Invalidity dossier
US 5260999
Added 9/23/2026, 5:10:08 PM
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Patent summary
Title, assignee, inventors, filing/issue dates, abstract, and a plain-language overview of the claims.
Patent Overview — US5260999A
Title: Filters in License Management System (source as given).
Patent number / application: US5260999A; application US07/946,009, filed 1992-09-15; granted and published 1993-11-09.
Inventor / assignees: Robert M. Wyman. Original assignee Digital Equipment Corp. Current assignee listed as Hewlett Packard Development Co LP, with recorded reassignments to Compaq Information Technologies Group, L.P. (2002-01-09) and Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. (2004-01-21).
Dates / status: Priority date 1991-06-28; anticipated expiration 2011-06-28; status "Expired - Lifetime" (the listing notes this is an assumption, not a legal conclusion).
Purpose: The invention "relates to methods of operation of computer systems, and more particularly to a method and system for managing the licensing of software executed on computer systems." Its stated object is a Software Licensing Management System in which usage of licensed software is monitored to determine whether a use falls within the scope of a license, with a central facility maintaining a database of software licenses and storing a unit value indicating the number of licensing units per product. On a user request, a message is sent to the facility, which checks whether a license exists and whether units may be allocated based on user characteristics such as the executing platform (CPU) configuration, then grants or denies permission electronically. The excerpt emphasizes flexibility: supporting simultaneous, varied licensing alternatives and vendor terms rather than one rigid policy; licensing individual products, organizations, networks, terminals, or calls from another licensed product; distributed execution across network nodes; delegation of a single license into locally administered parts; and licensing parts or features of composite packages. It also introduces "transitive licensing," where the right to use one product or feature implies the right to use others.
Plain-language scope: A centralized system for tracking, granting, and denying software licenses by counting licensing units and evaluating license terms and user/platform characteristics.
What the excerpt does not establish: No claims, detailed embodiments, or prior-art references are reproduced here, so claim scope, filter specifics, and distinctions over prior art cannot be assessed. Classifications and legal-status labels are listed as assumptions only.
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US5260999](/patent/US5260999)/en
Generated 10/1/2026, 9:43:47 PM
Cases on file (0)
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Litigation summary
Past and pending lawsuits — plaintiffs, defendants, jurisdictions, outcomes, and notable rulings.
Proceedings on file (0)
All PTAB activity →AIA trial proceedings (IPR / PGR / CBM) filed at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board against this patent. Sourced from the USPTO Open Data Portal and refreshed every six hours; each proceeding number deep-links to the PTAB E2E docket.
No PTAB proceedings on file. This patent has not been challenged via IPR, PGR, or CBM. The absence is itself a signal — well-asserted patents eventually attract IPRs. The LLM analysis below may surface filings the ODP feed hasn’t indexed yet.
PTAB challenges
AIA trial proceedings at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board — IPR, PGR, and CBM. Petitioners, judge panels, claim-level invalidation outcomes from Final Written Decisions, and Federal Circuit appeals. The single most important defensive datapoint after litigation history.
Assignment history
Inventors, original assignee, and the chain of ownership recorded with the USPTO — including the correspondent attorney who recorded each assignment, since shell-LLC chains often share one repeat-player attorney even when the entity names look unrelated. Surfaces NPE / patent-troll patterns: shell-entity transfers, known asserters in the chain, repeat correspondent fingerprints, pre-litigation assignments, and bankruptcy fire-sales.
Prior art
Earlier patents, publications, and products that may anticipate or render the claims unpatentable.
Obviousness
Combinations of prior art that suggest the claimed invention would have been obvious under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
Extensions
Patent term adjustments, term extensions, continuations, divisionals, family members, and expiration dates.
Derivative works
Defensive disclosure: derivative variations of each claim designed to render future incremental improvements obvious or non-novel.