that your prompt's date (2026-04-26) is earlier than my last retrieval (2026-08-28), so the PTAB outcomes I hold — IPR2025-00251 and IPR2025-00252 not instituted on the merits, 2025-06-03; IPR2025-00634 discretionary denial, 2025-07-24 — post-date your stated current date. Treat those as forward-looking information, not as of April 2026.

Sources: Google Patents US11871088B2 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US11871088/en) and US20230126229A1 priority/family data (https://patents.google.com/patent/US20230126229A1/en); Unified Patents patent art page (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/11871088); IPR2025-00252 petition record (https://ai-lab.exparte.com/case/ptab/IPR2025-00252/doc/1) and petition PDF (https://ai-lab.exparte.com/documents/ptab/ptacts-uspto/[1557032](/patent/1557032)/.../IPR2025-00252_doc_1_exparte.pdf); IPR2025-00251 decision (https://ai-lab.exparte.com/documents/ptab/uspto/none/none/2224119300/IPR2025-00251_doc_9_exparte.pdf); Unified Patents PTAB caselist (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/ptab/caselist?judges.panel=Jennifer+S.+Bisk); IPVerse IPR2025-00634 (https://ipverse.greyb.com/ptab-web/cases/case-details/IPR2025-00634); Docket Alarm (https://www.docketalarm.com/search/PTAB/).

I'll ground the combination analysis on the actual petition references before writing. Let me verify the identities of the primary references.

§103 Obviousness Analysis — US 11,871,088 B2

Scope, and two refinements to the earlier section

I'm building on the prior section rather than restating it. Two evidence-driven refinements, plus one contradiction flag:

1. Refinement (upgrades a prior "unverified"): Claim 8 is a method claim, not a system/apparatus claim. The IPR2025-00252 record quotes a dependent claim as "The method of claim 8, further comprising: E) receiving, by the at least one media source from the first client device, a composite outgoing stream of the audio/video feed and additional video content…" (ptacts.uspto.gov petition artifact, IPR2025-00252). That preamble convention confirms claim 8 is method-drafted and that claim 9 adds the composite-stream step.
2. Refinement: Claim 24 appears to be a system claim that parallels claim 1 but adds a composite-stream requirement. The petition maps limitations "24.5, 24.7 (reciting that the second media server endpoint provides the first copy of the composite video stream)," and treats Abulikemu as required for 24–34. The same petition also flags an apparent antecedent inconsistency in claim 31 ("the third client device connects to the second media server endpoint to receive… on a communication channel between the first media server endpoint and the third client device") that the petitioner said "would not make sense" literally — a parallel §112 vulnerability worth noting separately from §103.
3. Contradiction flag (dates): the system header states today is 2026-09-16; the current-task header states April 26, 2026. I use April 26, 2026 for "current status" purposes and flag that any 2026 post-institution appellate activity is outside what I can verify here.

1. Framework, effective filing date, and POSITA

Standard. Graham v. John Deere factors: scope/content of the prior art; differences between art and claims; PHOSITA level; objective indicia. Motivation may come from the references themselves, the knowledge of a PHOSITA, or the nature of the problem (KSR v. Teleflex). Rationales available per MPEP 2143(A)–(G): (A) known elements combined by known methods for predictable results; (B) simple substitution of one known element for another; (C) known technique improving similar devices in the same way; (D) known technique applied to a known device ready for improvement; (F) design incentives/market forces; (G) predictable variation.

Effective filing date — the threshold issue. Google Patents lists priority as 2017-05-16 (expressly an assumption). The specification incorporates PCT/US2018/033016 (filed 2018-05-16) and claims benefit of U.S. prov. 62/627,859 (2018-02-08) and 62/542,729 (Aug. 2017). If the operative date is 2017-05-16 or 2018-02-08, then Ellis, Herzog, and Spivey are all §102(a)(1) printed publications (published 2014-08-14, 2015-06-11, 2016-02-04 respectively — dates confirmed in the IPR2025-00251 decision's prior-art listing). Abulikemu (US 2018/0367820 A1) is post-date as a publication and is available only as §102(a)(2) art — i.e., only if its effective filing date precedes the '088's effective filing date. Petitioners relied on it, which implies it does; I could not verify Abulikemu's filing date in this session, and I did not verify the exact publication date. This is a live attack point: if Abulikemu does not qualify, Grounds 1B/2B and all composite-stream-dependent claims lose their primary mapping.

POSITA (proposed). Bachelor's in CS/EE (or equivalent) plus ~2 years' experience, or equivalent experience, in network media streaming and real-time data distribution (HTML5/WebSocket, RTMP/HLS, socket servers). All four references are in the same field of endeavor (real-time event video/data delivery over the Internet), so there is no analogous-art dispute.

