Invalidity dossier
US 5634012
System for controlling the distribution and use of digital works having a fee reporting mechanism
Current assignee: Contentguard Holdings Inc
Added 9/23/2026, 5:22:03 PM
Active provider: DeepSeek · deepseek-flash
Patent summary
Title, assignee, inventors, filing/issue dates, abstract, and a plain-language overview of the claims.
Patent Overview: US 5,634,012
Title: System for controlling the distribution and use of digital works having a fee reporting mechanism
Patent number: US 5,634,012 A
Application number: US08/344,773
Inventors: Mark J. Stefik, Ralph C. Merkle, Peter L. T. Pirolli
Original assignee: Xerox Corp; current assignee listed as Contentguard Holdings Inc
Prior art date / filing date: 1994-11-23
Publication (grant) date: 1997-05-27
Legal status: Expired – Lifetime (anticipated expiration 2014-11-23)
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5634012/en
Purpose (per supplied text): The patent addresses a "fundamental issue facing the publishing and information industries"—preventing "unauthorized and unaccounted distribution or usage of electronically published materials." Published works (audio, video, software, books, multimedia) are distributed digitally and recreated on computer systems; publishers receive royalties only for accounted deliveries, so unaccounted copying causes unpaid royalties. The ease of "perfect" reproduction and network transmission, including over the Internet, is described as a major concern.
Plain-language scope: The title indicates a system for controlling distribution and use of digital works that includes a fee reporting mechanism. The classification data corroborates this field: DRM for copyrighted material (G06F21/10), billing/invoicing (G06Q30/04), metering (G06F2221/2135), and billing for subscription/content services (H04N21/2543, H04N21/254). Prior-art keywords listed are: fee, repository, digital work, usage, server. No claim language, detailed description, or fee-reporting mechanics are present in the supplied excerpt.
What the excerpt does not establish:
- The actual claims and their scope; no claim text is supplied.
- How the fee reporting mechanism operates, what fees are reported, or to whom.
- Technical implementation details (repository architecture, usage rights enforcement, encryption).
- Litigation history, validity, or prior-art analysis (not researched per instructions).
- Whether the listed "current assignee" is accurate; Google states assignee lists may be inaccurate, and the Contentguard assignment (2000-08-31) is noted only as a recorded reassignment.
Generated 10/1/2026, 9:43:38 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.