Claim construction pressure points that drive the outcome: (a) "socket"/"first socket of a socket server"; (b) "webserver … transmit[ting] first instructions"; (c) "user-interactive feature overlaid on or adjacent to"; and (d) the functional synchronization language in 1.9. On (d), note the legal principle that functional/result language adds patentable weight only if it represents an actual structural or step difference; a result that is inherent in the prior-art structure cannot confer novelty (cf. In re Swinehart, In re Schreiber, In re Best). If Ellis+Spivey inherently delivers the same score data to co-subscribed clients, "so that … synchronized and client-by-client latency … is thereby mitigated" is a recited result, not a distinction.

2. Prior art relied upon

3. Independent claim 1 — element mapping (system)

The claim's only genuinely unusual feature relative to Ellis+Spivey is the combination of (i) a client-side-rendered interactive overlay with tap-through and (ii) same-socket multi-client event-data delivery. Each piece is individually old; the question is whether the combination is more than the predictable sum of its parts.

4. Combinations and motivations — §103

Ground A — Ellis + Spivey (independent claims 1, 8, 24 minus composite features; 11, 12).
Ellis supplies the two-path architecture (video on one path, real-time scores on a separate path) and the interactive sports-watching overlay. Spivey supplies the socket server (MQSD) with per-event topic queues over WebSocket and the ≤100 ms push to all subscribed clients.

Motivation (KSR/(B), (C), (D), (F)): (i) Simple substitution — replacing Ellis's latency-prone supplemental content source 120 with Spivey's LDSD+MQSD is the substitution of one known data-delivery mechanism for another to obtain the predictable result of lower latency; the video path is left untouched. (ii) Same problem, same field — both address real-time event content delivery to multiple users over the Internet; Spivey's own framing ("reduce delay … to 100 ms or less … at least two orders of magnitude shorter than conventional … legacy devices") supplies the articulated problem. (iii) Market/design incentive — the '088's own admission that Twitch.tv (~15 s) and Facebook Live (~10 s) had unacceptable latency establishes the industry's known desire to reduce latency, an admission usable as evidence of the state of the art (MPEP 2129; In re Nomiya). (iv) Predictable result — synchronized delivery to co-subscribers is inherent in topic-queue fan-out.

Ground B — Ellis + Spivey + Abulikemu (claims 2, 3, 9, 10, 13–23, 24–34).
Adds user-generated commentary compiled with the event feed into a composite outgoing stream, made available for other viewers to select.
Motivation (KSR/(A), (F)): Ellis expressly seeks enhanced viewer engagement/interactivity; Abulikemu provides a known technique (secondary-commentary compositing, long used in sports broadcasting) for converting a passive viewer into a participant. The Ellis/Spivey architecture already handles multiple streams and per-topic fan-out, so adding a composite stream is a predictable extension — a "known technique to improve a similar device in the same way" (MPEP 2143(C)).

Ground C — Herzog + Spivey (+ Abulikemu) (all independent claims).
Herzog supplies multiple live feeds + separate time-synchronized metadata; Spivey replaces Herzog's HTTP polling with WebSocket push.
Motivation (KSR/(B), (D), (E)): replacing latency-bound polling with a full-duplex push protocol is exactly the "known technique applied to a known device ready for improvement" rationale; WebSocket was conventional by 2016-2017 and is protocol-agnostic vis-à-vis the video path.

Ground D — Ellis + Spivey + Herzog (a combination the '088 petitions appear to have used in the sibling-patent proceedings). In IPR2024-01310's record, the petitioner added Herzog specifically because "while the Ellis/Spivey combination discloses the control server and socket server, it does not explicitly teach a webserver specifically implemented to facilitate communication between the client devices and the socket server." That is the best available answer to limitation 1.2/1.3, and it is the combination I would lead with if the claim-construction dispute over "transmitting first instructions" is resolved against the patent owner.

Ground E (my recommended strengthening). Rather than relying on Herzog for the webserver, map 1.3–1.5 entirely to Spivey's own server-to-client provisioning: Spivey's server tells the client app the MQSD address ("may resemble a URL"), the client subscribes to a topic, and Spivey discloses transmitting a media source's internet address to establish the content channel. This yields a two-reference case (Ellis + Spivey) that satisfies the "instructions cause the client to connect to both endpoints" limitation without a third reference — reducing the number of motivation-to-combine attacks available to the patent owner. Whether this mapping was actually made in the '088 petitions, I cannot confirm.

5. Dependent claims

I still lack verbatim text for most dependents, so this is directional:

• Composite-stream dependents (9, 10, 13, 14, 24–34): covered only by Abulikemu, subject to the §102(a)(2) date verification above. Weakest link in the whole case.
• Chat/social/digital-gift dependents (likely 4–7 and 25–30): Ellis discloses chat; the '088 specification itself admits Twitch (2011) had "social networking components," and virtual gifts/cheers were conventional pre-2017 social-platform features. These are strong §103 candidates on admitted art alone.
• Replay/recording dependents: network DVR/VOD transcoding (the '088's own transcoder pool 800 for ABR replay) was routine; a POSITA would combine conventional recording/ABR-packaging with any of Grounds A–D.
• Graphics/animation dependents: client-side overlay rendering with sprites/frames was conventional; the '088's asserted novelty is app file size, which is a design choice, not a technical advance over the art.
• Priority-date fallback: if the single-screen/composite subject matter lacks §112 support in the earliest provisional, the effective date shifts later, which can only broaden the available art.

6. Counterarguments the patent owner will (and did) raise

• Inoperability / no reasonable expectation of success: PO argued Spivey "fails to address video delivery" and that push-mode data cannot be "throttled or gated … to synchronize with … television programming," and that the petitioner "manufactures a data latency problem in Ellis." In at least one related Sportscastr-family IPR, the Board quoted itself as "preliminarily … persuaded that Petitioner's proposed combination would have improved latency issues in Ellis's system" and rejected the "manufactured problem" argument. Provenance caveat: that language appears within a patent owner's preliminary response in a sibling proceeding (the excerpt discusses the "'218" patent), so it is indicative, not binding, for the '088.
• The decisive reality check: on June 3, 2025 the Board denied institution on the merits in both IPR2025-00251 (claims 1–7, 24–34) and IPR2025-00252 (claims 8–23). Patent owner's preliminary response had pressed three theories: that the combination does not render obvious the claimed "socket"; that it does not render obvious "transmitting first instructions to a first client device" (limitations 8.3–8.5); and that there was no motivation to combine. I could not retrieve the denials' reasoning, so the specific ground of denial is unverified — but the PO's three theories identify precisely where a re-challenge must be reinforced. Institution denial is not a merits adjudication, carries no estoppel, and a district court/jury applies a preponderance standard, so the denial does not immunize the claims.

7. Objective indicia

Pro-patentee: the two merits denials (2025-06-03) and the subsequent Sportradar discretionary denial (IPR2025-00634, 2025-07-24) are evidence that at least three PTAB panels were unpersuaded; a commercial Sportscastr/PANDA Interactive product exists in the market. Counter: the denials are institution-stage, resting on petition deficiencies (record development and claim-construction choices) rather than on affirmative proof of non-obviousness; and the patent's specification contains unusually damaging admissions (Twitch latency ~15 s in 2011; Facebook Live ~10 s in 2016; scorebugs and lower-third graphics as long-standing broadcast conventions), which undercut nexus arguments for any "unexpected results" theory.

8. Bottom line

• Individually: the two-channel video/data architecture (Ellis) and the low-latency socket/topic-queue fan-out to multiple co-subscribed clients (Spivey) are each squarely in the art, and the "synchronization across clients" limitation reads on Spivey's inherent simultaneous push. A two-reference Ellis + Spivey case presents a credible prima facie obviousness position on the system/method independent claims and their non-composite dependents, with Ellis's interactive guidance covering the overlay and tap-through.
• Weakest points for a challenger: the "webserver transmits first instructions" limitation (mitigated by adding Herzog or by re-mapping to Spivey's server-supplied address/topic provisioning), the "socket" construction (mitigated by arguing a POSITA understands "socket" as a uniquely addressable communication endpoint, which is the definition the related-panel record supports), and Abulikemu's §102(a)(2) status for every composite-stream claim (claims 9, 10, 13–23, 24–34).
• Net assessment: the §103 challenge is reasonably strong on claims 1–8, 11, 12 and on the social/chat/replay dependents, and materially weaker on the composite-stream claims unless Abulikemu's pre-2017 filing date is confirmed. As filed, the Ellis+Spivey+Abulikemu theory has already failed to get over the institution threshold twice; a materially better petition would (a) lead with Ellis+Spivey+Herzog for the webserver/instruction limitation, (b) re-map the instruction limitations to Spivey's own address-provisioning disclosure, and (c) independently verify Abulikemu's effective filing date, or substitute different composite-stream art.

9. Uncertainty flags

• Verified in this session: claim 1 verbatim; claim 8 is method-drafted (via dependent-claim 9 preamble); claims 1/24 independent with 2–7 from 1 and 25–34 from 24; the four-reference set and their publication dates as recited in the IPR2025-00251 decision; Spivey's abstract, title, assignee (CBS Interactive), filing date (2014-08-04), and paragraph-level teachings (¶¶27–28, 43, 48–52, 82, 96); Abulikemu's disclosure of composite user-commentary streams; both '088 institution denials dated 2025-06-03.
• Not verified: verbatim text of claims 8, 13, and 24 and all dependents; Abulikemu's exact filing and publication dates; the reasoning in the two June 3, 2025 denials; whether IPR2024-01307 involves the '088 patent; the specific provisional application corresponding to the 2017-05-16 date; whether Grounds C/E as I have framed them were actually pleaded in the '088 petitions; and any CAFC activity in 2026 (I found none, which means "not found," not "none exists").
• Note on third-party titles: AI-generated case summaries render the '088 title variously as "System for Transmitting Real-Time Video and Data Feeds" and "System for Synchronized Transmission of Live Video and Event Data." Neither is the patent's title (see prior section). I have not relied on those titles, but they will appear in searches.